which assured him those cruelties should make him an absolute Monarch did help to absolve him of his Monarchy He had his punishment first his mother his two brethren the Cardinal Duke of Guise that had not only joyned with him in it but encouraged him to it they still survived him and for ought men saw were firmly stablished in much safety and prosperity though Guise might have been warned by the death of Claude Duke of Aumale his brother slain at the siege of Rochel in the yeare 1573. The first act by which Henry the third the new French King and brother and heir of Charles deceased discovered his impotency of spirit and want of judgement was his clandestine and sudden stealing out of Poland where he had been but a few moneths before elected and crowned King This was the first unfortunate step of his following his mothers weak Dictates and rejecting the able advises of his own Councell But her next instructions which shee as fatally gave him as he weakly pursued being to root out the Professors of the truth with fire and sword involved him and his kingdome into innumerable miseries The good Emperour Maximilian the second in the Kings passage out of Poland through Germany and the Venetian State during his stay there gave him both of them more faithfull counsell earnestly advising him to maintain the former Edicts of Pacification and not to enforce the consciences of men in matter of Religion The same opinion was generally held by his wisest Counsellers and by all sober and discreet Romanists at home who saw plainly that the Protestants encreasing was the onely meanes now left under heaven in time at length to draw the Pope and his Conclave to yeeld to some reformation of the Church which it exceedingly needed But other Papists there were of loose and Atheisticall lives as Lewes Lorainer Cardinall of Guise Henry Lorainer his elder brother Duke of Guise Renate Villoclare a man saith incomparable Monsieur de Thou fatally preferred to this Kings attendance by his mother and divers others who perswaded the King to break the former Edicts of Pacification and never to sheath his sword till he had utterly ruined the Protestants of France whom some of their foul-mouthed fellow-brethren Protestants of this age have stiled French Puritanes and would perhaps had they lived in his time have joyned their ghostly advices with those of the Cardinall of Guise for the utter extirpation of all such as dissented in judgement or practice from themselves in matter of Ceremony I have often wondred in the perusall of the story of this King whose troublesome raign did necessitate his frequent consultations that when divers advices were propounded he ever pitched upon the worst and most fatall to himselfe But I found the two main causes of it to be first his blind and inveterate hatred of the truth and secondly his weak and degenerate spirit by which the House of Guise the Arch-enemies of the Gospel became at the last so potent and triumphed so notoriously over his impotency as they forced him to seek to those very Protestants for support against whom himself had taken a most wicked and solemn oath as the head of a faction amongst his own Subjects for their utter subversion Infinite almost was the treasure he spent upon his Minions and pleasures his very expences for maintenance of his dogs onely in that age amounting unto twenty thousand pounds yearely at least but most was exhausted in the prosecution of his civill wars against the Protestants and his servile ancillating therein to the ambition of others Guise and his faction now grown strong and assured of support from Philip the second of Spain after his expelling the King out of Paris and heaping a world of other insolent affronts upon him was drawn by him in the yeare 1588. to the Assembly then held at Blois he came thither with Lewes Lorainer Cardinall of Guise his brother and Charles Prince of Jenvile his son upon the same royall assurance of safety with which Charles the ninth had by his advice deceived the Protestants before the inhumane massacre in the yeare 1572. And now let all Popish and Popishly addicted Pseudo-Lutherans who make it a sport to fine imprison suspend vex and impoverish their fellow-Christians for the lightest matter draw neer and stand amazed at Gods secret judgements For during this Assembly at Blois was this Henry Duke of Guise slaughtered against the publike faith given him not onely within the Castle of Blois but in that very room in which sixteen yeares before he had advised the bloudy massacre of Paris to be committed and executed Two circumstances also that attended his fatall minute do adde much horror to the punishment it selfe The first that he was but new risen from the bed of his adulterate lust the very morning he was murthered having not been able to conquer the chastity of a Gentlewoman attending the Queen-mother before that night and therefore was so eager upon