Covenanting Citizens: The Protestation Oath and Popular Political Culture in The English Revolution First Edition John Walter

Covenanting Citizens: The Protestation
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OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 17/08/16, SPi
C ov e n a n t i n g C i t i z e n s
Covenanting Citizens
The Protestation Oath and Popular Political
Culture in the English Revolution
J O H N WA LTE R
1
3
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Acknowledgements
To quote too many fellow authors to need acknowledgement, this book has taken
(far) longer than I had hoped. In part this was because of the paradox of an event
which generated thousands of records hitherto little worked on by historians, but
which left many puzzling gaps in the historical record, and to try to fill these
required a nationwide research project with visits to most local and regional arch-
ives. But the long span of the project also reflects that life intervened in ways that
cannot be anticipated. So my most important acknowledgements are, as ever, to
Bron, and to Angharad whose career blossoms doing what she loves, and to Ben
who died doing what he loved during this project, for their fortitude, love, and
support, and as reminders of what really matters.
Undertaking research on this scale would not have been possible without the
award of a two-year Leverhulme Major Research Fellowship. I am immensely
indebted to the Director and Board for the financial support and intellectual free-
dom the Trust’s funding provides. The periods of research leave provided by the
University of Essex and the support in particular of my early modern colleagues
Joan Davies, Amanda Flather, Alison Rowlands, Clodagh Tait, and Neil Younger
were also critical, particularly in the opening and closing stages of my research.
Given the centrality of the parliamentary records to the history of the Protestation,
I must thank David Prior, Assistant Clerk of the Records, Mari Takayanagi, Archivist,
and their colleagues in the Parliamentary Archives for their hospitality and help. For
similar reasons, I am very grateful to Maija Jansson, for her hospitality and advice
while I was a visitor at the Yale Center for Parliamentary History and to Dr Paul
Seaward, Director of the History of Parliament Trust and, in particular, Dr Stephen
Roberts, Editor of the 1640–60 section, and their colleagues for sharing their formi-
dable expertise with me. At Essex, the support provided for research and scholarship
by colleagues at the Albert Sloman Library has remained exemplary. Robert Butler
and Nigel Cochrane, respectively Librarian and Deputy Librarian, by making possi-
ble the purchase of microfilms of the thousands of Protestation returns whose study
was central to this book made a major and much appreciated contribution.
Undertaking research for this book has required work in all the major research
libraries and national archives, and has taken me to most of the regional and local
archives, in England. I regret that there are therefore too many librarians and
archivists to acknowledge individually, not least those who permitted me to see or
provided copies of records otherwise too fragile for public use. To undertake a national
tour of libraries and archives in this county in the early twenty -first century is to be
heartened by the still-growing interest across all age and social groups in the records
of the past, but to be disheartened by the increasing financial constraints placed on
these colleagues in both meeting that interest and in preserving an increasing
volume of historical records. I am therefore grateful for the unfailingly helpful wel-
come I received from archivists and archives staff, not least those unsung helpers
who produced the many records that this study necessitated consulting.
vi Acknowledgements
In the course of a long project I have accumulated many academic debts. Drawing
on their own areas of expertise, the following friends and (friendly) colleagues have
been generous inter alia in answering my questions, in providing me with access to
their own, often as yet unpublished work, in prompting further research, and in
providing me with sightings of the Protestation in manuscript and early print:
David R. Adams, Dan Beaver, Richard Blakemore, Lloyd Bowen, David Como,
Richard Cust, Joan Davies, Colin Davis, Jane Dawson, Jackie Eales, Anthony
Fletcher, Jeremy Gibson, Harumi Goto, Todd Gray, Ian Green, Tony Hadland,
Cynthia Herrup, Valerie Hitchman, Clive Holmes, Ulrike Hogg, Andy Hopper,
Arnold Hunt, Janet Huskinson, Mark Knights, Chris Marsh, James Mawdesley,
Fiona McCall, Angela McShane, Jason Peacey, Joan Redmond, Stephen Roberts,
Roger Schofield, David Scott, Bill Sheils, David Smith, John Spurr, Laura Stewart,
Mark Stoyle, John Sutton, Christopher Thompson, Alan Thomson, Nicholas
Tyacke, Tim Wales, Andy Wood, Keith Wrightson, and Neil Younger. Steve Smith
provided a sympathetic ear whenever I flagged.
Mike Braddick (again), Ann Hughes, John Morrill (again), and Stephen Roberts
generously set aside their own work to read the whole manuscript and were gener-
ous, too, with their comments and advice (as was the anonymous reader for Oxford
University Press). I am particularly grateful to Ann Hughes for the rewarding day-
long, and vinous, conversation which her reading prompted. All faults, of course,
remain my own.
As ever, my students at the University of Essex were the first audience for the
early outings about the Protestation and the need to explain to them why it mat-
tered sharpened my thinking. I would like to thank in particular my then research
students Drs Graham Hart, Deirdre Heaven, and Jon Vallerius for feeding me
references to the Protestation from their own areas of expertise in the history of
early modern Ipswich, Cambridgeshire’s (scandalous) clergy, and radical groups in
the English revolution.
Earlier reports on the research for this book were given at the Essex Society for
Archaeology and History 2009 Morant Lecture, the Centre for Local and Regional
History, University of Essex 2014 Dudley White Local History Lecture, and lectures
to University of East Anglia The Turbulent 17th Century 2010 lecture series; the
2014 Power of Place series, Institute of Medieval and Early Modern Studies,
University of Durham; Publics & Participation in Early Modern Britain 2014 con-
ference, Birkbeck College, and to the Historical Association, Canterbury Branch
2015; and as papers to the following seminars: Parliaments, Representations and
Society; Parliaments, Politics and People, Tudor and Stuart History; Religious History of
Britain, all at the Institute of Historical Research; Early Modern Britain, Oxford;
Early Modern Economic and Social History, Cambridge. I am grateful for and learned
much from the comments and questions from audiences and participants.
The time this project has taken has meant that I have benefited from the sup-
portive advice (and perhaps on occasion tried the patience) of a number of editors
at Oxford University Press: Ruth Parr invited me to publish, Christopher Wheeler
turned the invitation into a commission, and Cathryn Steele’s (gentle) persistence
got me to the finishing line. I am grateful to all of them.
Contents
Abbreviations and Conventions ix
Introduction 1
1. Parliamentary Politics and the Making of the Protestation 7
2. Popular Politics and the Making of the Protestation 50
3. Debating the Protestation 80
4. Swearing the Nation: Administering the Protestation 113
5. Taking the Protestation 153
6. Performing the Protestation 197
Conclusion: Covenanting Citizens, Enacting a Nation 244
Index 263
Abbreviations and Conventions
BLAS Bedfordshire and Luton Archives Service, Bedford

BL British Library
CALS Cheshire Archives and Local Studies, Chester
Carter The Surrey Protestation Returns 1641/2 (Surrey Archaeological Collections,
59, Guilford, 1962)
CJ Journal of the House of Commons
Cole & Atkin Ann Cole and Wendy Atkin, Protestation Returns For Lincolnshire 1641/2
(CD, Lincolnshire Family History Society, 1996)
CSPD Calendar of State Papers, Domestic
CSPV Calendar of State Papers, Venetian
CUL Cambridge University Library
DALS Devon Archives and Local Studies, Exeter
D’Ewes (C) The Journal of Sir Simonds D’Ewes From the First Recession of the Long
Parliament to the Withdrawal of King Charles from London, ed. Willson
Havelock Coates (New Haven, CT, and London, 1942)
DUL Durham University Library
ERO Essex Record Office, Chelmsford
Faraday M. A. Faraday, ed., The Westmorland Protestation Returns 1641/2
(Cumberland and Westmorland Antiquarian and Archaeological Society,
Tract ser., XVII, Kendal, 1971)
Fry E. A. Fry, ed., The Dorset Protestation Returns, 1641–2 (Dorset Records,
12, 1912)
Gibson J. Gibson, ed., Oxfordshire and North Berkshire Protestation Returns and
Tax Assessments 1641–42 (Oxfordshire Record Society, 59, 1994)
Guimraens A. J. C. Guimraens, ed., The Protestation Oath Rolls for Middlesex 1641–2,
(Miscellanea Genealogica et Heraldica, supplement, 1921)
HALS Hertfordshire Archives and Local Studies, Hertford
HMC Historical Manuscripts Commission
KHLC Kent History and Library Centre, Maidstone
LJ Journal of the House of Lords
LMA London Metropolitan Archives
NLW National Library of Wales, Aberystwyth
ODNB Oxford Dictionary of National Biography; from the earliest times to the year
2000, ed. H. C. G. Mathew, 61 vols (Oxford, 2004)
PA Parliamentary Archives, Westminster
PJ Private Journals of the Long Parliament, eds W. H. Coates, V. F. Snow, and
A. Steele Young (New Haven, CT, and London, 1982–97)
POSLP Maija Jansson, ed., Proceedings in the Opening Session of the Long
Parliament. House of Commons (7 vols, Rochester, NY, and Suffolk,
2000–7)
Proby Granville Proby, ed., ‘The Protestation returns for Huntingdonshire’,
Transactions of the Cambridgeshire and Huntingdonshire Archaeological
Society, v (Ely, 1937), 289–368
x Abbreviations and Conventions

Rice R. Garraway Rice, ed., West Sussex Protestation Returns 1641–2
(Sussex Record Society, 5, 1905)
RO Record Office
Rushworth John Rushworth, Historical Collections. The Third Part in Two Volumes.
Containing the Principall Matters which happened from the Meeting of the
Parliament, November the 3rd. 1640. To the End of the Year 1644 . . . (1692)
SALS Somerset Archives and Local Studies, Taunton
SRO(E) Suffolk Record Office, Ipswich
TNA The National Archives, London
Wood H. M. Wood, ed., Durham Protestations Or The Returns Made to the House
of Commons in 1641/2 For the Maintenance of the Protestant Religion For
the County Palatinate of Durham For the Borough of Berwick-upon-Tweed
and the Parish of Morpeth (Surtees Society, cxxxv, Durham and London,
1922)
WR A. G. Matthews, Walker Revised Being A Revision Of John Walker’s
Sufferings of the Clergy during the Grand Rebellion 1642–60
(Oxford, 1988)
WSHC Wiltshire and Swindon History Centre, Chippenham
Original spelling, punctuation, and capitalization are retained in quotations, but the uses
of u and v have been modernized. In citations from manuscripts, standard abbreviations
and contractions have been silently expanded where necessary. The place of publication is
London, unless otherwise stated.
Introduction
On 3 May 1641 members of the House of Commons assembled in a mood of

