Page:Protestant Exiles from France Agnew vol 1.djvu/343

 On the 10th November 1659, by the king’s warrant, a National Synod assembled once more. Its place of meeting was Loudun in Anjou. The Royal Commissioner, the aged Lord de Magdelaine, was however ordered to announce that this was the last National Synod. Accordingly, though the Synod at its dissolution, 10th January 1660, left matters in the usual train for the calling of another triennial synod, the Rev. John Quick, the English compiler of the “Synodicon in Galliâ Reformatâ,” ends his list of twenty-nine synods thus:— “The next National Synod was appointed to be held in the city of Nismes, but when that will be, Peloni Palmoni, the wonderful numberer, can only and most certainly inform us.”

The appointment of Ruvigny was largely dwelt upon in the Commissioner’s speech. Lord de Magdelaine said:—

“His Majesty commanded me to tell you that immediately upon the death of the Lord D’Arzilliers, who exercised the office of Deputy-General, he appointed the Lord De Ruvigny to succeed him, and to take care of your concerns at Court. Yet his Majesty would not constrain you by mere necessity to have recourse to him only, if for some other medium of communication you have arguments of sufficient strength. Although his Majesty has good grounds to believe that you are well content with the nomination of the Lord Ruvigny, because of those good offices he has already done you, as His Majesty is with all his other employments until now, yet I am ordered to declare to you that you are left at liberty to deliberate about the confirmation of him in this office of Deputy-General, that so after your debate upon it, His Majesty may provide as he shall think, good. If you admit him and desire his confirmation in this office, His Majesty will be very much pleased, hoping that he will continue to acquit himself worthily in it, that so being approved by you he may owe his establishment purely to your consent. In the last National Synod, His Majesty declared it to be his will that no Deputy-General should assist in it. Yet His Majesty, out of mere respect to the Lord De Ruvigny, allows him the use of the privilege to come to the Synod and vote in it at his pleasure, a privilege which has been ever enjoyed by his predecessors in this office.”

The Moderator, the illustrious Daillé, replied:—

“If our churches were to choose for themselves, as the custom was, they could never make a more advantageous election. And we have cause enough to be thankful to His Majesty for granting us the liberty of deliberating about his confirmation in this office, without imposing upon us in this juncture any force or necessity.”

According to De Magdelaine’s official report, Ruvigny laid his commission (of 1653) on the table, stating at the same time that he had been nominated by the king without any solicitation on his part, and that he left himself in the hands of the Synod as to the question of his retaining the appointment any longer. Having also produced the correspondence which showed that his importunity had led the king and Cardinal Mazarin to summon this Synod, he withdrew. The Synod, having deliberated, resolved that no better nomination could have been made. He was called in and took his seat; and the resolution was intimated to him by the Moderator.

Then (to resume Quick’s narrative) the Synod formally appointed him to exercise the office of Deputy- General near His Majesty, administered the usual oath to him, granted him both a deliberative and a decisive vote like his predecessors, and returned to him the king’s writ. They also declared their satisfaction with the Deputy-General in letters to the king and to Cardinal Mazarin. To the latter they said that the Lord Marquis de Ruvigny’s commendable qualities and services obliged them to confirm him in his office. What the Marquis said and did in the Synod is not recorded; we only find him as a Teller in a Division. Perhaps he wrote the theological portion of the Synod’s letter to the king; it must have been a layman who referred His Majesty to the Proverbs of Solomon for a precept taken from the First Epistle of Saint Peter:—

“Sire, The wisest of kings, to his command of fearing God, joined that of honouring the king. These are two duties inseparably linked together. For kings in this world do in some sense hold the very place of God, and are his most lively portraitures on earth, and the steps and degrees of their throne do not raise them above the generality of mankind, but to draw them nearer heaven. These, Sire, are the fundamental maxims of our creed, which we learned in our infancy, and endeavour to practise during our whole life, and to devolve as an inheritance to our flocks.”

It is to this period that St. Evremond’s panegyric probably belongs — (the French editor at vol. i., page 450, informs us that the reference is to “Feu Monsieur le Marquis de Ruvigny, père du Comte de Galway.”):— 