Henry M. Baird · 365 of 379

CHAPTER XII · Beza secures a favorable royal order.

To restrain the impatience of so numerous a body as the Protestants, while waiting for the assembly of the notables which was to confer the full measure of liberty they desired, was the task imposed upon Beza. He was to serve as a hostage for the obedience of the reformed churches. But the sagacious theologian recognized the difficulty of the position he was called to fill. He warned the government accordingly against disappointing the hopes it aroused in the breasts of his fellow Protestants, and he urged that if they must be temporarily denied the use of the places of worship which they had occupied wherever they constituted the bulk of the population, the present rigor must be somewhat abated during the interval before their formal emancipation. After much importunity a mandate was obtained, addressed to the royal officers, in which they were instructed to interpret the previous edicts with leniency, permitting different degrees of liberty, according to the various circumstances in which they were placed. In Normandy and Gascony the religious meetings might be open and unrestricted. In Paris they must be held secretly in private houses, and not more than two hundred persons could be gathered together. Everywhere, however, the Protestants were to be protected, and this was a great step gained. For those very officers, whose task it had not unfrequently been to drag the Huguenots to prison, were now constituted the guardians of their lives and property.