reaping the fruits of his long fiege as he repaired not to the Councel-chamber till he was often sent for and scarce ready The second in the manner of his first wound which was given him in his throat and caused immediately the bloud so abundantly to stream out of his mouth as he never had time once to call on God for mercy or forgivenesse but spent the last minute of his life in the revenging himself on his murtherers A little after the Cardinall of Guise his brother a great gamester at Cards and Dice perished likewise in the same Castle of Blois by a violent death Katherine de Medices the Queen-mother who had been the chief cause for neer upon thirty yeers before her death of the shedding so much innocent blood in France being present at the same time in the Castle of Blois stormed secretly that so great an action should be entred into and gone through without her advice and when she understood that Charles Lorainer Duke of Maine was escaped being the younger brother of the murthered Duke of Guise presaged to the King her son the sad issue of that rash attempt which he interpretting as it seems to be rather the expression of her wishes then her fears and having by many wofull experiences seen the effects of her Italian revengefull spirit took a course to pacifie her wrath for not long after she there ended her unhappy life by poyson saith Elias Reusner in the same Castle also where she held the first secret and bloody Councell for the execution of the foresaid inhumane massacre Francis her youngest son died before her upon the tenth day of June 1584. in the one and thirtieth yeer of his age of so violent a poyson ministred to him doubtlesse by some of the Hispaniolized Guisards as it caused his very blood to gush out of his body in severall places the sight of which purple streams might well call upon him to remember with what inhumane triumph he trampled on the bloody streets
profits of them And not many yeers after he gave liberty also to the very Mahometan Moores in Spain amounting to divers thousands to depart freely thence into any Province of Africa there to enjoy freedome from the bloody Inquisitors and with his own shipping conveyed many of them safe into France through which by the graclous permission of Henry the Great they had safe and free passage Charles the ninth also the French King did by his Agents earnestly sollicite Lewes de Clermont Prince of Conde and Gaspar de Colignie Earle of Cistillion Admirall of that Kingdome being the chief Commanders and Directors of the Protestants affaires to depart the Kingdome with the rest of the Religion and that they might begin a Plantation in the Island of Florida in America hee not only gave leave to the first expedition which was undertaken by John Ribald in the yeer 1562. but also at the same Admirals intreaty did contribute very largely himself to the second navigation which was entred upon not long after the first by Renate Laudonere and divers other Protestants But it pleased God that this fair occasion not only of enlarging the French Empire but also of planting a blessed Church amongst those Heathen people was in the very bloome and infancy prevented and brought to nothing by the precipitation of Luidonere himself and by those factious Romanists about the King who occasioned new civill wars and tumults in the Realme After the horrible and inhumane massacre of Paris in the yeer 1572. which was partly resolved upon because the Protestants would not upon any terms remove out of France and so desert and leave their deare and native countrey Charles Duke of Loraine intending to take that occasion to extirpate the true Religion out of his own Dominions which he might have done by their slaughters yet gave them liberty to depart whithersoever they would in safety and full time to sell and dispose of their goods and estates Nay Queen Mary of England whose bloody persecutions shall make her raign infamous to the worlds end yet in her first yeer expressed so much mercy as having publikely declared that she meant to restore the Romish Religion shee further permitted to all her subjects that would not professe the same free liberty to depart out of her kingdome by which the lives and ravagings of many hundreds were saved and amongst them divers of the Clergie for the first sensible persecution began then in St. Johns Colledge in Cambridge where the Idolatrous bowing to the Masse and Altar being wickedly practised and pressed divers immediatly left the same Colledge thereupon Now if the Popish Prelates of those times who accounted the Protestants arch-heretiques and mortally hated them did yet perswade the Kings and Princes they served and too often misadvised to permit the Protestants freedome of departure with liberty and time to sell their goods and estates is it possible that there should live in and under any Protestant Church such inveterately hating Prelates against the weaker and