anxiety and alarm. Behind closed doors and in fear of an imminent royal coup
against them, a determined group of parliamentarians fought a battle that day
perhaps every bit as important as some of the later, better-known civil war battles
in determining the course and character of the English Revolution. This is a battle
about which too little is still known, and it was one where the outcome was not
exactly that planned by the opposition to Charles I. With the doors of the House
of Commons ordered to be locked and all to remain in their seats, members found
themselves presented with the draft of an oath, of which there had been no trace
in the House’s previous proceedings. In the course of a long day of debating and
redrafting, what was called the Protestation was completed and taken—one by
one—by all members present.1 Over the next few days, it was to be taken by mem-
bers not then present and by the House of Lords where, given the presence of
Catholic peers, subscription to an oath against the threat from popery caused some
difficulties. A bill was introduced to make taking the Protestation compulsory,
but after protracted parliamentary wrangling was finally thrown out by the
Lords. Despite this, in the political crisis of January 1642 the Protestation was
used to swear the nation, county by county, parish by parish, individual by indi-
vidual. As events moved towards open conflict between Parliament and Crown,
Parliament used the Protestation to raise men and money and to mobilize an
armed citizenry.
Taken at face value, the Protestation required subscription to political common-
places in swearing takers to defend Protestantism, Crown, Parliament, and England’s
liberties. It was, however, radical, perhaps even revolutionary in intention and
certainly radical in its consequences. The objects of its promised protection were to
1 The Commons perhaps settled on the title of the Protestation to avoid discussion of whether they
had the right to issue an oath that had caused trouble in 1621 and 1624. ‘Protestation’ was a proce-
dural term in Parliament, but it would appear that its promoters here were using protestation in the
more generally understood sense of a ‘declaration of ones minde’: H[enry] C[ockeram], The English
Dictionarie: Or, An Interpreter of hard English Words … (1623), sub. protestation. In his pioneering
article (‘The Protestation Protested, 1641 and 1642’, Historical Journal, xlv (2002), 255–6), David
Cressy suggests that the Protestation was not an oath. But the act to make compulsory the taking of
the Protestation talked of it as an oath and the final text required takers ‘in the presence of Almighty
God [to] Promise, Vow and Protest’. Casuists distinguished between an oath and vow, but their nice-
ties were perhaps not appreciated by contemporaries who thought and talked of the Protestation in the
vocabulary of early modern oath-taking. Members in debate, preachers in their sermons, and parishes
at their taking of the Protestation referred to it as an oath or covenant.
2 Covenanting Citizens
prove contentious, its status as an oath challenged and challenging, and the conse-
quences of its obligations controversial. The parliamentary leadership intended it
be the basis for the mobilization of an armed citizenry, if necessary, against a king
they feared was contemplating military violence against them. The Protestation
envisaged new forms of political association which, to borrow Patrick Collinson’s
telling phrase, were to discover ‘citizens . . . concealed within subjects’.2 In its inten-
tions, the Protestation sought not only to bind the nation with a loyalty oath, but
also the peoples of the British kingdom. To be taken by all ‘inhabitants’, the
Protestation also offered a radical extension of membership of the political nation
to those hitherto excluded by class, age, or gender.
The Victorian historian S. R. Gardiner (1829–1902) was perhaps the first historian
to sense the Protestation’s potential importance. Arguing that its importance ‘lay
far more in what was implied by it than what it actually said’, he saw it as the basis,
if necessary, for an armed association (though his treatment of this also implies
more than it says).3 However, it is only recently that the Protestation has been
studied in its own right. Two important books and a pioneering article have
explored the Protestation as the first of a series of post-Reformation loyalty oaths
seeking to fix political allegiances in the contested politics of the seventeenth and
early eighteenth centuries.4 Two political histories of the period of crisis preceding
civil war, by Conrad Russell and John Adamson, have both emphasized the cen-
trality of the Protestation in their accounts of the political crisis leading to civil
war.5 Russell argued that it was the Protestation, ‘supplying their title to be in
arms’, which provided Parliament with what we might call a ‘validating charter’ by
which it was able to mobilize men, money, and political support to fight a war
against the king. For Russell and Adamson, the politics behind the Protestation’s
introduction also revealed a parliamentary leadership ready to countenance a
change in government to deal with the difficulties posed by a fatal breakdown in
trust for a king whose sincerity in negotiation was recurrently compromised by his
plans to use political force against them in the crises of May 1641 (and again in
January 1642). Thus, for Russell and Adamson the Protestation can be read only
as a declaration of conditional allegiance to the king, paralleling that to be found
in the other great oath of the period which was at the heart of the Scottish revolt
against Charles I, the Scottish National Covenant. In Russell’s words, the Protestation
2 Patrick Collinson, ‘The state as monarchical commonwealth’, Journal of Historical Sociology, 15/1
(2002), 93; Collinson, De Republica Anglorum: Or, History with the Politics Put Back (Cambridge,
1989), 24.
3 Samuel R. Gardiner, History of England From The Accession Of James I. To The Outbreak Of
The Civil War 1603–1642 (10 vols, 1899), ix, 354.
4 David M. Jones, Conscience and Allegiance in Seventeenth Century England: the Political Significance
of Oaths and Engagements (Rochester, NY, 1999); Edward Vallance, Revolutionary England and the
National Covenant: State Oaths, Protestantism and the Political Nation, 1553–1682 (Woodbridge,
2005); David Cressy, ‘Protestation protested’. See also Cressy, ‘Binding the nation: the Bonds of
Association, 1584 and 1696’, in DeLloyd J. Guth and John W. McKenna, eds, Tudor Rule and
Revolution (Cambridge, 1982), 217–34.
5 Conrad Russell, The Fall of the British Monarchies 1637–1642 (Oxford, 1991), 294–6, 449; John
Adamson, The Noble Revolt: The Overthrow of Charles I (2007), 289–92.
Introduction 3
‘identified loyalty with a cause, rather than with a person and authorized those
who took it to resist any threat to the cause’.6
By contrast, a recognition of the Protestation’s consequences for popular politics
has received far less attention. It is striking that when interest turned to the role of
the people in the Revolution, historians largely ignored the role of the Protestation.
In his pioneering essay on oaths, Christopher Hill referred to, but did not discuss
the Protestation other than to note the potentially levelling experience of an oath
that both the elite and the people were expected to take. But this was not an insight
he chose to develop, and it is absent from his other work.7 In a rich narrative of the
role of the people in the political crisis of the early 1640s Brian Manning, Hill’s
former student, devoted only two sentences to the passing of the Protestation and,
curiously, in reciting what it was intended to defend omits any reference to religion
although this was the first, and for many the most important, clause. Consequently,
in his discussion of popular iconoclasm and popular petitioning he omits to men-
tion the appeals made to the legitimizing role played by the Protestation in the
incidents he discusses, and readers are perhaps left to wonder the significance of
the episode he later reports in which petitioners in early 1642 sported copies of
the Protestation.8 This disjuncture between Manning’s neglect of the role of the
Protestation and the totemic importance accorded it by those groups upon whom
he claimed to be refocusing the history of the period is to be explained in the con-
text of the historiographical tradition within which he wrote. Writing on the Left
and subscribing to an essentialist reading of class formation, Manning believed
that it was ‘the well-to-do [who] remained concerned primarily with political and
religious questions, but amongst the lower classes bread-and-butter questions
loomed larger’. It was ‘economic distress [that] caused the middling and poorer
people to involve themselves in politics . . . they would not have become so involved
if the crisis had been concerned with political and religious questions’.9 The
Protestation, therefore, had little appeal for the people.
Manning was writing in 1976 and since then a growing body of work has chal-
lenged this reading of the determinants of popular politics.10 While much work
was being done by social historians that emphasized the politics of crowd actions,
some political historians had begun to see the importance of the Protestation for
popular politics.11 Writing in 1985, and again in 1992, David Underdown,
6 Russell, Fall, 295.

7 Christopher Hill, ‘From oaths to interests’, in his Society and Puritanism in Pre-Revolutionary
England (1966), 408.
8 Brian Manning, The English People and the English Revolution (1976), 14, 35, 97, 104.
9 Manning, English People, v, 102. On Manning’s interpretation, see John Walter, ‘The English
people and the English revolution revisited’, History Workshop Journal 61 (2006), 171–82.
10 On this, see John Walter, ‘Reconstructing popular political culture in early modern England’, in
Walter, Crowds and Popular Politics in Early Modern England (Manchester, 2006), 1–13; Walter,
‘Crowds and popular politics in the English revolution’, in Michael J. Braddick, ed., The Oxford
Handbook of the English Revolution (Oxford, 2015), 330–46.
11 For a growing recognition of the Protestation’s importance, see the following chronologically
ordered selection of works: J. H. Hexter, The Reign of King Pym (Cambridge, MA, 1941), 28–9; Derek
Hirst, The Representative of the People? Voters and Voting in England under the Early Stuarts (Cambridge,
1975), 186; Anthony Fletcher, The Outbreak of the English Civil War (1981, 1985), 15–16, 77–9,
e mphasized the importance of the Protestation as a ‘common system of values . . .

skilfully translated into political language’.12 (His use of the Protestation as a
consensual shorthand for ‘a simple set of unifying ideas which were to surface again
repeatedly in popular politics during and after the civil war’ misses however both
the Protestation’s radical provenance and the contention it caused in the politics of
the period.) Despite an increasing convergence between social and political histo-
rians with a shared interest in exploring a popular political culture that challenges
these tribal labels,13 there remains a division of labour which means that we have
yet to fully incorporate a social history of popular politics into the history of civil
war and revolution.
Marrying the traditional sources of political history with the methodology and
sources of social and cultural history, this study of the Protestation addresses the
agenda of the ‘new political history’, offering a manifesto for, and example of, an
integrated history of pre-Revolutionary early modern politics.14 It traces the history
of the Protestation from its introduction into Parliament in 1641, through the
debates that spilled into print and pulpit and onto the streets. It follows these debates
down to the level of those whose voices go otherwise largely unrecorded or unheard
and, in recovering the political geography of the Protestation’s administration,
explores the political consequences of its swearing in advancing a popular political
agency. Taken in a public and collective ceremony whose meaning was pronounced
from the pulpit, discussed in conversations in pews and churchyard, debated in pam-
phlets and ballads, and given significance in the choice of sacred space and dates
within the political calendar of Protestantism, rendered taking the Protestation an
out-of-the-ordinary event. It was made more extraordinary by its inclusion of those
previously excluded by age, gender, or class, but who now found themselves invited
or able to claim membership and participation in the politics of the nation.
The Protestation set the terms of debate in the politics of the approach to civil
war and continued to be appealed to thereafter by groups as diverse as Anglican
clergymen, the clubmen movements of the mid-1640s, and radical groups such as
the Levellers. The book shows how the Protestation promoted the development of
a popular parliamentarian culture and how, in turn, it was popularly appropriated
to legitimize an agency expressed inter alia in London street politics, political violence,
and new forms of petitioning and political mobilization. Making the Protestation,
I argue, was not just the preserve of bicameral parliamentary politics. An alliance
between the parliamentary leadership and their radical allies among Puritan clergy,
City activists, and citizens played an important role in the introduction of the
Protestation. It was popular Puritan discontent with the parliamentary text of
113–14, 208–10, 290–1; Ann Hughes, The Causes of the English Civil War (Basingstoke, 1991), 52,
59, 167, 170–1.
12 David Underdown, Revel, Riot And Rebellion: Popular Politics and Culture in England 1603–1660
(Oxford, 1985), 144–5, 158–9, 286; Underdown, A Freeborn People: Politics and the Nation in
Seventeenth-Century England (Oxford, 1996), 9; Michael Braddick, God’s Fury, England’s Fire. A New
History of the English Civil Wars (2008).
13 See the comments in John Walter, ‘Kissing cousins? Social history/Political history before and
after the Revisionist moment’, Huntington Library Quarterly 78 (2015), 703–22.
14 For which, see Collinson, De Republica Anglorum.
Introduction 5
the Protestation that helped shape the final text, and popular demonstrations and
popular petitioning that provided the occasion for the introduction of the idea of
national subscription. Crucially, then, it was collaboration between Parliament
and people that made the Protestation an oath to swear and mobilize the nation.
Familiar to family historians who have done much valuable work in transcrib-
ing and publishing the returns, albeit sometimes edited to reflect genealogical
priorities, the thousands of surviving Protestation returns, the parochial lists of
those who took the Protestation, are otherwise little known and little used except
by local historians, and then rarely in the fuller richness of the manuscript origi-
nals.15 Exploiting the rich cache of records that responses to the Protestation
produced permits an exploration in depth and detail otherwise not easily recover-
able of how the early stages of what was to become the English Revolution were
popularly received and understood. Operating across, and questioning a too-rigid
distinction between, the national and the local, this study explores both high and
popular politics, challenging the discrete integrity of those categories. Combining
extensive archival work with detailed work on the Protestation’s appearance in
mid-seventeenth-century print culture, it makes an argument for a greater social
depth to early modern political culture, and to popular knowledge and political
thinking, than perhaps even recent work allows.
15 In addition to transcripts of returns for individual places, many of which are now to be found
online, the following offer transcripts for part or whole counties: Protestation Returns for Cambridgeshire
1641, transc. Pamela Palgrave (Cambridge University Heraldic and Genealogical Society, 2004); T. L.
Stoate, ed., The Cornwall Protestation Returns (Bristol, 1974); A. J. Howard, ed., The Devon Protestation
Returns 1641, 2 vols (Pinner, 1973); L. Lloyd Simpson and T. Blagg, eds, Derbyshire Parish Registers:
Marriages, XIV (1917); E. A. Fry, ed., The Dorset Protestation Returns, 1641–2 (Dorset Records, 12,
1912); H. M. Wood, ed., Durham Protestations Or The Returns Made to the House of Commons in
1641/2 For the Maintenance of the Protestant Religion For the County Palatinate of Durham For the
Borough of Berwick-upon-Tweed and the Parish of Morpeth (Surtees Soc., cxxxv, 1922); Granville Proby,
ed., ‘The Protestation returns for Huntingdonshire’ (Trans. Cambs. & Hunts. Archaeological Society, v
1937), 289–368; Richard C. F. Barker, ed., The Protestation Returns of Kent 1641/2 (microfiche,
Institute of Heraldic and Genealogical Studies, 2001); W. F. Webster, transc., Protestation Returns
1641/2—Lincolnshire (Nottingham, 1984), now supplanted by the exemplary edition by Ann Cole
and Wendy Atkin, Protestation Returns For Lincolnshire 1641/2 (CD, Lincolnshire Family History
Society, 1996); A. J. C. Guimraens, ed., The Protestation Oath Rolls for Middlesex 1641–2 (Miscellanea
Genealogica et Heraldica, supplement, 1921); W. F. Webster, transc., Protestation Returns 1641/2—
Nottinghamshire/Derbyshire; J. Gibson, ed., Oxfordshire and North Berkshire Protestation Returns and
Tax Assessments 1641–42 (Oxfordshire Record Soc., 59, 1994); A. J. Howard, ed., The Somerset
Protestation Returns And Subsidy Rolls 1641–2 (Bristol, 1975); Hector Carter, ed., The Surrey Protestation
Returns 1641/2 (Surrey Archaeological Collections, 59, Guilford, 1962); ‘East Sussex Protestation,
1641’ (Sussex Family Historian, 2, 1975); R. Garraway Rice, ed., West Sussex Protestation Returns 1641–2
(Sussex Record Soc., 5, 1905); M. A. Faraday, ed., The Westmorland Protestation Returns 1641/2
(Cumberland and Westmorland Antiquarian and Archaeological Soc., Tract ser., XVII, Kendal, 1971);
E. A. Fry, The Wiltshire Protestation Returns of 1641–2 (Wiltshire Notes and Queries, VII, 1911–13);
Beryl Hurley and Joyce Newton, eds, Wiltshire Protestation Returns 1641–2 and Taxation Records for
Warminster Division 1648 (Wiltshire Family History Society, Devizes, 1997). Some editions by and
for family historians include only the names of takers, their listing sometimes alphabetically reordered.
In stripping out all other information, particularly the preamble describing how the Protestation was
understood and when and how it was taken, these give a limited sense of the evidence the returns can
be made to provide. I have used and cite the original returns, housed in the Parliamentary Archives [PA]
and published on microfilm: Main papers of the House of Lords. Pt 2: Protestation Returns, 1641–1642
(17 reels, Primary Source Microfilm). But for returns from counties for which there is a full scholarly
edition I also give the printed reference after the PA call number.
The Protestation gave ‘office’ to those conventionally excluded from a formal

