the King assembles at Paris his Knights Barons and Prelates and demanded of them of whom they held their Fiefs and their Church-Temporalties They answered That they hold them of the King and not of the Pope whom they accus'd of Heresie Murder and of other Crimes In the mean while the Pope made it his business to stir up Germany and the Low Countrys against France But the King sent into Italy William de Nogaret who assisted with the advice of Sciarra a Polander took the Pope at Anagnia and having mounted him upon an hurdle carried him Prisoner to Rome where he died of grief and anger Observe that this Pope who thundered against Kings had so little Power at Rome and so little love of the People that not a Roman stirr'd a foot to deliver the Bishop of Rome so rudely treated even in Rome it self For all this the King had immediately from the Successors of Boniface rare Bulls for abolishing the memory of all these Transactions as may be seen in the Extravaganta Meruit of Clement V. where this King is prais'd as a Religious Prince who had deserv'd well of the Holy See For the Popes are of the nature of Spaniards who will lick their Masters feet when they have soundly bang'd them In the Year 1408. Pope Benedict XIII angry because Charles VI. had express'd the exactions and pilferings of the Popes Court which drain'd France sends into France a Bull of Excommunication against the King and his Princes The University of Paris Order'd That these Bulls be torn in pieces and that the Pope Benedict whom they call'd Peter de Luna be declar'd Heretick and Schismatick and Disturber of the Peace And these Bulls were torn by the Sentence of the Court June 16. 1408. and ten days after the Court being risen at Eleven a Clock in the Morning two Bullbearers who had brought this Excommunication made their honourable Amends upon the stairs of the Palace and after were carried back to the Lovre in the same manner they had been brought being drawn on two Sledges adorn'd with Coats of Painted Canvas and Miters of Paper on their heads with the sound of Trumpets and the publick Laughter So little did they care for the Popes thunder And what would they have done if these Bulls had brought the Sentence of Deposition against the King Charles de Moulin in his Treatise against the Perites Dates relates a pretty Sentence of the Court against the Pope under Charles VI. From the same vigor of the French to defend the Dignity of the Crown of their Kings are risen these customs which have been observ'd many Ages that a Legate of the Pope is not receiv'd in France nor any Rescript nor Command of the Pope without the Kings leave and without that the Legate communicate his Powers to the Kings Procurator-General and that they be view'd and verified in the Court of Parliament who modifie and and restrain them to Masters that do not derogate from the Rights of the King the Liberties of the Church nor the Ordinances Royal. Against which ancient form Cardinal Balui being come into France an 1484. and there acting as a Legate without the Kings permission the Court at the request of the Procurator-General decreed a Commission for an Information to be brought against him by two Counsellors of the Court and did forbid him to use farther any Faculty or Legantine Power on pain of being declared Rebel An. 1510. the Gallican-Church being assembled at Tours it was concluded That the King Lewis XII might with a good Conscience dispise the abusive Bulls and unjust Censures of Pope Julius II. and might by Arms oppose his Usurpations though the Pope should go on to excommunicate or to depose him Which is more by a Council held at Pisa he declar'd himself fallen from the Papacy and caus'd Money to be coin'd with this Inscription around it Perdam nomen Babylonis There is some reason to believe he would have made good his word had he been 30 years younger And we hope that God has reserv'd this Glory for another Lewis in our days who with the vigour of a flourishing Youth has the prudence of an old Cato as also the courage and fortune of an Alexander When Lewis XII and his Adherents were depos'd John D'Albert King of Navarre was entangl'd with the same misfortune whose Kingdom by this Pope Julius II. was given to Ferdinand King of Arragon And this is all the Right the Spaniard has to that our great Kings Hereditary Kingdom In the Year 1561. on Friday 12th of December Master John Tanquerel a Batchelor of Divinity was condemn'd by a Sentence of the Court to make confession publickly that he had indiscreetly and rashly held this Proposition That the Pope is Vicar of Christ having Power spiritual and secular and that he may deprive of their Dignities the Princes that rebel against his Commands And notwithstanding that Tanquerel protested that he had propos'd this Doctrin aliter tantum non juridice that is to say not for affirming it as true but as a Subject for dispute in the Schools was he compell'd to make this acknowledgment During the Wars of the League an 1591. were sent from Rome Bulls monitory of Pope Gregory XIV by the which King Henry the Great was declar'd uncapable of the Crown of France as an Heretick and a Relapser and his Kingdom was exposed to prey Whereupon the Court of Parliament assembled at Tours made this Decree The Court having regard to the conclusions of the Kings Procurator-General have declared and do declare the Bulls monitory given at Rome the first of March 1591. null abusive damnable full of impiety and impostures contrary to the holy Decretals Rights Franchises and Liberties of the Gallican-Church Do Order that the Copies sealed with the Seal of Marsilius Landrianus under-seal'd Septilius Lamprius be torn by the Executioner of High-Justice and burnt in a Fire which shall be kindled for this occasion before the great Gate of the Palace c. which was executed August 5th of the same year I verily believe that many good Freuch men read not these Examples with pleasure and reckon it no glory that the Pope has never set his foot on the neck of a King of France as Pope Alexander the Third did to the Emperor Frederick nor kick'd off his Crown with his foot as Celestine II. to the Emperor Henry VI. nor brought our Kings to yield homage to the Pope for their Kingdom as other Kings have done and do to this day Without doubt they will laugh at the just punishment which Boniface VIII had for his Insolence from the Officers of the generous King Philip the Fair and to see how after this treatment the Popes Successors of Boniface did compliment him with a many Commendations and Apostolick Benedictions Without doubt also these good French-men are well satisfied with the pragmatick Sanctions whereby our Kings have repress'd the Exactions of the Court of Rome and have appropriated
an house do there fix not coursing from Lower Britannie for example unto Paris nor incessantly changing as their wont is unless some indispensible necessity does oblige to such changes The Carthusians keep in their houses and run not from place to place Nuns do the same The Voyages of Monks and all their transmigrations have no other end but to get an universal acquaintance Beyond all this it may be declared to the Monks at least its a thing that should be done in its season how that the King understands not their Monastick Profession does Exempt them from his Jurisdiction Thus the Orders being purged from their impurities will resume their ancient Iustre and be true Seminaries of Doctrine and Sanctity In fine no person will doubt but the King may take cognisance of all that concerns the external Policy of the Church because this is in such sort annexed to the Government of States that not a Patriarch nor even the Pope himself can make any regulation of it without His Majesties consent That reason of State which presseth for a retrenching of the number of Monks does also reflect upon Nuns and that with the more Justice because the greatest part of young Women who become Votaries are driven thereunto by the violence of their kindred There will never want just means to hinder this abuse from having a longer course As for instance Young Women may be declared incapable of making vows before 22 years of age at the least It may be enacted that they never shall be Professed i. e. setled of the Order in the Convent where they have had their Education either as Pensionaries or Novices This would be well enacted For oft-times the Nuns in hope to the gainers by their Portions do flatter the silly Maidens and persuade 'em to live with them All kind of humane iuducements must be remov'd and the inspirations of the Holy Ghost left to their full operation It may again be ordained that Recluses do take no Money as a Portion but only simple Pensions yearly for life and those likewise cautiously limited A Law too may be made that the Goods which might fall to a Daughter from her Parents and her collateral Kindred should at their Decease fall to the State and the King by representation be invested with the same Right to the Goods of the deceased as this Daughter had had to recompence the Publick for the loss sustained by a Recluse being incapacitated to raise a Family Further a general Regulation might be made of all Marriages of young Women with due respect had to the quality of each of 'em in particular and it might be ordered that in case any of them would take up a Religious life they should carry as much with them into Religion as into the Married state For if the Order was that Daughters becoming Votaries should have less Portions than those that Married Fathers so hugely covetous they are would compell them to the Cloister But when they shall find no profit in taking this course they will rather chuse to dispose of them in Marriage and make Alliances by that means This subject inclines me to say summarily that the moderating of Portions is a piece of the ancient Civil Law of the French and of divers other Nacions in which Daughters had nothing at all Thence it is as we see in the Customs that a Nobleman is licensed to Marry his Daughter with a Nosegay of Roses and she becomes disabled to pretend to any other Portion provided the Match be suitable and fitting This moderation is necessary Forasmuch as the vast wealth which is given to Daughters in Marriage does incommode the richest Houses Moreover Gentlemen themselves would no more contract undue Alliances and so the Nobility recover their ancient esteem Young Womens Birth their Beauty their Discretion their Virtue and their Ability in the management of Domestick Affairs would be to them instead of Wealth They would make it their care to lay up a rich Stock of so many precious things that perhaps it may one day come to pass that Men will as heretofore they did give Money to have Wives whereas at present Women do so to purchase Husbands I have spoken here of Marriages occasionally I am well aware that the Matter ought to be reserved for another Chapter To conclude it s a great ingredient of the Glory of a King to honour the Holy See to love and protect the Bishops to maintain the Gallican Church in its Liberties never suffer that any propositions be advanced any way that may wound the Authority of the Canons and employ all the rigor of his Ordinances a gainst persons who shall have the rashness to publish a suspected or erroneous Doctrine Additions to CHAP. IV. 1. That Bishops ought to be near the King 2. Of the Pension to be paid the Order for a Monk enter'd 3. Monasticks cannot Alienate therefore neither sell a Rent-charge 4. They shall not have power to purchase I Have affirmed Chap. 4. That Bishops are obliged by Command of GOD unto residence This is true yet forasmuch as they are also the Kings Subjects and Royal Dignity requireth that his Majesty have Bishops about him as the Roman Emperors after Constantine had it is fit to ordain That each Bishop be at Court Three Months every year attending His Majesty to Honour Him during which time they may negotiote their Affairs and the rest of the year abide fix'd in their Diocesses the King assigning to each of them the Months in which their presence will be needful In the same Chapter I have said That to prevent the vast number of Monks it should be ordained that the Parents of such as enter into an Order should pay an annual Pension to that Order during the persons Lives The effect of this Law would be that such a Pension being a Monachal Right in form of Clericature given by Act of State they that would have Revenue enough to be Monasticks would have enough to be Secular Priests And so persons whose Devotion should incline them to take Orders and Consecrate themselves unto GOD would rather chuse to remain Seculars than shut themselves up in a Cloister all the remainder of their Lives Now the more to fortifie this Law it should be added That Bishops make no more Priests upon the Title of Poverty upon Penalty of maintaining them The reason against it as to Secular Priests being as strong in reference to Regulars because it is no less a disparagement to the Clergy that a Priest Monk do beg and fall into extream poverty which may happen than that one of the other rank do so It is manifest that Monastick communities have no power to Alienate any thing and that Monks do daily re-enter into their Estates which they possessed heretofore Hence it follows that neither can they charge them with any Rents for Money taken up Forasmuch as by these kind of Contracts they Mortgage their Lands but to engage an Estate in such
The Huguenots have there a Temple and a Religious Exercise this Town they must exchange and have another for it given them reasons will not be wanting to colour such permutations there is nothing that may contribute more to their Conversion For it will be an incredible displeasure to them to live among people with whom they have no Acquaintance nor any Union either by Interest or Blood A Seventh means is to suppress by natural death all Huguenot Counsellors The Chambers of the Edict are now of no more use The Eighth is to give them for their Synods Catholick Commissaries such as are somewhat vers'd in the Controversies and have the skill to favour the Wranglings that are continually among them These Commissaries were heretofore all of them Catholicks Particular Synods when Petition'd for must not be deny'd them but National ones should never be granted and at the close of all their Sydonal Assemblies Money should be demanded of the Ministers for the King's Affairs by way of Loan or of Tenths or under some other pretexts The Ninth means is to get them prosecuted for their common Debts and so cause them to sell by Decree some of their Temples which sure cannot be judged to be in Mortmain or Un-alienable A Tenth is to Prohibit that any Subject go out of the Kingdom without the King's Permission For the Huguenots must not depart out of France and they will be compris'd under a general Prohibition The Eleventh is to take order the Confessors may intimate to the poorer sort of Catholicks that it is a point of Conscience to serve Huguenots The Twelfth is to oblige them on a Political account unto an Abstinence from Flesh upon those days which the Catholicks do so observe in like manner as they are already obliged to heed the Festivals out of respect to the Publick Religion then hereupon severely punish such as shall transgress in the one or the other of these two things The Thirteenth means is to endeavour the Marrying of Catholicks to the Huguenots and cause the Children issuing from such Marriages to be Educated in the Roman Religion A Fourteenth may be to hinder the Huguenots from selling any Estate they have in Land for this kind of possession does tye them to the Interests of the State The Fifteenth and last is to change the place of that Academy which they have at Saumur and fix it in some other Town as Vange or Beaufort There is a President for such a change in the Translation of the like Academy from Montauban to Pullaurens The pretext for drawing them out of Saumur is that this Town being a Pass on the Loire and maintaining the Communication of divers great Provinces the King cannot be too well secured of it beside this planting an Academy at Saumur is an Usurpation the Huguenots having never had a Patent for it It would signifie nothing should the Huguenots alledge that they have it for a place of security For they are now as the King 's other Subjects be who do not at all demand any What would come of it if all Collective Bodies should demand places of Security 'T is a madness Further yet it might be declared That Proponents who aspire to the Office of Ministers should be obliged to teach a course of Philosophy or two years in Theology Thus there would be fewer Ministers