[742] The fisheries of France, however, were profitable. “They quietly make their herring fishery ... without impeachment.... Their fish-markets were never better furnished.”—C. S. P. For., No. 1,356, Throckmorton to the queen November 1, 1563.
[743] Castelnau, Book V, chaps. vii-ix.
[744] “Instructions pour le Sieur de Lansac, envoyé en Espagne, janvier 1564,” L’Ambassade de St. Sulpice, 223.
[745] August 18, 1563. The officiai promulgation is in Mém. de Condé, IV, 574. Déclaration faicte par le Roy en sa majorité tenant son lict de justice en sa cour de Parlement de Rouen, Robert Estienne, Paris, 1563.
[746] L’Ambassade de St. Sulpice, 101, 102; R. Q. H., XXIV, 459; Claude Haton, I, 363, and n. 2; Correspondance de Catherine de Médicis, II, Introd., xxiii; C. S. P. For., No. 1,190, September, 1563.
The declaration, by a technicality, contravened the testament of Charles V (1374), which for centuries had been the law regulating the King’s majority. Charles IX was born on June 17, 1550, so that he was in his fourteenth year, though not yet fourteen years old. The Parlement of Paris for more than a month refused to register the edict, not on political, but on religious grounds. It objected to “la mention de l’édit de pacification d’Amboise, introduite sans motif dans la déclaration de l’édit de la majorité, ce que semblait reconnaître deux religions.”—Correspondance de Catherine de Médicis, II, Introd., xxiv. The Venetian ambassador gives an interesting character-sketch of Charles IX at this time (Rel. vén., I, 419).
[747] The estates of Burgundy declared in a memorial that it was impossible to maintain double worship in France and petitioned that Protestant worship might be abolished in that province, May 18, 1563 (D’Aubigné, II, 205; Mém. de Condé, IV, 413; Castelnau, Book V, chap. vi.)
[748] “S’étaient tous départis avec une hâte extrème causée sur la disposition du pape.”—Testu to Catherine de Medici, L’Ambassade de St. Sulpice, 207. “Les évêques français se déclarent obligés de partir, se voyant privés de ressources.”—Baschet, Journal du Concile de Trente, 239.
[749] The Pope sent the bishop of Vintimilla to Spain to persuade Philip II to enforce the Tridentine decrees in favor of the counter-Reformation (L’Ambassade de St. Sulpice, 174, 200, 217, 218). See also a letter of Luna, Philip II’s ambassador at Trent, of November 17, 1563, in Correspondencia de los principes de Alemania con Felipe II, y de los Embajadores de Este en la Corti di Vienna (1556-98) in “Documentos inéditos,” CI, 24.
[750] Annales Raynaldi, 1564, No. 1; Labbé, XIV, 939; cf. R. Q. H., October, (1869), 402.