Henry M. Baird · 129 of 379

CHAPTER VIII · Constancy of most of the prisoners.

The constancy of the victims, by disconcerting the plans of their enemies, doubtless contributed much to the temporary lull. No one attracted in this respect greater attention than the most illustrious person among the prisoners—the daughter of the Seigneur de Rambouillet and wife of De Rentigny, standard-bearer of the Duke of Guise—who resolutely rejected the pardon, based on a renunciation of her faith, which her father and husband brought her from the king, and urged her with tears to accept. Others, who, on account of their youth, were expected to be but poor advocates of their doctrinal views, proved more than a match for their examiners. The course was finally adopted of distributing the prisoners, about one hundred in number, in various monastic establishments, whose inmates might win them back to the Roman Catholic Church, whether by argument or by harsher means. The judges could thus rid themselves of the irksome task of lighting new fires, and the energies of the religious orders were put to some account. But the result hardly met the expectations formed. If a few Protestants obtained their liberty, and incurred the censures of their brethren, by unworthy confessions of principle, many more were allowed to escape by the monks, who soon had reason to desire "that their cloisters might be purged of such pests, through fear lest the contagion should spread farther," and found it "burdensome to support without compensation so large a number of needy persons."