is unknown is full full of Mysteries hence Objects of such a nature are apt to surprise us and we hereupon are awed at them and do admire them Such effects the greatness of an unsearchable high-descending Pedigree does produce Nor need we much scruple to affirm that this kind is the only proper and genuine Nobility and that the Two others are only Nobilitations What difference is made between a person Noble and one Ennobled is familiarly known This first kind of Nobility is thought to require a possession of the Virtue of Ancestors and withal a possession of their wealth this too in so essential a manner that if each of them be not joyntly possess'd the Nobility is extinct We daily see proofs that evince the Justice and the Truth of this Notion Be it intimated by the way that the Virtue here mention'd is the Military Art The Second kind of Nobility is that which takes its rise from Offices and eminent Employments unto which the Laws have annexed this mark of Honour The Third is acquir'd by the Prince's Letters which are called Letters of Nobilitation It is a right peculiar to the Kind to give such Letters as the Roman Panegyrist once said to the Emperor Trajan It belongs not but to Caesar to create a Nobility It is for none but the King to Honour brave aud valiant Subjects with this Quality This Third and last kind is least considered because the Person who acquires it hath not the Virtue of Ancestors for a foundation and caution of his own Yet it is sometimes more considerable than either of the two others and Marius in Salust had great reason to tell the Gentlemen of Rome that he had rather begin the Nobility of his Race than faintly continue it or unworthily lose it and that it was more Glorious for him to transmit to his Posterity a sparkling Virtue hard to be follow'd than plod slowly on upon the slight and almost effaced tracks of a common Virtue which his Ancestors had left him In all these three kinds of Nobility there must be the personal Virtue of the Person invested with 'em for when all is done it is but Virtue that confers effective worth All Nations have had a particular esteem for Nobility nor can any well-order'd Common-wealth be named which hath not invented some singular mark of Honour to make it conspicuous The French in this point have surpass'd and out-done all People upon Earth as for the first Antiquity Caesar observes that the Nobles that is the Gentlemen had among the Gauls as much power over the Plebeians as Masters at Rome had over their Slaves After Gaul was reduced to the State of a Province Nobility preserved its ancient Prerogatives and the Emperors knowing that the Nobles loved Glory and sought it above all things stiled them Honorati and gave them an absolute precedency in all Assemblies of the Gauls For the Romans had thought it necessary to weaken the Authority of the Druids In the time of Christianity the same Order was continued and the Nobility gave their Suffrage apart in the Election of Bishops expresly before the People yea even before the Clergy themselves Upon the declining of the Empire the Gentlemen did in France judge the Causes of their equals and hence without doubt came into use the Parliaments Courts and Assemblies which our Kings held of their Peers and Barons that is of the qualify'd Gentlemen of their Kingdom when a Case of some Peer or Grandee of the State was to be Tried The Nobles were distinguish'd anciently from Plebeians by their Hair which they wore long for a mark of their ancient Liberty and when any one of them committed a fault that was unbeseeming his Birth the rest Sentenc'd him to depart the Country or cut off his Hair This was therefore a no less punishment than Exile In Charlemagne's time the Gentlemen of France named themselves Franks by way of Excellence In fine the French Nobility hath alwavs had such an high degree of Excellency and so great a pre-eminence that it was preferr'd in all Cases as when vacant Bishopricks or Abbies were to be provided for or when the principal Magistracy and Seats of Judicature were to be fill'd up or the Government of important Places Warlike imployment and the Leading of Armies were to be dispoled of To conclude this Matter it may be affirm'd that Kings did take the Gentlemen into a partnership with themselves as I may term it in the Regality they honour'd them with part of their Power by conferring on them Fiefs and by entrusting them with the charge of doing Justice and of Commissioning Officers to that end Hereupon it was necessary to put a gradual difference between Gentlemen themselves nor is it indeed sufficient that they all have so many excellent Prerogatives above the vulgar or common sort as we call them For Nature is alike in every Man and all Men are Born equal Fortune on the contrary and Virtue distinguish one from another But natural Reason requires there be Order in all things 'T is Order that makes the Beauty and Symmetry of the Universe Now as a Musical Consort doth not make a perfect harmony but by a diversity of Notes so a Political State can be neither comely nor compleat unless there be a difference between the parts that compose it I know that Nobility being as Philosophers call it an Inherent Quality does lodge with its whole Essence in each of its Subjects As the quality of a Soldier is for its Essence in the person of a Corporal as well as of a Captain or General Officer Yet there is a great distance and many intervening degrees between a General and the meanest Musquetier in an Army Thus the meanest Gentleman in the Kingdom is Noble and to speak after the common Proverb is Noble as well as the King but the one is severed from the other by an immense graduation So though all Gentlemen be equal in Nobility yet they are not so in Riches in Lands in Alliance in Friends in Offices in Authority in Age and in Reputation Again they are not equal in Spirit in Knowledge in Experience nor in Wisdom therefore it hath been with much prudence ordered that they should have some external marks of these differences and for this end there have been created Princes Dukes Counts Marquesses Barons Knights Batchelers Esquires leave hath been given them to bear Helmets and Crowns upon their Armories In short no pains have been spared to find out things that might any way adorn their Quality and their Valour hath been publickly rewarded for an excitement of others to a generous emulation Here I cannot forbear to blame those Gentlemen who give themselves the Title of Knights of Marquesses or of Counts by their own private Authority This is a shameful Usurpation and so far from heightening the Luster of Nobility that it injures them For a Gentleman who takes upon him the quality of a Marquess and well knows he is
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
Pour Mounsieur de C. sur son traitte de la politique Francoise Sixain Si donner de moyens au plus grand Roy du monde D'Estre Maistre absolu sur la terre sur l'onde C'est marque d'un Esprit rare marveilleux Je puis dire en d'epit de toute la critique Que ce traitte de Politique Ne fut dicte que par les dieux To this effect If that to give the Great French King in hand The means to sway o're all both Seas and Land If this be Wit which none can well deny Then to the Teeth of all Critiques I 'll maintain these Politiques Are Wit above the Sky Louis XIV Roy de France et de Navarre THE POLITICKS OF FRANCE By Monsieur P. H. Marquis of C. WITH REFLECTIONS On the 4th and 5th Chapters Wherein he Censures the Roman Clergy and the Hugonots by the Sr. l'Ormegregny The Second Edition LONDON Printed for Thomas Basset at the George in Fleetstreet 1691. Sr. Richard Newdigate of Arbury in the County of Warwick Baronet 1709 The Authors EPISTLE TO THE FRENCH KING SIR ALL the Nations of the Earth wait with impatience for the Oracles which Your Majesties high Wisdom disposeth it self to Pronounce and the whole Vniverse by submitting to the Laws which you are about to give this Kingdom will declare That you alone deserve to Command all men If the Delphique Priestess scrupled not to style Lycurgus a God for his having setled the Spartans in order what must not Fame say when it shall publish Your Majesties August Name Future ages Sir shall proclaim aloud what You perform in Yours and report the splendour of Your Heroick Virtue Happy the People who already find the effects of it but a Thousand times Happy they of Your Majesties Subjects whom You permit to offer at Your feet some token of their Admiration You have often done me the Honour to grant me this precious Favour and I beseech with lowest respect that You further please to accept the Piece I now present You. It satisfies not the greatness of my Zeal that during the course of my Life I incessently speak of the Passion I have for Your Service my Writings must inform Posterity of it after my death and the whole World ever know to what degree I am Sir Your Majesties most humble most obedient and most faithful Subject and Servant P. H. D. C. THE PREFACE THE Bookseller will needs have a Preface to encourage the Sale of the Book Now for my part I think there needs no other recommendation than its Title for those that will not be induced to buy it because 't is French will not fail to have it for the sake of its Politick's yet if any should scruple laying out their Money only on the Credit of the Title Page their Scruple I doubt not will be removed when they are told that the Author of the Growth of Popery says That this Book is the measure of the French Kings Designs and I 'm sure there 's none of us all that will be-grudge Two Shillings to be made Privy to his Councels But if neither of these things nor the Credit it had in its Native Language will cause the Book to Sell I cann't imagine how a Preface should do it for I know few if any that read the Preface of a Book they intend not to Read also I have known some indeed Read the Book and omit the Preface which I doubt would be the Fate of this should I make it long I shall therefore only tell you how this Scheme of the vast Designs of the French King became Publick and so conclude The Author was a Person bred up under Mr. Colebert and to shew his Abilities he writ this Treatise and in Manuscript presented it to the French King which was favourably received but afterward Vanity prompting him to Publish it in Print the King lookt upon him as one that had discovered his Secrets and turned his Favour into Frowns caused him to be imprisoned in the Bastile where he continued a long time and was not deliver'd thence but to Banishment which to those that read the Preface affords one Encouragement more to Read the Book since it discovers a Secret which most Men seek more after and delight more in than Wisdom or Truth THE POLITICKS OF France CHAP. I. 1. What the Politicks are 2. What their Object End and Means 3. The different sorts of Governments 4. That Monarchy is the best THE Politicks are the Art of Governing States The Ancients have call'd 'em a Royal and a most Divine Science surpassing in excellency and superior to all others They have allow'd them the same precedence in practical Learning which the Metaphysicks and Theologie have among the Speculative The means which the Politicks prescribe are comprised under the heads of an exact Observance of Religion a doing Justice in all cases a providing that the People be protected in the times of Peace and War and a preserving the State in a just and laudable mediocrity by exterminating the extremes of Poverty and of Riches The Politicks have three principal branches Namely the three sorts of regular Governments in which Men live under the Authority of Laws The First is Monarchy in which one only Prince doth command for the Publick good The Second is Aristocracy in which the honestest and wisest Persons being elected out of all the Subjects have the Direction and Administration of Publick Affairs The Third is Democracy in which all Deliberations and Orders are held and do pass by the Agency and Vote of the People The principal end to which a Democracy tendeth is Liberty That of an Aristocracy is Riches and Virtue The end of a Monarchy is the Glory the Virtue the Riches and the Liberty of the Country A Tyranny the most dangerous of all vicious and unlawful Governments stands in direct opposition unto Monarchy A Tyrant commandeth meerly for his own Personal not the Publick Profit A King does the contrary Tyranny is destructive to the Glory the Virtue the Riches and the Liberty of the People An Aristocracy often falls into an Oligarchy and this happens when a determinate number of persons is no longer chosen out of the whole to Govern and the choice is made of the Rich and Noble only not generally out of all the Citizens Sometimes there riseth up Oligarchy even within Oligarchy and this comes to pass when the Magistrates are chosen of the Noblest and Richest of some preferred Families not of all the rich Gentry An Aristocracy is in some sort an Oligarchy but much better than that which is simply such Forasmuch as in an Aristocracy Justice is administred to persons of all ranks according to desert which in an Oligarchique State is not done A well-temper'd Aristocracy is of long duration and seldom comes into the danger of suffering any Change An Oligarchy on the contrary such as was the Government of the Decem-viri or Ten at
Rome and of the Thirty at Athens is easily corrupted For the persons who are in command do frequently usurp a Soveraign Authority Such Usurpation is not stiled a Tyranny for this is of one alone but strictly a Dynastie that is a Potentacy or Power violently assumed and retained contrary to the disposition of the Laws The Greeks whose the word Dynastie is do take it in this case in an ill sense An Aristocracy and an Oligarchy are dissolved when some one among the Rich the Noble or the Brave does attain to an overgrown height Thus Caesar became Master of Rome The Aristocracy is also in danger when they that Govern come into contempt with the multitude or are hated by them so that the inferiors grow factious and mutiny against them as hapned at Rome when the Tribunes of the People were first created The apprehensions which the more than ordinary virtue of some excellent persons gave the People of Greece caused the introducing of Ostracisme among the Athenians and of Petalisme at Syracuse Punishments but glorious for such as were condemn'd to them A Democracy likewise sometimes turns into an Oligarchy And that is when the dregs of the ignorant people seduced by evil Orators whom the Greeks call Demagogues or Leaders of the People do dispose of Affairs tumultuously with uproar and violence without respect to Law or Equity Thus the Athenians seduced by their speakers did put to death Aristogenes and other Captains who had fought in company with Thrasibulus and gain'd a notable Victory upon the Lacedomonians their enemies Obligarchies are the means sometimes that People lose their liberty and fall into servitude Pisistratius became Tyrant of Athens that way and Dionysius of the Syracusians There are as various Monarchies Aristocracies and Democracies as there are different manners of men But I have discours'd all this only cursorily and I design not any further to engage my self in these matters my purpose being to speak precisely of the concerns of the French Monarchy There are two sorts of Monarchy unto which all Regal Governments of whatever quality imaginable are reduced whether Elective Hereditary Barbarous Despotical or any other The first of these is entituled The Lacedemonian in which the King hath but a limited Authority The second Aeconomical in which the King hath a Sovereign and Absolute power in his Kingdom as the Father of a Family hath in his house 'T is no longer a question Whether Monarchy be the best Government the case having been often debated by Politicians and still decided for Regality And indeed it is of greatest Antiquity least susceptible of change most conform unto the Government of GOD himself and not only represents the Authority which a Father exerciseth in his house but it also necessarily occurs in an Aristocracy and in Democracy it self For both in the one and the other of these States the Sovereignty is entirely one so that no single person can possess any the least parcel of it In an Aristocracy no one of the Senators is a Sovereign but the whole Senate being united of one accord is King In a Democracy no one of himself hath power to make the least Ordinance the People assembled are the Monarch Thus every where appears an indivisible Sovereignty so conform to the Laws of Nature is Monarchy In fine it may be said that there never was Aristocracy but founded upon the corruptions and ruins of some Monarchy moreover that Tyranny it 's direct contrary is the worst of all Governments Now from all that I have said it follows by a necessary consequence That the Monarchique State is better than any other CHAP. II. 1. Of the true good and happiness of States 2. Of the true good and happiness of a King 3. How Felicity may be acquired THings reckon'd under the notion of Good are of three sorts Corporal as Health Beauty Strength Agility and the like External which we commonly call Goods of Fortune as Birth Riches Dignities Reputation Friends and such others The third sort are those of the Soul these are simply and absolutely good that is good of themselves and so they can be no other but virtue alone Things accounted good are no further such indeed than as they promote our Felicity and bring us to it Corporal and External things are not instruments to effect this But the good of the Soul is the true happiness Felicity is not a simple habit otherwise a man asleep would be happy but it consisteth in action which is the true use of Virtue The Soul makes us capable of living happily for happiness is measured by virtue nor can we be counted happy but proportionably as we are counted good The intention of Political Science is to bring to pass that men lead their lives happily as I have observ'd in the precedent Chapter 'T is therefore certain that it requires they be actually virtuous All that I have been discoursing is of constant and confesseth truth Whence clearly results That the Politicks consider virtue in a much more noble manner than Ethicks do for these confining themselves to the forming of idle speculations can produce but an imperfect felicity which the Schools do call Theoretical The Politicks on the contrary go further and causing us to exercise virtue do give us a Practical that is solid and perfect Felicity In fine it is not doubted but the Act is preferrable to the habit Besides the Ethical or Moral discourses of virtue can have no other aim but at most the welfare of particular persons which does not always produce that of the Publick And the Politicks regarding the welfare of an whole State provide at once for that of each particular as a good Pilot in endeavouring the safety of his Ship procures necessarily the safety of all that are embarqued in it Also the care of the welfare of particular persons seems to be beneath the Politicks except so far as it is necessary for the publick good Yet sometimes particular Men must of force suffer for the Publick Good as when a Malefactor is punished and when some Houses are pull'd down to save a Town from Fire and from Enemies The happiness of a State is of the same quality with that of particular persons For as we say a Man is happy when he hath Strength Riches and Virtue in like manner we say a Common-wealth is happy when it is potent rich and justly governed A Monarch is in reference to His State what the Soul is to Man There is no doubt therefore but that the proper Goods of a King are those of the Soul and that he can possess no other Fortune being beneath a true Soveraign and extrinsick to Him cannot give him ought of that kind from Gold or Glory All that He hath doth arise from His own Virtue His Power His Treasures and the various effects of Beneficence which he holdeth in His Hand do not constitute His Happiness as GOD Himself is not Blessed by external Blessings but only
