The Primitive Practice for Preserving Truth, Section 13
SECT. XIII.
WE have seen the gain and advantage that King Charles the ninth of France made by his barbarous persecutions, 'tis likely that those very flatterers which assured him those cruelties should make him an absolute Monarch, did help to absolve him of his Monarchy. He had his punishment first, his mother, his two brethren, the Cardinal & Duke of Guise, that had not only joyned with him in it, but encouraged him to it, they still survived him, and for ought men saw, were firmly stablished in much safety and prosperity; though Guise might have been warned by the death of Claude, Duke of Aumale his brother, slain at the siege of Rochel, in the yeare 1573. The first act by which Henry the third (the new French King, and brother and heir of Charles deceased) discovered his impotency of spirit, and want of judgement, was his clandestine and sudden stealing out of Poland, where he had been but a few moneths before elected and crowned King: This was the first unfortunate step of his following his mothers weak Dictates, and rejecting the able advises of his own Councell. But her next instructions which shee as fatally gave him, as he weakly pursued, being to root out the Professors of the truth with fire and sword, involved him and his kingdome into innumerable miseries. The good Emperour Maximilian the second, in the Kings passage out of Poland through Germany, and the Venetian State, during his stay there, gave him both of them more faithfull counsell, earnestly advising him to maintain the former Edicts of Pacification, and not to enforce the consciences of men in matter of Religion: The same opinion was generally held by his wisest Counsellers, and by all sober and discreet Romanists at home, who saw plainly, that the Protestants encreasing was the onelyonly meanes now left under heaven, in time at length, to draw the Pope and his Conclave to yeeld to some reformation of the Church, which it exceedingly needed. But other Papists there were of loose and Atheisticall lives, as Lewes Lorainer, Cardinall of Guise, Henry Lorainer his elder brother, Duke of Guise, Renate Villoclare, (a man, saith incomparable Monsieur de Thou, fatally preferred to this Kings attendance by his mother) and divers others, who perswaded the King to break the former Edicts of Pacification, and never to sheath his sword, till he had utterly ruined the Protestants of France, whom some of their foul-mouthed fellow-brethren, Protestants of this age, have stiled French Puritanes, and would, perhaps, had they lived in his time, have joyned their ghostly advices with those of the Cardinall of Guise for the utter extirpation of all such as dissented in judgement or practice from themselves in matter of Ceremony. I have often wondred in the perusall of the story of this King, whose troublesome raign did necessitate his frequent consultations; that when divers advices were propounded, he ever pitched upon the worst and most fatall to himselfe: But I found the two main causes of it to be; first, his blind and inveterate hatred of the truth: and secondly, his weak and degenerate spirit, by which the House of Guise, the Arch-enemies of the Gospel, became at the last so potent, and triumphed so notoriously over his impotency, as they forced him to seek to those very Protestants for support, against whom himself had taken a most wicked and solemn oath, as the head of a faction amongst his own Subjects, for their utter subversion. Infinite almost, was the treasure he spent upon his Minions and pleasures, (his very expences for maintenance of his dogs onelyonly in that age, amounting unto twenty thousand pounds yearely at least) but most was exhausted in the prosecution of his civill wars against the Protestants, and his servile ancillating therein to the ambition of others. Guise and his faction now grown strong, (and assured of support from Philip the second of Spain,) after his expelling the King out of Paris, and heaping a world of other insolent affronts upon him, was drawn by him in the yeare 1588. to the Assembly then held at Blois; he came thither with Lewes Lorainer, Cardinall of Guise his brother, and Charles Prince of Jenvile his son, upon the same royall assurance of safety with which Charles the ninth had (by his advice) deceived the Protestants before the inhumane massacre in the yeare 1572. And now let all Popish and Popishly addicted, Pseudo-Lutherans, who make it a sport to fine, imprison, suspend, vex, and impoverish their fellow-Christians for the lightest matter, draw neer and stand amazed at Gods secret judgements: For during this Assembly at Blois, was this Henry, Duke of Guise, slaughtered, against the publike faith given him, not onelyonly within the Castle of Blois, but in that very room in which sixteen yeares before he had advised the bloudy massacre of Paris to be committed and executed. Two circumstances also that attended his fatall minute, do adde much horror to the punishment it selfe: The first, that he was but new risen from the bed of his adulterate lust, the very morning he was murthered, having not been able to conquer the chastity of a Gentlewoman attending the Queen-mother before that night; and therefore was so eager upon reaping the fruits of