humbler Christians who dissent from them as themselves pretend only in matters of form and order arbitrary to be abolished or retained by the supreme Magistrate as neither to suffer them to live quietly at home without vexation suites fines suspension deprivation and imprisonment which in many cases occasioneth their immature deaths nor yet suffer them to depart quietly to plant a Church amongst the very Heathens themselves to the honour of God and the inlargement of their Soveraignes Empire and profit Is it possible that so many miles distance should not abate and asswage the very malice of Rome it self against them Were their departure like that of the fugitive Romanists a few yeers since to joyn with the publike enemies of the Kingdome to invade it and to be more forward to subdue it to a cruell and barbarous Nation as they were in eighty eight then the adversaries themselves then might there be some colourable reason to use all extremity and cruelty against them for their ruine and extirpation but when their hearts and soules breath forth nothing but loyaltie and innocencie the throne and kingdome fare the better for their prayers and humiliations and the worst they desire is but the quiet of their own consciences how is it possible they should be so prodigiously hated of any that would but pretend truly to love the Gospel and heartily to vote the flourishing of it Certainly it is impossible they should be so transported with barbarous rage as some of the Popes have been who rather desired to see the ruine of those innocent Christians then of the very Turks and Mahometans unlesse they will yeeld themselves to be as deeply toxicated with the dregs of that Romish cup as the Jesuites are who in the yeere 1578. began to preach and teach publikely that it was a more acceptable work to God for Christian Princes to root out and persecute all Sectaries and Schismatikes amongst themselves then for them to joyn their forces against the Turks and Infidels A doctrine saith Monsieur de Thou one of their own Historians contrary to all Christian pietie and mansuetude who with the rest of the sober and moderate Romanists by their charitable and advised censures given of the strictest and most tender conscienced Christians notwithstanding they most abhor any the least intermixtures and additions in Gods Worship which have been introduced by the Papists shall at the last day rise up in judgement against the invectives of many seeming Protestants of both orders against the same persons endeavouring thereby to prepossesse the eares and fascinate the judgements of the greatest Princes that so they may obtain license and power under them utterly to ruine and destroy their humble and pious fellow-Christians who are notwithstanding permitted quietly and safely to enjoy the publike liberty of their conscience in those Kingdomes and States where the Romish Religion it self flourisheth SECT. XXIV UNder Henry the fourth the late great and victorious French King the major part of the Papists of that kingdome continued in a most obstinate and furious war against him during the first four yeers of his raigne calling into their succours the Spaniards the sworn enemies of that Crown and State and yet he offered them not only to permit all his Romanized subjects the publike exercise of their Religion but also to continue it in all places in the same forme and freedome as it had been used at the time of the murther of Henry the third his predecessor by a Jesuited assassinate And further implored his own Subjects Not to endeavour to force him to the change of his Religion which he knew to be the truth being a cruelty hee desired not to practise upon the meanest of them The Protestants will yeeld up their Religion as false and wicked if ever such an example can be produced against them where they had libertie of conscience sincerely afforded them and yet took up armes against their lawfull Soveraign But those
Great and Lewes the Good in France ordaine for such as were counted Sectaries in their times Neither did those three hundred and eighteen Fathers in the first Nicene Councell those six hundred and thirty in that of Chalcedon or those hundred and fifty in that of Constantinople use any other weapons against the same Arrians Nestorians and Macedonians then the Word of God nor stirred they up or permitted the Christian Magistrate in their dayes to punish them by death Paulus Aquiliensis and Cedrenus doe also both of them report that when the Emperour Justinus used clemency towards the very Arrian Heretiques Theodoricus the King of Italy being infected with the same poyson did notwithstanding led by that example suffer the Orthodox Christians to have the free exercise of their Religion in all his Dominions Wee shall need no further examples to prove this truth when it is confessed by one of the most learned and best Romanists of our age that there is no approved