role in the politics of the commonwealth. It could also be appropriated in order to
claim a political agency hitherto denied the people in a political culture in which
obedience was the primary political obligation for those largely excluded from the
formal political process. Using the success of Parliament in swearing the nation
and the encouragement it gave for the exercise of a popular political agency, the
book explores the contours of early modern popular political culture, expands the
social boundaries to that culture, and extends current historiographical debates
about the discursive affinities between republican notions of active citizenship and
the transcripts of civic humanism and godly commonwealth. It argues for the
existence of an early modern public sphere with greater social depth and for a
popular political culture more formally engaged with the politics of Church and
State. The networks of activists among laity and clergy and the political networks
that made it possible to get the Protestation sworn, Parliament’s ability to secure
acceptance of its authority to swear the nation in 1642, and a widespread (but not
universal) popular willingness to accept the Protestation’s invitation to active
citizenry helps to explain why Parliament was able to fight a civil war.
1
Parliamentary Politics and the Making
of the Protestation
On Tuesday, 4 May 1641, the Suffolk gentleman Sir Simonds D’Ewes stayed up
late into the night writing to his wife.1 His letter offered a detailed commentary on
recent political events in the capital. A meeting between the king and Parliament
on the previous Saturday, he told her, had left the Commons stunned and silenced.
At that meeting, the king had announced that he could not find his leading
minister and most hawkish advisor, the Earl of Strafford, guilty of high treason.
Returning to their chamber, some members had spoken ‘shortelie of our calamitie’,
but for the most part the House had ‘sate silent’. D’Ewes told his wife that as he sat
within this emotionally charged atmosphere, ‘when I dreamt of nothing but horror
and desolation within one fortnight, the consideration of yourself and innocent
children drew teares from mee’. Sunday ‘was passed over with much affliction and
sadness’. On Monday, crowds numbered in their thousands had beset St Stephen’s
Palace demanding the speedy execution of the Earl of Strafford. Staying each lord
as they arrived, the crowds had told them that unless Stafford was executed, they
and their families ‘were all undone’. In the afternoon, several members of the Lords
had gone to the king to tell him of the sudden extreme danger that threatened him
and the royal family unless he agreed to the bill of attainder against Strafford.
Meanwhile, the Commons had ordered the doors of the House to be shut and had
‘kept private what wee were about’. They sat from seven in the morning until eight
at night. What they were about was the drafting of a protestation, ‘for the defence
of the true religion, the King’s person, the Privileges of Parliament and our Liberties’.
At the end of the day D’Ewes, together with all the other members present, had
taken what was to be called the Protestation—‘with all my heart’.
D’Ewes’s account of events on 3 May accurately catches the sense of crisis and
heightened anxieties that marked the May days. His (reported) tears at a time of
growing prohibition of males crying in public offered an index of the threat he
feared.2 Behind closed doors and in fear of an imminent royal coup against them,
a determined group of parliamentarians had that day fought to secure an oath, the
Protestation, whose outcome was not exactly what they had planned. Since what
1 Simonds D’Ewes, The Autobiography and Correspondence of Sir Simonds D’Ewes, ed. James
Orchard Halliwell, 2 vols (1845), ii. 268.
2 For the significance of an early modern male crying in public, see Bernard Capp, ‘“Jesus Wept”
but did the Englishman? Masculinity and emotion in early modern England’, Past & Present, 224
(2014), 83–5.
happened on the day offers important insights into how radical were the measures
intended by the parliamentary leadership, we need to examine in detail the events of
3 May 1641. A close reading of events in and outside Parliament on the day the
Protestation was passed offers important clues to the politics behind its introduction.
T he Parliame n tary P olitics of the

P rotestatio n ’ s I n trod u ctio n
The origins of the Protestation are uncertain, perhaps deliberately so. To judge
solely from the evidence of the formal parliamentary record—the Journal of the
House of Commons—the idea of a protestation was first mooted on 3 May and it
was drafted, debated, and delivered in a single lengthy day’s proceedings. There is
little in the surviving official record to challenge this reading of the oath as a seemingly
spontaneous act in response to an immediate political crisis. But some contempo-
raries, both then and later, thought otherwise. Hostile contemporaries suspected
that prior planning had gone into its introduction. Writing some thirty years after
the events, Dudley North, who had been a member in the Long Parliament and
present on the day, offered a conspiratorial reading of the Protestation’s introduc-
tion by ‘leading persons’. According to North, ‘the business of the protestation
made in the year 1641, had been taken into consideration at a private meeting of
the grandees’ the day before its introduction into the Commons. When Edward
Hyde, another member who had been present in the Commons that day, came to
write his History of the Rebellion he offered a similar reading of events.3 Those who
supported Parliament shared their suspicions. Walter Yonge, member for Honiton
and another who had been present that day, wrote later of it being ‘ushered in the
fronte’, but he, too, implied earlier, back-room composition. In his diary entry
recording the introduction of the Protestation to the Commons, D’Ewes himself
noted that its proposers had ‘plotted the whole business before’.4 While accusa-
tions of conspiracy were commonplace in the politics of the period, it is clear that
the conception and birth of the Protestation did not, as the parliamentary record
suggests, both occur in a single day. And, as it turns out, the Journal itself muddles
the record of events that day.
No direct evidence survives to prove prior planning and coordination in the
introduction of the Protestation. Even North’s account talks only of a meeting the
day before the oath’s introduction. But given that the parliamentary leaders had
evidence of royal plotting against them at least from mid-April, it seems probable
that the idea of a defensive association, which had been circulating from 1640 on,
3 [Dudley, 4th Lord North], ‘A Narrative of some Passages in, or relating to the Long Parliament. By
a Person of Honour’ (1670), in Walter Scott, ed., A Collection of Scarce and Valuable Tracts . . . particularly
that of the late Lord Somers (13 vols, 1809–15), vi (1811), 589; Edward, Earl of Clarendon, The History
of the Rebellion and Civil Wars in England, ed. W. Dunn Macray, 6 vols (Oxford, 1888), i. 329–33.
4 BL, Additional MS. 35331, fo. 79r; George Yerby, ‘Yonge, Walter (bap. 1579, d. 1649)’, ODNB,
2004; online edn, Jan. 2008 <http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/30231>, accessed 16 Nov
2015; POSLP, iv. 178.
Parliamentary Politics 9
was then being actively considered.5 On Wednesday, 28 April, both Houses had
been summoned to Whitehall to hear the king, Charles I answer their requests for
the dismissal of Catholics from the Court, for the disarming of Catholic recusants,
and the disbandment of the army raised in Ireland. To these, the king’s answers had
been deemed unsatisfactory. After the king had finished speaking, he ‘stayed a pretty
while looking about, but there was not one man that gave any hum or the least
plaudit to his speech’. According to D’Ewes, ‘many were much grieved . . . because
they saw no sudden hope of dissolving the . . . Irish popish army’.6 The king had
then summoned the Commons to attend him in the Lords on the Saturday, 1 May.
That the king had addressed Parliament for the second time in a week was a
reflection of the accelerating breakdown in relations between monarch and
Parliament. Some idea of the tension in which the Commons then met is sug-
gested by the symbolism of Black Rod, the bearer of the summons from the king,
who was careful to carry a white rod so that, ‘we might perceive he came not
about a dissolution’. Nevertheless, commanded to attend the king for the second
time in less than a week and with memories still fresh of the abrupt termination
of the Short Parliament the previous year, ‘some’, D’Ewes noted, ‘feared it had
been to dissolve us’.7
The political context for this audience was a crisis of confidence sparked by
growing mistrust between king and Parliament. Since the recall and rapid dismissal
of the Short Parliament in 1640 the king had continued to flirt with the idea of
using military force against his opponents in Parliament. In November, shortly after
the opening of the Long Parliament, the parliamentary leadership had thwarted
the threat of action against them for treasonable correspondence with the Scottish
covenanters by bringing charges against the king’s most hawkish advisor, the Earl
of Strafford.8 Thereafter, they sought what was to prove impossible—guarantees
for a political settlement that would reform the political and religious abuses of the
1630s and secure Parliament and their own persons against any future action by a
revengeful king. The circuitous judicial progress from impeachment to attainder
(on 10 April) of the Earl of Strafford became caught up in political negotiations.
Via a series of bridging appointments to Court and Council of the king’s opponents,
these explored a negotiated settlement, which Charles hoped would divide his
opponents from their Scottish allies, while the parliamentary leadership hoped
would give them control over royal finances and the king.9 These were negotiations
from which threats of political violence by Charles (and his opponents) were never
5 Conrad Russell, The Fall of the British Monarchies 1637–1642 (Oxford, 1991), 276. John Adamson
suggests there was an earlier rumour of an intended protestation: HMC, Report On The Manuscripts Of
The Right Honourable Viscount De L’Isle . . . , VI. Sidney Papers, 1626–1698 (1966), 384. He reads the
reference in this February 1641 letter to ‘such a protestation as will draw us into confusion’ to suggest
that opponents in the Lords and Commons, prompted by worries that Strafford might be able to clear
himself, ‘apparently’ planned to enter into a protestation that was to provide the ‘basis for armed
resistance’: John Adamson, The Noble Revolt: The Overthrow of Charles I (2007), 289.
6 POSLP, iv. 126. 7 POSLP, iv. 161.
8 Richard Cust, Charles I: A Political Life (Harlow, 2005), 270–1.
9 Russell, Fall, ch. 6–7; Russell, ‘Parliament and the king’s finances’, in Russell, ed., The Origins of
the English Civil War (1973), 110–16.
entirely absent. The Scots’ invasion of England meant that both sides had standing
armies in reserve: for the parliamentary leadership the (Puritan) Scottish army now
occupied the north-east of England and for Charles the (Catholic) army that
Strafford had assembled in Ireland, supposedly to fight the Scots but which the
parliamentary opposition feared was to be used against them. Charles also had the
possibility of using the English army assembled to fight the Scots and now lying
discontentedly in the north. Although neither side gave up all hope of securing
settlement, from the spring of 1641 both had concluded that this was increasingly
unlikely. But having faced a near-united parliamentary opposition, from late
February on Charles had begun to build a party on anxieties over the apparent link
between Parliament’s demands and popular disorder in Church and street and to
engage once more in plans for a coup against his opponents in Parliament.10
Conrad Russell describes ‘a succession of cat and mouse manoeuvres indulged
in by both sides during the second half of April’, in what he called ‘diplomacy by
threat’. Employing the pressure of the presence of the Scottish army and focusing
fears on the threat of a popish plot, the parliamentary leadership tried to force the
king to agree to the disarmament of recusants, the dismissal of Catholics from Court,
and the disbanding of the Irish army.11 In response to parliamentary pressure, the
king was said to be behind rumours that if the Scots threatened to use their army
to secure the Earl of Strafford’s death, then he would bring in the Irish army. As
Russell observes, ‘from May 1641 onwards, both sides in England negotiated by
means of threats designed to secure compliance’.12
Public disclosure about royal involvement in plots at the start of May proved
shocking.13 There were three plots—one to raise the army and return it to London
to intimidate the parliamentary opposition, one to seize the Tower and rescue
Strafford, and a third involving the queen going to Portsmouth to hold the port in
preparation for a rumoured invasion by French forces. There was also evidence to
suggest that Charles planned to use the Irish army as reinforcement for the Army
plot.14 The discovery of these plots, in which the king was complicit, with their
origins among those close to Charles I’s French Catholic queen, Henrietta Maria,
had called into question Charles’s sincerity in negotiations with Parliament’s leader-
ship, not least about bringing them into royal office. If there had been a willingness
at the very heart of the parliamentary opposition to negotiate a compromise settle-
ment, this was no longer the case. By late April, one letter-writer reported, ‘I hear
it whispered in ye court yt the king will not let ye earle goe, & yt the parliament is
not likely to be long lived’.15
10 Richard Cust, ‘The collapse of royal power in England, 1637–1642’, in Braddick, ed., Oxford
Handbook Of The English Revolution (Oxford, 2015), 60–76.
11 Russell, Fall, 275–6, 289; Caroline M. Hibbard, Charles I and the Popish Plot (Chapel Hill,
1983), ch. 8–9.
12 Russell, Fall, 276; Conrad Russell, The Causes of the English Civil War (Oxford, 1990), 121.
13 BL, Additional MS 64922, fo. 24r; Conrad Russell, ‘The first army plot of 1641’, Trans. Royal.
Hist. Soc., 5th ser., 38 (1988), 85–106.
14 Cust, Charles I, 307–9; Jane H. Ohlmeyer, ‘The “Antrim Plot” of 1641—a myth?’, Historical
Journal 35 (1992), 905–19.
15 Adamson, Noble Revolt, 211–14, 248–51, 276–84, 289; Russell, ‘First army plot’; TNA, SP
16/479/74.
The king’s intention in addressing the Lords and Commons on 1 May had then
been to calm their anxieties. In this, he failed miserably. Promising to implement
policies that Parliament had demanded against what it saw as the popish menace
at Court and in the country, the king had nevertheless told the Lords and
Commons that his conscience would not allow him to find Strafford guilty of
treason. Dismissed by the king, members were reported in the parliamentary
diurnals to have left the royal presence, ‘not without great shew of discontent’.
According to one well-informed letter-writer, the members had no sooner left the
king than they had begun to cry, ‘let us bee gone, let us bee gone & soe they rose
in some great discontent’.16 On their return to the House they had refused to
proceed in any business. All committees were suspended. ‘Now it growes warme’
reported another letter-writer.17 Finding the House not sitting on his return to
London that Saturday afternoon, the Kentish member, Sir Edward Dering, told
his wife in a letter written the next day that he had discovered that what he called
‘the sullen boys’ had broken ‘up schoole at 11 of the clocke and went to play’. ‘We
shall meet sullen tomorrow’, had been Dering’s prediction.18 It seems likely that
1 May marked the point at which Charles decided to abandon negotiation and to
resort to force. It is surely significant that the Earl of Warwick pleaded the press
of business as the reason for his failure to attend the wedding of the king’s young
daughter Mary to the Prince of Orange on 2 May. If North is to be believed, it is
likely that he was to spend Sunday in discussions with other members of the par-
liamentary leadership, debating the desirability of introducing a protestation. In
a letter written that day, Warwick predicted, ‘we see civil wars, from which, I hope,
God will deliver us’.19
The immediate context for the introduction of the idea of a Protestation was
therefore fear of an imminent royal coup. But the official account of business on
Monday, 3 May, to be found subsequently written up in the Commons’ Journal,
gives little sense of this. Only occasionally does the official record hint at the
extraordinary nature of events in the House that day: a committee is appointed to
draw up a letter to the army which is to be sent by ‘express messenger’; an order is
made that members are to ‘keep their places and none stir out of the House with-
out the leave of the House, nor speak to the messengers’; later in the day the House
defers a request from the Lords for a speedy conference with the answer that, ‘this
House is now in debate of businesses of great consequence such as concern the
good of the kingdom’. Instead, the Journal’s ordered account of the day’s business
is dominated by the seemingly smooth flow of proceedings associated with the
introduction of the Protestation. In the morning a committee is appointed and
retires ‘to prepare a declaration of the unanimous consent and resolution of this
16 The Diurnall Occurrences, Or Dayly Proceedings Of Both Houses, in this Great and Happy
PARLIAMENT, From the third of November, 1640, to the third of November, 1641 (1641), 90; NLW,
MS 9063E (Wynn of Gwydir papers), no. 1684.
17 Halliwell, ed., Autobiography and Correspondence, ii, 268; KHLC, U269/1/CP 16/2 [1 May
1641, Arthur Brett to the Earl of Middlesex].
18 Lambert D. Larking, ed., Proceedings Principally In The County of Kent, In Connection With The
Parliaments Called In 1640 . . . , Camden Soc., 1st ser. 80 (1862), 46.
19 Adamson, Noble Revolt, 278–82, 284.
House for the defense of the religion established, of the King’s person and the
liberty of the subject, be it by oath or any other way’.20 A draft Protestation was
subsequently reported to the House and, without explanation, recommitted. In
the afternoon, a revised draft was read and it was ‘resolved upon the question that
this protestation so drawn and agreed on is fit forthwith to be made by every
member of this House’. An order was made that the Speaker should first ‘make’
the Protestation, and the names of a further 368 members who had followed him
in doing so are recorded. The Journal then records that Mr Maynard reported
from the committee appointed to draw up the Protestation that they had drafted
a preamble to it. This in turn was read and approved, and it was agreed that this
document should form the heads of a conference to be had with the Lords,
at which they, too, were to be desired to join in making the Protestation. The
Journal for 3 May closes with the appointment of a four-man committee to manage
the conference.
Proceedings in the House of Commons on 3 May did not, however, flow as
smoothly as the ordered account of the official record suggests, nor as the parlia-
mentary leadership had intended.21 For evidence of this we need to turn to the
unofficial record provided by the parliamentary diaries kept by members. Four
diarists cover proceedings in the Commons that day: Sir Simonds D’Ewes, William
Drake, John Moore, and Sir Ralph Verney, who also made separate notes of the
day’s proceedings.22 An anonymous diary, for which John Warner, Bishop of
Rochester, has been identified as author, records proceedings in the House of
Lords.23 These can be supplemented by the evidence provided by informed com-
ment from letter-writers and by the later recollections of those who were then
present, including John Rushworth whose account in his Historical Collections
benefits from fact that he was clerk assistant to the House of Commons.24 Taken
together, the surviving evidence allows us to see that the events on 3 May were
altogether more complicated and the decisions more contested than suggested by
the account only subsequently written up in the official Journal of the House. The
Protestation, then, had a difficult birth. As a note of events that day to be found in the
State papers reported, it was only ‘after much debate . . . voiced subscryvd & sworn
20 CJ, ii, 131–3.

