dents from the Roman Catholic Church. No longer were there a few
scattered sectaries whose heretical views might be suppressed by their
individual extermination. But a compact and wide-spread and rapidly
growing party had assumed dimensions that defied any such paltry
measures. It had outgrown persecution. The time for its eradication by
open war or by secret massacre might yet come. Meanwhile, it was
important to avert present disaster by partial concessions.

[Sidenote: Dismay of the court.]

[Sidenote: New alarms.]

The treachery of Des Avenelles had warned the Guises of their danger,
but had left them in dismay and doubt. They knew not whom to trust, nor
whence to expect the impending blow. Sir Nicholas Throkmorton's
correspondence is full of interesting details throwing light upon the
confusion and embarrassment of the Guises. "You shall understand," he
writes on the seventh of March, "that the Duke of Guise and the Cardinal
of Lorraine have discovered a conspiracy wrought against themselves and
their authority, which they have bruited (to make the matter more
odious) to be meant only against the king: whereupon they are in such
fear as themselves do wear privy coats, and are in the night guarded
with pistoliers and men in arms. They have apprehended eight or nine,
and have put some to the torture." "Being ready to seal up this letter,"
he adds in a postscript, "I do understand that the fear of this
commotion is so great, as the sixth of this present, the Duke of Guise,
the Cardinal of Lorraine, the Grand Prior, and all the knights of the
Order which were here, watched all night long in the court, and the
gates of this town were all shut and kept." On the fifteenth of March he
writes: "These men here have their hands full, and are so busied to
provide for surety at home, that they cannot intend to answer
foreigners. This night a new hot alarm is offered, and our town doth
begin again to be guarded. It is a marvel to see how they be daunted,
that have not at other times been afraid of great armies of horsemen,
footmen, and the fury of shot of artillery: I never saw state more
amazed than this at some time, and by and by more reckless; they know
not whom to mistrust, nor to trust.... He hath all the trust this daye,
that to-morrow is least trusted. You can imagine your advantage." A few
days later he writes again: "And now it was thought that this was but a
popular commotion, without order, and not to be feared; wh