than there are and at length their number being diminished the number of Huguenots would infallibly diminish also The King might likewise ordain That the Proponents should be examin'd in presence of such Commissioners as he should please to appoint to the end they might undergo a rigorous Trial. For His Majesty is concern'd that these Ministers be perfectly well studied left they prove promoters of Sedition and not Pastors At the time of their Examination the same Proponents should be oblig'd to answer all the Catholick Doctors in any controversial questions they should think fit to move The Huguenots cannot refuse this Proposition because their Proponents ought to be prepared in all matters and since the Huguenots affirm that their Ministers are their Bishops there must no person be a Minister who hath not attained to the Age of Twenty seven years at least These are summarily the humane means that seem to me most conducible to the Conversion of the Professors of the Protestant Reformed Religion CHAP. VI. 1. What Nobility is 2. Of the Nobles of France of their Degrees and the Ranks of Gentlemen 3. Of the Orders of Knighthood 4. In what respects Gentlemen may be useful to the King HAving examined what relates to the Clergy the First of the Three Orders that compose the Body Politick of France it is time to speak of the Second which is that of the Nobility Nobility is a Quality that renders the Possessors of it Generous and secretly disly disposeth their Soul unto an affection for Honourable things The Virtue of Ancestors does make this excellent impression of Nobility upon persons and there is in seminal matter I know not what spirituous and energetical Principle that transmitteth and propagateth the inclinations of Parents unto their descendants as is obvious to remark not only in Men and in all the Animals which have a natural Generation but also in Plants and in things evidently most inanimate This Ancestral Virtue verily gives us the first tincture in order to a right Noble Accomplishment and every Man issued from great and illustrious Bersonages does continually feel a kind of elastick impulse in the secret recesses of his Heart which thrusts him on to imitate them and their Memory spurs him on to Glory and brave Actions but if through negligence or the degeneracy of an ill nature it so comes to pass that he answers not the hope which the Grandeur of his Progenitors gave ground to conceive of his Deportment in this case all the Lustre of their Ancient Reputation which environ'd him from the instant of his Birth and whether he will or no accompany'd him all along the course of his life it does I say by making him be noted for Nobilitas a noscendo dicitur but promote his shame and the more conspicuously shew his defects unto the augmenting and justifying a contempt of his Person Thus an actual Virtue is necessary for Gentlemen that they may be able to bear up the weight of their condition which otherwise presseth them quite down The greater the Rank and Honor of their House is the greater their Dishonor and so much the deeper that Precipice into which their dissoluteness doth cast them There are usually noted three kinds of Nobility The First is a Nobleness of Blood when the source of a great extraction is hidden in the obscurity of a long succession of years and cannot now be discovered This kind is in greatest esteem among Men and indeed we call things that are left us of this quality Venerable and do bear a sort of Religious Respect to them we are generally possess'd too with a perswasion that whatever
would need neither Law nor Magistrate to keep them in perfect tranquility But Nature being corrupted we no longer consult that Original Righteousness which is inseparable from reason and which without intermission inwardly presseth us to render to all their due as exactly as we would should be done to ourselves Always self-love often necessity sometimes hatred avarice or one passion or other does blind us and induce us to violate this eminently holy and equitable Law in such sort also that we suffer ourselves to be transported unto excesses hard to be believed We equally use fraud and force to content our injustice and irregular desires Whereupon it hath been commodiously done by wise Men to form as may be said a new reason which they called Law But because Laws are of no use except they be armed with Correction to punish such as despise them and have some soul and living principle therefore Magistrates have been created who are to pronounce the Oracles which those Laws inspire to put the Laws in Execution and maintain the Authority of them These Officers are chosen of the best and most intelligent Men in a State and if Common-wealths be duly regulated ordinarily the Rich are preferred before the Poor and Nobles before Plebeians because 't is supposed they have a greater measure of knowledge and virtue and by consequence are less capable of certain mean things in which a necessitous condition and a mean extraction might engage them Thus Ministers of Justice in France call'd Men of the Robe are in truth necessary in Publick Society For if there was no evil-doer Laws and Magistrates would be of no more use than Joyners and the Doors they make for the security of Houses if there were no Thieves whereas should not a Man in a whole Kingdom ever swerve from right reason and pure equity there must nevertheless be Priests for Religion Soldiers for defence against Foreign Invasions that might happen and People who may some of 'em Till the Ground others apply themselves to Trades and Manufactures that Men cannot be without So that these three sorts of Persons are inseparable from a Common-wealth and they make up the Three Estates we have spoken of which have been receiv'd without any contest Yet it seems that of late the Parliaments have sought to infuse into some green heads that they compos'd a Fourth Order in the Kingdom and the same not only distinct from the other Three but altogether superiour to them by reason of their Sovereignty and of the Power they have to deliberate upon the pleasure and Edicts of the King If they should not be brought off from this opinion perhaps they would draw the other Sovereign Courts and Officers of Judicature into the same Error an Union of them all not being deniable because otherwise the affair of Justice would in France form two bodies which may not be But from allowing this Fourth Body in the State namely that of Justice a ridiculous inconvenience would follow to wit that a Sergeant or Catchpole of a Village would be a member of a body superior to that of the Nobility and by consequence in some sort superior to a Marquis For in matter of Hierarchy the last of a more excellent Order is greater than the first of a less excellent one as the lowest of the Arch-Angels is greater than the highest of the Angels But to clear the difficulty before us it must be remembred that heretofore in France the Estates which were called Parliaments did assemble twice a year for two considerations one was to judge of Appeals that were made from judgments pass'd by inferior Officers The other to give the King Counsel when He demanded their Opinion about Government of the State For alway during the first and second Race the King 's did dispose of Publick Affairs as of Peace and War and this is so much a truth that if those ancient Parliaments had had the disposing of the State they would never have suffered that the Children of Lewis when they had divided the Kingdom among them should have fallen to make War one upon another which could tend to nothing but a publick desolation They would as little have permitted the enmities of Brize Haudet and Fredegonde In like manner under the Second Race they would not have endured that the Sons of Lewis the Mild should act such outrages on their Father that Charles the Bald should have given Neustria to the Normans In the Third Race that Lewis the Gross should have ruin'd so many great Lords who made up the greatest-part of the Parliaments that Lewis the Younger should have yielded up Guienne by the Divorce of Eleanore that the Count of Burgundy and the Duke of Britannie and some others should have leagu'd together against Queen Blanche In fine there are thousand and a thousand examples in History which do evidence that these Kings always had the free and Sovereign administration of their State nor will there one be found to prove that the Parliaments ever contradicted them They presented themselves at the feet of their Princes with Petitions and humble Remonstrances they made no resistance nor exercis'd Authority So that our King 's have been King's indeed always absolute Masters and for proof hereof it will be sufficient to look into all the Statutes there it may be seen how they spake and what part the Estates had in them The principal end of Parliaments therefore was to the end the Law-suits of particular Persons and people perceiving that Appeals brought to them were received and sentences invalidated many to try Opinions in their cases once again became Appellants by this means affairs were multiply'd and that contesting parties might not have the trouble to come up from the remotest parts of the Kingdom Deputies of the General Parliament were appointed they also stiled Parliaments and to be ambulatory The Commission they had was sometimes for three Months sometimes for six according to exigence of State but alway by the Command and Letters of the King These Parliaments went into the Provinces to judge the causes that were brought them almost in like manner as we now see done at the Extraordinary Sessions which instead of diminishing the number of Causes to be dispatch'd as had been conceiv'd really augmented them Philip the Fair saw cause to make such a Parliament sedentary at Paris another at Rouen a third at Thoulouse and succeeding Kings establish'd others in other Cities as they are at present From this faithful account it resulteth that the Parliaments are not a Fourth Body in the State but be extracted out of the Three ancient Orders at first they were taken out of the Clergy and Nobility only because the Commons at that time were not considerable afterwards These also were received in Other Sovereign Societies are but Images of these Parliaments As to the Sovereignty of the Parliaments themselves it neither is nor ever was other than an emination of the Sovereignty of the King in whom
Before any further advance into this matter it will be pertinent to observe that the fundamental Wealth of a State consists in the Multitude and Plenty of Subjects For 't is Men that Till the Ground that produce Manufactures that manage Trade that go to War that People Colonies and in one word that bring in Money To make way in France for multiplying of Men and oblige them to Marry the King may at once do two things after the example of the Emperor Augustus First He may decree Priviledges and Advantages in favour of such as shall have divers Children exempting them from Guardianships from being Collectors from Commissions to look to the Fruits of Sequestred Lands and other burthensom Offices He may discharge them from Subsidies and even give them some Estate Secondly He might impose penalties upon those that Marry not before a certain Age and take part in the Successions of all sorts of persons who in contempt of Law and Wedlock live single not having impediment by any natural infirmity 'T is upon a like consideration that I said in a former Chapter the King to restrain Parents from compelling their Daughters into Cloisters might Declare that the right of all Recluses in any Succession was vested in Himself And 't is for the very same reason that the Ancient Earls of Flanders were Heirs to all the Priests that were their Subjects Now to that which Augustus did for the inducing of his Subjects to Marry the King might add Two particulars One is That the First Year a Man Taxable did Marry the first time being under 26 years of age he should be exempt from all Subsidies and Impositions and publick Charges even quartering of Soldiers in case he kept House apart and was setled in a Dwelling of his own If the newly Married be the King's Officer his Office should not fall into the King's hand if he died within the year Commanders also and Soldiers should be dispens'd with as to their serving for that time unless on urgent necessity or some important occasion The other partilar which in France had need to be added to Augustus's Ordinances is to take effectual Order that persons once Married be not so easily separated again as they are For 't is to no purpose to contract Marriages if they be not stuck to and the coupled Parties cohabit not A strange abuse in this matter of separation hath crept in of late nor know I how the Officials have become so favourable in it or how the Parliaments have suffer'd it Now-a-days a Woman that would have as they say her swing and without controul practice all that her giddy witless and oft times wanton humour prompts her to raiseth stirs in the House at length tires out her Husbands patience hereupon she complains of his Vices hath Servants suborned for her purpose a Divorce comes to be adjudged upon their Depositions the Husband is sentenced to yield her up her Goods and not only do that but also to let her have possession of her Dower or of a good part of it at least to allow her a great Pension Then this Woman reties takes an House and lives after her own fashion which is not alway the most commendable in the World her Husband the while sinking under the whole weight of his Houshold Affairs Had she counted upon nothing else but that of necessity she must live with her Husband and in his House she would have formed her self to it and not have play'd her vexatious pranks so she had promoted the happiness of her Husband and of the Children and together with it her own For application therfore of a remedy in this case it must be a Law That a Wife shall not sue for a Separation ' as to Person or Habitation but by the advice ' of four of her nearest Kindred Men of known Integrity and that a Separation being ordered either by Sentence in Court or by Accommodation between the parties she shall be bound to enter a Monastery without egress again nor suffered to admit a visit from any man there it being contrary to Publick decency that a Woman who hath lost her Husband for to be separated from him is to lose him should appear openly and maintain commerce with other Men. On the other hand her Sex and all seemliness requiring that in this estate she hide her self and hide withal her ill fortune and her grief for it I would too that a very slender Pension be adjudged her And since Husbands will be found in fault on their part likewise and discover their ill husbandry it would be very just that the disposal of their Estates be not left to them nor the possession of more than a part of 'em as is the case of Wives and that supposing they have Children the Money arising from the remainder should be received employed and administred by a Guardian He to accompt for it to the said Children in due time If there be none the Revenue exceeding the Pension should be laid out on Hospitals and other necessities of the State This Law should extend to Separations already made And such rigour being practis'd in matter of Divorces there would be no more of ' em Husbands and Wives would be under a reciprocal Obligation to live together and to live together discreetly so they would breed up a Family that might prove the contentment of their Life the comfort of their elder years and be beneficial to the whole Kingdom There is a further consideration to be made in the matter of the Finances and it is this namely that it is expedient the King should declare that for the future He will be Creditor and Donotary to His Receivers and accomptable Officers fot their Wives dotal Money and Marriage settlements and for their Childrens Portions and Donatives then explaining the late Ordinances to take away all difficulty declare further the crime of misemploying the publick Money to be punishable by death and ordain that the Interests Amends and civil Reparations adjudged against Criminals of that kind should fall upon their Heirs or Legatees This Law is rigorous yet it is just and necessary forasmuch as it will strike terror on the Financiers who having no hope to escape Justice could not entertain a Thought of committing a fault that would ruine all that is dearest to them Beside the Romans punish'd even with death the very friends of those whom they condemn'd for Crimes against the State the History of Sejanus affords unquestionable proof of it That which we call the Demesne of the King and of the Crown cannot be Alienated nor is it liable to any charge or encumbrance This Law is Fundamental in all kind of Common-wealths as well as in France But here things are judged to belong to the Crown three manner of ways from all Antiquity As the Soveraignty the power of War Subsidies and the like By Declaration when the King by His Letters declares some particular united to the Crown By Confession
