The Anglo-French Entente In The Seventeenth Century Part 9

FIRST PART

From a literary point of view the intercourse between England and France in the period that immediately preceded and followed the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes (1685) has been exhaustively studied by M. Texte[140] and M. Jusserand,[141] both coming after M. Sayous.[142] We propose, while tracing the progress of political speculation among the Huguenots, to discover to what extent they influenced English thought. The field of research is extensive: a ma.s.s of information on the subject lies scattered in books, some of which are scarce, and the numerous ma.n.u.script sources have been hitherto imperfectly explored. We cannot hope to do more than draw a general outline of a profoundly interesting subject.

From the dawn of the Reformation, different reasons impelled the Huguenots to look towards England. Besides the natural link formed by community of thought in a matter that then pervaded life, _i.e._ religious belief, political necessities led the Huguenots to seek the friends.h.i.+p of England.

Having the same household G.o.ds, the Huguenots and the English loved the same mystical Fatherland, which dangers, ambitions, and interests shared in common invested with stern reality. As the Huguenots increased, they grew from a sect to a faction which, seeking alliances abroad, sent envoys to the foreign Courts. According also to the vicissitudes of their fortunes, streams of Huguenot refugees would flow from time to time towards the neighbouring countries likely to welcome them. Thus from the first were the Huguenots represented in England, not only by their n.o.blemen, but by their democracy.

A whole book might be written on the influence of Calvin in England, both within and without the Church. To a student of comparative literature, if the word be understood in the larger sense of intercommunication of thought among nations, the part played by Calvin in the early framing of the inst.i.tutions of the English Reformation is a matter not too unimportant to be overlooked.[143]

The first mention of Huguenot refugees in England occurs under the reign of Henry VIII., when in 1535-36 forty-five naturalizations were granted. When, responding to an appeal from Archbishop Cranmer, Bucer and his disciple Buchlein repaired to England, in 1549, they met in the Archbishop's Palace Peter Martyr and "diverse pious Frenchmen."[144] M. de Schickler and M.

Jusserand have rescued from long oblivion Claude de Saint-Lien, who, quaintly anglicising his name into Holy-Band, began earning his bread by teaching his mother tongue.

But it was only after Saint Bartholomew's Day that the Huguenot colonies in England grew to such numbers as to form congregations. Several ill.u.s.trious Huguenots then found a last home in England. Admiral Coligny's brother, Cardinal Odet de Chatillon, lies buried in Canterbury Cathedral. In 1591 Du Plessis-Mornay was in London with Montgomery and the Vidame de Chartres, negotiating an alliance with Elizabeth, and, with characteristic lack of diplomacy, availing himself of his stay in England to intercede with the Queen's counsellors in favour of the Puritans.[145] Though befriended by Archbishop Parker and Sir Robert Cecil, "the gentle and profitable strangers," as Strype calls the Huguenots,[146] were not generally welcome.

Popular prejudice was so strong against the newcomers that a Bill was introduced in Parliament in 1593, prohibiting them from selling foreign goods by retail.[147] The settlers, averaging during the sixteenth century about 10,000, were chiefly skilled artisans, weavers, printers, binders, or ministers, physicians, and teachers. By some curious unexplained accident, Shakespeare lodged from 1598 to 1604 in the house of a Huguenot wig-maker, Christophe Mongoye by name.[148]

With James I. the political preoccupations fell into the background; the King sought the company of the most famous Continental scholars. In 1611 he invited to his Court Isaac Casaubon, and three years later, at the instance of his Huguenot physician, Sir Theodore Mayerne, Pierre Du Moulin, the minister at Charenton. In the train of the scholars came over the men of letters, among them Jean de Schelandre, the future author of the epic _La Stuartide_, inscribed to James I.