confers them as a distribution made to His Creatures and that He may cause them by sensible means to experiment His Goodness The Magnificence of a Man renders him considerable if his Spirit in it be Great and Heroick But it is not enough to have spoken of that which constitutes Felicity we must take some account of the means which conduce unto it Nature Constancy and Reason do contribute to endue us with Virtue The two former do enrich the Mind and dispose it to receive Virtue then Reason being cleared by the light of Precepts makes it spring up and cultivates it Of all Precepts those of greatest efficacy are the Political which being indeed Laws do command and oblige Men to obey in a manner blindly necessitating and constraining us to live well whether we will or no. 'T is upon this ground it hath been said That there lies no servitude at all in submitting to the power of the Law and that it 's the proper act of Men truly free to reduce their inclinations and subject their practice to the same Forasmuch as the conforming of Life and Manners to the impulses of Virtue which is always right always uncorrupt is in truth a setting our our selves at full liberty and an enfranchisement from the Empire of importunate and irregular Passions But of these general Theses enough It is time at length to enter upon the subject which occasion'd my taking up the design of this present Treatise CHAP. III. 1. Of the French Monarchy 2. Of the Situation and Quality of France 3. Of the Nature of the French THE Monarchick Government doth not more excell other Governments than the French Monarchy doth all other Monarchies on Earth It is hereditary and for Twelve whole Ages there hath been seen Reigning from Male to Male upon the Throne of France the August Posterity of Meroue of Charlemagne and of Hugh Capet For it is exactly proved that these three Races of our Kings are Branches issued out of the same Stock This very Succession so Legitimate as it hath been and so long continued makes at present the surest foundation of the welfare of the State and carries in it Splendor Reputation and Majesty Indeed to how many Ills are Elective Kingdoms exposed How many Cabals How many Complottings and in truth Wars are kept on foot by so many different agitations The one and the other Roman Empire and the Kingdom of the Poles do administer sensible proofs of this Opinion If the Spartans heretofore did draw so great an advantage from the Honour they had to be commanded by Princes of the Blood of Hercules The French have far greater cause to glory since in the Catalogue of His Majesties triumphant Ancestors there may be counted an hundred Heroes greater than Hercules himself Is there a Monarch in the World whose just power is more absolute than that of our King and by consequent is there a Monarchy comparable to the French Monarchy It is necessary that the power of a good King be not confin'd within other bounds than Reason and Equity do prescribe otherwise there will ever be division between Princes and People to the ruin of them both What a disorder would it be in Man if the Eye or Hand should fail of following the impulses of the Soul this disobeying and rebellious Member would prove dead or seized with a Palsie If then the whole Body should fall into an universal revolt against the Spirit of Man all the Symmetry the Order and oeconomy would be utterly defaced Thus the Subjects in a Monarchy once ceasing to yield their King a full Obedience and the King ceasing to exercise His Soveraign Authority over them the Political Ligatures are broken the Government is dissolved by little and little all is reduced to extream calamities and oft-times to Anarchy and an annihilation Such are the inconveniencies that occur in Royalties of the Lacedemonian kind where the Prince hath but a limited Authority and if all that England suffer'd in the late times were pourtray'd here it would be easie to observe of what importance it is unto the felicity of a Monarchy that the Prince do in it command without restriction In fine the obedience of instrumental parts as those of Organical Bodies and the Subjects of a State is of so indispensible a necessity that the common good and conservation of that Whole which they compose depends upon it In Democracies even the most tumultuous and disorderly all must bow under the Will of the multitude though blind ignorant and seduced in like manner the parts of the Bodies of Brutes must act by their motions though they be in rage and madness And the reason of this necessity is that the Body and the Soul which is the form thereof are but one indivisible Whole so a King and Subjects are together but one whole that is one State In fine the French Monarchy is accompanied with all the mixture that can be desired for a compleat and perfect Government The Counsellors of State do compose an excellent Oligarchy in it The Parliaments and other Officers of Judicature do form an Aristocracy The Provosts of Merchants the Mayors the Consuls and the General Estates do represent rarely well limited Democracy so that all the different modes of governing by Laws being united in the Monarchy do render it as excellent and consummate as Reason can propose The Regality of France is therefore of the Oeconomick kind in which the King hath an absolute power in his State as the Father of a Family in his House and though he govern at His pleasure and without contradiction it is always for the good of His Kingdom even as the Master of an House does Rule it with an entire Authority and incessantly provides for the accommodating of this Family There is nothing Despotical nor Barbarous in France as in the States of the Moscovites and Turks In short our Laws are Holy and Equitable to a greater degree than in any Common-wealth that ever was and they are conceived with so much prudence and judgement that they are apt to make the People happy in the gentle times of Peace and enable them to triumph in the occasions of War The Situation and Compactness of France are known to all the World so that it would be a needless labour should I here expatiate to shew the Beauty and Richness of our Grounds and of our Rivers or declare how we abound in Wine in Corn in Silk in Wools in Cloth in Wood in Cattle in Salt in Mines and in Money how necessary we are to our neighbours and to what degree we may forego their Succors and their Merchandise I might justly be accus'd of a fondness for superfluous Discourse if I should particularly consider all these great advantages and as much if I should speak of the pureness of the Air and the incredible number of Inhabitants the most ignorant having a full and an assured knowledge of ' em I shall only say that it need not
Yet this Arrest innovateth nothing but is in all respects conform to the prescript and pursuant to the use of Charles the VIII his Pragmatique Sanction Kings and Emperors never practis'd otherwise in such cases Nor can it be deny'd but that Religion coming among others under a Political consideration and Kings being Protectors of the Church of its Doctrine and of its Canons it 's a part of their Office to notifie to men the Laws of GOD. The Tables were consigned to the hands of Moses not to the hands of Aaron and in the Temple of GOD the Law of GOD was often heard by the People from the Mouth of their Kings 'T is upon this account that Melchisedec was both King and Priest and 't is from this intention that the Emperors confirmed the first Synods that They sometimes gave judgments contrary to Sydonical decisions and that other Christian Princes have had liberty to receive or not receive Councils though Legitimate and Universal Nothing is more consentaneous to perfect equity than that the Gentlemen of the Clergy be obliged to contribute to the publick charges They receive vast sums from the State and what they pay to the King out of 'em amouts not to a sixth part of what they duly ought to pay But to reduce them gently to reason approaches must be made by degrees and in ways that may be to them unperceivable First they may be calmly told of the right of Mortmain which being part of the ancient inheritance of the Crown cannot be alienated They may ever and anon be put in mind that Residence is of Divine Right that it is unbecoming a Prelate or an Ecclesiastick to keep a great Table to have a multitude of Pages Horses Dogs intimation may be made them that the King intends to restore the ancient Law of Fiefs by which all sorts of persons concerned are obliged to set forth at any time a certain number of Soldiers equipped and paid at their charge In fine they may be required to make a new valuation of ordinary Rents For what pretext will they have to complain or be discontented Can they find any fault at all in it if His Majesty doth put things in their Primitive State which is the foundation of all publick Order and Discipline Other insinuative means may be set on work which shall make no shew at first yet may prove in the sequel of incredible advantage to the King's Affairs While I speak here of the Clergy I pretend not to speak of any but Bishops Canons Parish-Priests and Chappellans I know well that taking the word Clerus in its ancient latitude it may be said to comprehend all Christians but I extend it not so much as to Monasticks who in truth were at their rise so far from having particular and conventual Churches as now they have that they were reckoned Laicks that is of the People and had their places separate from the Priests Whatever care Kings hitherto could possibly take to hinder frauds in Beneficiary matters they have not been able to find means effectual for it Their prudence hath been still surmounted by the pravity of men which never wanteh artifice and expedients in occasions that concern their profit However these frauds are of such a quality and so important in reference to the salvation of all Christians that the charitable sagacity of the Laws ought to be indefatigably exercised about them neither Pains nor Authority should be spared in a design whose accomplishment is so necessary And indeed what mischief doth not follow for example when a wicked man by intrusion gets possession of some Benefice with Cure of Souls all his Sacerdotal Functions are so many Sacriledges for he is a suspended person ipso facto all the Absolutions he gives are null the Fruits of the Benefice cannot be his because he is not the lawful Guardian of it and so his appropriating them to his use is a continued Larceny for which he is indispensibly bound to make restitution But be it a Bishop that commits this act of intrusion and all the Consecrations of Priests which he shall solemnize are null whence will result a nullity of all the Absolutions those pretended Priests shall give What a concatenation of Crimes what a dreadful series of Evils Simonies Confidences and other bad means which are used to finger Benefices do tend to the same Consequences Sure the cure of this Malady Mortal to so many thousands of Souls is an atchievement worthy of a King I am of Opinion then that to cut up the root of all these disorders the King might create a Secretary in his Council of Conscience and when this Officer is in possession of his charge a Declaration of His Majesties should come forth by which to obviate the great abuses that have crept int-Beneficiary matters it should be ordained that all the Benefices in the Kingdom be Registred by the said Secretary of that Council and no dispatch there made until the Deeds upon which a Benefice is claimed have been seen and signed and placed in the Register by the same Secretary upon pain of the nullity of all that may have been petition'd for and granted Cognizance of all causes arising in consequence of this Declaration must be given to the Grand Council and this addition of Jurisdiction would facilitate the verification of it This Declaration would produce several advantages One is that there could be no more fraud used in order to demissions or to resignations and the Bankers of the Court of Rome would no longer have means to promote the cheats of pretenders to Benefices Another is that the King would exactly know all that the Church does possess in France which is a matter of extreme necessity both for the regulating of the Tenths and also for other considerations A third advantage would be that in process of time this Secretary of Conscience might make a Bank in the Roman Court which is to the King of unspeakable consequence for by this means all the Money that goes into Italy out of France would be known and upon such knowledge it would be more easie for him to take his measures with the Pope and Colledge of Cardinals A fourth advantage is that the King by degrees might become Master of all the Benefices of the Kingdom in the same manner as the Pope is Master of the Bishopricks and Abbies which would augment the Royal Authority That I may explain my self I will resume the thing from its original In the first Age of Christianity the first Bishopricks were conferred without any Bulls from the Pope at all Afterward He bethought Him to send or write unto the Chapters who then chose the Bishops and recommended to them to respect the merit of such or such a one when they should proceed to the Election I think that Alexander the III. was the first Inventer of these kind of Letters and they were called Bulls because they were seal'd up with the Pope's Seal Bulla being Latin