when for the continued space of ten years the Receivers have accompted for it to the Chamber There are many questions proposable in reference to the Demesne but it is not our business to State them Chopin may be consulted who hath learnedly written of this Subject In necessities of the State divers things have been engaged by the King to the use of private private persons who have paid in Sums thereupon Yet these persons cannot hinder but that the things may be recovered And there are two equitable ways to effect this The First is by making a Principal of what is due to those Creditors and assigning them Rents upon the Town Hall of Paris or some other place of which there are examples For when the King had Sold or rather engaged some Rights of His unto particular Men they have been resum'd by Contracts for a Rent-charge Now those Rights were Demesne upon which to recover the Demesne Rents were charged The same course then may be taken again Nor could the Engagees have any cause to complain for the engagements made to 'em are but to secure their due and give them not any propriety their security therefore will be as great when they have Contracts for Rent For the one and the other pertains to the Demesne still And such kind of Impositions in like manner the power to impose them being Royal and Dominical the Engagees concerned will by this means have security for security and Rent for Rent But that the King may reap advantage from this exchange it is necessary to settle a Stock for the raising of these new Rents and to that end a new Imposition must be laid upon the Clergy the Countries of State Cities Commonalties Companies Colledges Merchants and other Members of the Kingdom the Engagees themselves paying their proportions There is in this no inconvenience at all because the Demesne having been engaged for the preservation and defence of all the Corporations in the Kingdom it is natural that they all contribute to free it again The second way to disengage the Demesne would be by giving ready Money instead of Rents and making an Imposition for this end which might be more easie A reimbursement should be compleated in five or six years Mean time and before all things the Engagees must be put out of Possession and order given that the Receivers of the Demesne do take up the profits For if any condition be propos'd while the said Engagees are in possession they will make a thousand difficulties at it and on the contrary if they no longer possess they will readily consent But that the matter may be transacted with less noise it ought to be expedited in each Parliament apart or at least the Receivers commanded by virtue of a Decree of the Kings Council to receive all the profits and even those of the engaged Demesnes If there be not made a new imposition in order to recover those Demesnes the affair will not be of advantage to the King and there may one be very justly made for the reasons now alledged and for the putting of things again in order Let us pass unto the art of the Tallies The Imposition of the Tallies or Taxes is a kind of Subsidy or Aid laid upon the people Under it in France are comprehended the Tallion and the Subsistance as they term them The Tallie is hugely equitable it is ancient it is necessary and in use all the world over For there never was People that paid not to defray the publick Expences In France it is so moderate and may be so easily paid that it hath been known to be higher than now it is because the sums that make it up are receiv'd without much trouble Yet at present though it be considerably diminish'd the People are scarce able to pay it and the Country extreamly incommodated by it The prime cause of this is that the ratable persons considered the rates are not duely proportion'd the rich Peasants the Justicers of the Villages the Gentlemens Farmers the Eleus and other Persons of Power are so eased that they pay almost nothing and the poorest of all do bear all A second cause of the mischief is that they who are Commission'd to receive the Tallies do so run up the charges that they far exceed the principal and thus draw Money out of the Peoples hands which they can part with but once When the Sergeants of Villages need a Cow or Corn or some piece of Houshould-stuff they go to the Peasants houses where they know the same is to be had there they make Seizures and then Sales at what price they please They seize and sell whatever they find to the very Household-loaf of Bread that hath been cut and is in use upon this the poor Rustick hath nothing left to help himself but is utterly distressed and can no longer do his work The greatest part of these Officers must be suppress'd the more there are of them in the matter of the Finances the more disorder and oppression there is For all of them look for profit and they spoil all by their avarice and ignorance To remedy the two Evils that have been mention'd effectual order must be taken that the Peasants may pay equally that is in proportion to the estate they have and pay without charges superadded First all the Taxes should be made real as they are in Languedoc that every one may pay Secondly The Tax should be levied in kind of the fruits that are receiv'd from the Lands and Tenements as Wine Sider Beer Corn Cattle and the like the quantity that is to be taken being stinted and fix'd for example to a Tenth part A Peasant that might have ten Bushels of Corn would very willingly pay one to the King and might do it without inconvenience But when for payment of Forty Sous in Money which he hath not the Sergeants and Collectors seize upon and sell the ten Bushels of Corn which too are priz'd at an extream low rate and all is spent in charges doth he not really instead of Forty Sous pay Twenty Livres This turns not at all to the profit of the King and tends to the undoing of his People Under the name of Lands and Tenements this Tenth might be extended unto Houses in Cities Towns and Villages and they ordered to pay a Tenth part of the Money they might be let out for which should be very low rated In like manner a Tenth or Twentieth part might be taken upon Contracts for a Rent-charge For these are stocks and a real Estate The Ecclesiasticks who have sure been wary men have taken their Rents in kind and these sorts of Rents are now infinitely augmented The greatest part of the Revenues of the Romans and Aegyptians themselves was paid in Fruits They paid their Armies and Officers with them Many Kings have taken a Tenth of Estates oft-times a Fifth sometimes a Third It is not necessary that the People have Money but they must have Fruits
there were particular Magistrates appointed unto whom every private Man was obliged to give an account every year of all that he had done throughout the year which was executed with so much exactness and rigor that if any one had taken an ill course to live or not preserv'd his Estate he was severely punish'd for it The same thing was done at Athens and the Romans had Censors who took the like care they had it in charge to make a review of all the People every fisth year and inform the Senate of all that was amiss in the Commonwealth I have often wondred that there is no such Officer in France and that each ones Estate is not precisely known which 'tis hugely important it should be because in difficult times when the Kingdom perceives it self involv'd in urgent necessities succor must be drawn from every one in proportion to his Interest in the Publick Fortune that is in proportion to what he possesseth in the Kingdom Expence must be made with good Husbandry and a judicious parcimony observed in it that it run not out to a profusion on one hand nor sink into a sordid avarice on the other If Measure and Rule be not kept in the issuing out of Money all the Gold of Asia will be but a small matter Caligula found the way to consume in his debauches in one year the immense Treasures which his Predecessor had been heaping up all along the whole course of his Empire Thus it is expedient that a King do cause the sums to be paid which are charged upon the Receipt of his Finances and also that He give liberally but always so order the matter by his Prudence that nothing go out of or be kept in his hand but for the preservation and prosperity of His Subjects I said in a former Chapter that there were too many Officers in France that the wages they draw from the King were unprofitable nay prejudicial to the State Since the Sale of Offices was introduced divers new Creations have been made All these Edicts were meerly to get Money in some pressing Occurrences and nothing but the conjunctures of the time rendred them tolerable Now that those occurrences are over and the conjunctures pass'd things must be reduc'd to due order by suppressing all those new Officers I noted that wherever Magistracy brought gain disorders would creep in the reason of which is very clear and very natural For it is infallibly certain that Judges will augment the number of Suits while those Suits will bring them in profit Consequently useless Officers being suppress'd and provision made in the case by a due reduction sufficient Salaries must be allowed them and they forbidden to take any thing of the Plaintiff or Defendant upon the Penalties express'd in the ancient Statutes And that the King might make a stock to raise those Salaries without charging His Finances it should be ordained that such as go to Law shall when they commence their Suit deposite a certain sum into the hands of the Clerks this to be done in all the Royal Jurisdictions As for other Judges they ought to take nothing at all the proprietary Lords must defray the charge of their Courts if they will keep up the Power to hold them they having it of the King upon this condition from the first Grant of the Fiefs In matter of the Finances it is not sufficient to have the Secret of getting Money and the skill of duly expending it but there must be also a right course taken to make reserves of it The Romans had a publick Treasury where every year they laid up certain sums for the necessities of the Commonwealth Other Nations were no less provident History tells us of the Stores of David of Croesus of Midas and many others The King having setled an Order in His Finances both as to Expences and Receipt it will be very prudently done of Him to limit what he shall think fit to reserve and this reservation should make the first Article in his Finances and be continued until he hath in his Coffers in some secret place the fourth part at least of all the Coin in the Kingdom the rest if well us'd may be sufficent for all the People to maintain Commerce and pay the King's Revenues I say this reserve should be in a secret place and known only to persons of approved Fidelity For if many had notice of it such a store might occasion Seditions and Civil Wars Now a fourth part of the Money being once laid up apart in the King's Coffers some addition to it shall be made continually from year to year in proportion to what comes in anew Yet liberty must be left to Persons for some time to have Gold and Silver Plate yea it would do well to augment the use and mode of having it if it may be and that for three reasons First because the Goldsmiths perceiving hope of gain will not want inventions and industries to get into France as much Mettal as possibly they may either in ingots or barrs or coyned pieces Secondly because by this means Riches will be kept in the Kingdom and when a season for it comes all they that are owners of such Plate may be commanded to carry it to the Mint and there receive the price of it The third reason is because the Goldsmiths having wrought up and made Plate contrary to the direction of the Statute which undoubtedly they will do a search may be made in the case if affairs require a search highly just and no less advantageous Two regulations must be made for the Goldsmiths and they enjoyned to observe them upon pain of forfeiting Life and Goods and so strict an hand held over them that of all who trangress not a Man be pardoned The first is to prohibit their working upon any piece of Gold or Silver Coyn. The second that they do not change the form of any prohibited Plate rectifie and mend it they may At the same time all Persons that have any such and would put it off must be commanded upon great penalties to carry it to the Mint where ready Money shall be paid them for it at the currant price they making proof that they are the true owners and this to avoid Thieveries which may have been committed These two regulations will oblige the Goldsmiths to make use of new Silver or Foreign Coyns and thus they would cause a very considerable quantity of either to enter into France The State would receive no small profit by taking a due order in matter of Coyn. It should be ordained therefore in the first place that no more be made any where but at Paris and all other Mints and their Officers suppress'd as Useless The Romans who had so much Money had but one place to make it in which was a Temple of Juno's at Rome Charlemain forbad any Money to be made otherwhere than in His Palace And the truth is should all the Money of France
pass through Paris the King would much better know what quantity of it was in His Kingdom Secondly the Court des Monnoyes must be suppress'd and united to the Chamber of Accompts as I have said heretofore In the third place the value of Brass Money must be abated this kind of Coyn being the ruine of the State It cannot be believ'd how many Liarts and Sous the Hollanders have brought into France It would be convenient to set the Sous at two Liarts a-piece the Liarts at a Denier and the Doubles at an Obole half a Denier but this should be done by little and little and the fall made by degrees that the people be not ruin'd mean time Silver pieces of six blanks others of a Sous in value and of twelve Deniers are to be stamped Brasiers and workers in Mettal must be forbidden to melt up any Sous Liarts or Doubles or otherwise use them in work For after the Reduction a Sous a Liart and a Double would be worth more in work than in Money and that quantity of them which is in the Kingdom being preserv'd would suffice for Commerce in small wares they also being less worth in Money than otherwise Foreigners would bring in no more of them In the fourth place 't is fit that a Gold-coyn be made of the value of the Leuis's this Coyn to have on the front a Sun the face thereof representing the King with these words about it Nec pluribus impar and the year it is made in On the reverse a Cross charged or cantoned with Fleurdelizes and the ordinary Motto CHRISTVS vincit regnat imâ—eâ—at Of this Coyn there should be half and quarter pieces made as there are half Crowns of Gold This new Money should be called Suns and all Gold Louises made in France forbidden As likewise all cravens of Or Sol and Crowns of the Queen New Silver-coyn also should be made the pieces called Monarques or Dieudonnes or some other names in them the Figure of the King crowned after the manner of Antiquity with the Title Ludovicus XIV Franciae Rex on the reverse a Cross with Fleurdelizes and the ordinary Inscription Of these pieces there must be some of twelve Deniers others of two Sous six Deniers others of five Sous of ten Sous of twenty of forty And to have matter for them all Loueses of sixty must be forthwith prohibited because a multitude of false ones go abroad Afterward the Loueses of thirty Sous made any where but at Paris shall be call'd in and there must the new Coyns be also made They will be well received by the People for that every one hath an extream affection for the King and because in France we account by Livres or Franks and have no such Money the Quardecues being no longer current This new Coyning of Money is likely to bring a great deal into the Kings Coffers Gold and Silver must be held in France at an higher rate than they bear among Strangers that we may draw it hither nothing hath brought us so much Gold from Spain Italy and other Countries as the permission sometime grantéd that light pieces should pass The same thing should be done awhile for once again it would cause all Foreigners to come and take off our Wines our Linnen