rce again,
and supported the application of them or decreed the extension of them.
It was calculated that there were in France eight hundred towns and three
hundred bailiwicks or seneschalties; the treaties concluded with the
League had expressly prohibited the exercise of Protestant worship in
forty towns and seventeen bailiwicks; Henry IV. tolerated it everywhere
else. The prohibition was strict as regarded Paris and ten leagues
round; but, as early as 1594, three months after his entry into Paris,
Henry aided the Reformers in the unostentatious celebration of their own
form in the Faubourg St. Germain; and he authorized the use of it at
court for religious ceremonies, especially for marriages. Three
successive edicts, two issued at Mantes in 1591 and 1593, and the third
at St. Germain in 1597, confirmed and developed these signs of progress
in the path of religious liberty.

[Illustration: The Castle of St. Germain in the Reign of Henry IV.--107]

The Parliaments had in general refused to enregister these decrees a fact
which gave them an incomplete and provisional character; but equitable
and persistent measures on the king's part prevailed upon the Parliament
of Paris to enregister the edict of St. Germain; and the Parliament of
Dijon and nearly all the other Parliaments of the kingdom followed this
example. One of the principal provisions of this last edict declared
Protestants competent to fill all the offices and dignities of the
kingdom. It had many times been inserted in preceding edicts, but always
rejected by the Parliaments or formally revoked. Henry IV. brought it
into force and credit by putting it extensively in practice, without
entering upon discussion of it and without adding any comment upon it.
In 1590 he had given Palleseuil the government of Neuchatel in Normandy;
he had introduced Hurault Dufay, Du Plessis-Mornay and Rosny into the
council of state; in 1594 he had appointed the last a member of the
council of finance; Soffray de Colignon, La Force, Lesdiguieres, and
Sancy were summoned to the most important functions; Turenne, in 1594,
was raised to the dignity of marshal of France; and in 1595 La Tremoille
was made duke and peer. They were all Protestants. Their number and
their rank put the matter beyond all dispute; it was a natural
consequence of the social condition of France; it became an habitual
practice with the government.

Nevertheless the complaints and requirements of the ma