The Primitive Practice for Preserving Truth, Section 12
SECT. XII.
FOr Charles the ninth (third son of Henry the second aforesaid) that succeeded Francis the second his brother, in the Kingdome of France, in the yeer 1560. had he continued his raign with as much mercy and wisdome as he began it, or followed the grave and seasonable advice of Michael Hospitalius his Chancellor in his latter yeers, as well as he did in his former, he had in all likelihood lived as vertuously as hee died miserably. Hee had scarce raigned two yeers in peace and plenty, when Katherine de Medices his mother, desiring to vest and settle the Regencie in her self, by raising combustions in the Realm, began to perswade her son to revive and renew those persecutions against the Protestants which his father had begun; shee reconciled her self to Francis Lorainer, Duke of Guise, whom but a little before she had justly feared and hated, being a secret enemy to Lewes de Clermont, Prince of Conde: He and the Marshall of St Andrew having gained Annas de Memorancy, Constable of France to their party, conspired all together for the utter ruine of the truth. The Protestants in the mean, seeing the King in his Infancy, to be held captive, as it were, by this Triumvirate, take up Arms by the Queenmothers own instigation, to maintain the Kings Edict of Pacification, published in the yeer 1561. and commonly called The Edict of January. The yeer following, by the instigation of the same Triumvirate, not only the Queen-mother, but Anthony de Clermont (usually sirnamed Bourbon) King of Navar also, (who yet died a Protestant) was drawn on to assail the said Protestants by open force, they in the mean time filling the Queen-mothers ears with these vain flatteries, that she should soon see the utter ruine of all the Heretikes in France; from which time that goodly kingdome, so rich, peaceable and flourishing, for neer upon forty yeers together, (some short times of truce and peace being interposed) was filled with cruelties, ravages, ravishments, blood-shedding, battels, sires, slaughters, and all other calamitous desolations that accompany intestine and civill broiles; in the issue of all which, the Protestants being increased in their strength and numbers, obtained a more firm and advantageous peace then ever they had before enjoyed: whereas those three Incendiaries of all these miseries perished within a few yeers after, by the just judgement of God, in the very act of their hostile pursuements of his children: The Marshall of Saint Andrew was slain at the battell of Dreux, Annas de Memorancie under the very walls of Paris, and Francis Lorainer, Duke of Guise, was pistolled by John Poltrot, at the siege of Orleance. King Charles seeing that open force could not destroy the truth, nor root out the Professors thereof, about two yeers before the hellish massacre began at Paris, and continued to the perpetuall infamy of France in divers other Cities in that Realm, held a secret Councell in the Castle of Blois with Katherine de Medices his mother, Alexander and Hercules (called also Henry and Francis) his two brothers, and Henry Lorainer, son and heir of the before pistolled Duke Francis, Duke of Guise; by what means they might best draw the Protestants into their toile to destroy and murther them. The same Councell was held again by King Charles in the house of Hieronimo de Gondy at St. Clou, and the time and order of the bloody marriage banquet to be served in at the nuptials of the King of Navar, with the Lady Margaret his sister, was there agreed upon, and resolved of, almost, in the same manner as it was afterwards put in execution upon the 24. day of August, being St Bartholomews day, in the yeer 1572. in which were most inhumanely slaughtered within the space of few dayes, of men, women and children, many of them also being great and honourable personages of either sex, about thirty thousand: And while the Duke of Guise was busie in prosecuting that mercilesse and inhumane execution, it was seriously advised upon, and disputed of, in the Queenmothers Cabinet-councell, whether it were not necessary that hee himself, and the rest of his family then there, should also be dispatched at the same time in that tumult: King Charles himself never saw good day after that bloody massacre, although his Court sycophants had promised him it should prove the first happy day of his absolute Monarchie; for though hee had been long drenched in lust, (a sin seldome separated from a Persecutor) by his ordinary advowtrie with a mean wench of Orleance, on whom hee begot Charles of Engolisme, after Earle of Auvergne; and though he had been trained up by his mother, to see the flaughter of beasts, and ever in the chases loved to both his hands in the bloud of the fallen game, (all which might have served to have stupefied his conscience, as they did enflame his sierce and cruell nature) yet so stinging a remorse in his inward man did ever pursue and haunt him after that mercilesse slaughter accomplished chiefly by his often swearing and forswearing himself, (by which the Queen of Navar, and the Admirall Chasrilion were deceived) as that his eyes rolled often uncertainly in the day with feare and suspicion; and his sleep was usually interrupted in the night with dismall dreams & apparitions, like R. 3. of England, after the murther of his two Nephews in the Tower of London; nay, though he survived not this inhumane slaughter sull two yeares, yet had he plotted and decreed the death of the said Henry Duke of Guise, and the removall of his Queen-mother & her instruments from the helm of State: But some of his agents that were to have acted these last feats, playing false with him, (as he had some few dayes before the said massacre poysoned that incomparable Princesse for learning and piety, Joan D'Albret Queen of Navar, Grandmother to Lewes the thirteenth, now King of France:) so did his mother or the Duke of Guise, by way of prevention or anticipation minister to him his fatall physick, of which, after many sharp and grievous torments, he deceased upon Whitsunday, having not then attained to the five and twentieth yeare of his age, in the yeare 1574. the violence of the venome leaving in his intrailes (as appeared upon his distection) many blew spots and swellings.