In 1642, on the eve of the Civil War, there died in London the notorious Benjamin de Rohan, Lord of Soubise, who had survived in exile an age that belonged to the past. With the fall of La Roch.e.l.le, the political power of the Huguenots was struck down, and there remained no further check on the path of absolute monarchy. Protestant historians are wont to lament the lukewarm faith that marked the period extending from 1629 to the Revolution. Indeed, the outward manifestations of Huguenot zeal had then ceased to be characteristic of the Church militant. The Bearnese or Languedocian gentleman no longer left his castle for the wars, bearing as a twofold symbol of his sect and party the Bible in the one hand and the sword in the other; and the time was yet to come when in the wild Cevennes mountains, in the "Desert," as they said in their highly-coloured language, arose the heroic witnesses of the persecuted Church. The accidental causes that had temporarily given the Huguenots an undue influence in the State ceasing to operate, they appeared from a formidable party suddenly to shrink into insignificance. But their intellectual development meanwhile must not be overlooked. Alone in France, with those that a popular dogmatism, no doubt justified in some cases, contemptibly nicknamed libertines, they were prepared by a suitable mental training to act as a check on the natural bias of the majority regarding its own infallibility.

And over the libertines they had the advantage both of general austereness of life and of a certain readiness to suffer for their convictions.

No doubt the discipline exercised by the Calvinistic organisation discouraged individual eccentricity. The struggle for emanc.i.p.ation over, the leaders who had upheld against the Church of Rome their right of judging in spiritual matters concluded that no further encroachments of individualism on authority were permissible. The Confession of Faith lay heavy upon the Churches; the Synod of Dort, whose decisions had become laws for the French Synods, was singularly like a Reformed Council of Trent.

Still, there remained in the early seventeenth century a wide difference between the mental att.i.tude of a Huguenot and a contemporary Scotch Presbyterian. A minority in France, the Huguenot leaders could not cut off their flocks from the outer world; they mixed with the Catholics, who outnumbered them; they shared in the development of thought in their country; they were not all scholars and divines: some made bold to be men of letters, poets, even libertines.[149] In the literary coteries of the capital, in the incipient French Academy, over which the Protestant Conrart presided, abbes and pastors were reconciled in common admiration for an elegant alexandrine or a correct period.

In his own country, Calvin's system was imperfectly carried out. "The pastors," wrote Richard Simon, the Catholic Hebrew scholar, "subscribe their names to the Confession of Faith only by policy, persuaded as they are that Calvin and the other Reformers did not perceive everything, and effected but an imperfect Reformation."[150] "It cannot be denied," said Du Moulin the elder of a very influential contemporary divine, "that a third of Cameron's works are devoted to a confutation of Calvin, Beza, and our other famous Reformers."[151] Due allowance being made for the prejudice of a Roman Catholic or of an alarmed Orthodox, these statements are borne out by facts. For instance, the Huguenots had none of the Scotch Presbyterian's superst.i.tion for the Calvinistic system of Church government. "I think," said Samuel Bochart, the author of the _Geographia Sacra_, "that those who maintain the divine right either of Episcopacy or of Presbytery are equally in the wrong, and that the heat of the dispute makes them overstate their position; if we are asked which is the better and the fitter for the Church of these two forms of government, it is as though we were asked if it is better for a State to be ruled by monarchs, the n.o.bility, or the people, which is not a question to be decided on the spur of the moment, for that there are nations to which Monarchy is more suitable, to others Aristocracy, and to others Democracy, and that the same laws and customs are not followed everywhere."[152] When Bishop Henchman, in 1680, asked the ministers at Charenton their opinion on the respective merits of Episcopacy and Presbytery, Claude and De l'Angle answered that the question of Church government was one of expediency.[153]

The same detachment appeared in a more important matter. The Reformation, certainly against the wish of its promoters, opened the flood-gates of free inquiry. From the Church of Rome the Reformers appealed to Scripture, but underlying that appeal was a right given to reason to decide what construction should be put upon the divine message. The inconvenience of the process was not felt at first. In an age of faith, reason is docile and asks no questions. On the points upon which the Reformers had made no innovation, reason accepted the traditional teaching; on the others, it had free play without arousing the suspicions of Synods. But soon the teaching of the Reformers came to be questioned. Once the horse held the bit in his mouth, he could not be restrained in his headlong progress. So it came to pa.s.s that in France, as in England and Holland, through the same cause, lat.i.tudinarians followed in natural sequence the Reformers. A Royal Edict of 1623 forbidding the students to the ministry to leave France, while severing the tie that bound the Huguenots to Geneva, hurried on the revolutionary movement. The students flocked to the Academies of Sedan and Saumur, and soon two schools of divinity flourished opposed to each other, that of Sedan upholding orthodoxy, while that of Saumur became the nucleus of French lat.i.tudinarianism. Neither Cameron nor his disciple Amyraut, the two luminaries of the latter school, were Arminians--their philosophy was an offshoot of Cartesianism; like the English lat.i.tudinarians, they drew a distinction between fundamentals and accidentals, and dreamed the generous dream--a dream at most--of a Church so comprehensive as to include all the Christians accepting the Apostles' Creed.

