Note 45 — Chapter I

Weiss, La chambre ardente, Paris, 1889, a study of liberty of conscience under Henry II, based upon about five hundred arrêts rendered by the Parlement of Paris between May, 1547, and March, 1550. Before its creation heresy was dealt with by the regular courts. In Bulletin des comités historiques (1850), 173 (“Inventaire des lettres relatives à l’histoire de France aux archives de Bâle”), there is noted a letter of the King written in 1552 to the effect that those who have been arrested for heresy at Lyons shall not be dealt with unjustly; but the King reiterates his determination not to permit any new religious doctrine to obtain. In the very month before his death, in June, 1559, the edict of Ecouan prescribed the death penalty for all heretics, without the least limitation or restriction, and with injunctions to the judges not to mitigate the punishment, as they had done for some years (Castelnau, Book I, chap. iii). The Huguenots regarded Henry II’s death as a judgment of God.—C. S. P. For., No. 899, June 30, 1559: “They let not openly to say the King’s dissolute life and his tyranny to the professors of the gospel hath procured God’s vengeance.” A letter of Diane de Poitiers in the Catalogue de la collection Trémont, No. 424, proves that some of the property confiscated from the Huguenots was given by the King to his favorite.