the State unto their Succour and took a course to bring Fire and Sword into all parts of the Kingdom Shortly in matter of Government that which is good at one time is frequently not so at another all things must be accommodated to the general rule of Policy which is that the good of States be incessantly procured When the Edict of Pacification was accorded there was provision made for the welfare of France if that welfare does now require that the Edict be revoked there is no remedy revoked it must be or neglected From all this which I have said it follows that the King hath most just cause to secure himself from the Professors of the Protestant Reformed Religion and put them into such a state as he may have nothing to apprehend from their particular Perhaps it will be said that 't is expedient there be Huguenots in France because they oblige the Church-men to study and to live with the greater circumspection and a more exact observance of the rules of their Profession But this consideration is not worth the considering The Church of GOD will never be supported by these humane means He is in the midst of it and governs it Himself by His Holy Spirit which animateth and filleth it At whatever time there shall be no more Huguenots in France there will be fewer bad and a greater number of good men which the King should particularly desire since States are always sustained by people that love Virtue c. It passeth therefore for certain that it is fit the King do disable the Religionaties as to their doing any harm and as to their giving cause of suspicion It remaineth to examine what way may most readily and most commodiously lead unto this end I would not advise that these People of the other Religion should be compell'd to depart out of France as the Moors were out of Spain which proved in the sequel so prejudicial to the whole Country 'T would be a piece of inhumanity to drive the Huguenots in that manner they are Christians though separated from the Body of the Church besides this course would deprive the State of not a few good Families and put the unhappy numbers of e'm out of all hope of Conversion and Salvation so that the King in this concern should do well as seems to me to imitate the Church the common parent of all Christians who in the Remedies She prepareth ever mingleth mildness and Mercy with Justice and Compassion with Correction The first means then which the King might employ should be to provide that the Huguenots might frequent the coversation of the Catholicks with more familiarity than they do For by this coversation they would in time be undeceiv'd of the Opinion with which they are pre-possess'd that we hate them they would put off the Aversion they have for us they would know our Deportment and be informed of our Doctrine in the points that offend them because they understand not the Mysteries of them which would induce them to confess as St. Augustin did on the like occasion That the Church does not teach things as they once thought it did Nothing is to my Understanding or can be more effectual for the Conversion of the Hereticks than this frequent Conversation it is not possible but that at length the spirit of Men should yield unto impression the plumage of the Eagle 't is said consumes that of other Birds Light dissipates Darkness Truth triumphs over Falshood The second means should be to confer a recompence of Honour upon Converts and to make a Stock for this purpose which might never fail I should think it would be none of the best course to exclude the Huguenots from all Employments they must enter into lesser Offices though not at all into the greater The reason is because if they be put off from all kind of publick business they will accustom themselves to tarry at home idle and their ambition will be extinguish'd in such sort as perhaps they will make it a point of Religion to do nothing whereas being taken to ordinary Offices they will habituate themselves to a living among Catholicks and their Ambition will awaken when they shall compare themselves with their Superiours The third means I offer is to select some particular Men and create them such business referring to Religion as may constrain them to attend the Council and keep following the Court. Business of that kind may be started to Gentlemen upon the Exercise they have in their Houses There is not one of them but is obnoxious to a Process in that case and the Bishops will with joy be the Prosecutors Besides the King's Procureur or Attorney General is concern'd to know whether Marriages Baptisms and Burials be solemniz'd with due accurateness in these private houses and whether good and faithful Registers of them be kept or no Great defects herein being easily supposeable the same will be just matter of complaint against the Owners as negligent in observing the concession made them of having Exercise in their Castles The like may be done if others contrary to the Edict be admitted to these Preachings beside the Domesticks A Fourth means would be to oblige the Religionists to put again in due state the ancient Chappels of their Houses which they have demolish'd or prophan'd the pursuance whereof ought to be by the diligence of each Bishop in his Diocess There must not be made a common affair of it to all the Huguenots in general but divers particulars only be fix'd upon And the thing it self is as reasonable as any For they had no right to destroy Temples that had been all along destin'd to Divine Service according to the Religion of the King receiv'd by all the Kingdom and also profess'd by our Progenitors The Fifth means is that when an Affair of such quality as I mention'd comes before the Council the Deputies which the Huguenots have at Court in the name of them all be not permitted to intervene in it There are 3 Reasons for the putting by of these interventions The First is that the Huguenots cannot constitute a Body in France nor assemble without the Kings express permission The Second that Private and Particular affairs ought not to be set up in the rank of those that are general and publick The Third that the King will do Justice without their intervention The Deputation should not be all at once abrogated out-right but no regard must be had to what the Deputies represent in the name of all the party The sixth means should be that the King do take effectual order the Huguenots may no longer have their dwellings nor their Exercise in places not Royal at least such as have any Lords of the Protestant Reformed Religion for Proprietors As for Example Vitrey in Bretannie belongs to Monsieur the Prince de Tarante who is of that Religion and it belongs to him by a Demise made him of it by Monsieur de la Tremouille
Regality because of all Governments it comes nearest to it As to use the very terms of Hesiod a Potter envies and is against a Potter Be it remembred here briefly that Theopompus King of Sparta having created the Ephori at last after a great deal of time Cleomenes was fain to put them to death when they had slain King Agis The Senate becoming too potent overthrew the first Roman Monarchy and in one word what hath our Age seen in the trial of Chenailles and what did a former in that of Chancellor Poyet A second source from which the Evils of litigious suits do arise is the sale of Magistracies The Emperor Alexander Severus sound this mischief in his Empire it having been introduced by Domician S. Lewis saw cause to weed the abuse out of His Kingdom it having got in through the confusion and trouble of some precedent Reigns It will be glorious for the King to do in His State what the Emperour Severus and S. Lewis did in theirs with greatest glory to their Memory But as Policy requires that in such enterprises way be made by degrees and greatest events brought on by small beginnings so it is necessary here to proceed leisurely and with measured steps The fixation of Offices hath been much advanced already for though what hath been done seemed to signifie an authorizing the sale of them yet in truth there hath been ground gotten To continue the work and bring it to perfection there must a Decree pass or a Declaration be made and publish'd at the Seal by which the King declares that he purposeth no longer to admit any opposition in matter of Title to Offices This is just for the King ought to be ever Master and have the liberty to bestow the charges of His Kingdom on whom he pleaseth and thinks worthy of ' em Thus no one will be alarm'd but this Declaration will extend unto the price it self by a consequence easily deducible namely since the principal and essential right to Offices consisteth in the Title and the price is but an accessory as they term it 't is reasonable that the price alway follow the Law of the Title as the Title to a Benefice brings in the Revenue of it And as in Marriage the Validity of the Sacrament makes the Validity of the Contract and of the civil effects Thus receiving no more opposition at the Seal for the Title there neither will be any in reference to the price and hence it will come to pass in tract of time that Offices will be no longer security for Money which will diminish the price of them and insensibly bring it to nothing But it is very just too that the Mortgaging of Offices as hath been done hitherto be obstructed for the future For the Officer may dye before he hath paid the Paulette whereby his Office is extinct or if of Grace the King revives it the value of what ariseth from the casualty is much less than the sum for which the thing was engag'd so that there must loss certainly accrue But if the King make a new creation of an Officer all engagements are gone for 't is then no longer the Office that formerly it was Let it not be said that without the Sale of Offices the Casualties will be worth the King nothing For the contrary is true and if the Casualties be worth Him Two Millions by reason of that sale of them His Majesty will make Four Millions of 'em if they be no longer saleable Forasmuch as in this Case they will be no longer Hereditary and being no more Hereditary they will revert to the King upon the decease of every Titulary and so the King may dispose of 'em in favour of the Person that is most acceptable to Him and if it please His Majesty the new admitted Officer may fine to the Coffers of His Treasury Royal as the Officers of Gentlemen do to the profit of the Monasticks As to the Objection that by such suppression of Officers and Jurisdictions and taking away the sale of Offices the King will lose the Revenue of many of His Clerks places and of the Paulette The Answer is easie for as to the Clerks places suppress'd the King will be recompenc'd by the greater value of those that shall remain and as for the Paulette the retrenchment of the wages of the Officers suppress'd will be much more considerable A third cause of vexatious Law-driving is that Offices of Judicature are gainful to those that execute them An evil this the dangerousest of any that can affect a State for all becomes suspected all becomes corrupt where profit is to be made Avarice and Ambition creep in Justice Uprightness and Truth depart whereupon we may conclude with the ancient Proverb That Money doth many things which the Devil cannot do For an entrance upon a Reformation in this matter it would be good to ordain First That Judges not the Kings should take no more Spices Secondly That Judges in the Royal Courts should not decree Executions for their attendance against the parties that are in contest Thirdly That if Spices or Fees upon sentence obtained be allowed the parties shall give what they will as the former custom was and not be compelled Fourthly That there be no more transacting by Commissaries in Sovereign Courts Judges should be forbidden to admit any sollicitation from parties at Law even though it be but to let them know the difficulties of their Affairs and put them in a way to clear the same For a Judge ought not to be prayed to do his Office in favour of a man whose case is good much less of one whose case is bad CHAP. IX 1. Of some general Orders in Government 2. Of punishment and recompence 3. Of Royal Virtues IN the Chapters now dispatch'd I have inserted many things which may be of use for the Kings service for the general good of His State and of every of His Subjects in particular In the Chapters that are to follow others very considerable shall be added However I judge it not amiss to make here a distinct Chapter of some important points which I cannot easily rank any other where It hath been long in dispute whether it be good to alter Publick Laws and upon debate of the Question to and fro 't is concluded that there is oft-times so pressing a necessity that it cannot be forborn but withal that such alterations must be insensible to the People who hardly come off from old Customs and cannot be brought to any new observance but by a long circumference and ways to them unknown Legislators are Physicians of Common-wealths and in this case ought to imitate the ordinary Artists of that Profession who seeing the whole habit of a body out of order and that to preserve the Patient from Perishing 't is necessary to change it do prescribe remedies which the more slowly they operate the surer their effect Now the first Law which in my Opinion might be made or
King do give His Letters for personal Marquessates in such form as they may be verified in the Parisian Chamber of Accompts and the Persons Honoured with them do homage to His Majesty thereupon Such kind of Homages have been done heretofore for Officers and even for Pensions though but of two hundred Livres The Emperour in Germany hath in this manner made Gentlemen and Counts of the Empire as for example the late Count de Guimene who had not a foot of Land within the Emperours Jurisdiction The King of England creates a Gentleman Baron and Earl of a Barony or County in which the Gentleman possesseth Nothing The second kind of Gratifications and Rewards is of those that are purely gainful and pecuniary as Pensions Tickets for Money Acquittances by Patent Ransoms Confiscations of deceasing Strangers goods and the like These however carry a great deal of honour with them as I said afore The third kind is of those that are at once both gainful an honourable as Great Offices Governments c. Upon this matter of Rewards there is this further Reflection to be made namely that a King never be inform'd of a good Action but He gratifie the Actor either with Praises or with Benefits In fine all these favours must be regulated by consideration of His Service and the welfare of His State GOD in giving Princes a Sovereign Power inspires into them Affection for their People But His will is that it be a Paternal Affection that a King do open His Bosom to His Subjects as His very Children and that all His Counsels and Designs be levell'd at their Felicity without which Himself cannot be happy 'T is principally for this great and glorious effect that Kings are Images of GOD and be fortified with His Spirit I have said that Monarchs are in their Kingdoms what the Soul is in the Body of Man that external Goods cannot enrich them that Virtue alone is their proper Portion as it is of GOD Himself It now remaineth I should say what kind of Virtue it ought to be 'T is necessary that a Great Prince have Piety to give His Subjects an Example of it and bettering of them in this is the security of His State He must be just to govern them A Government never is of long duration without Justice This Queen of Virtues comprehends as Aristotle judiciously noted all the rest A King I say must be Just to render unto every one and unto Himself what is respectively due The third Virtue of a Prince is Prudence to foresee of Himself what may betide His States Thus a wise Pilot hath the skill to foresee Calms and Storms he knows by secret notices whether the Winds will be favourable or contrary to his Voyage The fourth Virtue is Magnanimity a weight this that keeps the Soul always in the same position and gives it so setled a firmness that neither good nor bad successes can put it out of place and a King appears unalterable He thus bears up the hope of His Subjects they look upon Him as an assured succour against Fortune and persuade themselves there is somewhat of Divine Quality in His Person Of Royal Virtues a fifth is Clemency It pertains to the greatness of a King that He be benign and do commiserate the weaknesses of His Subjects who are Men as He is Mischances are pardonable and it seems to me 't is too much rigor to punish a poor wretch for a Crime committed out of imprudence or by necessity and of which he is less guilty if I may say it than his ill destiny 'T is to Criminals of this kind that Grace should not be deny'd and when a King gives one of His Subjects his Life who hath been condemn'd to death he should rejoyce more at the feeling in the Secret of his Heart a Will to Pardon than at the having in His hand the power to punish To give a Man his Life is in some sort to create him and the preserving of his Being is a giving of it It would be 't is true a great fault to stop the course of Justice in case of publick Crimes and such as have disturb'd the Peoples Peace Yet in sum it is Noble that a King be inclin'd to compassion and Mercy 'T is an action appropriated unto GOD to disarm His Anger Upon this ground the Roman Poet said That those Thunderbolts which Jupiter throws might be diverted The sixth Royal Virtue is Liberality One of the Ancients pronounced that it was less disadvantageous for a King to be overcome by Arms than by Liberality A Poet introduceth Mark Anthony excellently saying That he had nothing left him but the Benefits he had conferred And to say true A Great Prince never enjoys His Wealth but when He hath given it Liberality enricheth Him and makes Him Purchases of inestimable value For thereby 't is that He wins the love of his own People and becomes admired of all others When I say Liberality I mean a judicious Liberality such as is a Virtue not an exorbitant profuseness a Liberality alway exercis'd with Advantage and with Glory To conclude in short when I consider other Virtues I do not find any one of them all improper for a King but it is impossible a King should have those which I have mention'd without having every one of the rest since they are inseparable Companions and must be united to make a Virtuous Man CHAP. X. 1. Of Finances or a Princes Treasure 2. Means to make the Subjects more numerous 3. Of the Officers that manage the King's Treasure 4. Of the King's Demesnes 5. Means to recover the Demesnes 6. Of Taxes 7. Means to ease the People 8. Of the Free Cities 9. Of the Gabells 10. Means to augment the Receipt of the Gabells and ease the People 11. Of the Salt-free Country 12. Of the Countries of State and Free Gifts 13. Of the expending of Money 14. Of the reserving it THE Art of Finances or the Treasury is a principal part of the Politicks and so much the more necessary in a State in that Money is the Soul of all Affairs A Common-wealth is no further powerful than proportionably to the richness of its publick Treasury and the greatness of the yearly Income that maintain it This the French Name plainly importeth for Finance is an old Word signifying Power and comes from the ancient Verb Finer which is to be able to may or can Three particulars are here to be considered First Just and easie means to make Money Secondly the prudent expending it Thirdly the keeping it in and laying it up for necessities that may happen as Famine Pestilence War Fire Shipwrack and such like We have in France three general means to make Money The King's Demesnes Impositions on the People Merchandises c. Of this last I will speak in the Chapter of Commerce I will say nothing here of Conquests which may come in for a Fourth means of Getting I will treat of them elsewhere