and our Corn. I should not forget to say as I put an end to this Chapter that the Masters of Accompts the Correctors and Auditors having wages of the King ought not to take any other Salary for any thing they do that directly refers to His Majesties service I mean for the Accompts of the Treasurers of the Reserve and other Accomptable Officers for they are paid for this by their wages practising in the manner they do they take as the saying is two Tolls of one grist I said that it was not at all just that the Masters of Accounts Auditors and Correctors take Fees for the Accounts they examine forasmuch as they receive Wages and Privileges from the King also this Custom was anciently practis'd and this would be to reduce things to the primitive State I well know that the pretence of these Fees is founded upon the creation of some Chamber of Accouuts where those payments are made that never go to the Chamber but this pretext is frivolous for the Chambers of Accompts in Montpellier and elsewhere ought not in like mauner to take any Money for examining the Accounts of the King so these new Chambers take away no Money from that at Paris that peradventure takes from them the homages and the verification of gifts but in this the Clerks only are the loosers and the Master Auditors and Correctors are not concern'd Addition Of the fine gross Farms I said but a word by the way of fine gross Farms which is one of the projects to raise Money by the fine gross Farms are let upon the Merchandise and upon the receipt of the Kings Rights to avoid the charge of all these an agreement might be concluded with all the Merchants to pay every year a certain sum to the King at Paris and upon their doing this they should not be molested in their passage on the Rivers or by Land for any Toll or Custom CHAP. XI 1. Of Peace and War Of Sciences of Arts of Laws of Publick Edifices and Shews 2. Of Arms of Arsenals Artilleries of Fortified places and Governors 3. Of Armies of Conquests how a Conquered Country should be preserved EIther Calm or Storm if perpetual would alike unfit the Sea for Navigation The Waves must not rage and swallow up the Vessels they should bear but there must be Wind enough to fill the Sails and give convenient motion nay some little Tempests are of use to quicken the Pilots skill whom continual fair weather would entice into a dangerous idleness Just so is it necessary that there still be in a great State especially in Nations of the French temper some moderate agitation and that the noise of Arms produce an effect upon them like that of the Winds upon the Sea Peace by general consent is that at which all Politicians do aim nor can it be deny'd to be preferrable to War being natural as Liberty is Yet War hath its peculiar advantages and those to such a degree that we may account it to be of Divine Right To say true what other right did GOD give His People against the Kings of Canaan In short War makes the Peace of Kingdoms the more firm as a Storm causeth the Air to resume a more setled serenity The prudence of Laws therefore should have provided Expedients for the preservation of States in each of these seasons and the Wisdom of Legislators hath been justly taxed in that they have not sufficiently thought upon this provision The Poet upon this ground gives his Vlysses all along the company of Minerva and disguiseth her a great many ways that she might not be parted from him In sum the Mythologists representing this Goddess armed and
and Equipage for the Horses of the Train The King should have for the security of his State several Fortified Places in his Kingdom 'T is an ill piece of Policy to neglect them and good heed had need be taken that he that may chance to win a Battel and become Master of the Field do not at the same time become Master of the Cities also It is known what Revolutions England hath suffer'd by it And on the contrary Flanders clearly shews what a Countrey thick set with Fortresses is Yet Excess being every where vicious-I would observe a mediocrity here But above all there must be left no Fortifications in Towns or Castles which belong to particular Lords except the King places in them other Governors than the Proprietors These kind of Places embolden Persons of Quality that possess them to Declare themselves and make Parties in a time of Civil War what pass'd at Tailebourg in the last Troubles is an example fully authorizing what I have propos'd I will say more of strong Places and Garisons in the Chapter of the Education of Children It is not sufficient to have such strong places and them well furnished with Garisons and brave Soldiers unless there be given them Captains fit to Command them and to be their Governors In each place then there must be four sorts of Officers The Governor the King's Lieutenant the Governor's Lieutenant and the Major These all having their Commissions from His Majesty it is expedient that as far as is possible their bearing Office be limited to a certain time to the end that the continuing of 'em longer may be in nature of a recompence for their Services And they thus attending with the greater diligence to their Duty I should also wish that being continued in employment they should change place As for example That a person who hath been the King's Lieutenant three years at Dunkirk should go serve as Lieutenant-Governor at Peronne or elsewhere Not that such a Change were fit to pass upon all the Officers of a place at the same time But let their Commissions last three Years and every Year one be changed that they may serve together one Year only It is meet to after the manner of the Turks that their Commissions expired they be kept a Year without employment to see whether there be any complaint against them These alterations would work two effects equally advantagious to the King's Service The First is that every one would stick to his Duty The Second that the King always having such kind of Employments to give there would be more persons to hope for them which would much more strongly engage them to well-doing The same usage should be introduc'd if it be possible in reference to Governors the King's Lieutenants There is a concluding observation to be made namely that it being the Custom for Governors to have some Companies of Carabines which they call their Guards they give them Cassocks of their own Livery I would have this Order changed and that the King should every year send each Governor a Troop of Horse to serve about him for a Guard they having the King's Cassocks as a Badge of their Commission and their Officers carrying the Staff in presence of their Governor during their year of service This would be a means to augment the Authority of the King and not diminish that of the Governors As to Armies it cannot be precisely said of what number of Men they should consist nor whether they ought to be strongest in Horse or in Foot This wholly depends upon the enterprizes that are made upon the quality of the Country and nature of the Enemy I should advise that a Great King do keep Troops on foot even during Peace nothing is so necessary to a State as old Soldiers Augustus after his Victories did not cashier the Forty Roman Legions which prov'd to be the safety of the Empire Constantine on the contrary disbanded them and thence came in the issue the dissolution of the Power of the Romans Augustus however and the other Caesars committed a great fault in keeping the Pretorians in a Body for the Grandeur of their Persons and History tells us what lamentable changes they made in the succession of the Emperors The Turks have fallen into like disasters by following the like usage I should therefore judge it expedient to divide the Troops into several Quarters and keep them in far distant Garisons The ancient Kings of Aegypt had a great many Soldiers perpetually in Pay and were always apprehensive of their Instructions but found a way to secure themselves from all such Seditions of their Armies Dividing them into Bodies according to the diversity of Nations they gave them different Ensigns as for instance to some a Crocodile to others a Dog to a third sort a Cat and so the rest Now the Aegyptians being hugely Superstitious they were easily induced to believe that their Tutelary Deities were included in the figure of those Beasts which were given them for Ensigns and that they had the same Antipathies among them in Heaven which those Beasts that represented them had to one another upon Earth Thus under a Veil of Religion those People were possess'd with an aversion for each other like those Animals which they had been ordered to carry in their Banners yet all were close united and perfectly at accord for the common defence of the State so nothing could be executed against the intentions of the Prince because as soon as any should begin to stir the rest would immediately have opposed them Upon this example the King might divide all his Troops by Provinces and though there should be no engaging of Religion in the case yet much advantage would without fail be drawn from thence For the Nations would strive to out-vie one another with more zeal and ardor than the Regiments now do These Regiments themselves might have names given them from the Arms of their Provinces as that of the Bretons might be called the Regiment of the Ermine that of the Normans the Regiment of the Leopards c. Jutius Caesar raised a new Legion among the Gauls and gave it the name of the Lark But what I say in this particular is but the giving my Opinion For I am not of the mind that the order of the Militia should be changed or Regiments disbanded which consist of the best and most War-like Troops that are in the World 'T is ordinarily a great question of what Soldiers an Army should be composed We have Subjects and Forreigners The Subjects are Gentlemen and Plebeians The Plebeians are Citizens and Rusticks On the other hand of Forreigners some are the Auxiliary Troops of Allies which serve at the cost of their own Princes as when the King sent succors into Germany and unto the Hollanders Others are Troops that serve at the cost of the State which employs them The Ancients termed them Mercinaries Such at this time are the Suissers and not a
few Germans All these different sorts of Soldiers may be used as necessity and the conjuncture of Affairs requires The Romans did so It is true by their Treaties of Alliance they always obliged their Allies to send them a certain number of Soldiers but these were not incorporated with their Legions and it is clear that Subjects are ever best of Subjects Gentlemen have ordinarily more courage than others Of Plebeians those of the Country are to be preferred before the Inhabitants of Cities because Peasants are more accustomed to Labour and Hardship than Townsmen are Auxiliary Troops serve but for a time and often when some continuation of service is demanded of them they impose hard conditions Mercenaries will have Money and care not if a State be ruin'd so themselves are paid In fine Strangers may on the suddain change Interests and Party so of Friends becoming Enemies and that in occasions of greatest importance Mercenaries above all do serve without affection and seldom stand it out in Fight unto the utmost They push on a Victory indeed but scarce ever win a Battel In short Strangers should be as little made use of as possible and scarce for any other cause but that Enemies might be deprived of their Aid When Strangers only are taken into Service the Subjects grow less War-like and the most considerable of them despise War as is done in Spain and extreamly ill done The Carthaginians were ruined principally by the fault they committed in employing Numidian Troops and other Strangers and not sending out their own Citizens in their Armies I will not here speak of the Art of War 't is a matter that deserves a Chapter apart Yet I will say cursorily that the Rules of it change as Time and Seasons do We neither attack Places nor defend them in the very manner that the Ancients did There is also a great deal of difference between their way of fighting and ours so that they had not the Arms which we now use All of precept for the leading of an Army that faileth not nor changeth is that Discipline be exercised wherein Commanders should never be remiss The only School of War is War it self and twenty Years experience will better make a great Captain than an hundred Years Reading Not but that we have examples of General Command given to persons who never were in Armies afore There are elevated Spirits to whom nothing is impossible but the instances are rare and 't is too too hazardous a course to rely upon them For a Captain must have not only spirit and courage but also credit with his Soldiers which cannot be gotten but by service In fine it is necessary for a great State to keep War on foot and Men of Quality must be employed in it to the end there may always be a stock of good Soldiers and a breed of Generals These two things give a Nation marvellous advantages and esteem among Foreigners Though France now be a most powerful Monarchy by means of its Extent of its Scituation the Fruitfulness of the Soil the Number of its Inhabitants and though greatest States have not always most strength as biggest Men are not always stoutest yet were it to be wish'd that the King did add unto his Kingdom First all the Low Countrys to the Rhyne This Conquest would re-settle Him in possession of the ancient demain of His Predecessors giving France gain its primitive limits It would make him Master of the Northern Seas and by consequence Arbitrator between the Crowns of Sweden and Denmark Poland c. Conquest must be aspired to out of a thirst of Empire being an unjust thing if we believe Aristotle for I would not determine but that the right of War were a very lawful right consonant to what I have said in the beginning of this Chapter but the desire of Conquest should principally be for the doing of good to all Men which is the end why GOD gave them Laws The more Subjects and Power a just Prince hath the better will it be for the World Secondly It were convenient that the King had Strasbourg to keep all Germany quiet In the third place He need have the Franche County to lay a restraint upon the Suisses least dividing themselves between the Empire and France or serving Spain in a War there they strengthen his Enemies In the fourth place Milan is necessary in respect of Italy to give the lesser Sovereigns and Republiques protection and ballance the Power which the King of Spain hath usurp'd there In the fifth place Genoa and all its Territory pertains to the King nor would the Genoese have revolted had it not been for the bad counsel given to Francis the First to discontent Doria Genoa would make the King Master of the Mediteranean Sea beside those two Acquisitions would keep the Duke of Savoy lock'd up within French Territories So he would never depart from the King's Service being entirely His dependant We must re-enter the Isle of Elba and into Portolongone and Piombino on the continent to drive the Spaniards out of Italy Here our nearness would keep the Duke of Florence the Dukes of Parma of Modena and of Mantua and even the State of the Pope in a submission for France Corsica would not stand out after the reduction of Genoa and then Sardinia would be no difficult Conquest This would strongly favour any stirs on the account of Liberty or Discontent that might be raised in the Kingdoms of Sicily and Naples nor would it be an hard matter to raise them in time On the Coast of Bayonne there would be need of Fuentaravia and those parts of the Kingdom of Navarr which the Spaniards have in possession might be justly re-demanded The King might also carry His Arms into Catalonia we have ancient pretensions there and the Conquests of it would be no less easily atchieved than it was in the time of the last War Majorca and Minorca would follow without trouble Thus the King would be absolute Umpire of the Mediterranean and of all the fortune of the Spaniards If it should happen one day that the Queen or Her Descendants should have an Hereditary Right there the King would be in a condition to do Himself reason in these matters The means of making these Conquests severally cannot be shewed without particular discourses Mean time what I have said is not in truth to be done in a day it would be an enterprise of many years Yet there is nothing of meer fancy it it I propose no Conquest to be made but what hath really been made except that of the Isles of the Mediterranean which our Kings never minded for that before Charles the Eighth they never were in case to strengthen themselves at Sea Bretagnie was separted from the Kingdom the Wars of Italy took up every Reign unto Henry the Second Then follow'd the affairs of Religion which put a stop to all the designs that might have been formed in this behalf Here one thing