21 On the clerks’ practices in recording proceedings in the Commons, see Sheila Lambert, ‘The
clerks and records of the House of Commons, 1600–1640’, Bulletin of the Institute of Historical
Research 43 (1970), 215–27; Maurice F. Bond, ‘The office of clerk of the parliaments’, Parliamentary
Affairs 12 (1959), 297–310.
22 BL, Harleian MSS 163–4 [D’Ewes], 477 [Moore]. D’Ewes’s and Moore’s diaries can be most
conveniently consulted in Jansson, ed., POSLP, iv. Verney recorded business of the House in his diary
(Verney Papers: Notes of Proceedings in the Long Parliament, Temp. Charles I, ed. John Bruce, Camden
Soc. 1st ser. 31 (1845)) and kept notes of committee meetings on separate sheets. He has been identi-
fied as the author of the second, anonymous, diary published in Maija Jansson, Two Diaries of the Long
Parliament (Gloucester, 1984), 81–143. For the identification and a description of the relationship
between the diary and notes, see Maija Jansson and Michael Mendle, ‘Notes and Documents. Escape
From Anonymity: Sir Ralph Verney’, Parliamentary History 5 (1986), 99–100.
23 BL, Harleian MS 6424.
24 Lambert, ‘Clerks and records,’ 218; Joad Raymond, ‘Rushworth, John (c.1612–1690)’, ODNB,
2004 <http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/24288> accessed 1 Dec 2015.
unto.’25 As will later be seen, the final text that members swore differed in signifi-
cant respect from that reported by the Committee into the House.
On 3 May, members had assembled early in the morning in a mood of anxiety
and alarm. Following the disastrous audience with Charles on Saturday, their
immediate fear was of an imminent and possibly violent dissolution of Parliament.
This atmosphere of anxiety was to prove important in ensuring the successful
introduction of the idea of a protestation. Debates later in the day were to be
marked by open reference to the fear of immediate dissolution. Significantly, one
of the few other substantive piece of business undertaken in the Commons that
day was the introduction of a clause into the subsidy bills declaring that their
passing should not end the Parliament. This atmosphere must have lent added
meaning to the daily prayer, steeped in the language of anti-popery, which opened
proceedings in the Commons with its recital of miraculous escapes from the
Spanish Armada, Gunpowder Plot, ‘and severall deliverances that have been since
the beginning of this Parliament’.26
With prayers read and the Speaker present, members then sat in an expectant
silence, broken only by the nervous laughter which greeted the attempt by the
assistant to the Clerk to the House to read a private bill touching on the grievances
of a group of precious metal workers. As D’Ewes noted, this ‘did amidst our sad
apprehensions move laughter from divers, that such a frivolous bill should be
pitched upon when all matters were in such apparent danger’. Amidst the contin-
uing silence, some members, unnamed in our accounts, called for the order that
had been made the Saturday before to be read by which members who arrived after
8 a.m. were to be fined. Thereafter, calls of ‘pay, pay’ greeted the later arrival of
other members.27 The reason for this concern to achieve a well-attended House
would gradually emerge in the course of the day’s proceedings.
As the silence suggested, the House was full of apprehension as to what actions
the king might take against them and was waiting to see what measures might be
introduced to deal with the emerging crisis. Developments outside the House over
the weekend meant that many members were probably already aware of the dan-
gerous threats that Pym was the next day to reveal to the House of plots to suborn
the royal army assembled to fight the Scots and stationed in the north, to bring it
up to London to suppress the Parliament and arrest its leaders, and to rescue
Strafford from the Tower. There had been further calls from the City’s pulpits for
‘the necessity of justice upon some great Delinquents’ and disturbances on the City
streets on Sunday night.28 The last had only just been discovered the night before
with the assembling of small groups of armed troops, and details were still emerg-
ing as the House proceeded with its business.29
Sunday, D’Ewes’s day of ‘affliction and sadness’, had doubtless witnessed many
discussions between members of both Houses and among the citizens and others.30
25 TNA, SP 16/480/9. 26 PA, HC/CL/JO/1/20, p. 1. 27 POSLP, iv. 174.

