Clement VIII., the last pope of the 16th century, having ordered the French to choose a king catholic in name and in deed, the sudden Catholicism of Henry turned the tables on the court of Rome, the league, and the intrigues of Spain. The pope preferred absolving Henry to seeing him reign and prosper in defiance of the Holy See. In truth, the representatives of the king, Perron and d’Ossat, lent themselves very complaisantly to the ceremonies of the absolution;³¹⁰ and they had not much difficulty in obtaining the suppression of the formula: “We reinvest him in his royalty.” But the absolved prince took a decisive measure against the pretensions of the court of Rome, in securing to the Protestants, by the Edict of Nantes, the free exercise of their religion and full enjoyment of their civil rights. When the catholic clergy came to require of him the publication of the decrees of the council of Trent, he evaded the proposition with that ingenious and easy politeness which distinguished the manners of the French, and which embellished in those of Henry IV. courage, fortitude and truth. Yet this Henry, publicly adored by the nation, fanaticism proscribed in secret; and the Jesuits, whom the poignards of Barriere and John Chatel had ill served, sharpened that of Ravaillac. ³¹⁰ Bossuet Def. Clsr. Gall. 1. 3. c. 28. In 1597, Alphonso II. duke of Ferrara, dying without children, Clement resolved to make himself master of this duchy, and made so good a use of his spiritual and temporal arms, that he succeeded in this undertaking to the exclusion of Cesar d’Este, the heir of Alphonso. This pope and his predecessors have been often reproached, since the death of Julius II. with a vacillating policy, and an extreme fickleness in their enmities and alliances. Let us not mistake these charges for proofs of unskilfulness; they evidence only the difficulties of the circumstances, and the state of weakness, in which the the schism of Avignon, the progress of heresy, and the ascendancy of some princes, had placed the Holy See. If during the sixteenth century the chair of St. Peter has been almost continually occupied by skilful pontiffs, this age also presents to us seated on most of the thrones, celebrated sovereigns, whose virtues, talents, or energetic characters, severally recommended them to the historian: for example, Henry VIII. and his daughter Elizabeth, in England; Louis XII. Francis 1. and Henry IV. in France; Charles V. and Philip II. in Spain. None of our modern eras has been more fertile in memorable men in all pursuits. And yet the court of Rome renounced none of its pretensions; it upheld the traditions of its ancient supremacy; it continued to speak in the language of Gregory VII. and Innocent III. What more could she do in the midst of so many formidable rivals? It was doing much to weather the tempests and preserve herself for better times. But these times did not come, and the