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1572.]

MASSACRE OF SAINT BARTHOLOMEW'S DAY.

175

of

queen a secret determination, Under these circumconfederacy for the

upon the prince of Navarre, afterwards Henry IV.; and that marriage was celebrated with great magnificence on the 18th of August, 1572. England had made a treaty with France, which had for one of its objects to wrest the Netherlands from Spain; and the advisers of Elizabeth had recommended a marriage with the duke of Alençon, the younger son of Catherine de Medici, who had given intimation of his disposition to favour the Protestants. Like many other recommendations of her Council and her Parliament, the England treated this proposal with civility, but with from whatever cause it proceeded, not to marry at all. stances the apprehension that there was a deep annihilation of Protestantism began to be lessened. The Huguenots were drawn in large numbers to Paris by the festivities of the marriage of the French princess with Henry of Navarre, their acknowledged head. On the 22d of August, Coligny was shot from the window of a house occupied by a dependant of the duke of Guise. His wounds were not dangerous. The king, with his mother, Catherine, visited the wounded man. The queenmother could ill disguise her alarm when the admiral began to speak earnestly with the king, whilst the house was filled with Coligny's armed retainers. She had concerted the assassination with the duke of Anjou and the duchess of Nemours, whose first husband had been slain by a Huguenot. A cautious historian says, speaking of Catherine de Medici, "The Huguenots won over the king, and appeared to supplant her influence over him. This personal danger put an end to all delay. With that resistless and magical power which she possessed over her children, she re-awakened. all the slumbering fanaticism of her son. It cost her but one word to rouse the populace to arms, and that word she spoke. Every individual Huguenot of note was delivered over to the vengeance of his personal enemy." This is, perhaps, a better solution of a disputed question than the theory that Charles IX., a very young man, weak and impulsive, vacillating and ferocious, was such a master of dissimulation, that for several years he could have deceived the English ambassador, Walsingham, into a belief that he was favourable to the Protestants whilst meditating their destruction. On the other hand, the jealousy of Catherine is a more rational explanation of her conduct, than the belief that the Massacre of St. Bartholomew had been part of a plan for the extirpation of Protestantism, settled between that fearful woman and the duke of Alva, in their conferences at Bayonne, in 1564. These questions have formed the subject of much historical controversy. The terrible events that followed the attempt to assassinate Coligny admit of no dispute. On the 23rd of August, according to the account given by Charles himself to his sister Margaret, after the noontide dinner of the court he was told of a treasonable conspiracy of the Huguenots against himself and his family. It would be necessary, his relations said, to anticipate the designs of the conspirators by their previous destruction. He gave his consent, and expressed his hope that not a single Huguenot would be left alive to reproach him with the deed. Night had descended upon Paris. There was no alarm, as bands of assassins silently congregated in the streets. A signal was to be given when the work of slaughter was to commence.

* Ranke, "History of the Popes," vol. ii. p. 69.

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TERROR OF ENGLAND.

[1572

The king, his mother, and Anjou sate amidst darkness and stillness in a balcony of the Louvre. The noise of a pistol is heard, and Charles trembles in the agony of guilty expectation. At length the clocks of Paris strike two. Then the bell of St. Germain l'Auxerrois tolled forth the signal. The duke of Guise bursts into the defenceless courts where Coligny slept, and three hundred men slaughter him and his followers. His body is cast out of the window, and the cry of Death to the Huguenots,' amidst the sound of the tocsin, wakes up the fanatical citizens, and one universal butchery of the protestants is being accomplished. For three days the slaughter goes on; and the fury extends to Orleans, Lyons, Troyes, Rouen, Toulouse, Bourdeaux, and other towns. We may choose what estimate we please of the number of victims, from the highest estimate of a hundred thousand, to the extenuating calculation of Dr. Lingard that there might be about sixteen hundred. Whatever was the number, the massacre was considered as a glorious triumph for the catholics. The pope, now Gregory XIII., celebrated the event by a solemn procession; and the pious Venetians expressed their satisfaction at this mark of God's favour. Charles, in his despatches to foreign courts, bewailed the massacre, and imputed it to the populace of Paris. To his parliament he avowed himself the author, and claimed the glory of having given peace to his kingdom. He sent an ambassador to England, to explain away the causes of this termination of his proposed tender mercies to the Protestants. The queen was at Woodstock; and when the envoy was admitted to a public audience, he had to pass between two lines of lords and ladies in deep mourning. Not a word was uttered as he advanced towards the queen, who also wore the deepest black. It was the chamber of death which he seemed to have entered. Motionless and silent was every courtier as he made his salutations. Elizabeth heard with perfect calmness the lying excuses which he was intrusted to utter. Charles wrote letters to her, which she first refused to answer; but afterwards replied to with courteous words. But her measured civility produced an impression in France that Elizabeth was about to arm. There was a general terror in England that the example of St. Bartholomew's day would spread. The bishop of London writes to lord Burleigh, on the 5th of September, "These evil times trouble all good men's heads, and make their hearts ache, fearing that this barbarous treachery will not cease in France, but will reach over unto us. . . . Hasten her majesty homeward; her safe return to London will comfort many hearts oppressed with fear." The bishop, Edwin Sandys, then advises, amongst other precautions, "Forthwith to cut off the Scottish queen's head." Walsingham writes from France that "certain unsound members must be cut off," for "violent diseases will have violent remedies." Elizabeth would not comply with these suggestions, pressed on her, as they were, by the terrors of her subjects and the counsels of her ministers. But there appears little doubt that she was cognisant of a plot between some of these ministers and the earl of Mar, the regent of Scotland, to deliver Mary up, that she might be put to death by her own people. It is not so clear, as Mr. Tytler believes, that she was to be secretly made away with. The death of Mar put an end to these dark intrigues; and Burleigh was left to make his moan that "if her majesty will continue her delays, for providing for

