Page:English Historical Review Volume 35.djvu/607

 1920 REVIEWS OF BOOKS 599 idea of handing Langley over to the nuns received a belated fulfilment. In 1557 Queen Mary re-established the nuns for more than a year in the friars' deserted buildings, until they could get back to their old house, granted to Anne of Cleves for her lifetime. They returned to Dartford late in 1558 and remained there, till their final expulsion on the accession of Elizabeth. Dominican sisters were so rare a phenomenon in England that it is not surprising that the indexer has been misled by the description of their life ' under the rule and habit of St. Augustine ', and by their afiiliation to Langley, though both were normal characteristics of the ' second order ' of preachers. Under ' Dartford ', ' Dominican ' should be added to the entry ' priory of St. Mary and St. Margaret of, under the Augustine rule, prioress and sisters of, charters for ' ; again, ' friars preachers of * seems to imply the existence of an actual friary at Dartford. An even falser impression is conveyed by the entry ' prioress and sisters and prior and brethren of ', under Langley, and by the addition of ' of the order of St. Augustine ' to the entry ' friars preachers of ' under the same heading, Hilda Johnstone. Le Gallicanisme et la Reforme Gatholique. Par Victor Martin. (Paris : Picard, 1919.) M. Martin begins his valuable contribution to the history of the Galilean church by pointing out that the council of Trent greatly disappointed France. That country, while ready to welcome certain measures of church reform, looked mainly to the council for the restoration of reUgious unity. But it brought that desired result no nearer ; it offered no prospect of accommodation with the protestants ; it met all the questions which divided the two parties with a rigid refusal to compromise. M. Martin is interesting on the massacre of St. Bartholomew and its consequences. His view, based on the correspondence of the papal nuncio, is that before the attempt on the admiral's life, a bold stroke, involving the death of many persons, had been decided on. He does not, however, refer either to Lord Acton's celebrated article in the North British Review, in which is printed the most important passage in the nuncio's dispatch of 24 August, or to M. Romier's more recent contribution to the subject in the Revue du Seizieme Siecle (xi. 529 fE.). Both these historians believe, like M. Martin, in the premeditation theory ; but does the evidence prove more than this : that some comprehensive plan, such as the assassination of the protestant leaders, which Alva had advised at the Bayonne inter- view, had been considered ; that Catherine characteristically compromised on the murder of Coligny alone ; and that only when this miscarried she recurred to the larger plan, which the pent-up passions of the populace and the soldiery developed into a general massacre ? The stormy period of the reign of Henry III was unfavourable to the publication of the council's decrees. The politiques were as much opposed to it as the zealous catholics, the later leaguers, were in its favour. In the Estates of 1593 the demand of the clergy for its publication without reserve was accepted by the nobles and the third estate, but the decision