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
for sustenance of life The King might have Farmers of this Tenth in each Parish or in each Election who might let out under Farms of it to the Peasants as is done in the Tyths of the Church If it be thought fit to take things in kind there must be Magazines in Cities as there are Store-houses for Salt in them the Receivers should sell the Fruits or reserve them as Joseph did in Aegypt The King will need them for Armies for Fleets for Victualling places of strength for Transportation into Foreign parts especially in case of a Famine This is practis'd in many Countries abroad and particularly in Italy What is done in a petty State may be done in a great Kingdom It is not to be doubted but that if the Tallie were thus rais'd it would go further than it does and the People suffer no incommodity by it at all But one thing which presseth more at present is the putting of the Country in case again For this end the rich must be permitted to give Cows Sheep and other Cattle upon terms to the poor Peasants This is done in very many places yea in the greatest part of the Kingdom The too severe and over-scrupulous Parish Priests prohibit it but they will not any longer be able to do so when the thing is publickly permitted It seems unreasonable that some certain Cities should upon imaginary Privileges be for ever exempted from the charges of the State and mean time the Country bear the whole weight of them The pretext of these Franchises hath induced divers of the Peasants to retire to these places Order must be taken in the case and all these Cities obliged to contribute to the expences of the Kingdom which they are so considerable a part of They may then be brought to pay under colour of Subsistance or Loan There should be Garisons sent them or Soldiers quartered upon them that all the Beams of the State may bear their part in publick affairs and so the weight be more easie to them whereas one alone would be over-charg'd and break under it The third means the King hath to bring Him in Money consists in the Gabells Some have said that the Gabells are not of the nature of the Kings Demesne and their reason is because the Ordinances for the first imposition of them do import that it was not the Kings intention they should so be The contrary might be true For beside that the Salt-pits did heretofore belong to the Emperour as goods of the Empire the sums that are raised out of them are raised by publick Authority and turn to the profit of the whole Kingdom as hath been done for many Ages But however that be not to enter into a dispute which can be of no consequence here I will consider the Gabells according to the present state of things I will not say when this kind of Imposition did commence in France nor upon what examples of Antiquity our Kings did ground themselves Not will I explain how beside the Gabells of France which are call'd The grand party there are the Gabells of Provence Dauphine Languedoc and Lionnois because the thing is known and makes not to our purpose The Gabells are paid in France by two different means First by Impositions so in places neighbouring on the Salt-free Countries There for fear the Subjects would not take Salt at the Kings Garners the Officers see how many Minots each Parish ought to take then a rate is made in the Parishes for it as for the Tallie The second means is without Imposition this is the use in places remote from the Salt-free Countries There because prohibited Salt cannot be brought in every one fetcheth from the Garners at the price currant The King receives a great deal of Money from these Gaballs but the People pay excessively beyond what comes into His Coffers The infinite number of Officers belonging to a Store-house the Receivers the Commissioners the Archers the Charges the Portage the Fees of Officers to whom Presents are also made do swallow up huge sums which the King fingers not and the People do pay For there is not a petty Gabeller but lives handsomely by his Employment not a Commissioner but makes him a Fortune and grows rich upon it making good chear and great expences 'T is of very much importance that a remedy be apply'd to the malady and in truth the vexations which the King's Subjects do suffer under pretext of the Gabelle are not to be comprehended The Archers enter into Houses to search they say for concealed Salt in obedience to Authority the doors are open'd to them mean time themselves covertly convey in some Bags hereupon they form a Process and the Master of the House is excessively fin'd nor do they depart till they have pillag'd all they can lay hands on If entrance be deny'd them they force the House and act all Hostilities nor dares any one complain all are at their Mercy and thus they ruine the poor Persons whom they single out This is no way beneficial to the King's affairs nor is it His intention that His Subjects should be so ill treated But it is easie to break them of this course First of all it must be debated in the Kings Council of the Finances what sum is fit to be taken for the Salt this sum being determin'd at ten or twelve Millions for example two several parts of it shall be set out to be yearly paid one for the Country-Parishes another for the Cities Each of these allotted parts shall be sent into each Generality and thence to the places where there is a Store-house of Salt The allotment for the Country shall be divided by the Parishes as is now done for the Tallie the Subjects among themselves rating every one's proportion The Gentlemen the Church men the Monasticks and others must be engaged in it and bear their part because they are charged by reason Salt is so dear as now it is and by consequence the King making a change to the profit of all all ought to be taxed to recompence the diminution that will follow in the Finances The second Sum allotted for the Cities shall in like manner be sent to the Generalties and Salt-Garners that such Rents as the Towns are to pay the King may be divided The houses may be measured by the Perch and the Rents assessed accordingly much like to what is done for cleansing the Strrets at Paris The Cities that claim a Freedom as Anger 's Orleans and Paris shall enter into this contribution for the same reason that the Ecclesiasticks and Gentlemen do inasmuch as they will notably profit by the suppression of the Gabells and abatement of the price of Salt For it is to be observed that that measure which now costs at Paris five and forty Livres might amount not to two Crowns and so proportionably in other Cities Now the number of Perches in each City being known having been taken by Commissioners of the
Kings who might be Citizens it will be very easie on any necessity toraise an aid from the City upon the proportion of the said Perches by way of Loan or Subvention or under some other title And that the Citizens may not oppose the Kings intentions in the matter permission must be given to each City to treat every year with what Merchants they please and agree a price for the Salt that shall be there sold through the whole year He to sell it who will oblige himself to afford it best cheap except the Citizens had rather leave it free for all Merchants that would to bring in always understood that there be no power to compell any one to buy The like may be done in every Village the Gentleman causing Salt to be Sold in a Servant's name and making the profit of it This course will without doubt be gain to the People and Salt being sold in such manner it may be brought to pass that the Commodity it self shall pay the Rents which shall be due to the King and they the while buy it at much a lower rate than they do So that clearly all sorts will receive such a proposal with applause To augment the cheapness of Salt it should be ordained that it be free from paying to Lordships and by the Load and from Imposts The thing being resolved in the Council the King shall make a Declaration in form of an Edict by which His Majesty shall take off the Impositions upon Salt on condition the Towns and Parishes will pay Him yearly the Sums He shall resolve upon in His Council and that until the Declaration be executed the Gabell shall continue its course It would be needful to ordain that these Sums be paid into the hands of the Receivers of the Tallies For there would be no more need of a Receiver of a Salt-garner What are so many Receivers good for but to consume all In this case the Receivers of Salt must be otherwise dispos'd of This Declaration would include a suppression of all the Officers of the Gabells for when Salt should be freely Sold the King would have no more use of ' em As for their re-imbursement provision might be made either by continuing their wages during their Lives or by assigning them Rents which might be redeemed for little and little or by giving them ready Money The People too might be charged with this re-imbursement in favour of the suppression of the Gabells This Affair might be worth the King a great deal and can never fail of being beneficial the People will gain six Millions by it beside the quiet it will yield them It being put in execution the King may purchase the Salt-pits upon the greatest part of which He would-previously have the Tenth part of the Salt if He took the Tenth of all Revenues as I said afore Again in doing as hath been shewed He would have an Army ready raised for all the Gabellers must be led into the Field There are in their Companies notable stout Men who also have been in action As for the Salt-free Countries which have bought out their freedom no one durst touch them hitherto by reason of the strength of the Huguenots the Civil and Forraign Wars and other Considerations as the Minority of Kings c. But now that the King is Master and in a condition to make Himself be obeyed 't is reasonable that he do oblige so many great and rich Provinces to bear a part of the burthens of the State in proportion to their ability for the easing the rest of France And to this end one of the three following Propositions may be made them First to take a reimbursement of the Sums paid by them which re-imbursement shall be made by granting them a diminution of the Tallies without putting hand in Purse other ways Hereto may be subjoyn'd that the King may not wholly discharge them because such a discharge tendeth to the oppressing of his other Subjects that a King may indeed augment and diminish Subsidies as seemeth him good but not extinguish them it not being possible that a Kingdom should subsist without publick Incoms that it must be remembred on this occasion how Nero proposing to take off all the Imposts that were paid at Rome the Senate oppos'd it as a thing that would be the ruine of the Empire The Second Proposition might be that these Provinces be obliged to pay the King a yearly Rent by way of Supplement and in confirmation of their ancient Treaty The Third that the Tallie and other Impositions on them be augmented to even the ballance which cannot be done any other way There are certain means to maintain the Finances among others the Free Gifts that are presented to the King by the People of those Provinces which are called Countries of State No other Order need be taken with them but to hinder as much as may be that the principal Members of these States be not in the Offices they bear unjust at the Publick cost Yet they must make their advantages in them otherwise the States would come to nothing which would occasion no small confusion and a retardment of the King's Affairs His Majesty might make Himself Master of the Deputations and gainful Commissions which are given to the States As for example in Bretannie Monsieur the late Mareschal de la Milleray nominated alone or rather caus'd to be nominated whom he pleas'd and there was no more deliberating after he had given order 't was one way he had to gratifie his Friends Monsieur the Duke Mazarin does the same still which may in His person succeed well but the King may cause whom he will to be nominated and the liberty of the States will not suffer by it any prejudice or innovation at all for such is the condition of things in these places I will not speak here of the Farms of Iron nor of others of like value These things run in ordinary course But having spoken of the bringing in of Money I must speak of a due laying out and a like due laying up thereof The advantage of an Exchequer doth not consist in the bare getting in of Money but also in a meet expending of it and there is no less profit in giving of it forth than in receiving of it 'T is necessary the King should spend to maintain his Revenues For if all the Sums that come into His Coffers should not issue thence again no one in the end would be able to pay Him any thing The Kings of Aegypt who took a third part of their Subjects Estates caus'd the Labyrinth to be built the Pyramids to be erected the Lake of Meotis to be dug up and other Fabricks raised which are incredible to Posterity Their design was to disperse among People the Treasure they received from them and withal banish sloth and idleness out of their States These two Vices so dangerous in Kingdoms the Aegyptian Laws did so strictly provide against that
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
bearing both the Shield and Thunder-bolt of Jupiter her Father do therein let us know that the Wisdom of a good King ought to serve Him both for Peace and War And such was the manner of teaching in deepest and most remote Antiquity Philosophy then but growing up and bashful durst not shew her full lustre unto deprav'd and ignorant men to whom She was yet very much a Stranger She accosted them veiled with the shadows of Fable and went softly and secretly about the preparing of their reason to receive her illuminations and instructions But to return to our similitude A Storm doth not reach to the whole extent of the Ocean and whatever Tumults be in some part of a Kingdom yet the whole doth not so feel the shock of War but that in others Peace subsists so as the Glory of Arms and the Contentments of a full Tranquility may be had together Nevertheless since these two different times do require like different cares each of which were enough to take up the whole application of an excellent King it is expedient to consider them severally Peace is undoubtedly proper for the Cultivation of Arts and Sciences Knowing Men there must be in a Common-wealth it being necessary that there should be good Men. For knowledge 't is that enlightens our Soul shews us Virtue and inflames us with desire to possess it I joyn Sciences here and Arts it being impossible that Men should have the one without the other For as they are Images of GOD they are mov'd by a natural propension to produce one thing or other so that having acquired general Speculative Principles they necessarily descend to Practical operations which are perform'd by particular Rules from whence Arts take their rise This is done during a Calm then the Soul not interrupted by any violent agitation enjoys and by reflections which by its leisure and repose permit it to make views its self 'T is in these precious hours that it may come to know the Dignity of its Original and be assured of its Immortality At such a time having and keeping its faculties united it gathers the fruit of a solid Wisdom which is unto the Soul as the Sun is to the Eyes of the body and being of all goods the greatest communicates its self in precepts whereof Law is the abstract and consummation giving the same spirit to all the People To proceed it is important that Cities be enrich'd with publick Buildings as Temples Palaces and other sumptuous Edifices because People have by that means the more affection for their Country The Trojans regretting their defeat were griev'd more for the ruine of Troy than the subversion of its Empire And the Jews in Babylon lamented the demolishing of the Temple where they had offered their sacrifices more than they did the loss of their Liberty This affection of People for their Country is likewise augmented by the contentment they receive in it and this Maxim was a principal reason why the Greeks and Romans exhibited to their Subjects publick shews 'T is in a time of Peace that a Prince should prepare His Forces for War yea He ought to be always in Arms they being the Ornament of His Royal Majesty and support of the Laws A People not armed does degenerate and we see that Nations heretofore eminently redoubtable are now bankrupt as to Valour and Reputation Croesus after his defeat counselled Cyrus His Conqueror in recompence for the Favour which had been shewed him to disarm the Lydians and promote among them Musick good Cheer