tement, arrived from France.

The long and heroic struggle which the Huguenots had maintained against
the French government had been brought to a final close by the ability
and vigour of Richelieu. That great statesman vanquished them; but he
confirmed to them the liberty of conscience which had been bestowed on
them by the edict of Nantes. They were suffered, under some restraints
of no galling kind, to worship God according to their own ritual, and
to write in defence of their own doctrine. They were admissible to
political and military employment; nor did their heresy, during a
considerable time, practically impede their rise in the world. Some
of them commanded the armies of the state; and others presided over
important departments of the civil administration. At length a change
took place. Lewis the Fourteenth had, from an early age, regarded
the Calvinists with an aversion at once religious and political. As
a zealous Roman Catholic, he detested their theological dogmas. As a
prince fond of arbitrary power, he detested those republican theories
which were intermingled with the Genevese divinity. He gradually
retrenched all the privileges which the schismatics enjoyed. He
interfered with the education of Protestant children, confiscated
property bequeathed to Protestant consistories, and on frivolous
pretexts shut up Protestant churches. The Protestant ministers were
harassed by the tax gatherers. The Protestant magistrates were deprived
of the honour of nobility. The Protestant officers of the royal
household were informed that His Majesty dispensed with their services.
Orders were given that no Protestant should be admitted into the legal
profession. The oppressed sect showed some faint signs of that spirit
which in the preceding century had bidden defiance to the whole power
of the House of Valois. Massacres and executions followed. Dragoons
were quartered in the towns where the heretics were numerous, and in the
country seats of the heretic gentry; and the cruelty and licentiousness
of these rude missionaries was sanctioned or leniently censured by the
government. Still, however, the edict of Nantes, though practically
violated in its most essential provisions, had not been formally
rescinded; and the King repeatedly declared in solemn public acts that
he was resolved to maintain it. But the bigots and flatterers who had
his ear gave him advice which he was but too willing to take. They
represented to him that