courts of Spain and Rome took the side of religious liberty, and
loudly reprobated the cruelty of turning a savage and licentious
soldiery loose on an unoffending people.13 One cry of grief and
rage rose from the whole of Protestant Europe. The tidings of the
revocation of the edict of Nantes reached England about a week
before the day to which the Parliament stood adjourned. It was
clear then that the spirit of Gardiner and of Alva was still the
spirit of the Roman Catholic Church. Lewis was not inferior to
James in generosity and humanity, and was certainly far superior
to James in all the abilities and acquirements of a statesman.
Lewis had, like James, repeatedly promised to respect the
privileges of his Protestant subjects. Yet Lewis was now avowedly
a persecutor of the reformed religion. What reason was there,
then, to doubt that James waited only for an opportunity to
follow the example? He was already forming, in defiance of the
law, a military force officered to a great extent by Roman
Catholics. Was there anything unreasonable in the apprehension
that this force might be employed to do what the French dragoons
had done?

James was almost as much disturbed as his subjects by the conduct
of the court of Versailles. In truth, that court had acted as if
it had meant to embarrass and annoy him. He was about to ask from
a Protestant legislature a full toleration for Roman Catholics.
Nothing, therefore, could be more unwelcome to him than the
intelligence that, in a neighbouring country, toleration had just
been withdrawn by a Roman Catholic government from Protestants.
His vexation was increased by a speech which the Bishop of
Valence, in the name of the Gallican clergy, addressed at this
time to Lewis, the Fourteenth. The pious Sovereign of England,