example in all the Monuments of Antiquity of any execution done upon the Sectaries of those times but that the Church of God did alwayes abhorre the shedding of bloud in matters that meerly concern Religion Jac. Aug. Thuanus Prooem. in Histor. p. 5. SECT. VI IT is likewise contrary to the practice of the best Princes and the wisest States of this latter age of the world to make matter of heresie it selfe a capitall crime Francis the first of that name King of France having decreed a persecution against the poore Protestants of Merindoll and Cabrieres and being informed by William Bellay Lord Langay Governour of the Province that they were harmless men very laborious in their callings just in their dealings loyall to their Prince charitable to the poore and very frequent in their prayers to God their innocency being likewise cleared in a great measure by Cardinall Sadolet himselfe he caused them to be freed from further persecution till being falsly informed by one Minerius a turbulent fellow that there were fifteen thousand of them up in armes in rebellion he rashly gave them over to the fury of their enemies yet not as Heŕetiques which he alwayes accounted them but as Traytors as he was then mis-informed of them In Germany Ferdinand the first taught by the error of Charles the fifth his elder Brother found no such meanes to make his Government happy and his Empire flourishing as to decree the liberty of Religion Which course the good Emperour Maximilian his Sonne following dyed as happy as he lived victorious The Venetian State indure no Inquisitors in matters of Religion nor if any of their Subjects be accused of Heresie doe they suffer it to be questioned before any of the Clergy alone who are thirsty after bloud but before them joyntly together with their Civill Judges The first Monarch in England that made matter of Religion a capitall crime by a publick Act or Statute was the usurper Henry the fourth who having by the perswasion and assistance of Thomas Arundell that traytor Archbishop of Canterbury and his fellow-Prelates deposed and murdered his lawfull Soveraigne Richard the second to curry favour with those bloudy Canniballs was forced to yeeld to the murdering of Gods Saints since whose time the bloud of the Martyrs in England have proved the seed of the Church although by the short raigne of that Kingdomes unfortunate Mary their number comes far short of those in France and the seventeene Provinces in which two Dominions within the space of little more then five yeares the curious searcher may finde by diligent inquisition that Gods truth was sealed under Charles the ninth of France and Philip the second of Spaine with the bloud of near upon two hundred thousand Martyrs amongst whom were slaughtered divers great and eminent personages of both sexes a cruelty that very Mahumetans doe abhorre as it appeared by that which the Ambassadours sent from Abas-Meriza the Persian Sultan to the Emperour Rodolph in the yeare 1604. did alledge to justifie the mercifull Government of that Empire to wit that all Christians had free liberty of Conscience in all their Soveraignes Dominions and therefore they exhorted his Imperiall Majesty to joyn in a firme league with him against their common enemy the Turke SECT. VII AS it is against the practice of the Primitive Church the course held by the Christian Emperours and the observation of the wisest Princes and States of the latter age though otherwise Pontifician to make matter of heresie a capitall crime to inforce the Conscience and to put to death for the cause of Religion meerly so it is against the Rules of charitie and reason First It is against the Rules of charity if we had no other light to guide us but the most wise answer of Englands last matchlesse Edward being then but a childe when he was pressed to yeeld his assent to the burning of an Heretique What said he shall I send him to hell By which he truly intimated that whereas in all other offences the Malefactors are punished with death because it may be hoped they have repented the sinne but to destroy an Heretick before conviction is to be the Devils Catour and to send him in provision even to Hell it selfe For the very pertinacious holding of an Heresie is agreed on by all sides to be a damnable sinne and then the cutting them off in that sinne is to be the immediate Instrument of their perdition This doth that virulent Romanist or monster of men Nicholas Harpsfeild in his Wiclevian History openly boast of Cap. 16. p. 717. That those blessed Champions of Christ whom he calls Heretiques did in the fires that consumed their bodies taste the first-fruits of the eternall fire they endured afterwards On the other side if they suffer not but for feare of death hope of preferment or other base ends turne from one Religion to another especially from the truth to errour and Idolatry without instruction or reasonable conviction they onely