[869] La Planche, 299-302. The remonstrance, signed Theophilus, which they addressed her, insisted on the ill-success of the persecutions to which for forty years they had been subjected; for one killed, two hundred had joined their assemblies; for ten thousand open adherents, the Reformation had one hundred thousand secret upholders. The Edict of Forgiveness answered no good purpose: "c'estoit bien peu d'oster pour un instant la douleur d'une maladie, si quant et quant la cause et la racine n'en estoit ostée."
[870] La Place, 41-45; La Planche, 316, 317; Mém. de Castelnau, l. ii., c. 7; De Thou, ii., liv. xxv. 788-791. I confess, however, that the careful perusal of La Planche's bold speech has nearly convinced me that the ascription of the anonymous "Hist. de l'estat de Fr. sous François II." to his pen is erroneous. I shall not insist upon the fact that the description of La Planche as "homme politique plustost que religieux" is inappropriate to the author of this history. But I can scarcely conceive of La Planche correcting errors in his own speech, and not only expressing an utter dissent from the account which he himself gave the queen of the motives that led La Renaudie to engage in the enterprise that had for its object the overthrow of the Guises, but even accusing himself of falling into a grave mistake with regard to the importance of the differences of creed between the Protestants and the Roman Church: "s'abusant en ce qu'il meit en avant des différends de la religion." La Planche had suggested a conference of theologians—ostensibly to make a faithful translation of the Bible, in reality to compare differences—and had expressed the opinion that there would be found less discord than there appeared to be. The condemnation of this view certainly does not mark a man of political rather than religious tendencies! I fear that we must look elsewhere for the author of this excellent history.
[871] It has been ascribed to the virtuous and tolerant Chancellor L'Hospital, who, it is said, drew it up in order to defeat the project of the Guises to introduce the Spanish Inquisition. (La Planche, 305; cf. also De Thou, ii. 781.) But the edict was published before the appointment of L'Hospital, and while Morvilliers, a creature of the Guises, provisionally held the seals after Chancellor Olivier's death; and the spiritual jurisdiction it established differed little in principle from an inquisition. In fact, three of the French prelates, the Cardinals of Lorraine, Bourbon, and Châtillon, had, as we have seen, been constituted a board of inquisitors of the faith; and, soon after the publication of the Edict of Romorantin, the Cardinal of Tournon was set over them as inquisitor-general. The subject has been well discussed by Soldan, Geschichte des Prot. in Frankreich, i. 338-342. The Duc d'Aumale, in his usually accurate Histoire des Princes de Condé (i. 113), repeats the blunder of La Planche and De Thou.
[872] Recueil des anc. lois fr., xiv. 31-33; La Planche, 305, 306; La Place, 46, 47. It is, of course, "an edict holily conceived and promulgated," in the estimation of Florimond de Ræmond, v. 113. The only redeeming feature I can find in it is the article by which malicious informers made themselves liable to all the penalties they had sought to inflict on others.
[873] La Place, 36 (who states that the burning of Du Bourg was an occasion of deep remorse in Olivier's last hours); La Planche, 266; J. de Serres, De statu rel. et reip., i., fol. 35; De Thou, ii. (liv. xxiv.), 775; Hist. du tumulte d'Amboise, ubi supra.
[874] La Planche, 305.
[875] If we may credit that professed panegyrist, Scævola de St. Marthe, L'Hospital was of an august appearance, of a dignified and tranquil countenance, and, if his intellectual constitution had a philosophic stamp, his features bore a not less remarkable resemblance to the head of the Stagirite as delineated on ancient medals. Elogia doctorum in Gallia virorum qui nostra patrumque memoria floruerunt (Ienæ, 1696), lib. ii., p. 95.
[876] This remarkable statement is made by Agrippa d'Aubigné, Mémoires, 478 (Ed. Panthéon Lit.). He tells us that he had inherited from his father, himself one of the conspirators, the original papers of the enterprise of Amboise. The suggestion was made by a confidant, that the possession of the proof of L'Hospital's complicity would certainly secure him 10,000 crowns, either from the chancellor or from his enemies; whereupon the youth threw all the papers into the fire lest he might in an hour of weakness succumb to the temptation. In his Hist. universelle, i. 95, D'Aubigné makes the same assertion with great positiveness: "L'Hospital, homme de grand estime, luy succeda, quoyqu'il eust esté des conjurez pour le faict d'Amboise. Ce que je maintiens contre tout ce qui en a esté escrit, pource que l'original de l'entreprise fut consigné entre les mains de mon père, où estoit son seing tout du long entre celuy de Dandelot et d'un Spifame: chose que j'ai faict voir a plusieurs personnes de marque."
[877] La Planche, 305; La Place, 38; De Thou, ii. 776; Davila, p. 29. I cannot refrain from inserting La Planche's worthy estimate of his course and its results: "Car pour certain, encores que s'il eust prins un court chemin pour s'opposer virilement au mal, il seroit plus à louer, et Dieu, peut-estre, eust bény sa Constance, si est-ce qu'autant qu'on en peut juger, luy seul, par ses modérés déportemens a esté l'instrument duquel Dieu s'est servy pour retenir plusieurs flots impétueux, où fussent submergés tous les François." Ubi supra.
[878] Throkmorton to Cecil, June 24, 1560, State Paper Office; printed in Wright, Queen Elizabeth, i. 32, 33.