had a scruple had on a sudden become strangely scrupulous.
Churchill gently whispered that the King was going too far.
Kirke, just returned from his western butchery, swore to stand by
the Protestant religion. Even if he abjured the faith in which he
had been bred, he would never, he said, become a Papist. He was
already bespoken. If ever he did apostatize, he was bound by a
solemn promise to the Emperor of Morocco to turn Mussulman.11

While the nation, agitated by many strong emotions, looked
anxiously forward to the reassembling of the Houses, tidings,
which increased the prevailing excitement, arrived from France.

The long and heroic struggle which the Huguenots had maintained
against the French government had been brought to a final close
by the ability and vigour of Richelieu. That great statesman
vanquished them; but he confirmed to them the liberty of
conscience which had been bestowed on them by the edict of
Nantes. They were suffered, under some restraints of no galling
kind, to worship God according to their own ritual, and to write
in defence of their own doctrine. They were admissible to
political and military employment; nor did their heresy, during a
considerable time, practically impede their rise in the world.
Some of them commanded the armies of the state; and others
presided over important departments of the civil administration.
At length a change took place. Lewis the Fourteenth had, from an
early age, regarded the Calvinists with an aversion at once
religious and political. As a zealous Roman Catholic, he detested
their theological dogmas. As a prince fond of arbitrary power, he
detested those republican theories which were intermingled with
the Genevese divinity. He gradually retrenched all the privileges