they have lost had they well examin'd our Ports and Havens in fine had they compar'd the Coasts of France with those of England they would condemn their Vanity as Canutus one of their ancient Kings did 'T is true all States are not disposed unto Navigation either because they are too far up in Midland Countries or because the temper of the People suits not with it or because they want Subjects but 't is so far that any of these Obstacles should hinder the French from addicting themselves unto it that on the contrary all things conspire to raise desire of it in them and to give them hope of advantageous success The work however is such as must be leisurably carried on and perfected by little and little so great a design continually allarming Europe Asia Africa and America Friends and Foes A precipitation of it would be its ruine I say not what number of Vessels would be fit for France to put to Sea But I affirm that the King may keep an hundred Gallies and an hundred Ships on the Mediterranean and a Fleet of Two hundred Sail upon the Ocean The more Vessels He shall have the more enabled He will be to recover the expence made about ' em As to the building of such numbers six or ten years of time may be allotted for it and there is Timber in France there is Cordage there are Sails there is Iron and Brass there are Victuals and Workmen so that the King's Subjects will gain the Money which is laid out in ' em Is it not far better for the King of France to build Ships for the employing and enriching of His Subjects than it was for the Kings of Aegypt to build their useless Pyramids There need be no anxious enquiry whence a Stock should rise for this advance every year will bring in Money and the Vessels once made and their Guns mounted it will not cost the King a Quardecu for other Equippings 'T will be but to give the Captains Places in the Ships and Gallies on condition to fit them out and there will more persons come to take them than there will be Offices and Places to be bestowed 'T is true Fleets being out there will need vast Sums to maintain them but the Sea will yield a maintenance for the Sea either by Commerce or by War Neither will it be always proper to keep so many Vessels in service On the other hand it will not be necessary to have so many Troops at Land as are at present For Spain or Italy will not dare to disfurnish themselves of their Men so there will be no need of a Land-Army but towards Germany The number of Rowers will be made up by bringing Men from Canada and the American Islands or by buying Negroes at Cape Verde or by sending all Malefactors to the Gallies And when things have taken their course Seamen will be had time and the profit that will accrue will afford store and bring them in from all parts of the World Hereupon the Corsairs of Algiers Tunis and Tripoli will not be able to keep at Sea and the French being continually on their Coasts they will be constrain'd to tarry at home for the guarding of their Towns so not in a condition to send out Troops for collecting the Tribute which they exact of the Arabs and Princes who lye further up in Africa the Tributaries will without fail revolt and the King may in the sequel Treat with them for their recovering their Liberty and take them into his Protection There is no cause to fear the Power of the Ottoman Port in this particular For beside that the Turks are no good Seamen the Grand Signior doth make no such account of the Pyrats of Algier as that their fortune is considerable to Him The Friendship of the French is more necessary for Him both in point of Commerce and in reference to other Interests The Fleets which the King might keep upon the Ocean would make Him Master of all the Powers and Trade of the North. Yea though the English and Hollanders should unite against France they could not avoid their ruin in the end For how should the one and the other make good their Commerce which is all they have to trust to if they were forced to maintain great Armada's to continue it The point of Bretannie is the Gate to enter into and go out of the Channel Fifty Ships of War at Brest would keep this Gate fast shut and they should not open it but by the King's Command Spain and Portugal would not be able to attempt any thing but by His permission if there were kept a Fleet on the Coast of Guyenne Thus there would need no War almost to be made for all these things nor His Majesties Forces hazarded It would be sufficient to give his Order to Forreiners Nor will it be difficult to cut them out work in their own Countries and by this means stay their Arms at home and make them spend their strength there I shall something of this in its place hereafter There is one further excellent means to strengthen the King at Sea and it is the taking Order that no more of His Subjects go to Malta To do this there must be given in Fee to the French Knights of St. John of Jerusalem some Isle in the Mediterranean as for Instance the Isle du Levant for which they should pay an acknowledgment to the King as they do for Malta to the King of Spain There might be given them too on the same condition an Isle in the Ocean as Besle-Isle l'Isle-Dieu or the Isle of Ree so that the French Knights fighting not but against the Enemies of their Country they would make War upon the English as upon Turks and keep the Islands at their own charge whereas the King is fain to keep great Garisons and be at vast expence to do it There is no cause to fear that they will ever give the King any trouble for being French they cannot fail of Affection or Obedience and their Kindred together with the Wealth they have in France will be perpetual Hostages to the King and caution for their Fidelity This Project is just for of ten parts of the Knights of Malta no less than eight do come from the Commanderies of France and it is easie to be put in execution for there need be only a stopping the income of the Commanderies to effect it The Order in general will find its advantages in it both in that there will be an addition made it of two considerable Islands and that the King will receive the Knights into a more particular Protection than he hath done hitherto The number of Commanderies may also be augmented by giving them some Maladeries or Hospitals for the diseased which are always usurped by People that have no right to them at all Be it observed in the last place that it is very requisite the Office of Admiral and Powers of the Admiralty
done because they are ill husbands and lay up nothing Their Reward-money must be put in a Publick purse or into some Merchant's hands who will be responsible for it The share of Lacquies that die will serve for other Youths that shall be chosen This would prove an excellent means for the having of Soldiers For the Apprentices would serve in their turn on Military occasions they would go upon the Guard c. nor would this take them off from perfecting their skill in the Calling they had chosen It would too be profitable that poor Soldiers have skill in one handicraft or other and be made to work at it whenever they are not on the Guard by this means they would avoid idling and get Money for a subsistance The Parishes both in Town and Country might be obliged to set forth and maintain each of them a Soldier or two in Garison giving also a sum for their being taught a Trade at the same time There would be Parishes able to maintain a Man and half others half a Man the rest in proportion to the number of communicants in each of them So the King would have 50000 Men well-nigh in Garison and a Nursery of Soldiers without its costing Him a Quardecu for none must have pay but old Soldiers it s by taking this course that the Turks raise their Janizaries and they become their best Men and most Warlike When the young Men have been a while in Garison that is two or three years they shall be sent to the Army if there be War on foot and all recruits shall be rais'd out of the Garisons by this means they will be rais'd without any expence at all for instance if there need a recruit of 4000 Men each of the Governors shall be ordered to send one an hundred another two hundred and the Men being drawn out of the Garisons new supplies shall be put in taken out of the Parishes which sent the former Thus the Armies would be alway compos'd of none but expert Soldiers which is a matter of exceeding great consequence I will not prescribe in what Towns or in how many places it is fit to settle Garisons because this depends on the Kings Will and Pleasure and Towns to be chosen for this purpose need not be nominated the most commodious and best scituated are known As to those that should be destin'd for Sea-service they might be taken out of the same Garisons and should be taught principally Navigation but it would be better to breed them up in the Ships themselves that they might be accustomed to the Sea It is fit that they should understand all the practise of Mariners and also be Handicrafts men as well as Soldiers it would be very good that some of the number were Carpenters or at least each of them somewhat skilled in use of the Axe and Adice If Soldiers both at Sea and on Land were Artificers their Captains or others might cause them to work They should be paid for what they made and the Person that employed them might fell their work either in gross or by retail as Garments Shooes Cloth Hatts Gloves and this would prove hugely beneficial all the Soldiers would find content in it hardly one of them fall into debauch When the Youngsters have been some time in Garison and are not needed for recruits they should be sent home with their Discharge and Certificate Hereupon they may set up the Trade they have learned or addict themselves to Husbandry as they should think most commodious for them The Country Youth not chosen by the King's Commissioners for the Garisons should abide in their Parishes to learn the Art of Husbandry and be exercised in it A like course as is to be taken with young Men should also be taken with young Women There must be School-Mistresses in every City publickly pay'd who may teach them all kind of works the Maids giving them too something for a reward It would do well to use means that Women and even those of highest rank might count it a shame to be unskilfull work would notably fix their thoughts and busy them to excellent good purpose Of Women I had not yet spoken nor will I say of them ought more herein I shall Imitate Lycurgus and besides him Aristotle who both conceiv'd it not possible to give them any Rules and that their temper was so imperious that they could not endure to be restrained by Law this is more to be excused in French Women than in others 't is their due to be Mistresses since they may Glory upon better Title than the Lacedemonian Dames that they give birth to Men who are capable of rendring themselves by their Valour Conquerors of all the Earth It seems to me a fault that Maids should be suffer'd to Marry at Twelve and Males at Fourteen at which Ages the too too indulgent Laws have fixed the Puberty of the Sexes For as to Nature it is not possible but persons of those years only must extremely prejudice their Health by Marriage and spend their strength before they have attain'd it 'T is the making of young Trees bear Fruit before the time the Children are without doubt the less vigorous for it How can the Parents give them what they as yet have not themselves Again Morality and the Laws are concerned in the case the truth is when a Girl is put so young into the possession of a Husband she hath the less of bashfulness and Modesty nor is Virtue so well secured for her Besides at this age neither Man nor Woman is of understanding to know their Duty and hence it comes that the Marriages of persons so young are ordinarily attended with no very sure Felicity and Success Finally how can the one or the other take care of the Affairs of an House being altogether unexperienced or duly govern their Children needing Government themselves and having not by allowance of the Laws power to dispose of any thing So that it must be ordained they shall not be capable of making a valid contract of Marriage till they have attained Females the age of Eighteen years compleat and Males of Twenty CHAP. XIV 1. How France should act with Forreign Princes and First with the King of Spain and King of Portugal 2. With the Pope with Venice with the Princes of Italy 3. With the Swisses with England 4. With the Emperor and Princes of Germany 5. With the Hollanders the Crowns of Denmark Sweden and Poland 6. With the Turks and King of Persia 7. With the Kings of the Coast of Barbary and the King of Morocco 8. With all remote Princes as the Emperor of the Negroes Prestor John the Great Mogul The other Kings of the Indies of China and of Tartary HAving treated in the precedent Ceapters of things Internal to the State I think it reasonable to speak of Externals and what course is to be taken in them For to promote the happiness of People and govern them
3 Months would utterly ruin him He may be induc'd to hope that he shall be reinstated in the Principality of Geneva If War be made in Italy the Italians must not have time given them to look about them As they are the Wisest so when inur'd to War they are the bravest upon Earth In one word they are the Masters of the Universe The Swisses are Mercenaries who will alway serve the King for his Money As for matter of the English they have not any Friends themselves be a sort of People without Faith without Religion without Honesty without any Justice at all of the greatest levity that can be Cruel Impatient Gluttonous Proud Audacious Covetous fit for Handy strokes and a sudden execution but unable to carry on a War with judgment Their Country is good enough for sustenance of Life but not rich enough to afford them means for issuing forth and making any Conquest accordingly they never conquered any thing but Ireland whose Inhabitants are weak and ill Soldiers On the contrary the Romans conquer'd them then the Danes and the Normans in such a manner too that their present Kings are the Heirs of a Conqueror They hate one another and are in continual Division either about Religion or about the Government A War of France for three or four years upon them would totally ruin them So it seems reasonable that we should make no Peace with them but upon conditions of greatest advantage for us unless the King think meet to defer the execution of this Project to another time or that His Majesty press'd with the love He hath for His own People do incline to prefer their ease before so fair hopes One had need be a Monarch to know what it is to love Subjects as be a Father to know how Children are loved In fine if we had a mind to ruin the English we need but oblige them to keep an Army on foot and there is no fear that they should make any invasion upon France that would be their undoubted ruin if they be not call'd in by some Rebels Now if they have an Army they will infallibly make War upon one another and so ruin themselves You must put them upon making great expences and for this end raise a jealousie in them for the Isles of Jersey and Guernsey of Wight and Man for the Cinque-Ports and Ireland and by that means oblige them to keep strong Garisons in all those places this will create a belief in the people that the King formeth great Projects against their pretended Liberty and while He is in Arms His Subjects will hate Him They must be wrought to distrusts of one another by writing Letters in Cypher to some particular persons and causing them to be intercepted For being suspicious and imprudent they will soon be perswaded that the Letters were seriously written Some Forces should be landed in Ireland and in other parts The Irish may be induced to revolt as having a mortal hatred for the English The Scots also will not neglect to set themselves at liberty Factions must be rais'd and the Sects favoured against one another especially the Catholicks among whom the Benedictine Monks in particular should be secretly promis'd on the King of England's behalf wherein it will be easie to deceive them that they shall be restored to all the Estates which they once possessed in the Island according to the Monasticon there Printed Upon this the Monks will move Heaven and Earth and the Catholicks declare themselves The rumor which hath already gone abroad that the King of England is a Catholick must