28 BL, Additional MS 37343 [Whitelocke’s Annals], fo. 226r.
29 Adamson, Noble Revolt, 278–83 provides the best account of the Tower plot.
30 For some discussion of members’ metropolitan experiences, see Pauline Croft, ‘Capital life:
members of parliament outside the House’, in Thomas Cogswell, Richard Cust, and Peter Lake, eds,
If then sitting silently in the House on Monday morning, many members would
have arrived at St Stephen’s Palace after two days spent in speculative (and possibly
feverish) discussion of the reports and rumours then circulating in a capital city
where political crisis was bringing a stop to trade and crowds out on to the streets.
‘God send good issue’ had been Sir Edward Dering’s response to what he had
found on his arrival in the capital. But in the letter to his wife written on the
Sunday he had gone on to tell her, ‘my despayres begin to go above my faith in
that . . . we shall be cured with a confusion’.31 That members on Monday met to the
sound of crowds surrounding St Stephen’s Palace calling for Strafford’s head, and
in the belief that they faced immediate dissolution or worse, must have led others
to the same conclusion. According to Conrad Russell, ‘revelations of various parts
of the Army Plot during 3 May produced a wave of anger such as had not been
seen since the Parliament began’.32 The Protestation was to be born of both fear
and this anger.
The first serious piece of business undertaken in the Commons that morning
was the appointment of a committee to draw up a letter to the army prompted by
the discovery of the plot to suborn it. The committee was to meet that afternoon, the
letter to be drafted by the next morning, and to be sent by express messenger,
the urgency of the order an index of fears of the army’s intentions. The committee
were to assure the army ‘what great care this House hath taken for their mainte-
nance’ and to promise not only swift payment of arrears, but also an additional
month’s pay. 33 The House then received a report from Alderman Pennington, one
of the members for the City, of the suspicious activities on Sunday night of a large
band of armed men in the City. These had been led by Sir John Suckling, one of
those associated with the Army plot and who was to flee the country four days
later. Pennington’s report also referred to the ‘great multitudes’ of Catholics whose
presence at the Spanish Ambassador’s, a focus of popular suspicions and earlier
protests, had produced trouble on the London streets that same night.34 This
prompted the House to send for a number of those named to be examined about
their involvement in the Army plot and about attempts, in association with the
embassies of the Catholic powers, to raise forces in London. These were supposedly
for foreign campaigns, but the Commons’ leaders feared they were to be used to
seize the Tower and to spring Strafford.35 During these developments, Thomas
Tomkins, recently returned to the capital from Herefordshire, reported that there
were ‘many papists from divers parts of this kingdom . . . newly come to London’.
Tomkins, a member given to outbursts about the Catholic threat, was associated
with another member from Herefordshire, Sir Robert Harley, whose Puritan
Politics, Religion And Popularity In Early Stuart Britain: Essays in Honour of Conrad Russell (Cambridge,
2002), 65–83.
31 Larking, ed., Proceedings in Kent, 46. 32 Russell, Fall, 294.
33 POSLP, iv. 169, 179. Despite the need for urgency, it would appear that the business of the
Protestation meant that this committee had to meet the following day.
34 LMA, X109/077, Journal of the Common Council, 39, fo. 193v.
35 Suckling was to be questioned later that day about his raising forces over the weekend: POSLP,
iv. 169, 179–80; HMC, Report on the Manuscripts of His Grace the Duke of Portland, K.G. . . . , 10 vols
(1891–1931), i (1891), 11–12.
commitment he seems to have shared and who was close to the parliamentary
leadership.36 The early introduction on the day of rumours about the suspicious
activities of Catholics in the capital and in the country was to provide a helpful
prelude for what was to come and a convenient cue for a speech later that day by
John Pym that would foreground fears of a popish plot. Reports of plots and their
association with the Catholic menace at home and abroad would, as Edward Hyde
later acknowledged, make it difficult for those suspicious of the proposals of the
parliamentary leadership for a protestation to offer outright opposition.
Next, the Speaker was commanded to report the king’s Saturday speech.
According to the somewhat disjointed account in William Drake’s parliamentary
notebook, this report of the king’s speech was met with a further ‘long silence’.
This was apparently ended by a further intervention by Tomkins. He had been
absent in the country when the bill against Strafford was passed, but he told the
House that he was certain that Strafford was guilty of high treason and he called
for a conference with the Lords. Drake records Pym speaking next, telling Tomkins
that it was therefore necessary to pass the bill of attainder.37 But what followed was
one of Pym’s great set-piece speeches, shaping and capturing the mood of the
House.38 Deliberate or otherwise, the early introduction of reports of the popish
menace and rumours of plots ratcheted up members’ anxieties and provided a
perfect prelude to Pym’s rehearsal of the ‘desperate Designs’ that threatened
Parliament and the kingdom.
Pym’s speech played to both the anxieties that the failure to achieve political
settlement had produced and to the suspicions about what was the cause of this
political impasse. Edward Hyde, then present, wrote later in his History, of Pym
informing the House of ‘as desperate a design and conspiracy against the Parliament
as had been in any age.’ ‘God’, he told them ‘had miraculously preserved them
from a most prodigious conspiracy in which all their privileges and liberties should
have been swallowed up’.39 Rushworth (then assistant to the Clerk of the House)
reports Pym as detailing the nature of these threats: the endeavour to spread disaf-
fection in the army and to bring it up to London to ‘over-awe’ the Parliament; the
designs on the Tower as part of a plan to secure the escape of the Earl of Strafford;
and the threats of a French invasion at Portsmouth. He did not believe, Pym said,
that the king had any intention to subvert the laws or to bring in the army raised
in Ireland.40 But some had counselled Charles that ‘he was loose from all rules of
government’. Pym went on to identify the Court as the site of these plots, accusing
but not naming a group of ‘eminent persons’ around the queen, and reporting that
36 POSLP, iv. 180; History of Parliament Trust, London, unpub. article on ‘Tomkins, Thomas
(c.1605–74)’ for 1640–1660 section by Stephen Roberts. I am grateful to the History of Parliament
Trust for allowing me to see this article in draft.
37 Jansson, Two Diaries, 40.
38 Pym’s speech can be reconstructed from accounts in, POSLP, iv. 180; Bruce, ed., Verney Papers,
67; Clarendon, History, i. 329–30; Rushworth, Pt 3, vol. i, 240. But Gardiner suggests that Rushworth’s
account conflates Pym’s speeches on 3 and 5 May: Gardiner, History of England, ix. 351n.
39 Clarendon, History, i. 240.
40 POSLP, iv. 180. The belief that an army raised by Strafford supposedly to fight the Scots was
really intended to put down the Parliament was at the core of the charge against Strafford.
all those implicated in the plots were engaged under an oath of secrecy. The other
great threat was the lurking menace of a popish plot. ‘I am persuaded’, he told
the House, ‘that there was some great design in hand by the papists to subvert
and overthrow this kingdom’. They ‘have had and still have a designe upon us’.41
In stressing the Catholic threat, Pym was returning to a theme that he had
stressed throughout his parliamentary career, but one that was given urgency by
the failure of Parliament since its recall to take effective action against this threat.
Since the Long Parliament had first met in November of the previous year there
had been a series of measures mooted to identify and disarm Catholics, includ-
ing the introduction in March of an act ‘to prevent the dangers that may happen
by Popish Recusants’, but worryingly none had yet resulted in the passing of
effective legislation.42
Treading a delicate line, Pym’s speech drew a picture of a king with a ‘tender
conscience’ (a deliberate repetition of the king’s description of himself in his
Saturday speech),43 but a man vulnerable to evil counsels. Parliament ought, he
argued, to take care that the king had good councillors about him and ‘to let him
understand that he is bound to maintain the laws and that we take care for the
maintaining of the words of the government’. How was this to be achieved? He
urged that Parliament act where the king’s government had not. Pym moved that
the king be desired to command that none attend Court without his leave and the
humble advice of Parliament. Parliament should ‘disarme all papists and noe priv-
iledge of parliament be allowed’.44 (One of the many worries about the activities
of Catholics had been the presence of Catholic peers in the Lords who, together
with the bishops, were thought to be responsible for the failure of the Commons
to secure reforming legislation and who were a stumbling block to the successful
prosecution of Strafford’s attainder.) Parliament should stop the ports, send com-
missioners into every county to disarm all recusants, and take measures to satisfy
both the Scottish and English armies.
But all this formed a prelude to Pym’s introduction of the idea of an association
for the defence of Crown and Church. Moore’s diary has Pym saying, ‘that some
course be taken to show that we will stand for the defense of the king and the good
of the kingdom’, and Verney’s saying that we ‘declare our allegiance to the kings
person and legall prerogative, and bind ourselves to maintaine the liberties of the
subjects’.45 This was for Pym a long-cherished idea. Although the earlier plots had
been scotched, ‘yet he feared there might be some new device’, and he proposed:
for the better evidence of their union and unanimity (which would be the greatest
discouragement to all who wished ill to them,) that some protestation might be
entered into by the members of both Houses, for the defence of their privileges, and
the performance of those duties to God and the King which they were obliged to as
good Christians and good subjects.46
41 POSLP, iv. 180.

42 CJ, ii, 24, 38, 46, 58, 85, 91, 99, 104, 105, 106, 111, 113, 115, 118, 123.
43 PA, Braye MS 2, fo. 137r. 44 Bruce, ed., Verney Papers, 67; POSLP, iv. 180.
45 POSLP, iv. 180; Bruce, ed., Verney Papers, 67. 46 POSLP, iv. 180.
The rest of what was to become a long day was to be mainly given over to answering
Pym’s call in the drafting of the Protestation. Having started at 7 a.m. the House
did not rise until 8 p.m.47
Pym’s suggestion triggered a series of supportive speeches. John Moore’s diary has the
fullest list of those speaking, recording in highly abbreviated note form the words of
nineteen speakers.48 Combining the accounts of the debate in the private diaries pro-
duces a list of twenty members who are recorded as having spoken in a groundswell of
support for Pym’s proposal. Those who spoke first did not directly address proposals for
an oath of association, but thereafter all but three speakers spoke directly in favour of
Pym’s proposal. Only one of the recorded speakers spoke against, ‘lest it breed a jeal-
ousy’. Significantly, this was the courtier Sir Sidney Godolphin who had voted against
Strafford’s attainder. The names and identities of those who were recorded as speaking
for Pym’s motion provide a clue to the political networks that lay behind the proposal
of the Protestation. Their identity suggests shared priorities and prior coordination.
Moore (but neither Verney nor D’Ewes, whose account is both brief and garbled)
records Mr Bagshaw, followed by Sir John Colepeper, as speaking first. Both spoke
in favour of firm action by Parliament and called for a conference with the Lords.
Bagshaw sought a meeting to further discussion about the threat posed by the Earl
of Strafford, arguing ‘that the kingdom cannot be safe while he lives’. Colepeper,
one of the most active members in the early days of the Long Parliament and at this
stage a leading member of the group organizing business in the Commons, called
for the Remonstrance (then long in drafting) and ‘petition of rights’ to be read and
after that for a conference with the Lords, that ‘by that we might try the affection
of the King . . . that if we should be dissolved, that we might be found doing the
service we were hither sent for’. Sir Robert Pye, a royal official and former client of
the Earl of Buckingham, a man said by his biographer to have shown ‘very luke-
warm support for the parliamentarian side’, also called later in the debate for ‘the
remonstrance’, as did Sir Henry Vane.49 Vane’s contribution may have been equally
lukewarm, since Simonds D’Ewes’s account of the day noted later that ‘even’ Vane
took the Protestation.50 The other speaker not to be recorded as addressing Pym’s
call for an association was John Hampden. But Hampden’s contribution was to
raise tensions further. In the middle of the debate he had called for one of those
believed to be implicated in the Army plot and who had been at the Portuguese
ambassador’s house on Sunday night, to be sent for and examined. Hampden’s
intervention was a reminder of the anxieties about plots and coups that lay behind
the record of the debate over the Protestation and of the communications passing
between the parliamentary leadership and their allies in the City.51
It was Henry Marten, the first speaker to be noted by Verney and the third to
speak in Moore’s account, who introduced the idea of an association. The role of
47 BL, Additional MS 35331, fo. 79r. 48 POSLP, iv. 180–1.