and Pleasures so they would never revolt nor fail of obeying His Command This Counsel of Croesus was really good For by that means the Inhabitants of Lydia lost their former love for War and forgat their ancient virtue Yet it is not expedient that Arms which are the Kings for He hath the power of the Sword should be in the hands of all private Persons alike and the difference between a Citizen and a Gentleman a Soldier and a Country-Labourer not be discern'd Arms therefore must be in their hands whom the King intends for that employment and He being every ones Protector securing all by His Authority all others must be expresly forbidden to bear any without His permission upon pretence of Hunting or Journey or Enemies and this upon pain of being Fined and in case of reiterated Offence sent to the Gallies These Penalties too must not be meerly comminatory but as they term it Legal and of indispensible necessity Not that Gentlemen should all be depriv'd of the liberty to wear a Sword on the contrary 't is fit to be injoyn'd them that they never neglect to do it because it is the mark of their Quality and continually minds them of the Virtue of their Ancestors It may be prohibited them to carry Fire-arms yet 't is convenient to permit them to keep in their Houses Musquers Fire-locks Pistols and other Arms for that they naturally are Defenders of the State and by consequence ought to be furnish'd for any occasion that may be offered For the same reason 't is meet that Gentlemen be enjoyn'd to keep their Stables stor'd with good Horses to breed up and manage a number of them for their Service in War But to this end the use of German Horses for the Coach must be forbidden and none of them suffered to come into France but Mares only for breed Lawyers Ecclesiasticks Citizens Merchants Artificers Husbandmen should never wear a Sword because 't is not their Profession and I would as much approve a Gentleman's fancying to wear a Lawyers Gown or a Priests Cassock But that no such person do abuse this Honourable mark it must be ordained as a fundamental Law of Honour that whoever strikes with a Sword a Man who not being of such profession has none shall be declared actually fallen from all Honour and as a very Plebeian yea Villain to use the old word deprav'd from all Gentility and reduc'd to the rank of a Labourer Since Arms are the Kings as I said it is expedient that there be Magazines in divers parts of the Kingdom they committed to the custody of safe Hands and persons of unquestionable Fidelity in them a store of all sorts of Arms Offensive and Defensive ready fix'd to Arm 40000 Men. There should be Equipage for Horses Boots Spurrs One of these Magazines should be plac'd at Paris to cover Picardy Champagne and Normandy One at Lion for any occasion that might happen on the side of the Mediterranean of Italy of Swisserland or the Franche Comte One at Tholouse or some other City of Languedoc for all that might be apprehended from Spain or the Sea of Guyenne And one at Anger 's to secure the Coasts of Bretagne and Poictou There need be beside these two Arsenals for the Sea which I shall speak of in their place It will be necessary to have in the Magazines a good number of Cannon for Battery and of Field-pieces ready mounted with Powder Ball
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
I suggested in the precedent Chapter is to be remembred namely That Conquests do afford a State one expedient to get Money In this the Roman Captains are to be imitated who made it a point of Glory to lay up extraordinary sums in the Publick Treasury and their Triumphs were as illustrious by the wealth they brought home with them as by the Enemies they had defeated in their Expeditions It would be very material therefore that Generals should account it a Glory to them to bring the Spoils of their Enemies unto the profit of the King and Kingdom or at least make the Conquered Countrys maintain and pay their Armies But the difficulty is not to make Conquests the Arms of the French will be Victorious wherever they appear All the trouble is to find out the secret how to keep what hath been gotten It is fit to say something on this particular The means to preserve Conquer'd Countrys which the Ancients used and that with good success are in a manner these Transportations and shiftings of the People As when the Chaldeans led away the Jews to Babylon The taking away of their Money of their richest Goods their Antiquities their Holy Things and things of Religion as was done with the ancient Idol-gods and as the Ark of the Covenant the Tables of Moses and the Israelites holy Writings were dealt withall The same for substance might be done among us by shifting of Saints Reliques and Consecrated Images The leading away of the ablest Men and such as have greatest credit with the People So did the Romans when they carried some of the Greeks out of their Country to Rome and treated them there with all possible kindness and civility In like manner as to Artificers the Turks drew at one time 30000 Work-men out of Persia The Romans out of their Enemies whom they had vanquish'd and taken in War reserved those whom they thought stoutest and made them fight on the Theatre the People being Spectators destroying them by that means Christianity suffers not such inhumanity Slavery was alway practis'd in the case of Prisoners of War and the ransom we make them pay is an Image of that old Custom Some People to this day stay their Prisoners or send them away to punishment after the fashion of the Ancients To proceed other means in reference to conquer'd Countrys are the mixing of the old and new Subjects by Marriage the Conquerors accommodating themselves to the manners of the Conquered taking up their modes eating with them as Alexander demeaned himself towards the Persians Then again the ruining the Fortifications of their Towns the taking Hostages of them the taking away their Arms and keeping them weak the abstaining from their Wives the giving them no jealousie in matter of Love To have little converse with them especially in their Houses and when any is to see it be with seriousness and decency to honour them to do them a pleasure on occasion not play with them not pick any quarrel with them not touch their Liberty nor the Goods that have been left them not disquiet them for matters of Religion To do them Justice maintain them in their Laws and Customs and in their manner of Government as the Romans did who permitted the People whom they had subdued to have their accustomed Laws To be diffedent of them and shew a confiderde in them To appear not desirous of their secrets not interrupt them in their pleasures make them pay the Tribute agreed upon with them exactly not at all augmenting it To keep word with them in all things seldom meddle in their affairs except it be to accord them to lend them no Money but owe them some and punctually pay the Interests of it not let them know the true State of affairs not give them entrance into strong holds which must always be well furnish'd with Men and Provisions That the Governor never come among them without being strongest or having Hostages To prevent their assembling and hinder as much as may be their having Commerce with Neighbours that are under another Prince's Dominion to keep off all kind Strangers from Houses and severely punish such of 'em as shall cause the least trouble or any motion that may tend to Sedition If our Conquerors had practis'd in this manner Italy and Sicily would have been French to this day CHAP. XII Of the Sea and its usefulness 2. Means to augment the Kings Power there 3. Of Commerce 4. Of Colonies THE Water of the Sea are wholly obnoxious to the humorousness of Fortune and the Wind that governs them turneth and changeth with as much inconstancy as that blind Goddess Yet it is certain that those States whose renown is greatest in Story did not establish their supreme Dominion but upon the power they attained to at Sea as if Virtue stout and undaunted had resolv'd to Combat and Conquer her Enemy in the very seat of her Empire The Romans are one instance whose example is ever to be follow'd with as peculiar a diligence as their conduct of matters was with singular wisdom and hard to be imitated They imposed not upon the World their Laws till they had forced the Seas to receive and acknowledge them Had they not set out War-like Fleets they had never accomplished their glorious Designs they had never extended their Frontier beyond Italy never brought down the Pride of Carthage nor Triumphed over all the Crowns on Earth The Aegyptians the Persians and the Grecians considered the Sea as the principal support of their Domination Xerxes having caus'd the Hâ—liâ—spout to be to punish'd as he termed it with Stripes accounted his Vanity satisfy'd in the sight of all Asia which he drew after him into Greece with so much Magnificence and Pomp that it seemed as if Jupiter Himself was come down from Heaven The Venetians still renew every year their Alliance with this Element by an old fond superstitious Custom casting into the Sea a Ring as if they espoused it perhaps by this use they would inform all the particular Subjects of their Common wealth that they should be content with the inconstancy and infidelity of their Women since the State of espousing the Sea espouseth inconstancy and infidelity it self The Riches of Tunis of Algier of Holland and England plainly prove the necessity there is for Princes to be Strong at Sea and do shew the Profit which does thence accrue These are petty States yet dare measure their Forces with those of the Greatest Monarchs The former of them are Turkish Slaves the others revolted Burghers and how insolent soever the English are they must confess that all the Brittish Isles laid together do not equal the half of our Continent either in Extent or in Fruitfulness of Ground or for Commodiousness of Scituation or in number of Men in Wealth in Valour Industry and Understanding yet they fear not to affirm themselves Sovereigns of the Sea Had they cast up the Wracks they have suffered and the Battles
discreetly 't is not enough that you regulate their Lives and their comportment at home but their ease and well-being must be secur'd against strangers abroad and principally against their Neighbors Now Interest being the prime motive unto all States we ought to consider other Nations either in quality of Friends or in that of Enemies ever accounting of them according to the advantage we may receive from them or the damage they may do us As they on their part take no thought of us but in proportion to what they fear or to what they hope for from our Arms. Besides to treat safely with Forreigners it is necessary that we know their Designs their Strength their Alliances their Temper and their Country Forasmuch then as Spain shareth with us at this time the Concerns of all Europe and there is not a Power in Christendom but hath Alliance with the one or the other of these two Crowns it is meet we examine in the first place what measures we are to observe with the Spaniards The Council of Spain proceeds with a great deal of slowness but always with a great deal of Evenness and since the House of Austria put it in their head to get the Dominion over all Europe the said Council hath continually steered the same course The end which these States-men have propos'd to themselves has been Tyrannical and Unjust and the means they have made use of to attain it bad destrustive and ill-adjusted which the declining of their Affairs doth evidently demonstrate Our Enemies are always Allies of theirs either covertly or openly and declared just in like manner as they who chuse the King's Protection and to be interessed with France will be Enemies of Spain The Emperor is Leagu'd with the Catholick King by Consanguinity and moreover by reasons of State For We are cause of fear to the Empire on the North and towards Germany as We are to Spain on the South and towards Italy Of all the other Princes the Duke of Bavaria seems fastest knit to the House of Austria and the Pope would perhaps be of the Party did not his Dignity of being the common Father of Christians withhold Him and if He as a Temporal Prince did not also apprehend some Irruption on our part Spain is a Country yielding little increase either for that the Ground is barren or because the Inhabitants neglect to cultivate it The discovery of the West-Indies and the expulsion of the Moors have dispeopled it Flanders and the places in Italy are a charge to Spain in time of War and what is rais'd there doth scarce suffice to maintain the Armies and Garisons Their Government is hard and ill to be endured because they are inflexibly severe and the Monks whose depravation is there at the highest pitch and Inquisitors do under pretext of Religion exercise incredible grievances The Spaniards are valiant for their Persons but Men of Quality despise the Military Profession as heretofore the Carthaginians did and the name of Soldier is in a manner ignominious with them They are Idlers and prefer Pleasure and a Gallantry before any thing be it ever so important or of greatest consequence The King of Spain hath little Money and much expense to defray The vanity of the Viceroys and Governors of His places doth spend Him above measure The Spaniards are presumptuous haughty and provided there be Honour done them you may treat advantageously with them Charles V. had reason to say that the Spaniards seem to be wise but are not Their Forces are not at all to be feared we ruin'd them in the late War and the Affairs of Portugal have hindred their recovering them The Minority of their King the Discontent of Don John and the pretensions of some Lords upon the particular Kingdoms which compose the Spanish Monarchy augment its weakness Sicily might easily make Insurrection The Neapolitans upon a pretext of Liberty such a darling in Italy would set up for themselves if they had succors and perhaps a new Pope would favour our designs there if he were made to see that it would be no impossibility for him to make some person of his Family King of Naples or joyn that Kingdom to the State of the Church of which he is possess'd already If ever the Spaniards be attacked it must be done with force and all at once in Flanders in Italy in Spain it self on the Sea and on the Coast of Portugal This is the best method for the French Such a general effort would produce two effects The First is that the Spanish Partisans would be astonish'd having no Forces ready to make resistance The Second that all their Enemies would resume Vigor and might set on foot again their pretensions against them If a through Conquest be intended we must not do as was done in the last War must not make it our business to take all their fortifi'd places one after another or to keep them when taken But this is a matter fit to be discours'd of by it self As for Portugal it 's a State yet under age and not throughly setled to us a perpetual instrument for weakning the Spaniard France hath nothing to fear on that side It would do well to convey covertly some Troops or sums into the Country and above all give secretly great hopes unto the French that are in service there if they made any important enterprises upon Spain which would divert their Forces It would I say do very well to order some Soldiers thither and 't were to be wish'd there were so many French in Portugal that the Partisans might not dare to make a Peace with Spain for fear of having those same French for Enemies The Queen of Portugal who is French both by Birth and by Affection may bear up this Interest and She may be told that there is a necessity of it on Her part and that Her Fortune depends upon it It must be accounted on in all Treating with the Spaniards that they are every whit as foolish as they seem to be The Pope the Venetians and all the Princes of Italy are of one and the same temper The Italians are wise and circumspect nor should we but very seldom enter into Negotiation with them To reduce them to our intentions we must work by down-right force they are weak and as I have said Wise they are people for Pleasure their Country is the beautifullest and best in the World consequently they love it and know their Interest they are able to foresee and fear the ill that may betide them The Pope will ever consider France by reason of the County of Avignon of the consequences of the Concordat of 1618. and because of the Jansenists The Venetians are weakned by their War with the Turk the Dukes of Mantua of Modena and of Florence and the Genoese can do nothing that 's considerable The Duke of Savoy must never separate from France We have the entrance into his Estates and a War with us but of
