24S

HISTOET OP ENGLAND.

crap, impelled so many officers of high rank to desert the royal1 B 8 5. standard. Men who had never before had a scruple had on asudden become strangely scrupulous. Churchill gently whis-pered that the King was going too far. Kirke, just returnedfrom his western butchery, swore to stand by the Protestantreligion. Even if he abjured the faith in which he had beenbred, he would never, he said, become a Papist. He wasalready bespoken. If ever he did apostatize, he was boundby a solemn promise to the Emperor of Morocco to turn Mus-sulman. *

Persecu- While the nation, agitated by many strong emotions,tionofthe. . n . . „ _ , * __ 7

French looked. anxiously forward, to the reassembling of the Houses,

nots!* 6 " tidings, which increased the prevailing excitement, arrived

from France.

The long and heroic struggle which the Huguenots hadmaintained against the French government had been broughtto a final close by the ability and vigour of Richelieu. Thatgreat statesman vanquished them; but he confirmed to themthe liberty of conscience which had been bestowed on themby the edict of Nantes. They were suffered, under somerestraints of no galling kind, to worship God according totheir own ritual, and to write in defence of their own doctrine.They were admissible to political and military employment;nor did their heresy, during a considerable time, practicallyimpede their rise in the world. Some of them commandedthe armies of the state; and others presided over importantdepartments of the civil administration. At length a changetook place. Lewis the Fourteenth had, from an early age,regarded the Calvinists with an aversion at once religious andpolitical. As a zealous Roman Catholic, he detested theirtheological dogmas. As a prince fond of arbitrary power, he

* There is a remarkable account of the first appearance of the symp-toms of discontent among the Tories in a letter of Halifax to Chester-field, written in October, 1CS5, Burnet, i. 684.