49 Moore identifies this speaker only as ‘Mr Treasurer’; G. E. Aylmer, ‘Pye, Sir Robert (bap. 1585,
d. 1662)’, ODNB, 2004; online edn, Jan 2008 <http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/37872>
accessed 28 Oct 2015.
50 Halliwell, ed., Autobiography and Correspondence, ii, 268. 51 PA, BRY 95, fo. 196.
Marten, a close ally of Pym and a radical whose outspoken hostility to monarchy
in general and to Charles I in particular earned him inclusion in those D’Ewes
labelled the House’s ‘fiery spirits’, provides an early indication of the radical nature
of what was being proposed. Verney’s highly abbreviated notes of Marten’s speech,
opening with the phrase ‘Honest disjointed fellowes’, captures the gist of his speech
as a call for a show of unity: ‘Unite ourselves for the pure worship of God, the
defence of the king and his subjects, in all there legall rights’. This was a direct echo
of Pym’s proposal. According to Moore’s account, Marten proposed that the House
appoint a committee to draw up ‘an association among us for the defense of King
and Church’.52
Next to be recorded by Moore as speaking in favour were Sir John Wray and
Sir Robert Harley. Both were men strongly identified with the godly cause; both,
significantly, were part of the pro-Scots interest in the House; both, unsurprisingly,
seconded Marten’s call.53 Moore gives no details of what they said, but fortunately,
Wray, a man with personal ties to the Earl of Warwick and Lord Mandeville among
the parliamentary leadership, thought the day sufficiently important for what
he had said to be included in a printed collection of some of his parliamentary
speeches under the suggestive title of A seasonable notion for a loyall Covenant. The
reference to a covenant from a known supporter of an alliance with the Scots is
worth noting. The use of such language might have been deliberately intended to
associate what was proposed with the Scottish Covenant of 1638, the basis for the
contemporaneous rebellion in Scotland. In a short speech, Wray argued that to
finish and perfect the great work on which Parliament had embarked it was necessary
for them:
to endeavour to be loyall Covenanters with God, and the King, first binding our selves
by a Parliamentary and nationall Oath . . . to preserve our religion entire and pure,
without the least compound of Superstition, or Idolatry: next, to defend the defender
of the Faith, his Royall person, Crowne and dignity, and maintaine our Sovereigne in
his glory and splendour, which can never be eclipsed, if the balance of justice goe
right, and his lawes be duly executed.54
If printed as delivered, then Sir John’s speech introduced some important themes.
While calling for an oath, he suggested that the act of taking such an oath should
52 Bruce, ed., Verney Papers, 67; POSLP, iv, 180–1; Sarah Barber, ‘Marten, Henry (1601/2–1680)’,
ODNB, 2004; online edn, Jan 2008 <http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/18168> accessed 28 Oct
2015; Barber, A Revolutionary Rogue: Henry Marten and the English Republic (Stroud, 2000), 2–3.
53 David Scott, ‘Wray, Sir John, second baronet (bap. 1586, d. 1655)’, ODNB, 2004; online edn,
Sept 2015 <http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/30018> accessed 28 Oct 2015; Clive Holmes,
Seventeenth-Century Lincolnshire, (Lincoln, 1980), 143–4; Jacqueline Eales, Puritans and Roundheads:
The Harleys of Brampton Bryan and the outbreak of the English Civil War (Cambridge, 1990); Eales,
‘Harley, Sir Robert (bap. 1579, d. 1656)’, ODNB, 2004; online edn, Sept 2015 <http://www.
oxforddnb.com/view/article/12343> accessed 28 Oct 2015; J. H. Hexter, The Reign of King Pym
(Cambridge, MA, 1948), 87–8.
54 Sir John Wray, Eight Occasional Speeches Made in the House of Commons this Parliament, 1641 . . .
(1641), 12–13. Given the context, Wray’s speech might be exempted from the judgement on
his collected speeches that they were ‘intellectually negligible and politically uninfluential’:
A. D. T. Cromartie, ‘The printing of parliamentary speeches November 1640–July 1642’, Historical
Journal 33 (1990), 28.
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ciel à l’orage. Son vaste front brillait. Ses yeux flamboyaient. Il ne se
ressemblait plus. Il s’abandonna à cette espèce de mouvement
épileptique, plein de rage, qui lui était familier; mais saisi par le
silence de ses deux auditeurs, et remarquant Chaudieu qui dit à de
Bèze: «Le buisson d’Horeb!» le pasteur s’assit, se tut, et se voila le
visage de ses deux mains aux articulations nouées et qui palpitaient
malgré leur épaisseur.
Quelques instants après, encore en proie aux dernières
secousses de ce grain engendré par la chasteté de sa vie, il leur dit
d’une voie émue:—Mes vices, qui sont nombreux, me coûtent moins
à dompter que mon impatience! Oh! bête féroce, ne te vaincrai-je
jamais? ajouta-t-il en se frappant à la poitrine.
—Mon cher maître, dit de Bèze d’une voix caressante et en
prenant les mains de Calvin qu’il baisa, Jupiter tonne, mais il sait
sourire.
Calvin regarda son disciple d’un œil adouci en lui disant:—
Comprenez-moi, mes amis.
—Je comprends que les pasteurs de peuples ont de terribles
fardeaux, répondit Théodore. Vous avez un Monde sur vos épaules.
—J’ai, dit Chaudieu, que l’algarade du maître avait rendu pensif,
j’ai trois martyrs sur lesquels nous pouvons compter. Stuart, qui a
tué le président, est en liberté...
—Erreur! dit Calvin doucement et en souriant comme tous les
grands hommes qui font succéder le beau temps sur leur figure,
comme s’ils étaient honteux d’y avoir laissé régner l’orage. Je
connais les hommes. On tue un président, on n’en tue pas deux.
—Est-ce absolument nécessaire? dit de Bèze.
—Encore? fit Calvin en enflant ses narines. Tenez, laissez-moi,
vous me remettriez en fureur. Allez avec ma décision. Toi, Chaudieu,
marche dans ta voie et maintiens ton troupeau de Paris. Que Dieu
vous conduise! Dinah?... éclairez mes amis.
—Ne me permettrez-vous pas de vous embrasser? dit Théodore
avec attendrissement. Qui de nous peut savoir ce qu’il lui adviendra
demain? Nous pouvons être saisis malgré les sauf-conduits...
—Et tu veux les ménager? dit Calvin en embrassant de Bèze. Il
prit la main de Chaudieu en lui disant:—Surtout pas de Huguenots,
pas de Réformés, devenez Calvinistes! Ne parlez que du
Calvinisme... Hélas! ce n’est pas ambition, car je me meurs... mais il
faut détruire tout de Luther, jusqu’au nom de Luthérien et de
luthéranisme!
—Mais, homme divin, s’écria Chaudieu, vous méritez bien de tels
honneurs!
—Maintenez l’uniformité de la doctrine, ne laissez plus rien
examiner ni refaire. Nous sommes perdus si de notre sein sortaient
des sectes nouvelles.
En anticipant sur les événements de cette Étude et pour en finir
avec Théodore de Bèze, qui alla jusqu’à Paris avec Chaudieu, il faut
faire observer que Poltrot, qui, dix-huit mois après, tira un coup de
pistolet au duc de Guise, avoua dans la question avoir été poussé à
ce crime par Théodore de Bèze; néanmoins, il rétracta cet aveu
dans les tortures postérieures. Aussi Bossuet, en pesant toutes les
considérations historiques, n’a-t-il pas cru devoir attribuer la pensée
de ce crime à Théodore de Bèze. Mais depuis Bossuet, une
dissertation en apparence futile, faite à propos d’une célèbre
chanson, a conduit un compilateur du dix-huitième siècle à prouver
que la chanson sur la mort du duc de Guise, chantée dans toute la
France par les Huguenots, était l’ouvrage de Théodore de Bèze, et il
fut alors prouvé que la fameuse complainte sur Marlborough est un
plagiat de celle de Théodore de Bèze. (Voir la note à la fin.)
Le jour où Théodore de Bèze et Chaudieu arrivèrent à Paris, la
cour y était revenue de Reims, où Charles IX avait été sacré. Cette
cérémonie, que Catherine rendit très-éclatante et qui fut l’occasion
de fêtes splendides, lui avait permis de réunir autour d’elle les chefs
de tous les partis. Après avoir étudié tous les intérêts et les partis,
elle en était à choisir entre cette alternative: ou les rallier au trône,
ou les opposer les uns aux autres. Catholique par excellence, le
connétable de Montmorency, dont le neveu le prince de Condé était
le chef de la Réformation et dont les fils inclinaient à cette religion,
blâmait l’alliance de la reine-mère avec les Réformés. De leur côté,
les Guise travaillaient à gagner Antoine de Bourbon, prince sans
caractère, et à le mettre dans leur parti; ce que sa femme, la reine
de Navarre, avertie par de Bèze, laissa faire. Ces difficultés
frappèrent Catherine, dont l’autorité naissante avait besoin de
quelque temps de tranquillité; aussi attendait-elle impatiemment la
réponse de Calvin, à qui le prince de Condé, le roi de Navarre,
Coligny, d’Andelot, le cardinal de Châtillon, avaient envoyé de Bèze
et Chaudieu. Mais en attendant, la reine-mère fut fidèle à ses
promesses envers le prince de Condé. Le chancelier mit fin à la
procédure qui regardait Christophe en évoquant l’affaire au
parlement de Paris, qui cassa l’arrêt de la commission en la
déclarant sans pouvoir pour juger un prince du sang. Le parlement
recommença le procès à la sollicitation des Guise et de la reine-
mère. Les papiers de La Sague avaient été remis à Catherine qui les
brûla. Cette remise fut un premier gage inutilement donné par les
Guise à la reine-mère. Le parlement, ne trouvant plus ces preuves
décisives, rétablit le prince dans tous ses droits, biens et honneurs.
Christophe, délivré lors du tumulte d’Orléans à l’avénement du roi,
fut mis hors de cause dès l’abord, et fut reçu, en dédommagement
de ses souffrances, avocat au parlement, par les soins de M. de
Thou.
Le Triumvirat, cette coalition future d’intérêts menacés par les
premiers actes de Catherine, se préparait donc sous ses yeux. De
même qu’en chimie les substances ennemies finissent par se
séparer au premier choc qui trouble leur union forcée, de même en
politique les alliances d’intérêts contraires ont peu de durée.
Catherine comprenait bien que tôt ou tard elle reviendrait aux Guise
et au connétable pour livrer bataille aux Huguenots. Ce Colloque qui
flattait les amours-propres des orateurs de chaque parti, qui devait
faire succéder une imposante cérémonie à celle du sacre et amuser
le tapis sanglant de cette guerre religieuse commencée, était inutile
aux yeux des Guise tout aussi bien qu’aux yeux de Catherine. Les
Catholiques y perdaient, car les Huguenots allaient, sous prétexte de
conférer, proclamer leur doctrine à la face de la France, sous la
protection du roi et de sa mère. Le cardinal de Lorraine, flatté par
Catherine d’y battre les hérétiques par l’éloquence des princes de
l’Église, y fit consentir son frère. C’était beaucoup pour la reine-mère
que six mois de paix.
Un petit événement faillit compromettre ce pouvoir que Catherine
élevait si péniblement. Voici la scène, conservée par l’histoire et qui
éclata le jour même où les envoyés de Genève arrivaient rue de
Bussy, à l’hôtel de Coligny, près du Louvre. Au sacre, Charles IX, qui
aimait beaucoup son précepteur Amyot, le nomma grand-aumônier
de France. Cette amitié fut également partagée par le duc d’Anjou,
Henri III, autre élève d’Amyot. Pendant le voyage de Reims à Paris,
Catherine apprit cette nouvelle par les deux Gondi. Elle comptait sur
cette charge de la couronne pour se faire dans l’Église un appui,
pour y avoir un personnage à opposer au cardinal de Lorraine; elle
voulait en revêtir le cardinal de Tournon, afin de trouver en lui,
comme en L’Hospital, une seconde béquille; tel fut le mot dont elle
se servit. En arrivant au Louvre, elle manda le précepteur. Sa colère
fut telle, en voyant le désastre causé dans sa politique par l’ambition
de ce fils de cordonnier parvenu, qu’elle lui dit ces étranges paroles
répétées par quelques mémorialistes:—«Quoi! je fais bouquer les
Guise, les Coligny, les connétables, la maison de Navarre, le prince
de Condé, et j’aurai en tête un prestolet tel que toi qui n’es pas
satisfait par l’évêché d’Auxerre!» Amyot s’excusa. En effet, il n’avait
rien demandé, le roi l’avait revêtu, de son plein gré, de cette charge
dont lui, pauvre précepteur, se regardait indigne.—Sois assuré,
maître, lui répondit Catherine (tel était le nom que les rois Charles IX
et Henri III donnaient à ce grand écrivain), de ne pas rester en pied
vingt-quatre heures si tu ne fais changer d’avis à ton élève. Entre la
mort annoncée sans plus de finesse, et la résignation de la plus
grande charge ecclésiastique de la couronne, le fils du cordonnier,
devenu très-avide et qui peut-être ambitionnait le chapeau de
cardinal, prit le parti de temporiser, il se cacha dans l’abbaye Saint-
Germain. A son premier dîner, Charles IX, ne voyant point Amyot, le
demanda. Quelque Guisard instruisit sans doute le roi de ce qui
s’était passé entre Amyot et la reine-mère.—Quoi! est-ce parce que
je l’ai fait Grand-Aumônier qu’on l’a fait disparaître? dit-il. Il alla chez
sa mère dans le violent état où sont les enfants quand un de leurs
caprices est contrarié.—Madame, dit-il en entrant, n’ai-je pas
complaisamment signé la lettre que vous m’avez demandée pour le
parlement, et au moyen de laquelle vous gouvernerez mon
royaume? Ne m’avez-vous pas promis en me la présentant que ma
volonté serait la vôtre, et voici que la seule faveur que je tenais à
donner excite votre jalousie. Le chancelier parle de me faire déclarer
majeur à quatorze ans, dans trois ans d’ici, et vous voulez me traiter
en enfant... Je serai, par Dieu! roi, et roi comme mon père et mon
grand-père étaient rois!
A l’accent et à la manière dont ces paroles furent dites, Catherine
eut une révélation du vrai caractère de son fils et reçut un coup de
boutoir dans le sein. Il me parle ainsi, à moi qui l’ai fait roi! pensa-t-
elle.—Monsieur, lui répondit-elle, le métier de roi, par le temps qui
court, est bien difficile, et vous ne connaissez pas encore les maîtres
à qui vous avez affaire. Vous n’aurez jamais d’autre ami sincère et
sûr que votre mère, d’autres serviteurs que ceux qu’elle s’est
attachés depuis longtemps, et sans les services desquels vous
n’existeriez peut-être pas aujourd’hui. Les Guise en veulent et à
votre trône et à votre personne, sachez-le. S’ils pouvaient me coudre
dans un sac et me jeter dans la rivière, dit-elle en montrant la Seine,
ce serait fait ce soir. Ces Lorrains sentent que je suis la lionne qui
défend ses petits, qui arrête leurs mains hardies étendues sur la
couronne. A qui, à quoi tient votre précepteur! où sont ses alliances!
quelle est son autorité? quels services vous rendra-t-il? De quel
poids sera sa parole! Au lieu d’un étai pour soutenir votre pouvoir,
vous l’avez démuni. Le cardinal de Lorraine vous menace, il fait le
roi, il garde son chapeau sur la tête devant le premier prince du
sang; n’était-il donc pas urgent de lui opposer un autre cardinal
revêtu d’une autorité supérieure à la sienne? Est-ce Amyot, ce
cordonnier capable de lui nouer les rubans de ses souliers, qui lui
rompra en visière? Enfin, vous aimez Amyot, vous l’avez nommé!
que votre première volonté soit faite, monsieur! Mais, avant de
vouloir, consultez-moi de bonne amitié? Prêtez-vous aux raisons
d’État, et votre bon sens d’enfant s’accordera peut-être avec ma
vieille expérience pour décider, quand vous connaîtrez les difficultés.
—Vous me rendrez mon maître! dit le roi sans trop écouter sa
mère en ne voyant que des reproches dans sa réponse.
—Oui, vous l’aurez, répondit-elle. Mais ce n’est pas lui, ni même
ce brutal de Cypierre, qui vous apprendront à régner.
—Ce sera vous, ma chère mère, dit-il adouci par son triomphe et
en quittant cet air menaçant et sournois naturellement empreint sur
sa physionomie.
Catherine envoya chercher le nouveau Grand-Aumônier par
Gondi. Quand le Florentin eut découvert la retraite d’Amyot, et qu’on
eut dit à l’évêque que le courtisan était envoyé par la reine, il fut pris
de terreur et ne voulut pas sortir de l’abbaye. Dans cette extrémité,
Catherine fut obligée d’écrire elle-même au précepteur dans de tels
termes, qu’il revint et reçut d’elle l’assurance de sa protection, mais
à la condition de la servir aveuglément, auprès de Charles IX.
Cette petite tempête domestique apaisée, Catherine, revenue au
Louvre après une absence de plus d’une année, y tint conseil avec
ses intimes sur la conduite à tenir avec le jeune roi, que Cypierre
avait complimenté sur sa fermeté.
—Que faire? dit-elle aux deux Gondi, à Ruggieri, à Birague et à
Chiverny devenu gouverneur et chancelier du duc d’Anjou.
—Avant tout, dit Birague, changez Cypierre. Ce n’est pas un
homme de cour, il ne s’accommoderait jamais à vos vues et croirait
faire sa charge en vous contre-carrant.
—A qui me fier! s’écria la reine.
—A l’un de nous, dit Birague.
—Par ma foi, reprit Gondi, je vous promets de vous rendre le roi
souple comme le roi de Navarre.
—Vous avez laissé périr le feu roi pour sauver vos autres
enfants, eh! bien, faites comme chez les Grands-Seigneurs de
Constantinople, annulez les colères et les fantaisies de celui-ci, dit
Albert de Gondi. Il aime les arts, les poésies, la chasse, et une petite
fille qu’il a vue à Orléans, en voilà bien assez pour l’occuper.
—Vous seriez donc le gouverneur du roi? dit Catherine au plus
capable des deux Gondi.
—Si vous voulez me donner l’autorité nécessaire à un
gouverneur, peut-être faudrait-il me nommer maréchal de France et
duc. Cypierre est de trop petite taille pour continuer d’avoir cette
charge. A l’avenir, le gouverneur d’un roi de France doit être quelque
chose comme maréchal et duc...
—Il a raison, dit Birague.
—Poëte et chasseur, dit Catherine du ton de la rêverie.
—Nous chasserons et nous aimerons! s’écria Gondi.
—D’ailleurs, dit Chiverny, vous êtes sûre d’Amyot, qui aura
toujours peur du boucon en cas de désobéissance, et avec Gondi
vous tiendrez le roi en lisière.
—Vous vous êtes résignée à perdre un enfant pour sauver vos
trois fils et la couronne, il faut avoir le courage d’occuper celui-ci
pour sauver le royaume, peut-être pour vous sauver vous-même, dit
Ruggieri.
—Il vient de m’offenser gravement, dit Catherine de Médicis.
—Il ne sait pas tout ce qu’il vous doit; et s’il le savait, vous seriez
en danger, répondit gravement Birague en appuyant sur ses paroles.
—C’est entendu, reprit Catherine sur qui cette réponse produisit
un effet violent, vous serez gouverneur du roi, Gondi. Le roi doit me
rendre pour un des miens la faveur à laquelle je viens de souscrire
pour ce pied-plat d’évêque. Le drôle vient de perdre le chapeau; oui,
tant que je vivrai, je m’opposerai à ce que le pape l’en coiffe! Nous
eussions été bien forts avec le cardinal de Tournon pour nous. Quel
trio que le Grand-Aumônier, L’Hospital et de Thou! Quant à la
bourgeoisie de Paris, je songe à la faire cajoler par mon fils, et nous
allons nous appuyer sur elle...
Et Gondi devint en effet maréchal, fut créé duc de Retz et
gouverneur du roi quelques jours après.
Au moment où ce petit conseil finissait, le cardinal de Tournon
vint annoncer à la reine les envoyés de Calvin, l’amiral Coligny les
accompagnait pour les faire respecter au Louvre. Aussitôt la reine
prit ses redoutables filles d’honneur et passa dans cette salle de
réception bâtie par son mari, et qui n’existe plus dans le Louvre
d’aujourd’hui.
Dans ce temps, l’escalier du Louvre était dans la tour de
l’Horloge. Les appartements de Catherine se trouvaient dans les
vieux bâtiments qui subsistent en partie dans la cour du Musée.
L’escalier actuel du Musée a été bâti sur l’emplacement de la salle
des ballets. Un ballet était alors une espèce de divertissement
dramatique joué par toute la cour. Les passions révolutionnaires ont
accrédité la plus risible erreur sur Charles IX à propos du Louvre.
Pendant la Révolution, une croyance hostile à ce roi, dont le
caractère a été travesti, en a fait un monstre. La tragédie de Chénier
a été composée sous le coup d’un écriteau placé sur la fenêtre du
corps avancé qui donne sur le quai. On y lisait cette inscription: C’est
de cette fenêtre que Charles IX, d’exécrable mémoire, a tiré sur des
citoyens français. Il convient de faire observer aux historiens futurs
et aux gens graves, que toute cette partie du Louvre, appelée
aujourd’hui le vieux Louvre en hache sur le quai et qui relie le salon
au Louvre par la galerie dite d’Apollon et le Louvre aux Tuileries par
les salles du Musée, n’a jamais existé sous Charles IX. La plus
grande partie de l’emplacement où s’élève la façade du quai, où
s’étend le jardin dit de l’Infante, était employée par l’hôtel de
Bourbon, qui appartenait précisément à la maison de Navarre. Il a
été matériellement impossible à Charles IX de tirer du Louvre de
Henri II sur une barque chargée de Huguenots traversant la rivière,
encore bien qu’il pût voir la Seine des fenêtres aujourd’hui
condamnées de ce Louvre. Quand même les savants et les
bibliothèques ne posséderaient pas de cartes où le Louvre sous
Charles IX est parfaitement indiqué, le monument porte la réfutation
de cette erreur. Tous les rois qui ont coopéré à cette œuvre immense
n’ont jamais manqué d’y graver leur chiffre ou une anagramme
quelconque. Or, cette partie vénérable et aujourd’hui toute noire du
Louvre qui a vue sur le jardin dit de l’Infante, et qui s’avance sur le
quai, porte les chiffres de Henri III et de Henri IV, bien différents de
celui de Henri II, qui mariait son H aux deux C de Catherine en en
faisant un D qui trompe les gens superficiels. Henri IV put réunir au
domaine du Louvre son hôtel de Bourbon avec ses jardins et
dépendances. Lui le premier, il eut l’idée de réunir le palais de
Catherine de Médicis au Louvre par ses galeries inachevées et dont
les précieuses sculptures sont très-négligées. Ni le plan de Paris
sous Charles IX, ni les chiffres de Henri III et de Henri IV
n’existeraient, que la différence d’architecture donnerait encore un
démenti cruel à cette calomnie. Les bossages vermiculés de l’hôtel
de la Force et de cette partie du Louvre marquent précisément la
transition de l’architecture dite de la Renaissance à l’architecture
sous Henri III, Henri IV et Louis XIII. Cette digression archéologique,
en harmonie d’ailleurs avec les peintures par lesquelles cette histoire
commence, permet d’apercevoir la vraie physionomie de cet autre
coin de Paris duquel il n’existe plus que cette portion du Louvre dont
les admirables bas-reliefs se détruisent tous les jours.
Quand la cour apprit que la reine allait donner audience à
Théodore de Bèze et à Chaudieu, présentés par l’amiral Coligny,
tous les courtisans qui avaient le droit d’entrer dans la salle
d’audience y accoururent pour être témoins de cette entrevue. Il était
environ six heures, l’amiral venait de souper, et se récurait les dents
en montant les escaliers du Louvre, entre les deux Réformés. Le
maniement du cure-dents était devenu chez l’amiral une habitude
involontaire, il récurait son râtelier au milieu d’une bataille en
pensant à faire retraite. Défiez-vous du cure-dents de l’amiral, du
non du connétable et du oui de Catherine, était un proverbe du
temps à la cour. Lors de la Saint-Barthélemi, la populace fit au
cadavre de Coligny, qui resta pendu pendant trois jours à
Montfaucon, une horrible épigramme en lui mettant un cure-dents
grotesque à la bouche. Les chroniqueurs ont enregistré cette atroce
plaisanterie. Ce petit fait au milieu d’une grande catastrophe peint
d’ailleurs le peuple parisien qui mérite parfaitement ce
travestissement plaisant du vers de Boileau:
Le Français né malin créa la guillotine.
Le Parisien, de tout temps, a fait des lazzi avant, pendant et

