Huguenot massacre for a dozen years. During the period in which the
Queen Regent was resolved to play her fast and loose policy, all the
persuasions of Philip and the arts of Alva were powerless to induce her
to carry out the scheme which Henry had revealed to Orange in the forest
of Vincennes. When the crime came at last, it was as blundering as it
was bloody; at once premeditated and accidental; the isolated execution
of an interregal conspiracy, existing for half a generation, yet
exploding without concert; a wholesale massacre, but a piecemeal plot.

The aristocracy and the masses being thus, from a variety of causes, in
this agitated and dangerous condition, what were the measures of the
government?

The edict of 1550 had been re-enacted immediately after Philip's
accession to sovereignty. It is necessary that the reader should be made
acquainted with some of the leading provisions of this famous document,
thus laid down above all the constitutions as the organic law of the
land. A few plain facts, entirely without rhetorical varnish, will prove
more impressive in this case than superfluous declamation. The American
will judge whether the wrongs inflicted by Laud and Charles upon his
Puritan ancestors were the severest which a people has had to undergo,
and whether the Dutch Republic does not track its source to the same
high, religious origin as that of our own commonwealth.

"No one," said the edict, "shall print, write, copy, keep, conceal, sell,
buy or give in churches, streets, or other places, any book or writing
made by Martin Luther, John Ecolampadius, Ulrich Zwinglius, Martin Bucer,
John Calvin, or other heretics reprobated by the Holy Church; nor break,
or otherwise injure the images of the holy virgin or canonized saints....
nor in his house hold conventicles, or illegal gatherings, or be present