care of the Service of God belongs as much to the Authority of the Prince as that of Justice and Civil Government Those Expressions of the Marquess That Secular Princes are the Protectors of the Church of its Doctrine and of its Canons are intended by him in a more liberal and ingenious sense than they meant from whom he takes them For they are the ordinary terms of those who make the King subject to the Pope and who own not the King for the Sovereign of the Church but only for its Protector and to execute the Commands of his Holiness and for that his Canons be observed This is the Stile of my Lord Bishop of Montauban Peter Bertier in his Remonstrance made to the King in the City of Rheims June 8th 1654. where after he had term'd his Sovereign Power a true resemblance of the Deity he sinks it again not only below the Pope but even below the Bishops who are the Kings subjects saying That the Bishops are the Head to govern and the Mouth of the Church to speak but that the King is its arm and its right hand to execute its Decrees and Ordinances This Scholar of the Jesuits speaks like his Masters for all the Jesuits harp on the same string which Becanus in Pref. ad Reg. Jac. Kings are only to execute the Popes Commands What is the duty of Kings says he in relation to the Church and to Religion I will tell you in one word they ought to guard and defendit not as Lords but as Servants not as Judges but as Executioners And why I pray has not the King the same Sovereignty in France that the Emperor Constantine and the Emperor Charlemaigne enjoy'd under whom the Canons of the Synods were none other than counsel and advice till these Emperors had examin'd and authoriz'd them Did not these Sovereigns altogether call and dissolve those Synods of Bishops at pleasure and wherefore shall our Kings be rob'd of that Power Our great King who surpasses all his Predecessors in Glory and Magnanimity shall he suffer a stranger Bishop to snatch from his Crown this essential Right of governing the Church of his Kingdom and He of a King become a Serjeant to put in execution the Commands of that Bishop and those of the Bishops his Subjects The world is well chang'd since Pope Adrian in his Letters inserted in the second Council of Nice express'd himself to the Emperor Constantine to this effect We beseech your Clemency with ardour of Spirit and as though we were present we cast our selves at your knees and lie at your feet I with my Brethren Then it was that Popes kissed the Feet of Emperors whereas now Emperors kiss the Popes Toe In the Year 679. the Pope Agathon pray'd the Emperor Constantine to discharge the Tribute which the Bishops of Rome pay'd Ordinarily to the Emperor for their Conservation Very far from compelling the Emperors the day of their Conservation to lay a sum of Money at the Popes feet for Tribute as a token of subjection which afterwards the Emperors of Germany have been oblig'd to do Gregory the First gave a good Example for our Popes at this day how they should demean themselves towards the Emperor for he speaks thus to the Emperor l. 3. Ep. 6. I am the unworthy Servant of your pity And in the same Epistle Whilst I speak thus before my Masters what am I other than Dust and a Worm And l. 2. Ep. 61. I am subject to your Commands I might bring many Examples how anciently the Christian Emperors and the Kings of Italy created and depos'd the Popes commanding them and deposing them at their pleasure Not to go farther than our France there we may see what Power our Kings of the first Line exercis'd in the Government of the Church The History of Gregory of Tours may furnish us with many examples l. 4. c. 5. King Glotharius speaks thus to the Inhabitants of Tours Have not I commanded that the Priest Cato be made a Bishop Why are my Commands slighted and Chap. 18. Pascentius is made Bishop of Paris ex jussu Regis Chariberti by the Command of King Heribert The same King being provok'd because Emerius had been turn'd out of the Bishoprick of Xaintes caused him to be beaten who came to signifie to him that deposition and made him be drawn upon a Cart loaden with Thorns into banishment and restor'd Emerius to his place from whence he had been cast out l. 6. c. 27. Felix Bishop of Xaintes being deceas'd Nonnichius Consobrinus rege ordinante successit His Cousin Nonnichius succeeded him by the King's Order C. 39. King Guntram created Sulpitius Bishop of Bourges rejecting the Presents offered him for promoting another and saying It is not our Custom to sell the Priesthood for the price of Money l. 8. c. 22. are these words Then the King commanded that Gundegesil be made a Bishop which was done accordingly And C. 39. Evantius Bishop of Vienna died and in his place was substituted Vitus a Priest the King chusing him In all these passages we find no mention of the Pope nor of Annates nor of Letters of Investiture For in those days the Bishops of Rome meddl'd not at all with the Election of the Bishops of France Above all is memorable the Francique Synod to be found in the Third Tome of the Councils of the Edition of Cologne Pag. 39. Where Carloman who stiles himself Duke and Prince of the French thus speaks By the advice of my Priests and of the chief of the Realm we have appointed Bishops for the Towns and have set over them Boniface Archbishop Pope Adrian the First by a Council made this Law to pass That Charlemain should have the Right and Power to choose the Pope and to govern the Roman See Which Constitution is inserted in the Roman Decretal The Council of Mayence held under Charlemain an 813. dist 63. Can. Hadrians begins thus To Charles August Rector of the True Religion and Defendor of the Holy Church of God And the Second Council of Mayence under Lewis the Debonnaire to Lewis the most Soveraign Rector of the True Religion At this day these Titles would be counted wicked Now for all that Charlemain and Lewis the Debonnaire have advanc'd the Pope out of measure yet his Authority even in Spirituals was no better than precarious and suject to those Kings that were Emperors For proof of this Hincmar relates l. 55. c. 20. That the Emperor Charlemain did convoke a general Synod in France whereby the worshipping of Images was condemn'd and the Second Council of Nice which defended them was rejected as a false Synod thô the Pope had approv'd it And thô at this Synod convoked by Charlemain the Authority of the Pope was admitted For the History of those times teaches us That Charlemain who had advanced the Pope made use of the Authority given him to his own advantage even against the Pope himself when he had a
mind Insomuch that he was not content to make the Popes Opinion be condemn'd in this Synod assembled pro forma at least by order of the Pope but he sent to the Pope a Book which he writ against the Second Council of Nice and against Images which we have still to this day After that Charlemain had rais'd the Pope in giving him a good share of the Country which he had taken from the Lombards the Popes began to be puft up extreamly and by little and little made themselves formidable taking upon them the Figure of Judges and Correctors of the Actions of Princes throughout Christendom by Excommunications Interdictions and finally by the Deposition of their Crowns Now 't is very remarkable that whereas by their imaginary Arms they have laid at their feet the Emperors of Germany and and the Kings of England and brought their Estates into a miserable confusion yet had they never the like success against France they never have been able to Depose our Kings never could prevail to have any Interdict receiv'd in their Kingdoms which so often as they attempted they were mock'd their Officers beaten and their Partisans ruin'd But alas the Submission which Henry the Great made to the Pope the only Instance that we can be reproacht withal is a cooling cast in our way Under Lewis the Debonnaire was held at Paris a Council against Images that is to say against the Pope who maintain'd them Of which Council we have all the Acts entire And in the beginning of his Reign Claudius Bishop of Turin broke down all the Images he could find within his Diocess and listed himself against the Bishop of Rome who stood for their Adoration and writ a Book against Images and the Pope durst not be angry because this Bishop was supported by the Authority of Lewis Great Troubles being stirr'd in France Gregory the Fourth confederates with the Sons of this Lewis too Debonnaire who had engag'd in a wicked Conspiracy against their own Father Sigebert about an 832. testifies That Pope Gregory came into France and took part against the Emperor with his Sons And the Annals written at the same time Bochel Decret Eccl. Gall. l. 2. tit 16. and the continuer of Aimoinus a Religious of St. Benet writes That the resolution of the French Bishops was that they would by no means yield to his Will and that if he came to Excommunicate them they would Excommunicate him again After this Pope Nicholas the First Excommunicated King Lotharius for in those days Deposing was not talkt on to make him leave Waldrade and take again Thetherge his former Wife Whereupon the Articles drawn up by the French and which may be seen in Hinemar Archbishop of Bheims import That the Bishops hold that as the King ought not to be Excommunicated by his Bishops so can he not be judged by other Bishops because he ought to be subject to the Empire of God alone who alone could establish him in his Kingdom Then also the Clergy of France writ to the Pope Letters full of hard words related by Aventin in his Annals of Bavaria insomuch as to call him Thief Wolf and Tyrant The Popes growing in Insolence Adrian II. took upon him to command King Charles the Bald to leave the Kingdom of Lotharius entirely to his Son Lewis The same Hincmar a Man of great Authority in his time writ several Letters to him containing many Remonstrances on this occasion and amongst other matters informs him That the Church-men and the Seculars of the Realm assembled at Rheims have said and say by way of reproach That never was such a Command sent from that See to any of our Predecessors He adds That Bishops and Secular Lords us'd threatnings against the Pope which he dares not repeat And for the King's part see how little he valued the Pope's Commands amongst the Epistles of the said Hincmar are to be found the Letters of Charles the Bald to Pope Adrian wherein after having charg'd him with Pride and Usurpation he adds What pit of Hell has vomited out this preposterous Law What Infernal Gulf has disgorg'd it from the black and dismal Dungeons quite contrary to the way that is set before us by the Holy Scripture And he forbids the Pope to send any more such Commands to him or to his Bishops unless he would be content to meet with contempt and dishonor Pope Vrban excommunicated Philip the First and set his Kingdom under an Interdict Innocent the Third did as much to Philip the August But nether of their Thunderbolts had any effect and were only receiv'd with Mockery Which agrees with the relation of Mat. Paris that after the Pope had declar'd to Philip the August by the Cardinal D'Anagnia that he would set his Land under an Interdict unless he would reconcile himself with the King of England the King answered That he was not at all afraid of his Sentence seeing that it was not founded upon any just cause adding moreover that it belong'd not to the Church of Rome to pronounce Sentence against the King of France the which Du Tillet Clerk of the Parliament tells us was done by the advice of his Barons But what was ever more memorable in History than the truly Royal Courage of Philip the Fair an 1302 Boniface VIII that Monster of Pride was irritated against him because he held Prisoner the Bishop of Pamiers who had spoken defamatory words against him and moreover for that he assum'd to himself the Collation of Benefices The Pope then commands him to release the Bishop and writ him the following Letter Fear God and keep his Commandments We will that thou take notice That thou art subject to us in Spirituals and Temporals that no Collation of Benefices and Prebends belongs to thee that if thou hast the keeping of any that are vacant thou reserve the profits for the Successors if thou goest about to make any such Collations we Decree them void and so far as in fact they are executed we revoke Those who shall believe otherwise we shall count Hereticks A Legate came to Paris with these fine Letters which were torn from him by the King's People and thrown into the fire by the Count of Artois The answer of Philip to the Pope was this Philip by the Grace of God King of the French to Boniface that calls himself Sovereign Pontifex wisheth little health or rather none at all May thy great sottishness know That in Temporals we are subject unto none that the Collation of Churches and Prebends belongs to us by our right of Royalty and also to take to our selves the profits during the Vacancies That the Collations made by us and to be made shall be strong and good and that by vertue thereof we will defend those in possession courageously Those who believe otherwise we count Fools and Mad-men The Pope thus provok'd Excommunicates the King but no body durst publish the Excommunication nor be the bearer of it Nevertheless
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
the Collation of a number of Benefices and think we are well helpt up in that the King the Magistrates and the Sorbonne will own no other Superior to the King but God for what concerns Temporals But I pray to what end is all this briskness in our Kings in our Parliaments and in the Sorbon against the Usurpations of the Pope in Temporals but to yield him the Spirituals and to confirm his pretensions even in Temporals Grant him the Spiritual Power and he will be Master of the Temporal without contradiction and he shall bring under his Jurisdiction all secular Causes under the colour of a Sacrament of an Oath of Charitable Uses or of matters of Conscience The Concords of our Kings with Rome and their pragmatick Sanctions about the Collations of Benefices what have they come to Is not this to come in for a share with the Robbers who had seiz'd the Royalties and by solemn Articles to make them a Title which they had no pretence to before their Invasions And what other do our Kings in acknowledging the Spiritual Power of the Pope but own themselves his Subjects in Temporals for the one hooks in the other of necessity The experience of six ages has prov'd this truth 'T is the voluntary Subjection of Emperors and Kings to the Spiritual Power of the Pope that has given him the liberty to Excommunicate them for this belongs to the Spiritual Jurisdiction And the very same Jurisdiction has authoris'd him to exempt their Subjects from the Oath of Fidelity for the keeping of an Oath is a duty of Religion so that if the Pope be obey'd by a discontented and factious People you see an Emperor or King is depos'd by the Spiritual Jurisdiction and the Pope may spare the other Power that he pretends to over the Temporalties of Kings seeing that his Spiritual power all alone is sufficient to ruine the poor Prince And if that the Christian Princes that are of his Communion own him for the Vicar of Jesus Christ let the Kings understand it in what sense they please he will make them know when-ever their weakness shall give him an opportunity that he takes himself for the Vicar of the Secular Power of Jesus Christ as well as of the Spiritual And that to him as to Christ whom he represents all Power is given in Heaven and on Earth This is what the last Council of Lateran attributes to him and applies to him that Prophesie of Psalm 72. particular to Jesus Christ All Kings shall be prostrate before him and all Nations shall serve him The Kings that prostrate themselves the most humbly before him are those he throws at his Feet Witness the Treatment he gave our good King Henry the Third who Ador'd him and yet he Thundered upon him and persecuted him even to death and beyond death For after he was Assassinated in pursuance of his Excommunication and Deposition by his Creatures of the League and particularly of the House of Guise that he favour'd He would not at all suffer any Obits or Services to be made for him at Rome as if he had a mind to have him Damn'd after he had caus'd him to be Murder'd Particularly he extoll'd in a Publick Harangue the execrable Parricide Jacob Clement and compares his Fact to the Mystery of the Incarnation of the Son of God The design of this persecution drawn out so at length against the King the Princes of the Blood and against all the Kingdom is to be seen in the Memoirs of the Advocate David intercepted at Lions An. 1577. as he was upon his return from Rome where he had been Secretary to the Bishop of Paris the King's Ambassador with the Pope This Bishop of Paris a Creature of the Duke of Guise being at Rome An. 1576. instead of serving the Interests of the King his Master who had sent him to make an excuse by reason of the necessity of the King's Affairs for the Peace he had made with the Duke Alenzon his Brother and with the Princes of the Blood that were Protestants He apply'd himself wholly to the Interests of the Duke of Guise and the Pope who had then complotted together their devilish design of the League For the Pope whose custom it is to build his Greatness upon the weakness of Kings and the troubles of their States seeing the Royal-House declining despis'd and drawing to an end and France harassed with Civil Wars was easily wrought upon to favour the House of Guise which aspir'd manifestly to the Crown by the exclusion of the Princes of the Blood So upon the whole matter the Duke of Guise a Prince well made and of high undertaking powerful in Friends lov'd and ador'd by the People promised to give him all the Soveraignty in France which he counts himself debarr'd of by the pragmatick Sanctions and by the Liberties of the Gallicane-Church Then during the stay of this Ambassador at Rome An. 1576. an Agreement was drawn between the Pope and Duke of Guise whereby the Pope Declares That Hugh Capet had seiz'd the Crown of France which of Right belong'd to the House of Charlemaign That he and his Race had render'd the French refractory and disobedient to the Holy See by that damnable Error which they call the Liberties of the Gallicane-Church which is none other says he but the Doctrine of the Valdenses Albigenses the Poor of Lyons Lutherans and Calvinists That it is this Error which makes the Arms of the Kings of France in defence of the Holy Church unfortunate and that they never will prosper so long as the Crown shall continue in this Line In order thereunto an opportunity was now offer'd by reason of the present Divisions to labour in good earnest the Restoration of the Crown to the true Successors of Charlemaign who had always constantly obey'd the Commands of the Holy See And who had in effect shew'd themselves the lawful Heirs of the Apostolick Benediction upon that Crown though depriv'd of their Inheritance by fraud and violence That 't is plain the Race of the Capets are wholly deliver'd over to a reprobate Sense some being possess'd with a spirit of Mopishness Stupid and of no Valour Others rejected by God and Men for their Heresie proscribed and shut out from the Communion of the Holy Church Whereas the Branches of Charlemaign are fresh and flourishing Lovers of Virtue vigorous of Body and in Mind for the execution of high and laudable Enterprizes He goes on and Prophesies for them that as War bad been the means whereby they lost their Degree so Peace shall do them the service to restore them to their ancient Heritage of the Kingdom with the good Will the Consent and the Choice of all the People Afterwards follows a Lesson of the Conclave for the execution of this Design well worthy to be read For it is the whole plot and project of the League which was exactly observ'd all along even to the very last Act with the States