après les plus horribles révolutions.
Théodore de Bèze était vêtu comme un courtisan, en chausses
de soie noire, en souliers fenestrés, en haut-de-chausses côtelé, en
pourpoint de soie noire à crevés, avec le petit manteau de velours
noir sur lequel se rabattait une belle fraise blanche à tuyaux. Il portait
la virgule et la moustache, gardait une épée au côté et tenait une
canne. Quiconque parcourt les galeries de Versailles ou les recueils
d’Odieuvre, connaît sa figure ronde, presque joviale, aux yeux vifs,
surmontée de ce front remarquable par son ampleur qui caractérise
les écrivains et les poëtes du temps. De Bèze avait, ce qui le servit
beaucoup, un air agréable. Il contrastait avec Coligny, dont l’austère
figure est populaire, et avec l’âpre, avec le bilieux Chaudieu qui
conservait le costume des ministres et le rabat calviniste. Ce qui se
passe de nos jours à la Chambre des Députés, et ce qui se passait
sans doute à la Convention, peut servir à faire comprendre
comment, dans cette cour, dans cette époque, les gens qui devaient,
six mois après, se battre à outrance et se faire une guerre acharnée,
pouvaient se rencontrer, se parler avec courtoisie et plaisanter. A
son arrivée dans la salle, Birague, qui devait froidement conseiller la
Saint-Barthélemi, le cardinal de Lorraine qui devait recommander à
Besme, son domestique, de ne pas manquer l’amiral, vinrent au-
devant de Coligny, et le Piémontais lui dit en souriant:—Eh! bien,
mon cher amiral, vous vous chargez donc de présenter ces
messieurs de Genève!
—Vous m’en ferez peut-être un crime, répondit l’amiral en
raillant, tandis que si vous vous en étiez chargé, vous vous en feriez
un mérite.
—On dit le sieur Calvin fort malade, demanda le cardinal de
Lorraine à Théodore de Bèze. J’espère qu’on ne nous soupçonnera
pas de lui avoir donné des bouillons?
—Eh! monseigneur, vous y perdriez trop! répondit finement de
Bèze.
Le duc de Guise, qui toisait Chaudieu, regarda fixement son frère
et Birague, surpris tous deux de ce mot.
THÉODORE DE BÈZE
Était vêtu comme un courtisan...

CATHERINE DE MÉDICIS.
—Vrai Dieu! s’écria le cardinal, les hérétiques ne le sont pas en

