religion, shall be allowed to have any thing to do with the care of either Catholic women or those of the pretended Reformed religion in childbirth, under penalty of being fined to the amount of three thousand livres, &c., &c., &c.
Given at St. Germain en Laye, the Twentieth day of February, year of grace 1680, and the thirty-seventh of our reign.
Signed,Louis.
[It would appear that the employment forbidden to Protestants by the above proclamation was one that had been followed by them with remarkable success, and even Roman Catholic women of high rank had more confidence in them than in those of their own faith, and were most anxious still to employ them, offering great and unusual remuneration for the risk to induce them still to attend. It is well known that the mind has much influence on the body at such times, and it was believed that the above proclamation caused the loss of many lives, not so much from want of skill in those assisting as in fright and want of confidence on the part of the patients.]
Declaration of the King to the effect, that children of the age of
seven years may he concerted from the Pretended Reformed
Religion, &c.
Louis, by the grace of God, King of France and Navarre, to all who see these letters, greeting.
The great success which it has pleased God to give to the spiritual stirring up, and other reasonable means, we have employed for the conversion of our subjects of the said pretended Reformed religion, making it expedient for us to second the movement that God has commenced amongst our subjects, discovering to them the errors in which they were born, we ought to have resolved to annul our Declaration, of the first day of February, of the year 1669, by which children of said religion were in some sort excluded from conversion to the Catholic, Apostolical Roman Church, at the age of seven, when they are competent to exercise their reason, and make a choice upon a subject of so much importance as their own salvation, until the ages respectively of fourteen for males, and twelve for females, although the Edict of Nantes contained no such provision, which should have been required. Moved by these and other influ-