dissemble outwardly as the Moores of Gran ido did under that bloudy Philip the second of Spaine who being enforced to be present at the Masse in the morning practised their own Mahumetanisme in the evening or els their conscience being shipwracked by their Apostasie before conviction with Francis Spira they are swallowed up of despaire or with Peter Espinae Archbishop of Lions of the Henetick faction in Henry the fourths time of France with lust and Epicurisme who practised that emasculating sinne with his own sister The Jews in England from Willian the firsts time till the eighteenth yeare of Edward the first were the onely Usurers of the Realme and brought in large contributions and tallages to the Kings under whom they lived and enjoyed here the freedome of their consciences At their deaths their whole Estates escheated to the King which their next heires commonly redeem'd for one full third part of three But to incourage them to turne Christians it was appointed in the Assize by which they were
and three of them by violent deaths and in his posterity ended the Valesian line the Crown devolving thereupon to the royall branch of Clermont commonly called Bourbon whom his sons had most bitterly hated and persecuted Of all his five daughters three died issuless and the eldest that had issue was cut off by poyson Nay his very Bastard son Henry of Engolisme a great actor amongst others in the massacre of Paris perished also by the stab of Philip Altovit a Florentine his old enemy in the yeer 1586. during the raign of Henry the third his brother SECT. XII FOr Charles the ninth third son of Henry the second aforesaid that succeeded Francis the second his brother in the Kingdome of France in the yeer 1560. had he continued his raign with as much mercy and wisdome as he began it or followed the grave and seasonable advice of Michael Hospitalius his Chancellor in his latter yeers as well as he did in his former he had in all likelihood lived as vertuously as hee died miserably Hee had scarce raigned two yeers in peace and plenty when Katherine de Medices his mother desiring to vest and settle the Regencie in her self by raising combustions in the Realm began to perswade her son to revive and renew those persecutions against the Protestants which his father had begun shee reconciled her self to Francis Lorainer Duke of Guise whom but a little before she had justly feared and hated being a secret enemy to Lewes de Clermont Prince of Conde He and the Marshall of St Andrew having gained Annas de Memorancy Constable of France to their party conspired all together for the utter ruine of the truth The Protestants in the mean seeing the King in his Infancy to be held captive as it were by this Triumvirate take up Arms by the Queen-mothers own instigation to maintain the Kings Edict of Pacification published in the yeer 1561. and commonly called The Edict of January The yeer following by the instigation of the same Triumvirate not only the Queen-mother but Anthony de Clermont usually sirnamed Bourbon King of Navar also who yet died a Protestant was drawn on to assail the said Protestants by open force they in the mean time filling the Queen-mothers ears with these vain flatteries that she should soon see the utter ruine of all the Heretikes in France from which time that goodly kingdome so rich peaceable and flourishing for neer upon forty yeers together some short times of truce and peace being interposed was filled with cruelties ravages ravishments blood-shedding battels sires slaughters and all other calamitous desolations that accompany intestine and civill broiles in the issue of all which the Protestants being increased in their strength and numbers obtained a more firm and advantageous peace then ever they had before enjoyed whereas those three Incendiaries of all these miseries perished within a few yeers after by the just judgement of God in the very act of their hostile pursuements of his children The Marshall of Saint Andrew was slain at the battell of Dreux Annas de Memorancie under the very walls of Paris and Francis Lorainer Duke of Guise was pistolled by John Poltrot at the siege of Orleance King Charles seeing that open force could not destroy the truth nor root out the Professors thereof about two yeers before the hellish massacre began at Paris and continued to the perpetuall infamy of France in divers other Cities in that Realm held a secret Councell in the Castle of Blois with Katherine de Medices his mother Alexander and Hercules called also Henry and Francis his two brothers and Henry Lorainer son and heir of the before pistolled Duke Francis Duke of Guise by what means they might best draw the Protestants into their toile to destroy and murther them The same Councell was held again by King Charles in the house of Hieronimo de Gondy at St. Clou and the time and order of the bloody marriage banquet to be served in at the nuptials