be fortifi'd and so all will fall into utter confusion and the English Monarchy be in case to be divided On the other hand our League with the Hollanders should be renew'd and they put into a belief that we will give them all the Trade still because they have a through Knowledge of it and are proper for it whereas the French have no inclination that way and Nature cannot be forced They must be told that now they are come to the happy time for advancing their affairs and ruining their Competitors in the Sovereignty of the Northen Seas Beside these particulars if the King give Belle-Isle or L'Isle Dieu or the Isle of Ree to the Knights of Malta as I have said before these Knights will make irreconcilable War upon the English redemand the Commanderies of their Order and by their courses and Piracies oblige them to keep great Fleets at Sea which will ruine them by ruining the profit of their Trade Mean time the King shall increase His Strength at Sea and then finding His Enemies weakned consummate their Depression and Subversion It is not difficult to make defence against any enterprises of the Emperor for He cannot make War upon France though He would such a War would be too costly for Him and and to make any progress in it He must needs bring into the Field excessive great Armies But if He armed Him so potently the Princes of Germany would grow jealous of Him and make Levies to oppose Him and to hinder His passage through their Territories beside His Hereditary Countrys would be disfurnish'd of Men and so expos'd to the inroads of the Turks so that there is no cause to apprehend any thing on the part of the Emperor On the contrary He hath intentions to give the King content because He may receive great succors from Him in Wars with the Turk as happen'd of late Years The Princes of Germany whether Catholicks or Protestants have an equal interest to keep themselves in the King's Protection for the reasons I noted afore in the Chapter of the Huguenots so that they will always oppose the Emperors growing greater on the side of France as it may be they would oppose the designs of the King if He should carry His Arms too far up into Germany 'T is the interest of lesser States that the Kings their Neighbours be equal in Power that the one may maintain them against the others To conclude the King hath no Allies whom He should so highly esteem as the Germans there is not a braver Nation a Nation more open more honest Their Original is also ours They have no Vices are Just and Faithfull there is among them an inexhaustible Seminary of good Soldiers their generosity put Alexander the Great into admiration for 'em and wrought affection and confidence in 'em in the first Caesars who by committinâ— their Persons to the virtue of these People entrusted them with the quiet of the Universe The Hollanders will never attempt any thing against France but keep themselves in our Alliance as much as possibly they may They are Rich and interessed as Merchants commonly are If the King had relinquish'd them theâ—… State would have sunk which yet by the rules of Policy cannot last long Democracieâ— being subject to changes It would be expedient that the King do interpose in their Affairs and some division be raised among
and his great Benefactor and to have basely betray'd the Rights of the King to oblige the Court of Rome But this may not seem so strange if one consider that he got the best part of his preferment for certain Services of pleasure that do not much bind the Conscience of him that receives them nor that of him who is recompens'd for them And in truth those diverting Services that he and Monsieur De la Ravenne render'd to King Henry the Great deserve that Posterity should erect for them Statues crown'd with Myrtle God be thank'd that France now has a King vigorous both in Age and in Virtue who is the terrour of Rome having shewn himself sensible of its Usurpations upon France beyond all his Predecessors and of whom we have good occasion to hope that he will shake off this Italian Yoke and banish all Foreign Jurisdiction out of his Kingdom We also ought to bless God for that the French Nobility at this day is much of a different temper from that which in the full States submitted the Crown and life of their King to the Popes Tyranny 56 years ago And that is ready to cover their Fathers faults by generously assisting their King to make Him the only King within his Kingdom To effect this above all things those pretended Immunities and Exemptions must be taken from the Clergy which indeed are revolts from the Kings Authority to that of the Popes 'T is in truth very reasonable that they who have the charge of Souls should be discharg'd from many publick Services by reason they are vow'd and reserv'd to the Service of God but however not that they and their Lands should no longer depend on the King and be subject to another Sovereign This is what was represented to King Henry the Great by that illustrious Personage Achilles de Harley first President of his Court of Parliament at Paris in a Speech he made to him to disswade him from recalling the Jesuits he Remonstrates to him That according to their Doctrine he who has taken the lowest Orders of the Church could not be guilty of High Treason whatever Crime he committed for that the Clergy are no longer the Kings Subjects nor belonging to his Jurisdiction In such manner that the Church-men if one would believe them are exempt from Secular Powers and may without punishment attempt against Kings with their bloody-hands and that this Doctrine they maintain in their publish'd Books Thuanus l. 130. ad an 1604. To this effect the Jesuit Emanuel Sa holds That the Rebellion of a Clerk against the Prince is not the Crime laesae Majestatis because he is not a Subject of the Prince Words that have been left out in the Edition of Paris but remain in that of Cologne and that of Antwerp Bellarmin that has not been purged says the same thing He affirms De Cl. C. 28. That a Clerk cannot be punished by the Civil Judges or in any wise brought before the Judicial Seat of a Secular Magistrate He likewise says That the Sovereign Pontifex having deliver'd the Clerks from the subjection of Princes Kings are no more the superiors of Clerks The Pope then by his reckoning is the King of Kings if he can deliver whom he pleases from their subjection due to their Princes by their birth by making them Clerks and it will be in his Power not to leave in France any Subject to the King if all his Subjects will but accept of the meanest Orders This Body of the Clergy has its Judges and Officers apart and Prisons apart Their Causes will not bide the Trial before the Kings Judges but fly to the Rota or to the Consistory at Rome There may be found an incredible number of Persons in France who under the Title of the Clergy have shaken off the Yoke of the Kings Authority and a third part of the Land of the Kingdom is in the Church-mens hands for which they will neither render Homage nor Service to the King And though the lots and vents the quints requints and other Rights of Lordship belong to the King all these Rights are lost after that the moveable goods are enter'd into the possession of the Clergy The King also loses his Rights D'Aubanir of Confiscation and of Deforence the Clergy being a Body that never dies yet mortifies the Inheritances new Donations falling to them every day but none goes from them A famous Writer said pleasantly That as the Arms and Thighs dwindle when the Belly swels to excess so in the Body of a State the Nobility and People that are as the Arms and Legs of a Commonweal are impair'd by the fatning of the Clergy I am of those who wish the Clergy may have those means and that Dignity which may lift them above Contempt and Oppression and render them respected even of Kings But because I love them I wish their Riches may not be so excessive as to create in Kings a jealousie that may cause them to be taken away as has happen'd in England and in other places 'T is therefore a great imprudence of our Lords the Clergy of France who possess the best part and the fat of the Kingdom enough to cause jealousie in the Seculars and the avarice of Sacriledge to add yet this unjust pretension of immunity from all Charges both for their persons and for their goods and defend themselves with the Popes Authority which exempts them Which in effect is to tell the King That they are another Kings Subjects who has Power to Command Him to dispose of the Lands under his Obedience and to limit his Authority over the Persons of the Native French If for this they alledge a long Custom we may say That the Popes to settle their Usurpations in France have ever embroil'd our Kings in Troubles and oblig'd them to think of somewhat else besides the repelling the blind encroachments of a stranger Kingdom that crept into their Realm and that they had to do with weak Princes or such as had their hands full other ways But now that God has given France a King wise powerful flourishing and who has leisure to have an Eye or all his Interests will these Gentlemen expect that he will suffer long that a third of his Kingdom lie unprofitable to him and even that it be reserv'd to fortifie a Foreign Monarchy and though natural reason requires that they who live at ease should comfort those who fight for their preservation all this while that the Nobles and the third State oppose the invasion of Strangers all this while that the King is fortifying his Frontiers entertaining Garisons setling Officers both for the State and for the War Why do not the Church-men who are thereby maintain'd in the quiet enjoyment of so great plenty contribute one Mite towards the defraying of publick Charges Why shall their increase be a diminution to the strength of the King who is kept waking for their repose and preservation Shall not the King
adviseable to appear in it barefac'd for says he That would be to bring upon us the Clamours and importunity of all the Monks and their followers this would be to bring Rome upon our back which might give us trouble I confess that no good can be acquir'd without trouble But I cannot conceive that it would be much trouble to deliver France from the Usurpations and the Exactions of Rome To forbid that there be in France no more Courts depending on the Pope nor Money carried from France to Rome or any Cause removed thither by Appeal And that no provision of Benefices be receiv'd from thence This in truth would be to bring Rome on our backs but not one Sword would be drawn in the Cause either within the Kingdom or without Should the Emperor do the same within his Principalities our King would not stir nor would the Emperor any more be concern'd if the King should set back the Jurisdiction of the Pope to beyond the Alps. When King Henry VIII of England did the same in his Kingdom what Prince undertook the quarrel against him How easily would the People accustom themselves to be free from the Papal Exactions and how vain and idle were the Attempts of the Popes Partisans in England to restore his Authority that Prince hack'd and harass'd what he had a mind to in the Ecclesiastick Estate and the clamours of the Monks which the Marquess is affraid on frighted not him though he treated them coursely Nor are we at all to fear least the Monks take up Arms as the Chiefs of the League forc'd them to do which would serve only to make them be laught at and gave a subject to the Painters for those antick and ridiculous Portracts that they have left us Or if any little broil should be rais'd by some of the Bigots how soon must it fall before a great King who is never without an Army Who shall read over all the Book of the Marquiss shall find that he proposes Reformations in the State far more hand to be effected than the banishing of the Canon-Law and Papal Jurisdiction out of the Kingdom For he would perfectly melt down the Justice and Policy and cast them all anew He has truly made it appear that he understands the Malady of the State and yet his Projects to remedy them cannot be put in execution without bringing to ruine and despair many active Spirits that live on their Prosessions which is very dangerous to attempt in a State Whereas the expulsion of the Canon-Law out of France and the reduction of all Causes thereon depending to the Civil Magistrate and of all persons acknowledging the Pope to the Obedience of the King would not at all be any dangerous Innovation To discontent the regular Ecclesiasticks that are unactive as bred up in the shade and in contemplation or in idleness can be no great danger especially leaving them their Revenues at least for life I neither have the wit nor the presumption to give a model of what Orders should be prescrib'd the Church after the Papal Jurisdiction is banisht the Kingdom And I shall go no farther than to say that I see no vigour in the Roman Jurisdiction and their Partisans in France that may hinder the King from cashiering them absolutely and making himself Master at home Even the Excommunications and Interdicts that would follow would strengthen him being of no other effect but to provoke the Parliaments and to animate the People against the Pope The greatest part of the Clergy would submit to the King and would cast off all Foreign Domination and the dissenting Clergy would be inconsiderable would be disperst and vanish before the Rays of the Authority Royal. And I pray a King of England could he accomplish this Work to free himself from the Papal-Yoke though carried thereunto more by passion than prudence And our Great King so Vigorous so Powerful so Wise shall not he dare to undertake it for fear of vexing the Pope and the Monks Shall he be scar'd with an imaginary Monarchy that has neither force nor foundation save in the Opinion of those that fear it and establish it by their sottish fear What is most considerable in this Example is That the Pope continues banisht out of England For though restor'd by Queen Mary and his Power own'd for the space of five years Queen Elizabeth and the Kings her Successors found themselves so much at ease in being deliver'd from the Roman-Yoke and in being acknowledged Supreme under God in all Causes and over all Persons as well Ecclesiastical as Civil that they have maintain'd and do yet maintain this Authority essential to their Crown This Authority is no less essential to the Crown of our Great King and 't is this that the good Prince James King of England represents to all Kings and Princes of Christendom in the Remonstrance he has made them touching the Rights of their Crowns They have not hitherto been so happy to listen to it but let us hear what he says to them If you that are the most Powerful come to consider in earnest with your selves that well-nigh a third of your People and of your Lands belong to the Church will not the Thoughts of so great a loss move you which withdraws from your Jurisdiction so many Men and so much of your Lands in such manner that every where they plant Colonies and Provinces for the Pope What Thorns and Thistles suffer you to grow in the Country under your Subjection so long as so powerful a Faction flourishes and spreads over so much good Soil within your Kingdoms openly maintaining that they are exempt from your Power and that they are by no right subject to your Laws and to your Judgments insomuch that whereas formerly the Clerks desir'd no more but their Tiths and liv'd thereon content at this day the Pope chief of the Clerks is not content with less than a third part of your Subjects and of your Lands These words of a King our Neighbour happily enjoying a Sovereignty independant of the Pope of which his Ancestor robb'd this Robber an hundred and forty years ago ought to move in our Kings a virtuous Emulation to recover and after to maintain the Rights proper to their Crown And the example of so flourishing a success ought to encourage them to so just and so noble an Undertaking From this great and principal acquisition that the King shall be the only Sovereign in his Kingdom other advantages will arise These stranger Courts being put down that are the Mills whither every one brings and where the Moulture goes all to Rome or to their Creatures the Money they drain from the Kings Subjects shall stay in France and seeing that this employs a great number of Officers that only do harm to the State when this Gate shall be shut the young Men will seek out other ways to make themselves valued by and the Arts and Commerce of the Kingdom will be