no longer now any ambitious Prince within the Kingdom to rob him of his Peoples Affection or that may dare to make any Alliance with the Pope to tumble him from his Throne and share the Crown We have this good fortune that we may set out to the life the ill aspect of Rome upon our Kings and that dangerous vigilance over France without any danger of abating the Courage of our Great King but on the contrary were his truly Royal Courage capable of an increase it would yet swell the higher from the consideration of the Evils that Rome has done and will yet do to France if he do not heartily oppose the Usurpations she exercises with impunity in all the parts of his Kingdom The honest French men that have the Honour to be near his Person might represent to Him the danger of this Doctrine maintain'd by the Popelings of His Kingdom That Jesus Christ committed to St. Peter as well the earthly as the heavenly Empire which are the very words of Pope Nicolas Therefore Cardinal Bellarmine Ch. 27. against Barclay holds absolutely That the Pope may dispose of all the Temporals of the World I affirm says he with confidence That our Lord Jesus Christ the time he was Mortal might dispose of all Temporal things and deprive the Kings and the Princes of their Kingdoms and Dominions and that without doubt he has left the same Power to his Vicar to be employ'd when he shall judge it necessary for the good of Souls The Pope Pius V. displays this Power with great Ostentation in his Bull against Queen Elizabeth of England wherein after that he calls Himself Servant of Servants he declares That God has establisht the Bishop of Rome Prince over all Nations and Kingdoms to take destroy disperse consume plant and build and in the Power hereof he does Anathemize degrade and depose this Queen absolves all her Subjects from the Oath of Fidelity that they had made her and forbids them absolutely to give her Obedience Gregory XIV set out such another Bull against our Great Henry declaring him uncapable of the Crown and exposing His Kingdom to prey But both this and the other Bull were torn and cast into the fire by the hands of the Hangman Observe that the Pope exerciseth this Power over the Temporalties of Kings for the good of Souls and as a Spiritual Prince So that our French Statesmen may cease to have their Eyes wilfully seal'd up by that distinction of Spiritual power which they allow him and Temporal power that they deny him For that it is by virtue of the Spiritual Power that he exerciseth the Temporal See what Cardinal Bellarmin says De pont Rom. l. 5. c. 5. The Pope may change the Kingdoms take them from one and give them to another as a Sovereign Spiritual Prince when it shall be necessary for the good of Souls And of this necessity he shall be the only Judge as the Sovereign Spiritual Prince For 't is thus the Cardinal argues Apol. pro Garnet p. 84. If the Church that is to say the Pope had not the power to dispose of Temporal things she would not be perfect and would want the Power that is necessary for the attaining her end for says he the wicked might entertain Hereticks and go scot-free and so Religion be turn'd upside down This reason charges imperfection on the Church in the Apostles time for that had no power over the Temporals These horrible Principles so strongly maintain'd by the Court of Rome were of fresh memory found so prejudicial both to the safety of our Kings and to the Peace of France that those of the third State an 1615. were mov'd to propose to the General States an Article containing the means to dispossess the people of that Opinion that the King might be depos'd by the Pope and that by the killing of Kings one might gain the Crown of Martyrdom Cardinal Du Perron in the name of the Clergy oppos'd this Article and employ'd all the strength of his Eloquence and Learning in two fair Speeches the one before the Nobility the other before the third State to perswade them that our Kings may be depos'd by the Pope offering himself to suffer Martyrdom in defence of this Truth The Lords of the Nobility to their great shame joyn'd with the Clergy for the putting their Kings Crown under the Miter of the Pope much degenerating from the vertue of their Ancestors those French Banons by whose advice Philip the August declar'd to the Cardinal D'Anagnia the Popes Legat that threatned him that it did not at all belong to the Church of Rome to pronounce Sentence against the King of France But the third State held firm to their Article that maintain'd the Dignity of their King and the safety of his Person and could never be won by promises nor affrighted by threatnings to depart from it shewing themselves in this more noble than the Nobility It is no wonder in this case that the third State shew'd more affection to their King than the Clergy seeing that the Clerks hold That they are not the King's Subjects for in effect they acknowledge another Sovereign out of the Kingdom And who can think it strange if they labour to heighten that Monarchy of which they make a Party But that the Nobility the Kings right arm that they should be so base to strike their Head and lay it at the feet of an Italian Bishop this is that which after Ages will reflect upon with astonishment and indignation and which Historians shall blush to relate and be vex'd that they cannot let pass in silence So the Nobility being joyn'd with the Clergy the Article of the third State was censur'd and rejected Whereupon the Pope writ Triumphant Letters to the Clergy and the Nobility who had been faithful to Him in this Cause glorying in His Victory and exalting the Magnanimity of these generoâ—s Nobles But in truth the Deputies of these generous Nobles deserv'd to have been degraded from their Nobility and they of the third State to have receiv'd their Titles The minority of the late King and the easiness of the Queen-Mother render'd them expos'd to these Injuries and apt to be circumvented insomuch that this Harangue made to the third State was printed with the Priviledge of the King and the Pope gain'd his point The false dealing of the Cardinal who made this Speech is remarkable namely that he had a long time followed King Henry the Great even then when he was of a contrary Religion and depos'd by the Pope and that a little before in an assembly held at the Jacobins in Paris he had resisted the Popes Nuncio who would that this Doctrine of the Temporal Sovereignty of the Pope might be held for an Article of Faith But in these two Harangues the Cardinal made a kind of a Recantation and pronounc'd himself his own condemnation Ungrateful wretch to have thus abus'd the tender Age of the Son of his King
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
who is so clear-sighted see what an impoverishment it is to his Kingdom that France be tributary to a Stranger under the Title of Annates Offerings Dispensations Absolutions and Causes Matrimonial Against these Depredations our ancient Kings had provided some remedy by the pragmatick Sanctions vext to see the fairest Revenue of the Kingdom pass over the Alps by a Religious spoil and go into the Purses of those who laugh at our simplicity But what reason is there that they who pay so willingly Tribute to the Pope should make so great difficulty in paying to the King Is it not because they believe they owe all to the Pope and nought to the King St. Paul teaches them to pay Tribute to the Higher Powers inasmuch as they are Ministess of God And St. Chrysostom commenting upon this Text tells them who are these higher Powers If says he the Apostle has establisht this Law whilst the Princes were Pagans how much more ought this to be done under Princes that are Believers And he had said before The Apostle commands this to all even to the Priests Which is more he adds though thou art an Apostle though thou art an Evangelist or a Prophet or what ever else thou art From St. Ambrose we have the same Lesson in his Oration of delivering the Temples If Tribute be demanded refuse it not the Lands of the Church pay Tribute Even Pope Vrban and the Roman Decretal say That the Church pays Tribute of its exterior Goods Also That Tribute must be paid to the Emperors in acknowledgment of the Peace and Repose in which they ought to maintain and defend us The right of Kings and Truth must needs be very strong that could draw from the Pope and his Canonistical Doctors this acknowledgment For the Canon Law was not founded for any other end but to supplant the Civil Laws and establish the Popes Jurisdiction throughout This is a Body of Foreign Laws that have their Tribunal apart and that depends on a Foreign Prince and where the King has nothing to do but look on I mean till such time as he shall please to take cognizance of so unreasonable an Usurpation And forbid that any Cause be judged in France by other Authority than His and much less any Cause commenc'd in France be appeal'd to Rome And in truth he is but a King by halfs till he alone possess all the Jurisdiction exercis'd within his Kingdom This is what Charles du Moulin said in an Epistle to Henry II. where he writes freely against the Empire that the Pope has set up within our France where the Pope has Subjects that submit not to the Laws of the King but to those of the Pope which are the Canon-Law and the Constitutions that come from Rome But some may object Would you have the King judge in Spirituals I Answer That if the King ought not to be Judge it does not follow that the Pope must The King has his Bishops that may and ought to judge of matters purely Spiritual but of nought without being authoriz'd by the King and there is no need of an Authority out of the Kingdom for this I will say more That the Ecclesiastical Government is a part of the Office of a King For so it was in the Kingdom of Israel And who would believe that in this Age and in Spain where the Inquisition Reigns King Philip IV. assum'd to himself the Soveraign Power of Churches within his Dominions For this purpose he apply'd that excellent passage of Isodore which is attributed also to the Council of Paris That the Secular Princes should know that they ought to give an account of the charge of the Church committed to them by Jesus Christ for whether that the Peace or the Discipline receive improvement by believing Princes or that they are impair'd He who committed the Church to their Power will demand an account O the excellent passage O the Holy Lesson God give all Christian Kings the Grace so well to learn it that they may never leave this Charge of the Church which Jesus Christ has committed to them upon the hands of Strangers and when they have taken it into their own hands to acquit themselves worthily and render a good account Alas Alas Have Kings Eyes to see their Rights and have they no hands to maintain them Are they quick-sighted enough to perceive that the Government of the Church is committed to them and that they are to render an account to God and have they not the courage to rescue them from unjust and strange Hands that snatch them away Think they to acquit themselves of this great Account of the Government of the Church of their Kingdoms by saying That the Holy Father has discharg'd them of it when they have in their hands the power to discharge Him from his Usurpations In Truth they will never be in condition to Govern the Church committed to them they will never be but Kings by halfs till they have banisht from their Territories this pretended Spiritual Jurisdiction which destroys the Civil and which will draw under its Cognizance all sorts of Causes there being none wherein there is not some matter of Conscience or some kind of Transgression of Gods Commandments and that by consequence belongs not to the Jurisdiction of the Pope if He must be own'd the Soveraign Spiritual Judge in France The Popes themselves inform our Kings of their Right to Govern the Church Leo IV. writing to Lewis and to Lotharius did not he own that the Investiture of the Bishop comes from the Emperor and the Pope has only the Consecration Did not He beseech the Emperor to invest a person he had recommended and does he not acknowledge that the Metropolitan dares not Consecrate him without the Emperors consent And Pope John X. in his Epistle to Hereiman of Cologue about the business of Heldwin of Tongres does he not observe That the old Custom has this force that none ought to confer a Bishoprick upon any Clerk save the King to whom the Scepter has been given of God The Council held at Thionvil under Lewis the Debonnair An. 835. gives us this good Maxim That the Pope ought to be call'd Pope and Brother not Father and Pontifex and that Lewis had more Power in the Government of the Gallicane-Church than the Bishop of Rome as Agobard Bishop of Lions has it in his Treatise of the Coâ—â—â—â—…ison of the Two Governments related by Bossellus in his Decretals Gregory Turonensis does furnish us with more than Ten Examples of the right of Investiture belonging to our Kings before the Empire fell into their hands In the times of Clovis they held the Royal Right of the Investiture of Bishops They had also a Right which they call'd Regal which was the Power of enjoying vacant Bishopricks and Prebends and the moveables of Bishops dying without a Will And it is very easie to prove that under the first Line of our Kings and a long while under