A little book published anonymously at Saumur in 1670, under the t.i.tle of _La Reunion du Christianisme ou la maniere de rejoindre tous les Chrestiens sous une seule Confession de Foy_, sets forth in a bold ingenuous form the aspirations of this school. "Some time ago a method of reasoning and of making sure progress towards truth was proposed in philosophy.[154] To that effect it is a.s.serted that we must rid ourselves of all preconceived notions and of all preoccupations of mind. We must receive at first only the most simple ideas and such propositions as no one can dispute who hath the slightest use of reason. Might we not imitate the process in religion?

Might we not set aside for a time all the opinions that we upheld with so much ardour, to examine them afterwards with an open unimpa.s.sioned mind, adhering always to our common principle, which is Holy Scripture?"[155]

D'Huisseau, the author of the book, answered with a young man's confidence the most obvious objection. On a few simple dogmas all Christians would be agreed; there would be no difference between a "Doctor of the Church" and a poor man, since primitive Christianity is understood of all men. Then, with Gallic faith in the efficacy of State intervention, he added: "Above all, I think that those who can strike the hardest blows on that occasion, are the Princes and those who rule the States and manage the public affairs. They can add the weight of their authority to that of the reasons alleged in that undertaking; and their power will be most efficacious in giving value to the exhortations of others."[156]

In spite of this appeal to secular aid, the school of Saumur furthered toleration. By the distinction they drew between fundamentals and accidentals, they tended to deprive the Churches of some pretexts for persecuting. No doubt they examined the question from the ecclesiastical and not the political point of view, but their freedom from the prejudices of their gown was a signal service to progress.

Another instance of detachment, all the more noticeable because of its consequences in England, was Daille's att.i.tude towards the Fathers.

Published in 1632, his _Traite de l'emploi des Saints-Peres pour le jugement des differends qui sont aujourd'hui en la religion_ was translated into English in 1651. It is no exaggeration to state that to this book was due the scant reverence shown in the seventeenth century by Protestant theology for the authority of the Fathers. The Bible, as the Saumur school desired, became the rule of faith, until in the early eighteenth century its authority came to be questioned in its turn.

The development of theological thought followed therefore in France about the same lines as in England. When considered from a merely intellectual point of view, the speculative activity of the Huguenots, in the period intervening between the fall of La Roch.e.l.le and the Revocation, gives the impression of an orchard in April, in which the trees covered with blossoms promise abundance of fruit. The impending frost blasted those hopes. What fruit ripened was not gathered in France.

The relation between a critical att.i.tude in theology and in politics has often been noticed. A common charge brought against the early Reformers was that of sedition. Though the charge was unfounded in most cases, popular instinct sharpened by enmity was right in the main. Even Protestant writers admitted the temptation of men who had rebelled against the Church to rebel against the State. Some profound observations they made on the tendency of the human mind to extend the scope of a method of reasoning, and to evolve out of a philosophical theory a programme of political reform long before the students of political science of our own time made a similar observation. "All the subtleties," said D'Huisseau, "that are called forth in religion generally make the minds of the people inquiring, proud, punctilious, obstinate, and consequently more difficult to curb into reason and obedience. Every private man pretends to have a right to investigate those controverted matters, and, bringing his judgment to bear upon them, defends his opinion with the utmost heat. Afterwards they wish to carry into the discussion of State affairs the same freedom as they use in matters of religion. They believe that since they are allowed to exercise control over the opinions of their leaders in the Church, where the service of G.o.d is concerned, they are free to examine the conduct of those that are set over them for political government."[157] With still keener insight did Bayle, twenty years later, perceive the political import of certain tenets of the Reformation. The emphasis laid upon the divine command to "search the Scriptures," marked the beginning of a new era for humanity. Bidden as a most sacred duty to judge for themselves, men could not be withheld from wandering into the forbidden field of secular politics.

