as we mentioned, yet because they were said to be done by Oppede his lieutenant, and by his order, he also himself was brought into a share of peril. The matter was first debated in the great council, as it is called: afterwards when Oppede, De la Fons, De Tributiis, Badet, and Guerin, being called upon to answer, they defended themselves by the plea of a sentence past, against the execution whereof the royal advocate had not appealed; at length, by a new arret of the 17th day of March, the king took the cause into his own cognizance. And because the question concerned the force and authority of the supreme court of Aix, he committed the hearing both of the matter itself, and of the appeals, to the grand chamber of the parliament of Paris; where the cause was publicly managed, with great contention, and before a large concourse of people, for fifty days, by James Aubry on the part of the Merindolians, Peter Robert for the parliament of Aix, and Denys de Ryants for the king's advocate. When, upon the mention of so many horrid facts, of which the defendants were accused, the minds of all men were in the utmost attention and expectation of the issue, they were entirely disappointed of their hopes, Guerin alone, who happened to be destitute of friends at court, suffering the punishment of death. Oppede, who with De Grignan escaped by the intercession of the Duke of Guise, was restored to his former post, together with his colleagues: but, in a little time, being grievously afflicted with pains in the bowels, he breathed out his sanguinary soul in the midst of the most cruel torments, and paid the deserved penalty, which his judges had not exacted, late indeed, but, therefore so much the heavier, to God."* * Thuani Historia sui temporis, lib. VI. Such is the relation of this dreadful scene of cruelty, oppression, and carnage-detailed not by the poor persecuted Waldenses themselves, but by a Catholic historian whose impartiality and rigid adherence to truth has never been questioned except by his own party. SECTION III. A view of the conduct of the court of Rome, and the operation of its favourite instrument, the Inquisition, about the middle of the sixteenth century, including details of the horrid cruelties exercised towards the friends of reform, particularly in Spain and the Netherlands. A. D. 1550 -1570. HAVING devoted a former section to the purpose of tracing the rise, spirit, operation, and progress of that infernal instrument of cruelty, known by the name of the inquisition; that we may not wholly lose sight of the influence of this engine of spiritual despotism, we shall, for a moment, suspend the immediate narrative of the Waldenses in France and Piedmont, in order that we may take a cursory view of the state of affairs, in reference to religion, in Spain and the Netherlands, at the period at which we are now arrived, namely, about, twenty years after the Reformation by Luther. It is scarcely necessary for me to state, that, in the succession of kings by whom Spain had been governed for about the space of three hundred years, the popes of Rome had generally found a race of obsequious princes, seldom reluctant to yield their concurrence with any measures that might be proposed for the destruction of VOL. II. LI heretics. But it was now the misfortune of that country to possess a monarch whose zeal for the extirpation of heretical pravity, surpassed even that of popes and cardinals. This monarch was Philip II. son of the Emperor Charles V. and of Isabella, daughter of Immanuel the great, King of Portugal. He was born on the 27th of May, 1527, and educated in Spain, under ecclesiastics noted for their bigotry, which may account for several of those features in his character that afterwards appeared so prominently in his conduct. He was the most powerful monarch of the age; for, besides the government of Spain, he possessed the kingdoms of Naples and Sicily; the duchy of Milan, Franche Compté, and the Netherlands, or, as they were then generally termed, the Low Countries. These provinces, which, on account of their situation, are called the Netherlands, had been long governed by their respective princes, under the titles of dukes, marquisses, or counts; and under the administration of the princes of the house of Burgundy, they had flourished in trade, commerce, and manufactures, beyond any other European state. No city, in those days, except Venice, possessed such extensive commerce as Antwerp. It was the great mart of all the northern nations. Bruges was little inferior; and in the city of Ghent there were many thousand artificers employed in the woollen manufacture, long before the art was known to the English, from whom the wool was purchased by the industrious Flemings. In consequence of the constant intercourse which subsisted between Germany and the Netherlands, we may naturally suppose that the doctrines of the Reformers would be early propagated from the former to the latter country; and, accordingly, in the month of May, 1521, even before the days of Philip, his father, the Emperor Charles V. had published an edict, in which all the pe nalties of high treason were pronounced against heretics. In the execution of this edict, which Charles, from time to time, renewed, all the fury of persecution was exercised d; and it is affirmed by several cotemporary historians, that, during his reign, fifty thousand of the inhabitants of the Netherlands were put to death on account of their religious principles.* Those principles, however, far from being extirpated, became more generally propagated and diffused amidst the severities which were employed to suppress them. Before the Emperor Charles V. had resigned the reigns of government to his son Philip, great numbers of his subjects had begun to retire from the provinces of the Netherlands and to transport their families and effects to the neighbouring states; and when he was informed of this, by the regent, who was his sister and queen dowager of Hungary, his heart relented for the calamities of his people, and he dreaded the consequences of depopulating a country from which he had often received the most effectual assistance and support. But these considerations had no influence on his son Philip. He republished the edicts of his father, and ordered the governors and magistrates to carry them into rigorous execution. In these edicts it was enacted, that all persons who held erroneous opinions in religion, should be deprived of their offices, and degraded from their rank. It was ordained, that whoever should be convicted of having taught heretical doctrines, or of having been present at the religious meetings of heretics, should, if they were men, be put to death by the sword; and if women, be burned alive. Such were the punishments denounced even against those who repented of their errors and forsook them; while all * F. Paul's History of the Council of Trent, b. v. Grotius doubles the number! who persisted in them were condemned to the flames. And even those who afforded shelter to heretics, in their houses, or who omitted to give information against them, were subjected to the same penalties as heretics themselves. But Philip could not content himself with publishing and executing these cruel edicts. He also established a particular tribunal for the extirpation of heresy, which, although it was not called by the name Inquisition, had all the essentials of that iniquitous institution. Persons were committed to prison upon bare suspicion, and put to the torture on the slightest evidence. The accused were not confronted with their accusers, or made acquainted with the crimes for which they suffered. The civil judges were not allowed to take any farther concern in prosecutions for heresy, than to execute the sentences which the inquisitors pronounced. The possessions of the sufferers were confiscated; and informers were encouraged, by an assurance of impunity in case they themselves were guilty, and by the promise of rewards.* That the establishment of this arbitrary tribunal should have excited considerable commotion in the Netherlands, can occasion no surprise. It had created disturbances even in Spain and Italy, where civil liberty was not ́enjoyed in the measure that it was in the Netherlands. Among the Flemings, therefore, it excited the most terrible apprehensions: they considered it as utterly subversive of their liberty. But to the grievances already enumerated, the inhabitants of the Netherlands further complained that the provinces were filled with Spanish soldiers, whose insolent and rapacious behaviour was intolerable. And to all these causes of discontent, Philip added another by encreasing the number of bishopricks from five * Grotius, Annales, lib. i, |