the Second the Kings of France were the Soveraigns as well in Spirituals as in Temporals And though they had lost their Soveraignty about the end of the Second Line and under the Third by their negligence and by the cunning of the Popes watchful for their advantage nevertheless an infinite of Persons in those times both of the Clergy and of the Law took notice of and Taxed the Usurpations of the Popes upon the Rights of our Kings Amongst others Aegydius Romanus Archbishop of Bourges in the time of Philip the Fair this Archbishop for the Reasons Registred in the Court of Parliament remonstrates That the Gallicane-Church has that Right and that Liberty to provide for its occasions by Synods of the Bishops of the Country without that the Pope ought to meddle unless by way of exhortation Cardinal D'Offat Letter 90 to the King shews That the Pope ought not to meddle at all with the Election of tâ—â— French Bishops and this he proves by the Ordinance of Orleans An. 1560 and saith That since the Popes have reserv'd to themselves the provision of Bishopricks they have been very ill serv'd The excellent Archbishop of Paris Peter de Marca in his agreement of Empire and the Priesthood has wisely and boldly Remonstrated That since the Pope would hold the same Degree in France that the Soveraign Sacrificer held in the Synagogue he ought not to pretend to more Authority in our France than the Soveraign Sacrificer had in the Kingdom of Israel where he was the Kings Subject his Person his Jurisdiction the Affairs of the Church the Order of Ceremonies were within the Kings Jurisdiction who depos'd the Sacrificer and set another in his place out of his pure and full Authority God be prais'd for that in these later times where the Throne of iniquity the Papal See is so much adored he has rais'd up such brave Assertors of our Christian Liberty which would bear up again and for which we want only to shake off the Yoak What is alledg'd the most specious for the necessity of a Pope to superintend the Christian Kingdom is that the Kings need an Arbiter of their Differences that may be generally respected and whose Dignity and Sanctity may oblige them to Submission and Veneration But if this general Arbiter instead of making Peace amongst Princes foment their Differences and embroil their Affairs to fish in troubl'd Waters they shall do wisely to let him alone and yet more wisely to rid themselves of him There 's no question but that when a general Peace is for the advantage of the Pope that then he will set himself seriously about it But it rarely happens otherwise then that the good of one party shall be disadvantageous to the Pope and then 't is ill trusting to his Arbitrement France has more reason to stand upon its guard than any other Nation for the Court of Rome has always sought its ruin has favour'd its Enemies or rais'd them up anew When the English made War against us Rome abetted their quarrel and aided them with Spiritual Weapons I cannot let pass the ridiculous assistance sent to Henry V. of England when he levied an Army to go into France this was a Ship loaden with Consecrated Apples which were distributed to all who would List themselves for this War and they listed themselves with a good Will having scrambl'd for the Apples with Greediness and Devotion and were well satisfied in Conscience of the Justice of this Expedition by these Apples Apostolical The Pope employ'd more powerful means against us when France was weak and the Spaniard powerful whom he assisted with all his Forces Spiritual and Temporal What a strong League did he make to destroy both King and Kingdom What Evils did he heap on France and after the injury done us how much praying did he require before he would be appeas'd Thomas Campanella speaks thus of this Judge of differences Who shall carefully read History shall find that the Popes have made more Wars amongst Christians than they have quieted Let France mark what he adds So far have the Popes been from opposing himself Hispanis Imperiorum helluonibus to the Spainiards unsatiable devourers of Empire that the Pontifical Authority has lent pretences to their Voracity Witness Navarre and France in the times of Henry III. For this last hundred years all the Popes except Vrban the VIII have favour'd the Spaniard And what reason can we have to expect better from them seeing that the greatest part of the Cardinals are born Subjects to Spain in the Principalities of Milan of Naples and of Sicily and that the Court of Rome is inclos'd within these Principalities Judge what confidence we can have in such Arbiters France loses plainly both Money and Pains ' sending Ambassadors to these Gentlemen courting them and enriching them when they are assembled for the Election of a Pope The fear they have of France's Power may gain some respect but it is a respect without Friendship and when France has gain'd it I do not see what France has gain'd They have reason to fear the King knowing that this Great Prince is sensible of their Usurpations and they have no great reason to love his Subjects because they are no great purchasers of Indulgences And the less the King cares for them the more will they fawn upon him but we may assure our selves they employ all their strength and set to work all their Art and Subtilty to put a stop to his Progress and to pull down his Greatness That agreement of the Pope with the Duke of Guise ought never to be forgotten What rancour did he testifie against the Royal Line that Reigns at this day what Pains did he take to disinherit and destroy it Into what combustion did he cast the poor Kingdom that he might have a King of his own Choice who might abolish the Liberties of the Gallican-Church and make France a Fief of the Court of Rome Let us for our experience learn the truth of that Character given by Aeneus Sylvius who was afterwards Pope Pius II. That there was never any great Slaughter in Christendom nor any great Calamity happen'd either of Church or State whereof the Bishops of Rome were not the Authors Hist Austria And as much is said by Machaivel in his History of Florence And if we consider that the great Evils done by the Pope to Kings were done under the colour of com-promise we shall find that 't is the surest way to decline his kindess and to have nought to do with him and that he always comes better off that affronts him than he that flatters him The Marquess after he has wisely consider'd that the name of Religion is a false pretext laid hold on by the Court of Rome thereby to encrease their Temporal Power and raise them Creatures every where the abuses he would have retrench'd after the example of Charlemaign and of many more great Kings But to compass this it is not
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
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
the true ground of the great hatred that is born us is it not for that if we are to be believ'd there would not in France be any French-man that is not the Kings Subject Causes Beneficial and Matrimonial would not be carried to Rome nor the Kingdom be Tributary under the shadow of Annates and the like Impositions And on this Subject the Testimony of Cardinal Perron for us in his Harangue to the Third State is very considerable wheâ— he says The Doctrine of the Deposition of Kings by the Pope has been held in France until Calvin Whereby he tacitely acknowledges That our Kings had been ill serv'd before and that those he calls Hereticks having brought to light the Holy Scripture have made the Right of Kings be known which had been kept supprest Shall they be said Friends of the State who owning themselves Subjects of a Stranger Soveraign dare endeavour to make themselves Masters of all the Temporal Jurisdiction of which the Marquess complains loudly and with good cause and of the great resistance they have made to maintain themselves in an Usurpation so unreasonable In this kind those of the Church of the Reform'd Religion could never be accus'd in the Towns where we have had some Power Our Religion is hated because it combats the Pride the Avarice and the Usur pations of the Court of Rome and their Substitutes in the Kingdom and because we have shewn to the World that sordid Bank of spiritual Graces they have planted in the Church and how they have drawn to themselves a Third of the Lands of France for fear of Purgatory from silly People mop'd with a blind Devotion and from Robbers and Extortioners who have thought to make Peace with God by letting these share in the booty 'T is an advice very suitable to the Politicks of France to examine well the Controversies that are most gainful to the Clergy as this of Purgatory concerning which an old Poet said the Truth in his way of Drollery But if it be so That no more Souls shall go To old Purgatory Then the Pope will gain nought by the Story It would be wisely done to examine what necessity there is for so many Begging-Fryers that suck out the Blood and Marrow of devout People and for so many Markets of Pardons in honour of a number of Saints of a new Edition and for what design are made so many Controversies And whether it would not be a great Treasure for the Kings Subjects to Teach them to work out their Salvation and put their Consciences in quiet at a cheaper rate God justly provok'd by the great Sins of France gives us not yet the Grace of that Gospel-Truth St. John Ch. 8. Know the Truth and the Truth will set you free And though it shines out so clear to let us see the Usurpation of the Popes upon the Temporals of the King and upon the Spirituals of the Church yet see we not clearly enough to discover all the mystery of Iniquity and to resolve to shake off the Yoak For this great design no other War need be made by the Pope but only take from him all Jurisdiction in France all Annates and all evocation of Causes to Rome This would hardly produce any other stirrs but the complaints and murmuring of them that are loosers And the condition truly Royal that the King at present is in will sufficiently secure Him from Insurrections at home and Invasions from abroad Or should any happen behold more than an hundred thousand Huguenots that the Noble Marquess has sound him in the heart of his State whom he is pleas'd to call His Enemies but who on all occasions and on this especially would do His Majesty a hearty and faithful Service The two main Interests of France being to weaken the House of Austria the Princes of which enclose him on both sides and to throw off the yoake of Rome which holds a Monarchy within the French Monarchy 't is easie to judge that amongst the Kings Subjects the Protestants are absolutely the most proper to serve him on both these occasions I know that amongst the Roman Catholicks as well Ecclesiasticks as Seculars there are excellent Instruments to serve the King in both these Interests But there is need of great caution to well assure him by reason of the multitude of Jesuits Scholars with whom these Fathers have Industriously fill'd all Professions of the State and Church and it is for no other end that they have so many Colledges They who have been too good Scholars of these Masters are contrary to both these Interests being so great Catholicks that they espouse the Interest of the Catholick King to advance that of his Holiness But to find amongst the Protestants trusty Instruments for both these accounts he need not try them they are fitted and form'd by their Education for these two Uses so necessary to France The Marquess assures His Majesty with good reason of the friendship of the Protestant Princes of Germany which they would never testifie so freely as in serving him to ruin the Power of the Pope who savours that of the House of Austria For thereby they would kill two Birds with one Stone Not to mention our other Neighbours who have broken with Rome and being disquieted by its secret practises will be ready to contribute to its destruction Who shall well consider the Scheme of the Affairs of Christendem shall judge that all things invite His Majesty to shut out the Jurisdiction of Rome beyond the Mountains Right Honour Profit Liberty Facility his Duty to his Crown to his Subjects and to his Royal Posterity and that many Aids smile upon him both within and out of his Kingdom for so fair and so just an Enterprize This is the warm desire of the honest French-men And none there are who better deserve that Title than they who with the most Indignation resent that their Kings should kiss the Feet of that Prelate who ought of Right to kiss their Feet for having receiv'd his Principalities from Kings of France and who in recompence of their good Deeds have plotted and plot continually their ruin When the King shall have deliver'd Himself and his People from this strange yoak he will find the enmity amongst his Subjects for matter of Religon greatly diminisht and the way open to a re-union And were the difficulties about the Doctrine overcome the Protestants would not stick much at the Discipline God who is the Father of Kings and the King of Glory protect and strengthen our Great King to accomplsh the Designs that turn to the general good of His Church to the greatness and to the respect of his Sacred Person and to the Peace and Prosperity of His State FINIS
of Blois when the Theatre on a suddain fell upon the Actors Heads and that the Tragical death of two of the Principals broke the great design ready to be accomplisht which was to shut the King in a Monastery and the Queen in another and to put to death all the Princes of the Blood to make way for Monsieur the Duke of Guise to whom immediately the Crown was to be given For the Conclusion of this Accord his Holiness requires of the Duke of Guise that he shall cause to be acknowledg'd the power of the Holy See by the States of the Realm without any restriction or modification abolishing the Priviledges and the Liberties of the Gallican-Church the which he shall promise and swear to do before he take the Crown The Pope enrag'd to see his great design quash'd that he had laboured and push'd on with so much Artifice by the execution made by the King upon the persons of the Duke of Guise and of the Cardinal his Brother Excommunicates and Deposes the King who for all that lost not his Crown till he lost his Life also being assassinated by James Clement a Dominican-Monk who being immediately kill'd by the King's Servants there present had undoubtedly been Canoniz'd by his Holiness for his Heroick Act if the business of the League had prosper'd for we have have seen and read with horror the Legend of St. James Clement Printed and Dispersed through France and his execrable Paracide has been defended as a just and meritorious Action by the Jesuit Guignard who has written a Book expresly on that Subject Even Bellarmine condemns highly those that kill'd the Monk who murdered his King because says he they kill'd Sacratum virum a Man consecrated accounting this detestable Monk more Sacred and more inviolable than the Sacred Majesty of the King Henry the Great having inherited the Crown of Henry the Third the Pope prosecutes the League against him with a re-doubled Zeal So that besides the open War there followed three several attempts upon his Person by Villains instructed and posted in convenient places for their design by the Jesuits who for this reason were banish'd out of France and a Pyramid was erected close by the Palace with an Inscription which declar'd the cause of their banishment Now for all that His Majesty professed the Roman Catholick Religion yet would not the Pope of a long time receive him into the bosom of the Church because as yet his Party was but weak But when his Holiness saw that the Interests of the League declin'd and that good Cities and whole Provinces treated with the King then the Holy Spirit suggested to him that he might receive into his fold of the Church this straying Sheep out of fear least France provoked too far should in the end come to do what has been often threatned that is to make a Patriarch of the Gallicane-Church And yet in this Reconciliation the Pope made appear so much Pride and Rancor this great King could not but in the Person of his Ambassador lying on the Ground at the Pope's Feet receive a bitter Cup of Repentance Never had a King of France made the Pope the like submission The Pope has taught our Kings a Lesson to take advantage in their turn of his Necessities to make him bend or break And I am full of hope that our Great and Glorious King will have a deep resentment of so great an Indignity done to His Heroick Grandfather Especially might His Majesty be pleas'd to consider that the Court of Rome notwithstanding that Reconciliation never pardon'd him keeping near his Persons Confessors that conspir'd against his Life causing Seditious Sermons to be Preacht in Paris and censuring at Rome in full Consistory the Sentence of the Court of Parliament against John Castel executed for having struck with a knife at this Great King in order to cut his Throat And this censure was made at Rome four Months before that this excellent King was kill'd to prepare their Spirits for this execrable Assassination Thereupon when Ravaillac who perform'd what the other Martyrs of the Pope had attempted was examin'd and asked why he undertook this detestable Parricide he answered That there needed no more than to have heard the Sermons preached in Paris the last Lent to inform any body of the Motives for the rest that the King was preparing to make War against God in that he would make War against the Pope and that the Pope is God In short one might find in this Wretch the sparks of that fiery Zeal and blind Devotion for His Holiness and the desperate Spirit of the League which the Pope by the means of the Jesuits industriously fomented in France to produce this horrible and dire Effect When it was represented to these Bigot Parricides that the King having been Excommunicated was afterwards Absolv'd and Reconcil'd to the Pope they answer'd That his Conversion was feign'd And they who attempted against his Person before this Reconciliation might shield themselves with the Canon Excommunicatorum of Pope Vrban which speaks thus We count them not Murderers who shall happen to kill any Excommunicated Persons out of an Ardour of Zeal for the Catholick Church their Mother Observe then that all they whom the Pope taxes for Heresie they that Appeal from the Pope to a future Council and they that levy Taxes upon the Clergy are Excommunicated by the Bull De coena Domini which the Pope pronounces every Thursday absolutely a many Kings and Princes are involv'd in this Excommunication and the Kings of France amongst the rest no Heresie being more Criminal at Rome than the asserting of the Liberties of the Gallicane-Church and the not owning the Terrestrial Empire of his Holiness It concerns then those to make good provision for the securing of their Lives who are by this Canon expos'd to all those who shall be pusht on to kill them by an ardor of zeal for the Catholick Church He was much deceiv'd who thought that the Pope and the Jesuits his Emissaries take it very ill any should represent to the World that by the Doctrine and by the Censures of Rome Subjects are instructed to kill their Kings as often and as many as it shall please the Pope to Excommunicate and that the Murder of our two last Henries ensued thereupon I think the quite contrary they are well content that in laying to their charge these furious Executions which have plung'd our France in a gulph of Miseries we serve their design which is to scare our Kings and Princes and render them tame Slaves to the Court of Rome by the fear of Excommunication Deposition Rebellion Knife and Poison But this is not to be fear'd save where the People are bigotted with a sottish Zeal and believe in the Pope instead of believing in God and obeying the King France at this time is pretty well purg'd of this Zeal And by the Grace of God and the wise Conduct of His Majesty there is