Though Henry IV was not the model of a perfect king, I have always thought his conduct towards the Jesuits a strong proof, that his return to the religion of his forefathers was sincere. The parliament, which had opposed him, while he headed the Hugonot party, opposed him now from the motives above alleged, and determined to deprive him of the services of the Jesuits, on whom they knew that he greatly depended, for the re-establishment of the catholic religion. They drove the Jesuits from France with every mark of ignominy, before Henry was strong enough to support them. When {308} his power was consolidated, he restored them to their country, and he chose one of them for his preacher, confessor, and bosom friend. This was the celebrated father Cotton, whom Laicus impudently names in his list of Jesuit regicides. In such rage of faction, it is no wonder that the parliament erected a pillar to the infamy of the persecuted Jesuits. It was not quite so tall as the British monument, which still attests to the heavens, in the words of the lord mayor, Patience Ward, that the city of London was burnt by the malice of the catholics, in 1666. The difference is, that in calmer times the Gallic column, with all the calumnies of Harlay, was erased, but Patience Ward, who had been put into the pillory for perjury, still lies uncontradicted[113]. To the article of regicides I add, that {309} the attempt on the life of Louis XV, in 1757, was not imputed to Jesuits, either by parliaments, or by Jansenists. The calumny in the fourth Letter is, I imagine, the undisputed property of Laicus or his prompters[114]. {310}