Page:A Biographical Dictionary of the Celebrated Women of Every Age and Country (1804).djvu/610

596 into a plot to escape to the protestant chiefs; but his plan was discovered by Catherine, who greatly enlarged upon it to the king; and, by pretending to make use of means for its full discovery, kept both his majesty (who was then very ill) and the duke almost as state prisoners; and on this plea she apprehended some of the principal nobility, who were disaffected. Mean while the king's indisposition increased; and in its last stage, he issued letters patent to the governors of the provinces, requiring them to obey his mother, during his illness: he also nominated her, on his demise, to the regency of the kingdom, until his brother the king of Poland should arrive. Yet before his death, which happened 1574, he expressed the greatest remorse for the massacre of St. Bartholomew, and the various other cruelties to which he had been instigated by his unnatural mother. Catherine immediately assumed the reins of power, until her son's arrival, closely guarding the king of Navarre and the duke of Anjou.

The people expected an active, vigilant and high spirited monarch; but they found Henry III. irresolute, inconstant, indolent, and voluptuous: a strange compound of sensuality and devotion. Alternately governed by licentious minions, and bigoted priests. Civil war was again kindled, arid the king of Navarre effected his escape to Tours, where he publicly resumed the exercise of the protestant religion. But Catherine once more contrived to avert the storm that hung over the kingdom; and by exerting her usual address in the arts of negotiation, the combined princes were induced to lay down their arms; the reformed were allowed the free exercise of their religion, on condition they should not preach within two miles of Paris. These favourable terms granted to the Huguenots, furnished the catholics with a plau-