As the infallibility of the priest, so the infallibility of the ruler came to be questioned. But if the principle of free inquiry, or, as Bayle terms it, "l'examen particulier dans les matieres de foi,"[158] would lead necessarily to civil liberty, another tenet led to equality. "When there was a pressing need, any one had a natural vocation for pastoral functions."[159] Universal priesthood drew no distinction between a caste of priests and the people, between the princes or magistrates and the rabble. In cases of necessity, leaders, political as well as religious, might spring from the ranks, as the prophets of Israel did, holding their commissions directly from Heaven.

But the seditious Huguenot negotiating against the King of France with Englishmen and Hollanders, and marching against the capital at the head of an army of mercenary Germans, had now disappeared as a type. The mangled remains of the great admiral, martyred for the cause of political and religious liberty, lay in the chapel of Chatillon Castle. The Condes had gone back to Roman Catholicism. With the advent of Henri de Navarre, sedition became loyalism. Though brought up upon the works of Hotman, Languet, and Du Plessis-Mornay, the Huguenot found little difficulty in bowing, with the rest of his countrymen, before the throne of absolutism.

The Synod of Tonneins condemning as early as 1614 the doctrine of Suarez, "exhorts the faithful to combat it, in order to maintain, together with the right of G.o.d, that of the sovereign power which He has established."[160]

The Synod of Vitre (1617) addresses Louis XIII. in these words: "We acknowledge after G.o.d no other sovereign but Your Majesty. Our belief is that between G.o.d and the Kings, there is no middle power. To cast doubt upon that truth is among us a heresy, and to dispute it a capital crime."[161]

The Civil War in England made it imperative for the Huguenots to frame a theory of government. Readily confounded by popular malice with English Presbyterians and Independents, they were bound to be on the alert. In 1644, complaints from the Maritime Provinces of attempts on the part of "Englishmen belonging to the sect of Independents" to spread their doctrines among the people, gave the Synod of Charenton an opportunity of condemning them as "a sect pernicious to the Church" and "very dangerous enemies to the State."[162]

The relations between the Huguenots and the Puritans thus so unexpectedly revealed are still uncertainly known. As early as 1574, La Roch.e.l.le had been in close touch with the extreme Elizabethan Puritans, Walter Travers causing one of his works of controversy to be printed there.[163] In 1590 two of the Martin Marprelate tracts were issued from the presses of La Roch.e.l.le,[164] and Waldegrave, one of the factious printers, took refuge there. During the Civil War there seem to have been active negotiations going on between some of the Parliamentary leaders and the Bordeaux malcontents. These found the doctrines of the Levellers more to their taste than the more moderate schemes of Cromwell, Ireton, and the "grandees."

They even sketched out for France, or at least Guyenne, a Republican Const.i.tution. For those who have been taught to explain the French Revolution by racial theories, nothing is more disconcerting than to learn how the ancestors of the Revolutionists caught some of their most advanced ideas from their English co-religionists. They clamoured for a representative a.s.sembly, liberty of conscience, trials by jury, the abolition of privileges. "The peasant," they wrote, "is as free as a prince, coming into this world without either wooden shoes or saddle, even as the king's son without a crown on his head. So every one is by birth equally free and has the power to choose his own government."[165] If it is astounding enough to hear almost a century and a half before the fall of the Bastille the cry of liberty and equality, it is startling to think that the English had raised it.

The tragedy enacted at Whitehall on 30th January 1648-49, stirred up in Europe a horror equal only to that caused nearly a century and a half later by the execution of Louis XVI. of France. "We gave ourselves up," wrote Bochart, "to tears and afflictions, and solemnised the obsequies of your King by universal mourning."[166] One of the most distinguished laymen in the Rouen congregation, Porree the physician, declared that "all true Protestants abhorred that execrable parricide."[167]

The Doctors of the Church delivered their opinion in emphatic terms. In 1650 two works appeared exalting the royal prerogative.[168] Amyraut, the lat.i.tudinarian professor of Saumur, was the author of one of them;[169]

Bochart that of the other.[170] Their argument is mainly Biblical. The kings being G.o.d's vice-regents, are accountable only to Him. To sit in judgment upon them, to inflict them bodily injury, is heinous sacrilege.

