ges from the King before he was securely fixed on the throne.

This is not a mere conjecture, at least with regard to the King of Spain,
since it is certain that he ordered Taxis and Stuniga to offer the King
forces sufficient to reduce all the chiefs of the League and the
Protestant party, without annexing any other condition to this offer than
a strict alliance between the two crowns, and an agreement that the King
should give no assistance to the rebels in the Low Countries. Philip II
judged of Henry by himself, and considered his conversion only as the
principle of a new political system, which made it necessary for him to
break through his former engagements. It may not, perhaps, be useless to
mention here an observation I have made on the conduct of Spain, which
is, that although before and after the death of Catherine de' Medicis she
had put a thousand different springs in motion, changed parties and
interests as she thought most expedient to draw advantages from the
divisions that shook this kingdom, yet the Protestant party was the only
one to which she never made any application: she had often publicly
protested that she never had the least intention to gain or suffer their
alliance.

It is by an effect of this very antipathy that the Spaniards have
constantly refused the Reformed religion admission into their states--an
antipathy which cannot be attributed to anything but the republican
principles the Protestants are accused of having imbibed. The King being
fully convinced that, to stifle the seeds of schism in his kingdom, it
was necessary to give none of the different factions occasion to boast
that his power was at their disposal, and that to reduce all parties he
must be partial to none, he therefore steadily rejected these offers from
Spain, and those which the Duke of Mayenne made him to the same purpose,
but at that very time appeared willing to treat with any of the chiefs or
cities of the League which would surrender, and to reward them in
proportion to their readiness and services; and it was this prudent
medium that he was resolved to persist in.

Although he now professed the same religion as the League, yet his
aversion to the spirit which actuated that party, and to the maxims by
which they were governed, was not lessened; the very name only of the
League was sufficient to kindle his anger. The Catholic Leaguers,
supposing that his abjuration authorized them to abolish in those cities
which d