that insult over us for Actions forc'd by the despair of a few and protested against by the greater Party and that will not acknowledge the signal Services we have done for the Crown which ought never to have been forgotten so long as the Race of Henry the Great shall Sit upon the Throne I think my self oblig'd to represent truly what is most considerable in their condition and in their actions since the last return of the Purity of the Gospel into France I say the last return because that it has been and has flourisht there two or three hundred years before and the Professors remain'd there skulking and yet in great numbers after long and cruel Persecutions For we dissemble not but own that this Holy Doctrine came to us and was planted by the remains of those poor Valdenses and Albigenses the destruction of whom is rank'd by the noble Marquess amongst the good Works of the first Rates The Character that Reinerius their cruel Inquisitor gave them is very remarkable and may satisfie those who ask where was our Religion before Luther c. 4. Contra Valdenses This says he of all Sects is the most pernicious for three Reasons First because of its long duration for some say that it has continu'd since the time of Pope Sylvester others hold that it began even in the Apostles time Secondly because of all Sects this is the most general there scarce being any Country where this Sect has not taken root In the Third place by reason that all contrary to other Sects that become abominable by the enormity of their Blasphemies against God these People seem very Godly for they live justly before Men have a sound belief in all things and of God and of all the Articles contain'd in the Apostles Creed only this They Blaspheme against Rome An admirable Testimony from the Pen of a Mortal Enemy that deserves to be Writ in Letters of Gold Let us joyn hereunto that of good King Lewis XII the Father of the People He was much importun'd by those of the Clergy who pray'd him to root out the Inhabitants of the Cabrieres and of Merindol in Provence that were of this Profession and some remainders of the Albigenses But this just King afore he would grant that bloody Request would see their Confession of Faith which having read He swore they were better Christians than he and his People and preserv'd them from the rage of their Enemies But these Enemies obtain'd what they desir'd of King Francis the First and made an horrible slaughter of those poor Christians If these Albigenses be Hereticks because they Blaspheme against Rome Is not the Marquess one and all the Men of Politicks in France who declaim so openly and so generously against the Pope's Usurpations that makes of Religion a pretence thereby to invade the Rights of the King and make himself Universal Monarch of all the World These Gentlemen would abate much of the hatred they bear us would they be pleas'd to consider that the Pope and Roman Clergy hate us for a Cause that is common to us both For it is not upon the account of any Controversies about the Holy Sacrament the Invocation of Saints and the Prayers for the Dead but it is because we oppose boldly the Usurpations of Rome it is because we Blaspheme against Rome as the Albigenses in Reinerius's days That we are call'd as he calls us A pernicious Sect. This is the great Heresie for which we have been made Objects of the Publick hatred and for which the Devotion of the People is made to consist in a bloody Zeal to burn us and Massacre us In the Year 1520. the Light of the Gospel shin'd throughout all the parts of France And the Queen of Navarre Sister of King Francis I. who was enlighten'd therewith was a great Rampire against the fury of the Roman Clergy that labour'd to extinguish this Holy Light by Persecution However she could not hinder but that much cruelty was exercised But after her decease the Persecution grew hot again and continued during the Reign of Francis I. and Henry II. For the space of Forty years those that were converted maintain'd their Holy Profession by a constancy in their Sufferings in imitation of the Christians of the Primitive Church Notwithstanding this Vigor many of the Princes and of the best Families of France as the Princes of the Blood of the House of Bourbon embrac'd the Reform'd Religion Under the Reign of Francis II. the Princes of the Blood debarr'd of their Rights by those of the House of Guise the Queens Uncles form'd the design at Ambois to banish those from the King's Person that held them at distance This attempt failing was call'd a Crime of High Treason and charg'd on them of the Reform'd Religion though Renaudy the chief of the Plot was a Roman Catholick and this Party was compos'd of Noblemen and Gentry of both the Perswasions Whoso understands the Priviledges of the Princes of the Blood in France will never accuse these Undertakers of the Rebellion Thuanus testifies in their Favour Hist l. 24. That not one of them was prov'd to have attempted against the King or against the Queen but only against Strangers that Govern'd all at Court in a Tyrannical way For then the House of Guise was still lookt upon as a Stranger in France Francis II. being dead his Successor Charles IX being a Minor the Princes of the Blood had more Right than afore to be admitted to the management of Publick Affairs at least joyntly with the Queen-Mother But when they saw themselves excluded and their Persons in danger they Levy'd Forces for their Preservation When the King came of Age the Princes seeing Him much incens'd against them and that He was of a dangerous and implacable Nature they retir'd and stood upon their Guard The several Affronts they receiv'd and the frequent Massacres occasion'd two or three little Wars To rid himself of them all at one blow the King set his Sister for a bait to draw in and to destroy the whole Party of the Princes giving her in Marriage to the Prince of Navarre who was afterwards our Henry the Great He and his Cousin Germain the Prince of Conde were imprison'd and the Principals of their Party slain in their Beds having Danc'd at a Ball the Evening before Never were Dancers at such a Wedding Pope Gregory XII had a hand in this execrable Action his Predecessor Pius V. refused to consent to this Marriage because said he the Prince of Navarre is an Heretick But when the Cardinal of Lorrain told his Successor Gregory XII that this Marriage was a trap to catch the Hereticks he then dispatcht the Dispensation and encourag'd the Design The Prince of Navarre having sav'd himself at Rochel was immediately assisted by a great Party that had escap'd the Massacre and the War broke out afresh Thereupon was form'd that Faction of the League to destroy the Princes of the Blood under
the colour of Religion and particularly to destroy the King Henry III. as appear'd afterwards During these long Troubles what refuge found the King of Navarre whom God reserv'd for the Crown of France but amongst these of the Reform'd Religion These were they that aided that defended and even nourisht him in his long and cruel Adversities And after in the end when the League had pull'd off the Mask and had driven the King from Paris and besieg'd him at Tours came not they to his Relief under their brave Chieftain and did they not deliver him from the utmost danger though he had sent his Armies against them to extirpate them I would gladly ask the Noble Marquess Where were then the honest French and where were the Rebels Would he find the honest French amongst the fiery Zealots and Bigots of the League Who have shed so much Blood to beat down this dangerous Sect as he is pleas'd to brand us With your good leave Noble Marquess which of the two is this dangerous Sect that which teaches that the Persons of Kings are inviolable and that exposes their Lives to defend those Kings that had persecuted them or that which holds That a King Excommunicated by the Pope may be justly kill'd by any body and which out of zeal for Religion plunge their Bloody Hands into the Bowels of their Soveraign as St. Jacob Clement did and as John Castrel and Peter Barâ—iere attempted and as Ravaillac perform'd Where is the Huguenot that ever offer'd any thing of this Nature during all the Persecutions of their Party Or where is the Minister that ever broacht such Doctrine to his Flock to kill their King which your Spiritual Fathers have so often done I would also ask the Marquess Where he finds that term of near fourscorce years spent in quelling this dengerous Sect which is the title he is pleased to give us Would he take in to these 80 years the 38 after the death of Francis II. till the Peace of Amiens in which time the Reformed Party were the constant and the only support of the Great Henry for near 30 years Will he venture to say That those Arms which defended the hope of after Ages and the fortune of France were unjust Let him also say if he please Whether by the zeal that has been to reduce the Hereticks to their duty he means that Butchery of the St. Bartholomews and the Massacres in every Town of France at that time and before which are reductions of a strange nature And because he may Object That their defence of the Princes of the Blood was only a pretence for the Huguenots taking up Arms and their unjust resistance against their Sovereign It will suffice to answer That their Arms were necessary for the Preservation of that Great Prince whom God reserv'd for the blessing of France and that when He came to the Crown they were judg'd worthy of a Reward I would beseech also all indifferent persons to consider them simply as men that are neither Angels nor Devils and to tell us if they think it strange that men the Relicks of Fires and Slaughters which were the only arguments employ'd for their Conversion for so many years take the course at length that Nature teaches them to defend themselves against force with force This to take it at the worst is all the Rebellion can be objected against them in all that past Age till the quiet settlement of Henry the Great But the good Providence of God has well clear'd them from the necessity of that excuse having set them out an Employment so just and so fortunate for their Arms that all who love and who shall for future Ages love the Prosperity of France and the Greatness of the Royal Family will have perpetual reason to bless the timely succour of this Party and to praise God who rais'd them for the everlasting good of the Kingdom Let us come to their condition after that Henry the Great was establish'd on His Throne The King being turn'd Roman Catholick and seeing his Party of the Reformed Religion discontent and in trouble as expos'd afresh to what they had afore tried gave them Places of Security for about twenty years This was the Ground-work of all their Miseries and I am much inclin'd to believe that this was procur'd for them by those who projected their ruine For their Enemies might well think that a King that understands his Interest would not long sufler in the heart of his Kingdom places assign'd for Protection against Himself in effect and to make resistance in case he kept not all his promises That these Places would be retreats for all discontented Persons and Incendiaries that would trouble the State That Strangers seeing in France a Party strengthen'd with Garisons and holding themselves in perpetual defiance would never leave bidding them to cock up and fomenting their discontents That this thorn in the foot of France would always hinder it from advancing and after all that this would be a kind of dangerous Discipline in a State to accustom Subjects to represent their Grievances with Sword in Hand On the other hand they might well fore-see that the Reform'd being seiz'd of these places would not quit them at the end of the term assign'd imagining that the enjoyment of their Religion of their Goods and of their Lives depended all on their keeping of these Places and that by their refusal they would oblige the King to win them by force which would make them Criminals odious and objects of the Justice and Vegeance of an incens'd Master And even so it happen'd For their term for holding these places being expir'd the King demands them again and having at their instant request prolong'd their term for three or four years at length wisely resolv'd to force them this gave occasion for the Assembly of Rochel where most imprudently and contrary to their duty to God and the King they resolv'd to hold the Places by force a resolution of despair ill-grounded For though the King shew'd himself favourable to his Subjects of the Religion after he had taken these Places by his Arms he would have been yet more favourable to them had they render'd the Places humbly and peaceably at his demand When the Assembly of Rochel began was held the National Synod of Alaix in which the famous Du Moulin was President In that Country where many of these Places of Security were he apply'd himself seriously to consider the posture of the Affairs of his Party to sound their Inclinations and to give them good counsel And he found that the greatest and the best part was dispos'd to render their Places to the King and did not at all approve of the proceedings of the Assembly of Rochel of which matter he thought himself oblig'd to inform that Assembly and having return'd home he writ them an excellent Letter a Copy whereof I have procur'd which is as follows SIRS I Write not to you to pour my
revolts for Confusion and Anarchy That there will be more than an hundred thousand men of the Kings Enemies in the bowels of his Kingdom so long as there shall be Huguenots in France and that perhaps they wait only an occasion to rise up in Arms. He pretends even to know their hearts saying That they have in their hearts the same hatred they had which are words flung out with more animosity than reason For 't is but ill Logick that they are all Rebels because about a six part of their number took up Arms in their defence to keep some Places of safety and that because they have sin'd they never have repented If all they who have been engag'd in the Troubles of the State within these last forty years are to be thought the Kings Enemies for ever His Majesty would find few Persons in his Kingdom whom he might trust and now forty years are past since the War for those Places of safety was ended When the Body is in a Fever the good humors are stir'd as well as the bad and all settle again when the Disease is over The same is in the Body of a State it is subject to hot fits that enflame both good and bad but all grow cool and quiet in time by the wisdom of the Sovereign and by the repentance of those that are honest good men To upbraid them as Rebells and Enemies that took up Arms against their duty and laid them down again forty years ago this is to violate the Laws of Amnesty without which no State could subsist Kings being the Lieutenants of God ought to deal with their Subjects as God does with his He forgives and forgets offences and makes them faithful that were disobedient through his Benefits The Protestants of Languedoc stay'd not for the Kings Benefits till they testifi'd their Fidelity and their Oblivion of what they had suffer'd in the reduction of the Places that they had held than when their wounds were yet bleeding This was when the Duke of Montmorency in Longuedoc where he was Governor made a Party against the King hoping to find the Protestants who are in great numbers in that Province ready for an Insurrection from the resentment of their late Sufferings But he found the quite contrary for they all joyn'd as one man with the Kings Forces and did him excellent Service in a battel where the Duke was defeated and taken and a Bishop with him The old Marshall De la Force who had scap'd the Massacre of St. Barth olomew by hiding himself under the Carkasses of his Brothers whose Throats were cut was one of the Principal Commanders in this Action That Marquess confesses That in the Wars at Paris they put themselves in Arms and with great respect protested that they were at the Kings Service and their Actions would have justify'd their Protestations if His Majesty had had occasion for their Service I will not loose time and pains in making Reflections upon the fourteen ways he proposes to torment us and make us weary of our Religion of our Country and our Lives Ways enough are found out without his proposing And now because the King of late years has had much to do with the Court of Rome it has been a part of the Policy of France whilst they affront the Pope at the same time to treat us with some extraordinary Severity to prevent the suspicion of Heresie We humble our selves under the powerfull hand of God and under that of our Sovereign confessing that we are justly chastis'd for our sins For the rest we know in whom we have trusted and