"Kings are absolute and depend only on G.o.d; it is never allowed to attempt their lives on any pretence whatsoever."[171] Yet Amyraut recorded a remarkable reservation in which the regicides could have found their justification: "Except there be an express command, proceeding from G.o.d directly, such as those given to Ehud and Jehu, nothing may be attempted against the kings without committing an offence more hateful to G.o.d than the most execrable parricide."[172] Dr. Gauden's _Eikon Basilike_ had a great success in France, two translations penned by Huguenots appearing, that of Denys Cailloue[173] in 1649, that of Porree[174] a year later.

Lastly, all students of English literature remember that Claude de Saumaise wrote the _Defensio regia pro Carolo Primo_, and Pierre Du Moulin the _Clamor sanguinis regiae ad coelum contra parricidas Anglicanos_ (1652).

The Huguenots showed zeal not only in condemning the King's execution and in vindicating his memory from the charges of the Commonwealthsmen, but in furthering the Restoration of his son, Charles II., by proclaiming his t.i.tle to the Crown of England.[175]

The Restoration coincided with the majority of Louis XIV. The Synod of Loudun, whose moderator was Daille, then an old man, proclaimed the duty of pa.s.sive obedience: "Kings depend immediately on G.o.d; there is no intermediate authority between theirs and that of the Almighty."[176]

"Kings in this world are in the place of G.o.d, and are His true living portrait on earth, and the footstool of their throne exalts them above mankind, only to bring them nearer Heaven. Such are the fundamental principles of our creed."[177]

Significant it is to see the divine of world-wide repute, whose youth was spent with Du Plessis-Mornay, the co-author, most probably, of the _Vindiciae contra Tyrannos_,[178] solemnly recalling the duty of subjects to princes on the threshold of an era of absolutism in Europe, supposed by every one except some Fifth-Monarchy men to be of long duration.

Yet the Huguenots, with all their submissiveness, were not thought sincere.

Public opinion had not forgotten the lessons of the sixteenth century. "To be candid," wrote Richard Simon to Fremont d'Ablancourt, "most of your ministers were not born for a monarchy such as that of France. They take liberties permissible only in a Republic, or in a State where the King is not absolute."[179]

The factious individualism latent in every Huguenot only awaited favourable circ.u.mstances to come to light. The concessions of a vanquished party to their victors explain how political thought depended on theological thought. But among the refugees in England, the pa.s.sive-obedience doctrine imbibed in the mother-country did not endure.

Pierre Du Moulin, who, at the invitation of James I., had twice visited England, in 1615 and in 1623, left two sons, Peter and Lewis, who both settled in England. The elder, who accepted the living of Saint John's, Chester, and became at the Restoration chaplain to Charles II. and Prebendary of Canterbury, is the author of _Clamor sanguinis_, wrongly attributed by Milton to another French pastor, of Scottish descent, Alexander Morus. A staunch Royalist, he published in 1640 a _Letter of a French Protestant to a Scotsman of the Covenant_, and also in 1650 a _Defense de la Religion reformee et de la monarchie et Eglise Anglicane_, and after the Restoration _A Vindication of the Protestant Religion in the Point of Obedience to Sovereigns_ (1663). The younger brother, Lewis, threw in his lot with the Commonwealthsmen, was appointed Camden Professor of Ancient History at Oxford (September 1648), and deprived on the accession of Charles II. He remained, in spite of the idle story of his recanting on his death-bed in presence of Burnet, a st.u.r.dy Independent, publis.h.i.+ng the very year of his death an apology for Independency.[180] A more striking instance of the discord which rent England during the Civil War could hardly be found. Party spirit ran high among the refugees, Jean de la Marche, the pastor of the French congregation in Threadneedle Street, being violently opposed by his flock for becoming an Independent,[181] while Herault, the minister of Alencon, having during a stay in London vented his Royalist opinions, was compelled to seek safety in flight.[182] Another minister, Jean d'Espagne, sided with the Protector, who granted him permission to preach in Somerset House, and graciously accepted the dedication of a book.[183] At an earlier date, three French divines had sat in the Westminster a.s.sembly.[184] About the same time, some active, intelligent Huguenot was busy publis.h.i.+ng in London for Continental readers a French newspaper.[185]

