And king of nothing he soon was, though Catherine de’ Medici did not live to see his downfall. In twelve days after she had thus heard, without the slightest emotion, of the assassination of the duke who had been her most zealous worker in the infamous Massacre of St. Bartholomew, this iniquitous queen,—the personification of every vice, who had lured all around her to destruction, who had been always accompanied by bands of the most profligate but beautiful women, known as her infamous Flying Squadron, who by their fascinating wiles should secure the victims her own cunning could not reach; this woman,—without a single redeeming virtue, despised by the Catholics, and hated by the Protestants, and execrated by the world,—this fiendish spirit was at length the prey of the grim conqueror, Death.
Seven months after the death of Catherine de’ Medici, Henry III. was assassinated by a monk, and Henry of Navarre was proclaimed king of France as Henry IV. Thus had all Catherine de’ Medici’s vile scheming come to naught. She and her sons died with the curses of the nation on their heads, while the son of the illustrious and faithful Huguenot, Jeanne d’Albret, sat upon the throne of France.
QUEEN ANNE.
A.D. 1664-1714.
“A partial world will listen to my lays,
While Anna reigns, and sets a female name
Unrivall’d in the glorious lists of fame.”—Young.
SOME monarchs make their reign illustrious by their own individual characters and famous deeds; other sovereigns are illustrious only because their reigns have been important epochs in the annals of history, irrespective of any merits of their own or any renowned actions or policies on their part. Upon the importance of certain political and religious aspects of the times of the “Good Queen Anne” rest all her claims to be enrolled upon the lists of fame.
One kind and generous deed, however, must be credited to her own good-natured heart. Without possessing any of the refined tastes and mental capabilities of the Stuart royal line, of which she was the last representative upon the English throne, she nevertheless inherited the generous disposition of her race, and she has made her individual name to be held in loving remembrance by her people, by the liberal fund which she relinquished from her own entitled rights, in favor of the poor clergy, whose petty livings, or rather “starvings,” had made the lives of some of the most excellent and worthy in that profession really objects of charitable commiseration. The fund set apart for the relief of poor clergymen was called “Queen Anne’s Bounty”; and surely this beautiful charity, which placed her name high upon the list of royal foundresses in the Christian church, must needs cover many of her glaring defects of mind and character beneath the shining mantle of unselfish benevolence.