The Primitive Practice for Preserving Truth, Section 11
SECT. XI.
IF wee passe out of Spain and Germany, from the House of Austria into France, to consider the sad successes of the Princes of the Valesian line, upon their hatred and persecution of Religion, wee shall see so many instances of Gods just indignation against them, as they may not only leave to all posterity a just ground of admiration, but save us the labour also of searching any further back into the elder Histories of Gods judgements powred out on the persecuting Emperours in the Primitive times. Henry the second of France, was meanly married to Katherine de Medices, the Niece of Pope Clement the seventh, during the life of Francis the Dolphine, his elder brother, afterwards poysoned. That prudent Prince, Francis the first, his Father deceasing, hee succeeded him in his Throne and Purple, and swayed the French Scepter divers yeers, with much tranquillity and happinesse, till loathing the coiture of his Queen, unfit indeed for a Princes bed, he grew highly enamoured on Pictavia of Valence, a woman of exquisite beauty and good extraction: with whom hee long after lived in continuall advowtrie, and was by her enticed to the persecution and slaughter of the Protestants, in the yeere 1553. that so by the confiscation of their lands and goods, shee might enrich her self and her kindred. This persecution set a period to all his former victories, and was followed the next yeere with the losse of the City of Senis in Italy to the Spaniard, the death of that gallant old Generall Leo Strozzi, by a base hand, and the overthrow of the French Army by James de Medices. In the yeer 1556. the violence of persecution was again renewed against the Professors of the Truth, and the very next yeer following, as before, God again gave up the French Army to the slaughter of the Spaniards, and the Dutch, at the fiege and battell of St. Quintins, in which there were about 3000. slain upon the place, and many of them signall men, and the Town soone after taken in by assault, Annas Duke of Memorancie himself, the Constable of France, Gasper de Colignie, Earle of Caestilion, Admirall of France, the Marshall of St Andrew, the Duke of Longevile, and a number of other great Peers were taken prisoners. In summe, the losse and slaughter was so great and fatall to the French, as it well-neer equalled that victory obtained by the Duke of Bourbon, at the battell of Pavia in Italy, against Francis the first his Father; yet Henry the second still shuts his eyes against the cause of all these losses, and having his heart already cauterized by lust, he not only caused the godly to be committed to the flames, but would needs view their torments himself, as a pleasing spectacle, and had conspired and combined with Philip the second of Spain, his new Sonne in Law, for the utter ruine and finall subversion of Geneva: Nay, but a few houres before his death, in the yeer 1559. Lodowick Faber, and Annas Burgus, two Senators of Paris, because they had spoken a little freely for the innocency and piety of the Protestants in the open Senate, were imprisoned upon his expresse command in the Bastile in the same City by Gabriel Earle of Mongomery, one of the Captains of his Guard; and the persecution against all others of the same profession grew hot and furious, when the King upon the 29th of June the same yeere, running at Tilt with that very Earle of Mongomery, and neer the very Baslile, where the Senators remained prisoners, was struck with a splinter of Mongomeries speare through his eye into his brain, and never had the happinesse to speak any one word after, though he survived the wound a few dayes, or to acknowledge his former lust and cruelty. Had the Papists but such an instance of Gods immediate providence in vindicating their cause, we should soon heare of one true miracle amidst so many false and adulterate. But if wee further looke to Gods hand that followed this Prince in his posterity, it will yet seem the greater Miracle; for of five sons hee had, all except one, died without lawfull issue to survive them, and three of them by violent deaths, and in his posterity ended the Valesian line, the Crown devolving thereupon to the royall branch of Clermont, commonly called Bourbon, whom his sons had most bitterly hated and persected. Of all his five daughters, three died issuless, and the eldest that had issue was cut off by poyson. Nay, his very Bastard son, Henry of Engolisme, a great actor amongst others in the massacre of Paris, perished also by the stab of Philip Altovit a Florentine, his old enemy, in the yeer, 1586. during the raign of Henry the third his brother.