It is true, as my author has observed in the beginning of his history, that before the Catholic League, or Holy Union, which is the subject of this book, there was a league or combination of Huguenots, against the government of France, which produced the conspiracy of Amboise; and the Calvinist preachers (as Mezeray, a most impartial historian, informs us) gave their opinion, that they might take up arms in their own defence, and make way for a free access to the king, to present their remonstrances. But it was ordered at the same time, that they should seize on the Duke of Guise, and the Cardinal of Lorraine, his brother, who were then chief ministers, that they might be brought to trial by process before the States; but he adds immediately, who could answer for them, that the prisoners should not have been killed out of hand, and that they would not have made themselves masters of the queen-mother’s person, and of the young king’s, which was laid afterwards to their charge? The concealed heads of this conspiracy, were Lewis Prince of Conde, and the famous Admiral de Coligny: who being discontented at court, because their enemies, the Guises, had the management of affairs under the Queen Regent, to their exclusion, and being before turned Calvinists, made use of that rebellious sect, and the pretence of religion, to cover their ambition and revenge. The same Mezeray tells us in one of the next pages, that the name of Huguenots or Fidnos, (from whence it was corrupted,) signifies, League or Association, in the Swiss language; and was brought, together with the sect, from Geneva into France. But from whencesoever they had their name, it is most certain that pestilent race of people cannot, by their principles, be good subjects; for whatever enforced obedience they pay to authority, they believe their class above the king; and how they would order him if they had him in their power, our most gracious sovereign has sufficiently experienced when he was in Scotland.[21] As for their boast that they brought him in, it is much as true as that of the Calvinists, who pretend, as my author tells you in his preface, that they seated his grandfather, Henry IV. upon the throne. For both French and English Presbyterians were fundamentally and practically rebels; and the French have this advantage over ours, that they came in to the aid of Henry III. at his greatest need, or rather were brought over by the king of Navarre, their declared head, on a prospect of great advantage to their religion; whereas ours never inclined to the king’s restoration, till themselves had been trodden underfoot by the independent party, and till the voice of three nations called aloud for him, that is to say, when they had no possibility of keeping him any longer out of England. But the beginning of leagues, unions, and associations, by those who called themselves God’s people, for reformation of religious worship, and for the redress