of the King of Navar with the Lady Margaret his sister was there agreed upon and resolved of almost in the same manner as it was afterwards put in execution upon the 24. day of August being St Bartholomews day in the yeer 1572. in which were most inhumanely slaughtered within the space of few dayes of men women and children many of them also being great and honourable personages of either sex about thirty thousand And while the Duke of Guise was busie in prosecuting that mercilesse and inhumane execution it was seriously advised upon and disputed of in the Queen-mothers Cabinet-councell whether it were not necessary that hee himself and the rest of his family then there should also be dispatched at the same time in that tumult King Charles himself never saw good day after that bloody massacre although his Court sycophants had promised him it should prove the first happy day of his absolute Monarchie for though hee had been long drenched in lust a sin seldome separated from a Persecutor by his ordinary advowtrie with a mean wench of Orleance on whom hee begot Charles of Engolisme after Earle of Auvergne and though he had been trained up by his mother to see the flaughter of beasts and ever in the chases loved to both his hands in the bloud of the fallen game all which might have served to have stupefied his conscience as they did enflame his fierce and cruell nature yet so stinging a remorse in his inward man did ever pursue and haunt him after that mercilesse slaughter accomplished chiefly by his often swearing and forswearing himself by which the Queen of Navar and the Admirall Chasrilion were deceived as that his eyes rolled often uncertainly in the day with feare and suspicion and his sleep was usually interrupted in the night with dismall dreams apparitions like R. 3. of England after the murther of his two Nephews in the Tower of London nay though he survived not this inhumane slaughter sull two yeares yet had he plotted and decreed the death of the said Henry Duke of Guise and the removall of his Queen-mother her instruments from the helm of State But some of his agents that were to have acted these last feats playing false with him as he had some few dayes before the said massacre poysoned that incomparable Princesse for learning and piety Joan D'Albret Queen of Navar Grandmother to Lewes the thirteenth now King of France so did his mother or the Duke of Guise by way of prevention or anticipation minister to him his fatall physick of which after many sharp and grievous torments he deceased upon Whitsunday having not then attained to the five and twentieth yeare of his age in the yeare 1574. the violence of the venome leaving in his intrailes as appeared upon his distection many blew spots and swellings SECT. XIII WE have seen the gain and advantage that King Charles the ninth of France made by his barbarous persecutions 't is likely that those very flatterers
was written by a humane pen ought alwayes to be deare to the Christian world discovers plainly to us this truth in setting downe the bloudy Legacy Pope Paul the third left to his Conclave when he died in the yeare 1359. For having called divers of the Cardinalls into his bed-chamber he exhorted them by all meanes to maintaine and continue the office of the Inquisition as the onely meanes left upon earth to establish and support the Romish Religion then which Confession there can none be more cleare of the falshood of their pretended Catholick Church for if no other way remaine but bloud and butcheries for them to establish and repaire the lofty and proud Towers of their Babylon then have they doubtlesse no part left in the Church founded by our Saviour and his Apostles for that was at first reared up and finished by the preaching of the Gospel and may certainly be continued and supported to the worlds end by the same meanes It is not for Christians but for Pagans and Infidells who know not the way of instruction to propagate their Gentilisme and Idolatry by fire and sword Besides that epidemicall sinne of lust both naturall and against nature being peculiar to the Popish Prelates and the rest of their Clergie is a maine ground of their stupefied Consciences and so prepares and fits them for the shedding of innocent bloud or any other sinne whatsoever Peter Espinaâ— Archbishop of Lyons in France was a great persecutor and a prodigious incestuator with his own sister John Archbishop of St. Andrewes in Scotland spent the greater part of the revenues of his Sea and the seizure of the Protestants estates whose mortall enemy he was upon his harlots and revellings the Cardinall of Granvellans veneries were so manifest and numerous as when in the yeare 1574. the Kingdome of Tunis and the Fort called the Gulet before accounted impregnable were wonne by the Turke the Spaniards made a jest of it and said openly that the Cardinalls breeches had occasioned that losse meaning thereby