Page:Protestant Exiles from France Agnew vol 1.djvu/107

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
celebrated refugees.
91

day of visitation. Forsake not Him, least He forsake you when He shall appear in glory with His holy angells. Desert not your profession for all the insinuations of wicked men or your own relations, but say as that good man did, I will tread upon wife and children rather than forsake my God. O remember what your Redeemer hath done and suffered for your immortal souls. Whatever losses or sufferings ye may undergo, be sure you hold fast the jewell of a good conscience; constancy is the crown of religion. Forsake all your good, yea, and your very lives, rather than comply with Popery. Eschew evill and the appearance of it, and if you must suffer, choose it rather than sin. If persecution by God’s providence befall you, remember that holy martyr who said as he was going to be burnt, One stile more, and I shall come to my Father’s house.”



Chapter III.

CELEBRATED REFUGEES FROM THE ST BARTHOLOMEW MASSACRE.

I. Odet De Chatillon.

The name among the victims of the St. Bartholomew massacre, that is remembered with the greatest admiration and commiseration, is Admiral Coligny. My younger readers should be informed that he was a great military commander (the title of admiral not having been then made over to the Naval Service); also that Coligny was his title of nobility, and not his surname. The family name was De Chatillon; there were three brothers in that generation. The youngest was Francois de Chatillon, Sieur d’Andelot, and usually called Andelot; he died in 1569. Gaspard de Chatillon, Comte de Coligny, the second brother, was the Admiral of France. The eldest brother, although he died before the massacre, deserves a memoir among Protestant exiles.

Odet de Chatillon, commonly called the Cardinal de Chatillon, was born on the 10th July 1517. It must be remembered that this date is antecedent to the Protestant Reformation; and that all the brothers, being born during the undisturbed reign of Romanist superstition, were converted to Protestantism. The dignity of Cardinal, with which Odet was invested, was no better than a temporal honour — a decoration or compliment conferred on him on the 7th November 1533, that is to say, when he was only sixteen years of age, by Pope Clement VII. At the same date he was consecrated as Archbishop of Toulouse. In 1535 he obtained the Bishopric of Beauvais, which, along with ample revenues, included the dignity and privileges of a Peer of France. In 1544, being so well endowed as an ecclesiastic, he resigned all his own heritage to his brothers. His tendencies towards Protestantism arose from aspirations after religious life. In 1554, he issued his Constitutions Synodales, in order to reform ecclesiastical abuses in his diocese. In 1564 he appeared as a doctrinal reformer. In the month of April of that year, he administered the Lord’s Supper according to the rites of the French Protestant Church in his palace at Beauvais. His neighbours raised a riot, in which his own life was threatened, and a schoolmaster as as his protege was killed. He then deliberately renounced his ecclesiastical dignities, and assumed the title of Comte de Beauvais. The Pope cited him to appear before the Inquisition; but he took an early opportunity to wear his Cardinal’s dress among the King’s Councillors, in order to proclaim his defiance of the Papal authority. And on the 1st of December he married Elizabeth, daughter of Samson de Haute- ville (a Norman gentleman) and Marguerite de Lore. As during this year, so afterwards, he openly acted as a leading Huguenot negotiator.

In 1568 he negociated the peace of Longjumeau, avoiding all Bourbon schemes, and confining his demands to the free exercise of the Protestant religion. Queen Catherine de Medicis attempted, in violation of the peace, and by a coup d’ etât, to seize the Protestant leaders, who, however, got secret information, and Conde and Coligny retired precipitately within La Rochelle, whither the Queen of Navarre and her son quickly followed them. The Cardinal, in August 1568, hurried from his Chateau of Brele (near Beauvais), hotly pursued. Disguised as a sailor, he barely succeeded in embarking at Sainte-Marie-du-Mont for England. His countess accompanied him, and their voyage was safely accomplished. At Dover, on the 8th September, the Cardinal de Chatillon’s arrival was an-