o have been deterred by the supplications of his
young wife from going in person to destroy them.[1074] At length, when the
alternative of death or the Bastile was the only one presented, the
courage of the Bourbons began to falter. Navarre was the first to yield,
and his sister, the excellent Catharine de Bourbon, followed his example.
On the thirteenth of September the ambassador Walsingham wrote: "They
prepare Bastile for some persons of quality. It is thought that it is for
the Prince of Conde and his brethren."[1075] But three days later (the
sixteenth of September) he wrote again: "On Sunday last, which was the
fourteenth of this month, the young Princess of Conde was constrained to
go to mass, being threatened otherwise to go to prison, and so
consequently to be made away. The Prince of Conde hath also yielded to
hear mass upon Sunday next, being otherwise threatened to go to the
Bastile, where he is not like long to serve."[1076] Such conversions did
not promise to prove very sincere. They were accepted, however, by the
king and his mother; although both Navarre and Conde were detained at
court rather as prisoners than as free princes. Pope Gregory the
Thirteenth received the submission of both cousins to the authority of the
See of Rome, recognized the validity of their marriages, and formally
admitted them to his favor, by a special bull of the twenty-seventh of
October, 1572.[1077] In return for these concessions Henry of Navarre
repealed the ordinances which his mother had made for the government of
Bearn, and re-established the Roman Catholic worship.[1078]

FOOTNOTES:

[925] Memoires de Marguerite de Valois, 25, 26.

[926] No dispensation was ever granted until _after_ the marriage, and
after Henry of Navarre's simulated conversion to Roman Catholicism. Then,
of course, there was no need of further hesitation, and the document was
granted, of which a copy is printed in Documents historiques inedits, i.
713-715. The bull is dated Oct. 27, 1572. There is, then, no necessity for
Mr. Henry White's uncertainty (Massacre of St. Bartholomew, 370): "The new
pope, Gregory XIII., appears to have been more compliant, or the letter
stating that a dispensation was on the road must have been a forgery."

[927] De Thou, iv. (liv. lii.), 569; Lo stratagema di Carlo IX. re di
Francia, contro gli Ugonotti, rebelli di Dio e suoi; descritto dal signor
Camillo Capilupi, e mandato di Roma al signor Alfonzo Capilupi. Ce
str