that Philip the second relying chiefly upon his advice in that and most of the rest of his important affaires his lust so tooke him up as he had not time to give seasonable counsell The reckoning up of all these lustfull Priests and Prelates who have been persecuters of the truth since the last Reformation begun by learned Luther would defile all modest eares to heare or any Christian tongue to relate It may justly be said of them all what one delivered of the before-mentioned Cardinall Beton That he wallowed at home in pollution with his harlots and raged abroad with the bloud and slaughter of the innocent Ockam himselfe in the first part of his Dialogues lib. 5. cap. 16. confesseth that a wicked and an Atheisticall life blinds the understanding and prepares a way for the entertainment of the vilest heresies How true is this of the Romish Prelates who could not possibly swallow down those prodigious errours and severall kinds or species of Idolatry abhorred of the very Moores and Turks That taking from the Commandements one that adding to the Articles of the Creed twelve that robbing the people of the Cup that depriving God of his honour by praying to men and women departed that trampling of Christs infinite merits under their prophane feet by their own merits and a number of other falshoods were not their judgements poysoned by their horrible lusts and other crying sins The Turks themselves boast at this day that they first learn'd their Sodomie from the Italians and that disorderly brood in Italy may as truly vaunt that they first learn'd that abomination from those amongst them in orders Was there ever or shall there ever be not onely amongst the Papists but amongst the Lutherans and Pseudo-Lutherans any Prelate or other Ecclesiasticall person that did or shall violently cite accuse suspend fine imprison deprive or murther any godly Minister or other pious Christian who was not or will not be amongst other vices guilty of that brutish sin of lust And 't is possible though the back-door be kept never so secret yet God shall at last in his judgement reveale it to the world as he doth often punish them with that loathsom and infamous disease commensurate to that sin with which that notable persecutor Doctor Weston in Queen Maries dayes in England was so unconcealably smitten as he was ordinarily branded by a beastly nickname not beffiting modesty to expresse SECT. XVII THe fruitfull seed-time of severall vices and of lust especially in the Popish Prelacie and Clergie brings in a large encrease in the Laity also to fill up the reaping time or harvest and not onely their lust and Epicurisme but their malice against the truth and thirsting after the bloud of the professors thereof like a contagious gangrene hath likewise infected especially since the yeare 1500. the vicious and prophane lay-Papists themselves What was Escovedo the great Instrument of the King of Spains cruelties against the Evangelicall party in the lower Germany but a lump of lust which in the end proved fatall to him But as the horrible massacre committed in France in severall places in the yeare 1572. is not to be paralleld in respect of the treachery and inhumanity of it in any Story of the most barbarous Nations of the world so it will not be amisse seeing the examples of this kinde would else prove endlesse to confine our selves with taking a summary view of the chief undertakers in that master-piece of hell which was never in any possibilitie to be equalled since but with the Romish Powder-plot in England had it succeeded To begin with Paris it selfe the murtherers there were for the most part brutish and lustfull souldiers or prophane varlets of the scumme of the Citie their leaders were indeed more noble but lesse vertuous The Dukes of Guise and Aumale Albert Gondy Earle of Rets Tavanne and others of them having been bred up in lusts revellings and other Aulicall deviations The place that came neerest to Paris in the cruelties of their murthers was the Citie of Lyons where the numbers of the slaine and massacred were so great as their bodies being cast into the river Rosne corrupted and stained the streame the violence whereof carrying them downe upon heaps to Tornou and the inhabitants not knowing what they were but fearing an invasion by enemies or robbers assembled themselves in armes together for their mutuall defence The chief abetters and ring-leaders of which butchery Monsieur de Thou himselfe confesseth to have been Boidon Mornieu and Clou three of the most wicked and vilest varlets that a Kingdome could harbour which Boidon was after executed at Clermont in Auvergne and if Merniue escaped a shamefull end yet doubtlesse he deserved it as well as his fellow-persecutor having before as witnesseth Serranus procured the murther of his own father At Tholouse also a few dayes after there was a great slaughter of the godly committed but by whom not by the better