ent judgments were pronounced upon
the decree: those who took the most political and most zealous view of
religion considered that it was necessary, as well to preserve and
maintain the Catholic religion as to keep down the seditious, who, under
the cloak of religion, were doing all they could to upset the political
condition of the kingdom. Others, who cared nothing for religion, or for
the state, or for order in the body politic, also thought the decree
necessary, not at all for the purpose of exterminating the Protestants,
--for they held that it would tend to multiply them,--but because it
would offer a means of enriching themselves by the confiscations ensuing
upon condemnation, and because the king would thus be able to pay off
forty-two millions of livres which he owed, and have money in hand, and,
besides that, satisfy those who were demanding recompense for the
services they had rendered the crown, wherein many placed their hopes."
[_Memoires de Michael de Castelnau, in the Petitot collection,_ Series
I., t. xxxiii. pp. 24-27.]

The Guises were, in the sixteenth century, the representatives and the
champions of these different cliques and interests, religious or
political, sincere in their belief or shameless in their avidity, and
all united under the flag of the Catholic church. And so, when they came
into power, "there was nothing," says a Protestant chronicler, "but fear
and trembling at their name." Their acts of government soon confirmed
the fears as well as the hopes they had inspired. During the last six
months of 1559 the edict issued by Henry II. from Ecouen was not only
strictly enforced, but aggravated by fresh edicts; a special chamber was
appointed and chosen amongst the Parliament of Paris, which was to have
sole cognizance of crimes and offences against the Catholic religion. A
proclamation of the new king, Francis II., ordained that houses in which
assemblies of Reformers took place should be razed and demolished. It
was death to the promoters of "unlawful assemblies for purposes of
religion or for any other cause." Another royal act provided that all
persons, even relatives, who received amongst them any one condemned for
heresy should seize him and bring him to justice, in default whereof they
would suffer the same penalty as he. Individual condemnations and
executions abounded after these general measures; between the 2d of
August and the 31st of December, 1559, eighteen persons were