The refugees thus took part in the internal dissensions of their adopted country. As a rule, to be favourable to the Stuarts they need be dependents on the Court or the Church; if merchants, they would usually side with the opposition, thus revealing the revolutionist ever lurking in the Calvinist.

When Shaftesbury, at the time of the agitation on the Exclusion Bill, thought of making London a Whig stronghold, in view of a possible _coup d'etat_, his main coadjutors seem to have been the elected sheriffs for Middles.e.x, Papillon and Dubois, two refugees. The battle fought and lost, Papillon fled to Amsterdam; but not before the thought crossed his mind of returning to the beloved mother-country: "I should not," he wrote from Holland, "have taken refuge here if I could go to France and wors.h.i.+p there freely."[186]

Such a letter helps us to realise the loss suffered by France from the exile of men like Papillon. Their talents were not uncommon; in their own country, unmolested, they would have led useful, obscure lives, open-minded enough withal to welcome the inevitable change sooner or later to take place in European politics.

In spite of the efforts of the French King[187] and the disfavour shown the Huguenots by the exiled Anglicans,[188] the intercourse between England and the Huguenots continued after the Restoration. The French churches in England formed a natural link which survived the Act of Uniformity. The Huguenots, as well as Louis XIV., had their amba.s.sadors in London, and, in some cases, these unofficial envoys were better informed than Colbert de Croissy or Barillon, for they could speak and write English and showed little reluctance to become Churchmen. Some obtained high preferment. This explains how Jurieu, called to England on leaving college by the Du Moulins, was ordained in the Church.[189]

In the precincts of the Court gathered some men of letters, refugees and scholars, Catholics and Protestants, the best known of whom is Saint-Evremond. Vossius, his "ami de lettres,"[190] was then Canon of Windsor, and to the latter's uncle Du Jon (Junius), librarian to the Earl of Arundel, who though born at Heidelberg was of Huguenot descent, England owes some of the earliest studies in Anglo-Saxon. These literati gathered round the d.u.c.h.ess of Mazarin, the Cardinal's niece, at her little court at Windsor, when Vossius, a pedant like most scholars in his age, would discourse on Chinese civilisation and the population of ancient Rome,[191]

Saint-Evremond read a paper of verses, the d.u.c.h.ess speak of her interminable lawsuit with the bigoted, doting old Duke, her husband; and the company would be merry upon her recounting how he directed his grandchild's nurse to make the infant fast, in literal accordance with the Church commandments, on Fridays and Sat.u.r.days.[192] The librarian to Archbishop Sancroft, Colomies, may have been admitted to the circle. On his arrival in England, he had found Vossius a useful friend, and through the latter's exertions was ordained in the Church of England, became a thorough Episcopalian, and was, like his patron, strongly suspected of Socinianism.

Their friends.h.i.+p for Dr. Morales, a Jew of Amsterdam and one of this literary circle, only confirmed the suspicion. But in Madame de Mazarin's salon theological disputes were infrequent. For France, anti-Protestantism then was not an "article of exportation." Far from being fanatical, the temper of these literati savours somewhat of a much later indifferentism.

Perhaps the courtly scepticism of the Restoration proved contagious. For Saint-Evremond a system of ethics did very well in place of a Confession of Faith. "The Faith is obscure, the Law clearly expressed. What we are bound to believe is above our understanding, what we have to do is within every one's reach."[193]

Most of his friends were Protestants, and he never felt bitterness against them: "I never experienced that indiscreet zeal that makes us hate people, because they do not share our opinions. That false zeal takes its rise in conceit, and we are secretly inclined to mistake for charity towards our neighbour what is only an excessive fondness for our private opinions."[194]

This paragraph strikes the keynote of the temper that reigned in the French circle at Windsor. On foreign land, out of the reach of Gallican maxims of policy and priestly intrigue, the two Frances, Catholic and Huguenot, not without an admixture of "libertinage," met, a picture of what might have been, had the dream of Michel de l'Hopital and De Thou, maybe of Henri IV., been realised.