shelter our selves under the Hand that strikes us assuring our selves that it will protect us and that we shall find Jesus Christ our Redeemer and his Spirit our Comforter both in this Life and in that which is to come As the Marquess is very exact in giving Instructions to ruine us he does the same towards the end of his Book for England counting it a Nation that is good for nothing but to be ruin'd We cannot take the advantage of these Instructions given against us to defend our selves against them for we are a Body meerly passive expos'd and submitted to all that God and the King will do with us But for the English when he has disoblig'd them by the most odious Character that his Malice could furnish his Eloquence withall He obliges them in publishing all those ways that must be taken to destroy them for it is likely that being told of them they will look to themselves Mean time his Readers will say of him that they who tell aforehand of their cunning are not very cunning Because that the noble Marquess terms us Rebels and Enemies of the State after the humble confession of our Faults which I have neither cloak'd nor dissembl'd I will take the boldness to compare them with those of some of the Gentlemen of the Roman Clergy especially of the Jesuits and their Disciples and that they that are not pre-possest with passion may judge whether to them rather or to us belongs the title Of Enemies of the State Let us consider the Actions and the Doctrine of the one and the other For the Actions the horrible attempts against the Sacred Persons of our Kings by Ecclesiasticks and Scholars of the Jesuits and all the Enormities of the League to destroy our Kings our Laws and our Monarchy and to transfer it to a stranger carry away without dispute the prize of Villany from those who being possest with a fear ill-grounded have with Arms defended the Places that were lent to them by Edict for the security of their Religion of their Goods and of their Lives Add hereto that they had their hearts big with the sense of their incomparable Service to the Crown and believ'd they well deserv'd what these endeavour'd to keep And as for the Doctrine these never read Lectures of Rebellion and Parricide And the resistance some of the Party made against the King was condemn'd by their Divines whose writings are full of Lessons of Obedience and of Fidelity to their Sovereigns Whereas those of the Jesuits and their Disciples teach the people to cast off and kill their King so often as it may please the Pope to Excommucate him France has felt the Effects of this Doctrine during the long Wars of the League and it was the Books and the Sermons that made the Sword be drawn and that sharpen'd the Daggers for the Murder of our Kings whilst the Protestants expos'd their Lives for their Preservation Now I am content to let pass what is past provided the same may be done to us Let us fix upon the present Whom ought you to esteem the Enemies of the State those who subject the Crown of our Kings absolutely to the Papal Mitre and who acknowledge another Sovereign than the King or they who own him their only Sovereign and maintain that his Crown depends not save on God alone What in Conscience is
a manner is to make a kind of Alienation 'T is a fetch of the Benedictine Monks to take up Money for Rent to be paid by them that so they may appear always poor and have pretexts to solicite the liberality of devout People also that they may have Protectors for the greater number of their Creditors is the greater is the number of persons interessed in their conservation Yet there is nothing more unjust than this Custom For there are Monastick Communities that owe more than all their Goods moveable and immoveable are worth The Monks care not though their House be ruin'd nor though they ruine some of their Creditors provided themselves subsist For by passing from one Convent to another they are quitted of all the Debts they have created It greatly concerns the Publick to Prohibit these kind of Contracts that Monasticks may be kept from defrauding any Man for the future and to decree that the Contractor shall pay the Rents Contracted for and they bound to do it both all in common and each of them in particular then that the Notaries be Fined and Declared incapable of bearing any Office Or if insolvent condemned to the Gallies for 101 years Moreover that the Purchasers of such Rents shall for their part pay a Mulct of 3000 Livres to His Majesty and the principal Money be converted to His use Besides it would be very fit to require all Notaries all Creditors of Monasticks and the Monasticks themselves to make Declaration of the Sums and Rents charged upon them bring in the Contracts for the same before Commissioners nominated by the King to be Registred and this within a time expresly limited which being once pass'd no more shall be received and all Contracts not Registred remain null and as if they were cleared This course would be very severe but excellent to reduce the folk of the Cloister to Reason There is an important Observation to be made too namely That all the Contracts which Church men have made are utterly null unless their Creditors can make it appear that the Money they lent did turn to the profit of the Church and that there was an authentick permission to make such Contracts This Doctrine is a point of Law for the Church is ever a Minor and all that it possesseth hath come from the liberality of particular persons without whose consent or at least the Magistrates and such as are capable of it the Ecclesiasticks can make no alterations in the Estates they have received So that the King may not only forbid Contracts for the future but also Declare those to be dissolved which have been made heretofore and discharge the Monasteries of them Debts have been annulled for less reasons often It must likewise be prohibited to Monks and to the Church to purchase any Estate in Land or High-rents upon pain of such Contracts being null and void in Law and the Sellers and Notaries incurring the forementioned penalties Our Lords the Prelates have lately bethought them and resolved to compell such Gentlemen as have Chappels in their Houses where the Sacrifice of the Mass hath been at any time performed to profane the said Chappels or endow them with Land for the maintenance of a Priest This would be a means to gain the Church more than Two hundred thousand Livres of Rent at one blow wherefore it will be fit to Ordain that this enterprize of the Bishops do not take effect except in case of Chapels built hereafter and built for other persons CHAP. V. 1. Of the Hugonots and whether it be for the good of the State to put them out of France 2. Politick means to extirpate their Heresie 3. Of their ancient Confession of Faith A King cannot have a more Illustrious Object of his Cares and Application than the preserving of that Religion which he hath received from his Ancestors in the States he governs because diversity of Belief of Divine Service and of Ceremony doth divide his Subjects and breeds Animosities among them Whence arise Contentions War and in the end an universal defiance Unity of belief on the contrary knits Men together and 't is seldom seen but that Fellow-subjects who call upon GOD in one and the same Temple and offer at the same Altars do also fight with the same Arms or under the same Banners If this Maxim be generally true in Christian Politicks and the Religion we profess the only one as it is that we can savingly embrace the Princes are obliged to maintain it with all their Might and employ that Soveraign Power for the Glory of the true GOD which they hold of his Goodness The Pagans whose particular conduct was so prudent and just and who have left us so many Examples of wisdom and virtue made it their principle not to suffer in their Republicks any novelty that thwarted the common and popular belief and they adher'd so peremptorily unto it that they would not so much as permit any man to undeceive them of their Errors The Books of Numa Pompilius which had been found near his Grave and contained the ancient Religion of Rome the Senate caused to be burnt because the Praetor Rutilius who had been commission'd to read them affirmed upon Oath That the Contents of e'm tended to subvert the Religion which the People observed at that time They refus'd even to open their eyes unto the light of truth though known to them when they apprehended it would be novel to the people They rather chose to stick to Fables which length of years had consecrated among them and the multitude was through custom addicted to Thus too the Athenians thought they did an act of necessary Justice in condemning Socrates to death for having taken on him to persuade the people that there was but one only GOD. They knew however that in truth this Philosopher was the Wonder of his time the Honour of the City and of all Greece the discerning men amongst them were convinc'd of the solidity of this Doctrine and the Sect of the Stoicks made profession of it so that it must be confess'd the fall of Gentilism and subversion of Idols is an effect of the hand of GOD who alone can work miracles of Grace and Omnipotence The Kings His Majesties Predecessors have set themselves with unwearied diligence to preserve the Catholick Religion inviolable They have never failed to be Protectors of the Apostolick See and the Church They expelled the Arrians they turned their Arms and exposed their lives against the Albigenses they vanquish'd e'm they destroy'd e'm they punish'd the Poor men of Lions In fine they have provided that Christianity receive no harm in any places unto which their Authority extended The last Age produced a new Monster to oppose the Church France saw him born in her bosom and unhappily bred him up with several complices of his Impiety and Revolt History will tell Posterity how much Blood was shed during the course of well nigh Fourscore years to quell this dangerous
Sect and the world well know that the Zeal there was to reduce Hereticks to their duty did take up the Reigns of Six of our Kings the glory of cutting off the last head of this Hydra being reserved for his present Majesty But it is expedient to see what weapons must be used for an execution so long expected There is no cause to doubt but that upon the Principles of Christianity and Maxims of Policy its necessary to reduce all the Kings Subjects to one and the same Belief And though they that make Profession of the pretended Reformed Religion be now without Arms without Strong-holds without Treasure without an Head and without Allies yet they are not out of case to be feared They still retain a remembrance of their boldness and by-pass'd Rebellions they look back on the Towns they once seized and out of which they could not be driven but by force of Arms as if they were their proper Inheritance and had been unjustly pluck'd out of their hands they bear in their hearts the same aversion for Order and Discipline that they ever had and their minds are always inclining to revolt and to Confusion and Anarchy It disquiets them not to think who shall head them they have Soldiers of their own number whom they can advance to be Captains by giving them Authority to command e'm They persuade themselves that if they were in Arms they should want neither Money nor Friends They believe that the Glory of the King attracts as much Envy on him as Admiration and that his Virtue raiseth in his Neighbours no less Anger than Terrour In short there is ground to think that he will have more than an Hundred Thousand Men of his Enemies in the heart of his State while there are Huguenots in France they too perhaps do but wait an occasion to make their Musters Thus they are perpetual Obstacles to the Designs that might be formed and though weak may nothwithstanding be dreaded 'T is true the honest men of their Communion do well know that they cannot be in a calmer repose than they now enjoy by the Grace of the King and under the security of his Edicts but in these matters the multitude carries it These are a Torrent that by its Rapidity overturns Rocks which seems unmoveable It will be said that the good treatment which the Huguenots receive doth preserve the friendship of the German Princes for France and if favourable Justice should be no longer done them the King would lose the most potent and most considerable of his Allies This discourse is but a found and void of all substance of reason for beside that the Princes of Germany are not of the Religion of our Hereticks They need not the Kings Protection for maintaining the Huguenots in their pretended liberty of Conscience but the French Arms securing them against the power of Austria and principally of the Emperor who hath divers pretensions upon them they cannot recede from the Alliance they have made with his Majesty nor will they do it though the last man of the Huguenots was brought to the Scaffold nay forasmuch as the Kings Forces are so useful to all those Protestants it will would be their interest not at all to Arm themselves for the Huguenots preservation but far otherwise even to promote their expulsion out of France and the reason is because if this party were in a condition to raise stirs the King would have his hands full of work to repress them and so his Forces being dissipated the Emperor might take his time to enlarge his Domination the thing that Charles the Fifth did when Francis the First was not in a possibility to succour the Princes It being therefore certain that the Liberty of Germany hath its support and prop in the Arms of the King they are not sollicitous there for the affairs of the Huguenots in France and since the Protestants of the Empire are knit to his Majesty by other engagements than those of Religion they will continue the same Deportment and his Majesty on his part will always have the same reasons to succour them though the time should come that he should have no more Huguenots in his Kingdom No succour neither may they hope for from England that 's a State too weak to make any trial of strength against France all the English there are must pass the Sea and the Isle be disfurnish'd of Soldiers and Provisions yet this all would be nothing to purpose mean time their affairs would lie expos'd to the Levity and Lunacy of the people Holland and Swedeland are of like consideration and they both have other Interests to Negotiate with the King than those of the Huguenots Denmark is defective in power The Calvinists mount unto a strain of Policy above ordinary when they would have us believe That whatever is not of the Roman Communion is of the Opinion of Charenton the Lutherans of Germany notwithstanding sympathize with them less than with us Thus the King hath nothing to be afraid of from the pretended Allies of the Huguenots Yet these men as I have already said are to be feared and they would be seen stoutly to bestir themselves if some extraordinary Commotion should happen in France as a Civil War or some great Invasion by Foreign Enemies in such a Juncture they would do as they did in the War of Paris they took up Arms and respectively protested they were for the Kings Service but if the Peace had not been soon made they would not have forborn to think themselves necessary and to make all the Propositions that they could imagine advantageous to their party They would have re-demanded their places of Security they would have press'd for a restoring of their Temples for an augmentation of their pretended Priviledges and for a free exercise of their Religion and according to their good old custom have uttered Complaints and Menaces But if by ill chance a Victorious Army of Strangers whether Catholicks or Religionaries should enter the Kingdom the King must resolve to see the Hereticks declare against him or else content them in all their pretensions which would prove an engaging of his State in like Calamities as our Fathers in their time saw It ought to be ordained that they shall exactly follow their ancient Confession of Faith which was permitted them in France and that such as vary from it shall be no longer reckon'd in the number of those of the Protestant Reformed Religion who have Liberty of Conscience given them These Huguenots have no ground at all to plead the Edict of Nantes so loudly and bravingly as they do they extorted it by violence and with Sword in hand yet was it but an Interim an Order taken until they should inform themselves of the truth which they have had time enough to do But did they not violate it themselves by the War of Languedock that other of Sevennes and again by that of Rochelle nay they call'd the Enemies of