This, however, was as nothing compared with the hostility evoked by their unscrupulous application of these principles in practice. There was hardly a plot against established rule in Protestant countries with which they were not known or believed to be connected. The invasion of Ireland in 1579, the murder of the Regent Morton in Scotland, and Babington's conspiracy against Elizabeth, emanated from their councils. They were held responsible for the attempted murder of the Prince of Orange in 1580, and for his actual murder in 1584. They loudly applauded Jacques Clement, the assassin of Henri III. in 1589, as 'the eternal glory of France.'[175] Numerous unsuccessful attacks upon the life of Henri IV., culminating in that of Jean Chastel in 1594, caused their expulsion from France. When they returned in 1603, they set to work again;[176] and the assassin Ravaillac, who succeeded in removing the obnoxious champion of European independence in 1610, was probably inspired by their doctrine.[177] They had a hand in the Gunpowder Plot of 1605, and were thought by some to have instigated the Massaere of S. Bartholomew. They fomented the League of the Guises, which had for its object a change in the French dynasty. They organized the Thirty Years' War, and they procured the revocation of the Edict of Nantes. If it is not possible to connect them immediately with all and each of the criminal acts laid to their charge, the fact that a Jesuit in every case was lurking in the background, counts by the force of cumulative evidence heavily against them, and explains the universal suspicion with which they came to be regarded as factious intermeddlers in the concerns of nations. Moreover, their written words accused them; for the tyrannicide of heretics was plainly advocated in their treatises on government. So profound was the conviction of their guilt, that the death of Sixtus V. in 1590, predicted by Bellarmino, the sudden death of Urban VII. in the same year, and the death of Clement VIII. in 1805, also predicted by Bellarmino--these three Popes being ill-affected toward the order--were popularly ascribed to their agency. But of their practical intervention there is no proof. Old age and fever must be credited, in these as in other cases, with the decease of Roman Pontiffs supposed to have been poisoned. [Footnote 175: See Mariana, _De Rege_, lib. i. cap. 6. This book, be it remembered, was written for the instruction of the heir apparent, afterwards Philip III.] [Footnote 176: Henri IV. let them return to France, in mere dread of their machinations against him. See Sully, vol. v. p. 113.]