his long fiege, as he repaired not to the Councel-chamber till he was often sent for, and scarce ready. The second, in the manner of his first wound, which was given him in his throat, and caused immediately the bloud so abundantly to stream out of his mouth, as he never had time once to call on God for mercy or forgivenesse, but spent the last minute of his life, in the revenging himself on his murtherers. A little after the Cardinall of Guise his brother, a great gamester at Cards and Dice, perished likewise in the same Castle of Blois, by a violent death. Katherine de Medices, the Queen-mother, who had been the chief cause, for neer upon thirty yeers before her death, of the shedding so much innocent blood in France, being present at the same time, in the Castle of Blois, stormed secretly, that so great an action should be entred into, and gone through without her advice; and (when she understood that Charles Lorainer, Duke of Maine was escaped, being the younger brother of the murthered Duke of Guise;) presaged to the King her son, the sad issue of that rash attempt, which he interpretting (as it seems) to be rather the expression of her wishes then her fears; and having, by many wosull experiences, seen the effects of her Italian revengefull spirit, took a course to pacifie her wrath; for not long after, she there ended her unhappy life by poyson, (saith Elias Reusner) in the same Castle also, where she held the first secret and bloody Councell for the execution of the foresaid inhumane massacre. Francis her youngest son, died before her, upon the tenth day of June, 1584. in the one and thirtieth yeer of his age, of so violent a poyson ministred to him, doubtlesse by some of the Hispaniolized Guisards, as it caused his very blood to gush out of his body in severall places; the sight of which purple streams, might well call upon him to remember with what inhumane triumph he trampled on the bloody streets of Paris, in the great slaughter committed on Gods Saints and Martyrs, about twelve yeers before. There now only remained Henry the third, the French King alive, of all the first contrivers and principall executioners of that inhumane massacre, which no age, no time, no action of the most barbarous nations of the world could ever pattern; neither believe I, can any ancient or modern History parallel the following punishments of the chief actors therein in all respects: who not only all of them perished by violent and bloody ends, but proved also the murtherers one of another. Charles Lorainer Duke of Maine was presently upon the death of his brother, made Generall of the holy League; Paris it self, and in a manner, all the Popish cities beyond the Loire, giving up their names and forces to the Henotick faction, supported by Pope Sixtus the fifth, from Rome, and Philip the second from Spain. When the King saw that neither his acting the Monk with the Flagellators, nor his playing the Persecutor against the Protestants would secure him from a speedy ruine, by the violent hands of the rebels: He sends to the victorious King of Naver, his brother in Law, and to the Euangelicall Army, before whose known valour the Popish Forces hastened back from the Loire to the Seine; Henry the third pursues them, and pitched his royall Pavilion at St Clou, not far from the gates of Paris. But his old cruelties and persecutions of the godly, were doubtlesse the Remora of his new expected victories; and the divine providence so ordered it, that in the very place where the last resolution was taken by himself, his Mother, his brethren, and others, for the speedy execution of the beforementioned belluine Massacre, about seventeen yeers before, nay, in the very same house of Hierome de Gondy, and in the very same roome or chamber (saith John de Serres) was he murthered by James Clement, a Jesuited Monk, in the yeer 1589. and in the thirty and ninth yeer of his age. The assassination was furthered by the authority of Pope Sixtus the fifth, by the seditious preachings of the Jesuites, Priests, and Friers, in Paris, (who had secretly drawn infinite numbers into open rebellion before, by their auricular confession) and by the perswasion of the Lady Katharine Mary, Dutchesse of Mompensier, sister of the deceased Duke of Guise, whose horrible transport with malice against the Protestant party, and desire of revenge against the King himself, did so far excaecate and blind her nobler endowments, as she prostituted her body to that Jesuited wretch (as impartiall de Thou himself relates) to incourage him the more in the accomplishment of the murther, and so to stupefie and harden his soul by that fatall sin of lust, that it might not startle at the commission of any other wickednesse whatsoever. Yet as this King some moneths before his death altered his former bloody resolutions against Gods servants, so did the Divine providence at his death afford him some hours of repentance and sorrow, after the bloody knife had been sheathed in his belly: In which he acknowledged his error and sin; his error, in having been so long mis-led by his ambitious and factious Vassalls; his sin, in having persecuted his Protestant Subjects, and inforced the consciences of many to submit to Popery against the known truth by cruelty and threatning.