Page:Protestant Exiles from France Agnew vol 1.djvu/346

 great political changes in England. On the 23d May there was concluded a treaty of commerce with Spain, and on the 24th of August, peace with Holland. On the 31st of August, the Earl of Clarendon was dismissed. All these changes alarmed France so much, that on the 11th of September Ruvigny sought an audience with King Charles, having come over with instructions “to sound the disposition of the English Court, and to know whether, upon Clarendon’s being turned out, the king had not been prevailed on to quit the friendship of France and enter into a closer alliance with Spain.” The Marquis continued to hold communications with the English Court during this and the following year. In 1668, Claud Roux, Sieur de Marcilli, went to the Protestant courts of Europe, detailing all the injustice done to the Protestants of France, and declaring that Louis XIV. had vowed the ruin of the Huguenots. Unfortunately for himself, and for Ruvigny also, his visit to Charles II. was during the Marquis’s embassy in England. Marcilli made a great impression on Charles and on many Members of Parliament, and was allowed to leave England without molestation. Ruvigny obtained all these particulars in England, as well as information that Marcilli had gone to Switzerland. As an accredited servant of France, he sent home this intelligence, which led to the unfortunate man’s apprehension and execution in 1669. What can be said in Ruvigny’s defence amounts to this, (1st) that he did not believe that Louis had made any sanguinary vow; he afterwards told Burnet, “I was long deceived as to his feelings towards the Protestants, knowing he was not of a sanguinary disposition naturally, and knowing well how grossly ignorant he was on religious questions.” (2dly) Technically Marcilli was guilty of treachery; “ce scelcrat” Ruvigny called him. (Despatch, dated 29th May 1668.) In that age unauthorised communications with foreign potentates were regarded as more lawless and dangerous than they are now. (3dly) Marcilli’s schemes included both civil war and a plot against the life of the King of France. I may add in connection with the first of these excuses, that Ruvigny at this date did not despair of the French Protestants obtaining the lasting protection of Louis XIV. He was in the habit of warning the king that the furious and blind zeal of his confessor and of the provincial magistrates would drive out of him the generosity and equity which were natural to him. The odium of frequent oppressions and persecutions was always imputed to priests and bigoted advisers, and not to the king, who was believed to be tolerant and humane. Religion was not a subject of which the gay monarch had any accurate knowledge, or for which he had any enthusiastic predilection; and the feuds of the Jesuits and Jansenists within the pale of the Roman Catholic Church were fitted to weaken his attachment to that body, and also to contradict the theory that there would be peace and unanimity if there were no Huguenot party in the kingdom. Personally the Protestant people commended themselves to the king by their honesty, industry, and talents.

Though Ruvigny’s head-quarters were in London, he occasionally paid visits to Paris when the interests of the Huguenots required them; for instance, in the winter of 1667, when “the most Christian king” was planning the suppression of the Mixed Chambers. These were courts of law presided over by a bench including some Protestant judges. As they had been established for the Protestant population by the Edict of Nantes, they were named Chambers of the Edict. On hearing of the ordinance for their abolition, all the provincial deputies of the churches rushed to Paris to the residence of the Lord-Deputy-General, who procured the king’s permission for their attendance at the Palace of the Tuileries. Accordingly, on the 27th of November 1667, Pastor Du Bosc was admitted to the royal closet to plead. The king listened very graciously, and persevering in dissimulation, replied to the following effect:—

“Ruvigny has already spoken to me of the affair which you have now represented to me, and has touched on some of the reasons which you have alleged. On your general interests I say nothing; I wait for the Commissioners’ report thereupon. As to the ordinance for the suppression of the chambers, it was a reform, not intended to prejudice those of your religion, but inaugurating a remodelled system, breathing within a new framework the same impartiality towards those of that religion.”

Du Bosc, being permitted to reply, said — “The question was not so much as to