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DANGER OF THE QUEEN OF SCOTS.

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her own surety by just means given to her by God, she and we shall vainly call upon God when the calamity shall fall upon us." Those means" for her own surety' "were not employed by the queen for fourteen years; and, however indefensible they may have been when called into exercise, it is an abuse of historical evidence to represent that her perpetual anxiety was to get rid of

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her hated rival. There might be deep policy in Elizabeth's delays; but her jealousies and fears must have been under some subjection to a higher feeling, when she was hounded on by those in whom she had the surest trust; by the petitions of the Commons and the clamour of the populace; to do a deed for which all the bells of London would have rung, but which she shrunk from, to

VOL. IIL

N

Queen Elizabeth surrounded by her Court. (From a Print by Vertue.)

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DANGER OF THE QUEEN OF SCOTS.

[1572

remain in perpetual apprehension of losing crown and life. Unless we can believe, against all proof, that such danger was imaginary, we must be content to think that each of these queens was the victim of a sad necessity; and that some of the wretchedness which Mary had to endure in her lonely prisons was not unfelt by Elizabeth in her gorgeous court. But it awakens, indeed, a painful contrast to imagine the one queen wearing out her life in some inaccessible castle; working tapestry with her maidens in gloomy rooms; walking in the narrow garden, or gazing from the guarded turret; waiting eagerly for news which never comes; sending secret letters which are intercepted; watched by a stately earl and his haughty countess: and then to read of the other making joyful progresses, and smiling upon loving subjects; borne on the willing shoulders of handsome courtiers, amidst "throngs of knights" and "store of ladies;" feasting at Kenilworth with Leicester, or opening the Royal Exchange with Gresham; speaking Greek with the Greek professor at Oxford, or correcting the exercises of the scholars at Eton. It is indeed a sad contrast. But in our pity for the one queen we must not forego our respect for the other, for the queen who, despotic as she was, always relied upon the people-who, as Mr. Macaulay has most justly said, "did not treat the nation as an adverse party:" the queen under whose auspices Drake circumnavigated the world, and Raleigh founded Virginia; the queen whose name will be ever associated with the splendid literature of her age, for that sprang out of the emancipation of the national mind which she was the great instrument of accomplishing.

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Jesuits in England-Campion-Increased severities against Papists-Expedition to the Netherlands-Leicester in the Netherlands-Death of Sir Philip Sidney-Naval successes under Drake-Babington's conspiracy-Trial of the conspirators-Alleged complicity of Mary in the plot-Mary's papers seized-She is removed to Fotheringay Castle.

FROM the terrible day of Saint Bartholomew in 1572, to the detection of the conspiracy against the life of Elizabeth in 1586, the struggles between the two great principles of Romanism and Protestantism was incessant in England. The government was earnestly supported in this contest by what was now a large majority of its subjects; for although the opinions of the Puritans had become a serious source of alarm to the Established Church, this party never swerved from a general loyalty to the queen, even under persecution. We shall defer, till another chapter, a general notice of this Protestant schism; and here confine ourselves to a rapid view of the events in which the hostility between the old and the new religions was the principal element.

In 1580, the pope, Gregory XIII., at the suggestion of William Allen, despatched a body of Jesuits to England. The mission of these religious enthusiasts was to attempt the re-conversion of the heretic islanders. They were led and organised by Robert Parsons and Edmond Campion, who had formerly belonged to colleges in Oxford, and had been avowed Protestants before their conversion to Romanism. Out of the college of Douay, in which

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