David Carnegie Andrew Agnew

“ If the fall of La Rochelle and the other cautionary towns has been ascribed to the lukewarmness of the Huguenots themselves, it may, with at least equal reason, be inferred that there was a principle in their inaction. To exchange the appearance of feudal defiance for statutory subjection to their king was a lawful suggestion and experiment. Accordingly, not only did the majority of the Protestants stay at home, but many of them served in the royal armies. ”

“ After considering that the Bartholomew massacre made personal self-defence a Huguenot’s only protection, the reader must picture a French Protestant congregation, forbidden to carry any arms, yet surrounded by Roman Catholics, armed with weapons which a raging priesthood stirs them up to use against the unarmed worshippers, the law not visiting such murderous assaults with any punishment. ”

“ Protestants, as literati, found refuge from persecution in the ducal palace during the early years of her marriage, namely, from 1528 to 1536. Calvin was there for a few months, under the assumed name of Charles D’Espeville. But it is on account of her influence during her widowhood, from 1559 to 1578, as an inhabitant of France, that the Duchess of Ferrara is here mentioned. She then ceased to make any concealment of her attachment to the reformed faith. Her castle of Montargis became a stronghold of Protestantism. It was the asylum of many reformed pastors, who called it Hotel Dieu. ”

“ We also forbid all our subjects, of whatever quality and condition, to take away by force or enticement, against the will of their parents, the children of those of the Pretended Reformed Religion, in order to their being baptised or confirmed in the Catholic, Apostolic, and Roman Church. ”

“ We could not better employ ourselves than in what concerneth the glory of God’s holy name and service, and in providing that He may be adored and supplicated by all our subjects ; and if it hath not pleased Him to permit at this time that it shall be in one and the same form of religion, yet at least that it may be in one and the same intention, with such regulations that there shall be no trouble or tumult among our subjects. ”

“ And laws that connive at, or virtually encourage and suggest, the molestation of quiet citizens on the roadside, are laws only in name, and can be enforced not by right, but by might alone. Up to 1561, such was the molestation to which French Protestants were exposed.
In 1561 the Protestants obtained a breathing time, through the influence of a great General and Statesman, the Grand Admiral of France, Gaspard de Coligny, born in 1516, and a convert to “the religion” in 1557. ”

“ The adherents of the said Pretended Reformed Religion shall not be in any manner constrained, nor shall they stand obliged, by reason of abjuration, promises, and oaths which heretofore they have made. ”

“ All disinheritings or deprivations, whether verbal or testamentary, uttered out of mere hatred, or on account of religion, shall be abolished among our subjects.
70. The children of those who departed from this kingdom on account of religion, and of the troubles, since the death of Henri II., our most honoured lord and father-in-law — even though the said children were born out of this kingdom — shall be reputed true Frenchmen and natives ”

“ People who stigmatize the Reformers as rebels, on account of their occasional armed resistance to persecution, should remember that if assassins come upon us, though they be the emissaries of what is called government, no scriptural principle of loyal subjection compels us to give them our lives ”

“ In order, however, to retain the custody of her son and daughter, she fled with them in 1568, and took refuge within the fortifications of La Rochelle, from whence she would not remove till September 1571. The same city of refuge was the sanctuary of many other leading Protestants. The pacification of August 1570 was hastened by this circumstance. It was the beginning of those blandishments from the Court towards the Huguenots, which ended in the massacre on St. Bartholomew’s day, 1572, in Paris. The Massacre of St. Bartholomew spread through France ”

“ La Noue, as an envoy, was coldly received. Finding the citizens firm and courageous, he again accepted the chief command in the Protestant interest, and the Royalist besiegers withdrew in the summer of 1573. ”