edifices. -Courts of law, and of criminal judicature. - State of the Gallican church. - Immunities of the clergy. Revenues. Taxes levied on the ecclesiastical property. Alienations. Abuses. Pluralities. Sale of tual acts of violence and cruelty exercised between Catholics and Protestants. Perversion of the human State of literature, the sciences, and the fine arts. - Na- tural philosophy. Astronomy. - Pharmacy. prudence. -Eloquence. - History. -Poetry. Po- lite letters. Erudition of the age. - Imitation of the antients. Protection of learning, and learned men. - dor under the last princes of Valois. Orders of knighthood.- Institution of the order of the Holy Passion for martial exercises. Tournaments, and com- bats at the barrier. Judicial combats. Relation of that between Jarnac and La Chataigneraye. - Defi- ances. Diversions. Entertainments. Sports. Occupations. Colours. Devices. - Rage for gaming. - Theatrical representations. False coiners. Retainers. Spies. Duels. Assassinations. Murders.-Study and practice of magic. - Demoniacs. Astrology. Horoscopes and cal- culations of nativity. - Transmutation of metals, and alchymy. Pilgrimages and jubilees. Roads. Inns. Frequency, and ravages of the plague. Dis- THE HISTORY OF FRANCE. BOOK THE SECOND. AGE OF HENRY THE THIRD. CHAP. I. 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. Revenues. Management of the finances. Public funds. Coin. — force. Infantry. - Cavalry. Arms. Excesses of the soldiery. Artillery.- Ransoms. - Navy. - GalGeneral state of the French marine. lies. THE I. 1574 HE prerogatives enjoyed and exercised, as CHA 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 to approach nearly to that species of power, which we justly denominate arbitrary and un VOL. IV. B limited. 1589. Prerogatives of the French kings. 1589. CHA P. limited. Louis the Eleventh, the Tiberius of I. 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, "the |