State of the Gallican church. - Immunities of the clergy. State of literature, the sciences, and the fine arts. — Na- antients. Protection of learning, and learned men. -Progress of the art of printing. — Libels. — Libra- dor under the last princes of Valois. - knighthood. Institution of the order of the Holy Ghost. Officers, and ceremonial of the court. — Pa- bats at the barrier. Judicial combats. Relation of gaming. Theatrical representations. False coiners. - Retainers. Spies. - Duels. Assassinations. Murders.-Study and practice of magic. - Demoniacs. Astrology. Horoscopes and cal- THE HISTORY OF FRANCE. BOOK THE SECOND. AGE OF HENRY THE THIRD. -- CHAP. I. Revenues. Nature, limits, and extent of the royal power, under the last princes of Valois. - Functions of the States General. Institution, and privileges of the parliaments. - Provincial assemblies. Management of the finances. -Public funds. Coin. Military force.- Infantry. - Cavalry. Arms. Excesses of the soldiery. Artillery. - Ransoms. Navy. - Gallies. · General state of the French marine. THE I. 1574 HE prerogatives enjoyed and exercised, as c H A P. well by Henry the Third, as by all the kings of France his predecessors, during the course of the sixteenth century, might be said 1589. to approach nearly to that species of power, tives of the which we justly denominate arbitrary and un- French limited. kings. VOL. IV. B Preroga I. 1589. CHA P. limited. Louis the Eleventh, the Tiberius of France, who combined in his character greater 1574 vices and greater talents, than were perhaps ever seen united on the throne in one man ; had, by the oppression and destruction of the nobility, erected the despotism of the crown upon their ruins. The people became gainers by the exchange of a single tyrant, instead of many for, it would be equally absurd and false to suppose, that at any period since the elevation of the family of Capet, and the formation of the feudal system, the nation collectively was possessed of civil liberty, guaranteed by laws against royal and aristocratic encroachment. Almost all the odious branches of prerogative, exercised in England by the princes of the house of Tudor, and wrested from those of Stuart in the succeeding century, were vested by long prescription in the French monarchs. The ablest civilians, the gravest writers, and the wisest magistrates, who flourished between the accession of Henry the Second in 1547, and the death of Henry the Unlimited Third in 1589, agreed in recognizing the unpower, ex- limited powers of the crown. "The kings of ercised by France," says Cayet, a contemporary author, them. "do not resemble the Polish sovereigns, and "others who swear at their election to observe "the laws made by those who have elected "them but on the contrary, they have the supreme and absolute authority over their people. On their will depend all the delibera"tions of peace and war, the taxes and tributes, 66 "the |