The most notable Huguenot in this circle was Louis XIV.'s ex-secretary, Henri Justel, a "great and knowing virtuoso,"[195] as Evelyn calls him, whom Charles II. appointed King's librarian in 1681. He seems to have been a very grave, courteous, and modest scholar. Having no literary ambition,[196] he went through life exciting no envy, free from envy himself. His religious convictions were sincere, and he made sacrifices to ensure them. Martyrdom, Renan said, is not so difficult after all. With nerves strung to a high pitch, fearful lest the jeering crowd should discern a sign of weakness, the victim of the Roman emperors stepped forth into the arena without the slightest tremor. Physical pain, the apprehension of death, were lost in the light of the glorious crown which the witness of Christ's word felt already encircling his brow. Some such feeling may have stirred the humble preacher that the Intendant sentenced to be hanged, or the obscure peasant whom the dragoons dragged away to the Toulon galleys. But nothing short of a very rare uprightness of mind, a sound probity towards self, could drive Justel to forsake all that a man and a scholar loves--his books, his friends, his ease, his beloved country. Saint-Evremond failed to understand Justel's higher motives of conduct. "Allow me," he wrote to him, "not to approve your resolution to leave France, so long as I shall see you so tenderly and so lovingly cherish her memory. When I see you sad and mournful, regretting Paris on the banks of our Thames, you remind me of the poor Israelites, lamenting Jerusalem on the banks of the river Euphrates. Either live happily in England, with a full liberty of conscience, or put up with petty severities against religion in your own country, so as to enjoy all the comforts of life."[197]

So the tempter spoke, and, to support his hard lot, Justel had none of the martyr's incentives. To those of his own faith, his constancy must have seemed surprising. Far from encouraging him to keep within the fold, the Consistory of Charenton had grossly insulted him.[198] The great value to a country of men like that faithful scholar is their love of spiritual independence. A letter that he wrote to Edward Bernard, professor of astronomy at Oxford, on February 16, 1670, shows what a price he paid to keep his fathers' faith. After stating that Claude is preparing an answer to a book of Arnault, and wishes to adduce against transubstantiation the evidence of some modern Greeks, he says that all the libraries in France being closed to the religionists, he must perforce have recourse to the Bodleian Library and its rich collection of oriental ma.n.u.scripts.[199] In this appeal of a scholar I find as much pathos as in any account of dragonnades.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A SCHEME OF THE PERSECUTION]

Yet Saint-Evremond could not understand that the prize was worth the fight.

His sense of equity was undisturbed by the Revocation. The King's method of dealing with heretics was rough, but justifiable. Instead of resisting openly, the Protestants should more or less sullenly acquiesce, and count on their sharpness of wits to evade the ordinances. "Churches are opened or closed according to the Sovereign's will, but our hearts are a secret church where we may wors.h.i.+p the Almighty."[200] "Be convinced," he wrote to Justel, "that Princes have as much right over the externals of religion as their subjects over their innermost conscience."[201]

In its far-reaching consequences, the Revocation can be compared only to the French Revolution. Both events excited in England a profound pity for the victims and a feeling of execration against their tormentors; both led to a protracted struggle with France; both, after giving France a temporary glory, plunged her into misery, humiliation, and defeat. The Huguenots fled to divers countries, some settling in New England, others in South Africa, the most considerable portion finding a new home in Holland and England.

In Holland they met the English Whigs, driven from their country upon the Tory reaction following the defeat of the Exclusion Bill. A close relations.h.i.+p was established between the Huguenots in England and in Holland, and when the crown of England was given to a Prince of Orange, the refugees in both countries formed one colony whose thoughts and aims were the same, and whose sympathy and interests were with the more liberal party in England. The sentimental impression made by the persecution strikes one the most: "The French persecution of the Huguenots," wrote Evelyn, "raging with the utmost barbarity, exceeded even what the very heathens used....