fine politique.
Pour éviter toute difficulté, la reine, qui fut annoncée en ce
moment, prit le parti de rester debout. Elle commença par causer
avec le connétable qui lui parlait vivement du scandale de recevoir
les envoyés de Calvin.
—Vous voyez, mon cher connétable, que nous les recevons sans
cérémonie.
—Madame, dit l’amiral allant à la reine, voici les deux docteurs
de la nouvelle religion qui se sont entendus avec Calvin, et qui ont
ses instructions relativement à une conférence où les Églises de
France pourraient accommoder leurs différends.
—Voici monsieur Théodore de Bèze, que ma femme aime très-
fort, dit le roi de Navarre en survenant et prenant Théodore de Bèze
par la main.
—Et voici Chaudieu, s’écria le prince de Condé. Mon ami le duc
de Guise connaît le capitaine, dit-il en regardant le Balafré, peut-être
sera-t-il content de connaître le ministre.
Cette gasconnade fit rire toute la cour, et même Catherine.
—Par ma foi, répondit le duc de Guise, je suis enchanté de voir
un gars qui sait si bien choisir les hommes et les employer dans leur
sphère. L’un des vôtres, dit-il au ministre, a soutenu, sans mourir et
sans rien avouer, la question extraordinaire; je me crois brave, et ne
sais pas si je la supporterais ainsi!...
—Hum! fit Ambroise Paré, vous n’avez rien dit quand je vous ai
tiré le javelot du visage, à Calais.
Catherine, au centre du demi-cercle décrit à droite et à gauche
par ses filles d’honneur et par ses courtisans, gardait un profond
silence. En examinant les deux célèbres Réformés, elle cherchait à
les pénétrer par son beau regard noir et intelligent, elle les étudiait.
—L’un semble être le fourreau et l’autre la lame, lui dit à l’oreille
Albert de Gondi.
—Hé! bien, messieurs, dit Catherine qui ne put retenir un sourire,
votre maître vous a-t-il donné licence de faire une conférence
publique où vous puissiez vous convertir à la parole des nouveaux
Pères de l’Église qui sont la gloire de notre État?
—Nous n’avons pas d’autre maître que le Seigneur, dit
Chaudieu.
—Ah! vous reconnaissez bien un peu d’autorité au roi de
France? reprit Catherine en souriant et interrompant le ministre.
—Et même beaucoup à la reine, fit de Bèze en s’inclinant.
—Vous verrez, répliqua-t-elle, que mes sujets les plus soumis
seront les hérétiques.
—Ah! madame, s’écria Coligny, quel beau royaume nous vous
ferions! L’Europe profite étrangement de nos divisions. Elle a
toujours eu la moitié des Français contre l’autre, depuis cinquante
ans.
—Mais sommes-nous là pour entendre chanter des antiennes à
la gloire des hérétiques? dit brutalement le connétable.
—Non, mais pour les amener à résipiscence, lui dit à l’oreille le
cardinal de Lorraine, et nous voudrions essayer de les attirer par un
peu de douceur.
—Savez-vous ce que j’aurais fait sous le père du roi? dit Anne de
Montmorency. J’aurais appelé le prévôt pour pendre ces deux pieds-
plats haut et court au gibet du Louvre.
—Hé! bien, messieurs, quels sont les docteurs que vous nous
opposerez? dit la reine en imposant silence au connétable par un
regard.
—Duplessis-Mornay et Théodore de Bèze seront nos chefs, dit
Chaudieu.
—La cour ira sans doute au château de Saint-Germain, et
comme il serait malséant que ce colloque eût lieu dans la résidence
royale, nous le ferons en la petite ville de Poissy, répondit Catherine.
—Nous y serons en sûreté, madame? dit Chaudieu.
—Ah! répondit la reine avec une sorte de naïveté, vous saurez
bien prendre vos précautions. Monsieur l’amiral s’entendra sur ce
sujet avec mes cousins de Guise et de Montmorency.
—Foin de ceci! fit le connétable, je n’y veux point tremper.
—Que faites-vous à vos sectaires pour leur donner tant de
caractère? dit la reine en emmenant Chaudieu quelques pas à
l’écart. Le fils de mon pelletier a été sublime...
—Nous avons la foi! dit Chaudieu.
En ce moment, la salle offrait l’aspect de groupes animés où
s’agitait la question de cette assemblée qui, du mot de la reine, avait
déjà pris le nom de colloque de Poissy. Catherine regarda Chaudieu,
et put lui dire:—Oui, une foi nouvelle!
—Ah! madame, si vous n’étiez pas aveuglée par vos alliances
avec la cour de Rome, vous verriez que nous revenons à la vraie
doctrine de Jésus-Christ, qui en consacrant l’égalité des âmes, nous
a donné à tous des droits égaux sur terre.
—Vous croyez-vous l’égal de Calvin? demanda finement la reine.
Allez, nous ne sommes égaux qu’à l’église. Mais, vraiment, délier les
liens entre le peuple et les trônes! s’écria Catherine. Vous n’êtes pas
seulement des hérétiques, vous vous révoltez contre l’obéissance au
roi, en vous soustrayant à celle du pape! Elle le quitta brusquement,
et revint à Théodore de Bèze.—Je compte sur vous, monsieur, lui
dit-elle, pour faire ce colloque en conscience. Prenez tout votre
temps.
—Je croyais, dit Chaudieu au prince de Condé, au roi de
Navarre, et à l’amiral de Coligny, que les affaires de l’État se
traitaient plus sérieusement.
—Oh! nous savons bien tous ce que nous voulons, fit le prince
de Condé qui échangea un fin regard avec Théodore de Bèze.
Le bossu quitta ses adhérents pour aller à un rendez-vous. Ce
grand prince de Condé, ce chef de parti était un des plus heureux
galants de la cour; les deux plus belles femmes de ce temps se le
disputaient avec un tel acharnement, que la maréchale de Saint-
André, la femme d’un triumvir futur, lui donna sa belle terre de Saint-
Valery pour l’emporter sur la duchesse de Guise, la femme de celui
qui naguère voulait faire tomber sa tête sur un échafaud, et qui, ne
pouvant pas détacher le duc de Nemours de son amourette avec
mademoiselle de Rohan, aimait, en attendant, le chef des Réformés.
—Quelle différence avec Genève! dit Chaudieu sur le petit pont
du Louvre à Théodore de Bèze.
—Ceux-ci sont plus gais. Aussi ne m’expliqué-je point pourquoi
ils sont si traîtres! lui répondit de Bèze.
—A traître, traître et demi, répliqua Chaudieu dans l’oreille de
Théodore. J’ai dans Paris des Saints sur lesquels je puis compter, et
je vais faire de Calvin un prophète. Christophe nous débarrassera du
plus dangereux de nos ennemis.
—La reine-mère, pour qui le pauvre diable a souffert la question,
l’a déjà fait recevoir, haut la main, avocat au parlement, et les
avocats sont plus délateurs qu’assassins. Souvenez-vous
d’Avenelles qui a vendu les secrets de notre première prise d’armes.
—Je connais Christophe, dit Chaudieu d’un air convaincu, en
quittant là l’ambassadeur de Genève.
Quelques jours après la réception des ambassadeurs secrets de
Calvin par Catherine, vers la fin de la même année, car alors l’année
commençait à Pâques, et le calendrier actuel ne fut adopté que sous
ce nouveau règne, Christophe gisait encore sur un fauteuil, au coin
du feu, du côté qui lui permettait de voir la rivière, dans cette grande
salle brune destinée à la vie de famille et où ce drame avait
commencé. Il avait les pieds appuyés sur un tabouret. Mademoiselle
Lecamus et Babette Lallier venaient de renouveler les compresses
imbibées d’une préparation apportée par Ambroise, à qui Catherine
avait recommandé de soigner Christophe. Une fois reconquis par sa
famille, cet enfant y fut l’objet des soins les plus dévoués. Babette,
autorisée par son père, vint tous les matins et ne quittait la maison
Lecamus que le soir. Christophe, objet de l’admiration des apprentis,
donnait lieu dans tout le quartier à des contes qui l’entouraient d’une
poésie mystérieuse. Il avait subi la torture, et le célèbre Ambroise
Paré mettait tout son art à le sauver. Qu’avait-il fait pour être ainsi
traité? Ni Christophe ni son père ne disaient un mot à ce sujet.
Catherine, alors toute-puissante, était intéressée à se taire ainsi que
le prince de Condé. Les visites d’Ambroise, chirurgien du roi et de la
maison de Guise, à qui la reine-mère et les Lorrains permettaient de
soigner un garçon taxé d’hérésie, embrouillaient singulièrement cette
aventure où personne ne voyait clair. Enfin, le curé de Saint-Pierre-
aux-Bœufs vint à plusieurs reprises voir le fils de son marguillier, et
de telles visites rendirent encore plus inexplicables les causes de
l’état où se trouvait Christophe.
Le vieux syndic, qui avait son plan, répondait évasivement à ses
confrères, aux marchands, aux amis qui lui parlaient de son fils:—Je
suis bien heureux, mon compère, de l’avoir sauvé!—Que voulez-
vous? entre l’arbre et l’écorce, il ne faut jamais mettre le doigt.—Mon
fils a mis la main au bûcher, il y a pris de quoi brûler ma maison!—
On a abusé de sa jeunesse, et nous autres bourgeois nous ne
retirons que honte et mal à hanter les grands.—Ceci me décide à
faire de mon gars un homme de justice, le Palais lui apprendra à
peser ses actions et ses paroles.—La jeune reine, qui maintenant
est en Écosse, y a été pour beaucoup; mais peut-être aussi mon fils
a-t-il été bien imprudent!—J’ai eu de cruels chagrins.—Ceci me
décidera peut-être à quitter les affaires, je ne veux plus jamais aller à
la cour.—Mon fils en a maintenant assez de la Réformation, elle lui a
cassé bras et jambes. Sans Ambroise, où en serais-je?
Grâce à ces discours et à cette sage conduite, il fut avéré dans le
quartier que Christophe ne mangeait plus de la vache à Colas.
Chacun trouva naturel que le vieux syndic essayât de faire entrer
son fils au parlement, et les visites du curé parurent naturelles. En
pensant aux malheurs du syndic, on ne pensait pas à son ambition
qui eût semblé monstrueuse. Le jeune avocat, resté nonante jours,
pour employer un mot de ce temps, sur le lit qu’on lui avait dressé
dans la vieille salle, ne se levait que depuis une semaine et avait
encore besoin de deux béquilles pour marcher. L’amour de Babette
et la tendresse de sa mère avaient profondément touché Christophe;
or, en le tenant au lit, ces deux femmes le chapitraient rudement sur
l’article religion. Le président de Thou fit à son filleul une visite
pendant laquelle il fut très-paternel. Christophe, avocat au
parlement, devait être catholique, il allait être engagé par son
serment; mais le président, qui ne mit pas en doute l’orthodoxie de
son filleul, ajouta gravement ces paroles:—Mon enfant, tu as été
rudement éprouvé. J’ignore moi-même la raison qu’avaient
messieurs de Guise pour te traiter ainsi, je t’engage à vivre
désormais tranquillement, sans te mêler des troubles; car la faveur
de la reine et du roi ne se portera pas sur des artisans de tempêtes.
Tu n’es pas assez grand pour mettre à ton roi le marché à la main,
comme font messieurs de Guise. Si tu veux être un jour conseiller au
Parlement, tu n’obtiendras cette noble charge que par un
attachement sérieux à la cause royale.
Néanmoins, ni la visite du président de Thou, ni les séductions
de Babette, ni les instances de mademoiselle Lecamus, sa mère,
n’avaient ébranlé la foi du martyr de la Réforme. Christophe tenait
d’autant plus à sa religion qu’il avait plus souffert pour elle.
—Mon père ne souffrira jamais que j’épouse un hérétique, lui
disait Babette à l’oreille.
Christophe ne répondait que par des larmes qui rendaient la jolie
fille muette et rêveuse.
Le vieux Lecamus gardait sa dignité paternelle et syndicale, il
observait son fils et parlait peu. Ce vieillard, après avoir reconquis
son cher Christophe, était presque mécontent de lui-même, il se
repentait d’avoir montré toute sa tendresse pour ce fils unique; mais
il l’admirait en secret. A aucune époque de sa vie le syndic ne fit
jouer plus de machines pour arriver à ses fins; car il apercevait le
grain mûr de la moisson si péniblement semée, et voulait en tout
recueillir. Quelques jours avant cette matinée, il avait eu, seul avec
Christophe, une longue conversation pour surprendre le secret de la
résistance de son fils. Christophe, qui ne manquait pas d’ambition,
avait foi dans le prince de Condé. La parole généreuse du prince,
qui avait fait tout bonnement son métier de prince, était gravée dans
son cœur; mais il ne savait pas que Condé l’avait envoyé à tous les
diables au moment où il lui criait son touchant adieu à travers les
barreaux de sa prison, à Orléans, en se disant:—Un Gascon
m’aurait compris!
Malgré ce sentiment d’admiration pour le prince, Christophe
nourrissait aussi le plus profond respect pour cette grande reine
Catherine, qui lui avait, par un regard, expliqué la nécessité où elle
était de le sacrifier, et qui, pendant son supplice, lui avait jeté, par un
autre regard, une promesse illimitée dans une faible larme. Par le
profond silence des nonante jours et nuits qu’il employait à se guérir,
le nouvel avocat repassait les événements de Blois et ceux
d’Orléans. Il pesait, pour ainsi dire malgré lui, ces deux protections: il
flottait entre la reine et le prince. Il avait certes plus servi Catherine
que la Réforme, et chez un jeune homme, le cœur et l’esprit
devaient incliner vers cette reine, moins à cause de cette différence
qu’à cause de sa qualité de femme. En semblable occurrence, un
homme espérera toujours plus d’une femme que d’un homme.
—Je me suis immolé pour elle, que fera-t-elle pour moi?
Cette question, il se la faisait presque involontairement, en se
souvenant de l’accent qu’elle avait eu en disant: Povero mio! On ne
saurait croire à quel point un homme, seul dans son lit et malade,
devient personnel. Tout, jusqu’aux soins exclusifs dont il est l’objet,
le pousse à ne penser qu’à lui. En s’exagérant les obligations du
prince de Condé envers lui, Christophe s’attendait à être revêtu de
quelque charge à la cour de Navarre. Cet enfant, encore neuf en
politique, oubliait d’autant mieux les soucis et la rapide marche à
travers les hommes et les événements qui dominent les chefs de
parti, qu’il était comme au secret dans cette vieille salle brune. Tout
parti est nécessairement ingrat quand il milite; et quand il triomphe, il
a trop de monde à récompenser pour ne pas l’être encore. Les
soldats se soumettent à cette ingratitude; mais les chefs se
retournent contre le nouveau maître à l’égal duquel ils ont marché si
longtemps. Christophe, le seul qui se souvînt de ses souffrances, se
mettait déjà parmi les chefs de la Réformation en s’en proclamant
l’un des martyrs. Lecamus, ce vieux loup du commerce, si fin et si
perspicace, avait fini par deviner les secrètes pensées de son fils;
aussi toutes ses manœuvres étaient-elles basées sur l’hésitation
naturelle à laquelle Christophe était livré.
—Ne serait-ce pas beau, disait-il la veille à Babette en famille,
d’être la femme d’un conseiller au Parlement. On vous appellerait
madame!
—Vous êtes fou, mon compère! dit Lallier. Où prendriez-vous
d’abord dix mille écus de rentes en fonds de terre, que doit avoir un
conseiller, et de qui achèteriez-vous une charge? Il faudrait que la
reine-mère et régente n’eût que cela en tête pour que votre fils entrât
au Parlement, et il sent un peu trop le fagot pour qu’on l’y mette.
—Que donneriez-vous pour voir votre fille la femme d’un
conseiller?
—Vous voulez voir le fond de ma bourse, vieux finaud! dit Lallier.
Conseiller au parlement! Ce mot ravagea la cervelle de
Christophe.
Longtemps après le colloque, un matin que Christophe
contemplait la rivière qui lui rappelait et la scène par laquelle
commence cette histoire et le prince de Condé, la Renaudie, et
Chaudieu, le voyage à Blois, enfin toutes ses espérances, le syndic
vint s’asseoir à côté de son fils en cachant mal un air joyeux sous
cette gravité affectée.
—Mon fils, dit-il, après ce qui s’est passé entre toi et les chefs du
Tumulte d’Amboise, ils te devaient assez pour que ton avenir
regardât la maison de Navarre.
—Oui, dit Christophe.
—Hé! bien, reprit le père, j’ai fait positivement demander pour toi
la permission d’acheter une charge de justice dans le Béarn. Notre
bon ami Paré s’est chargé de remettre les lettres que j’ai écrites en
ton nom au prince de Condé et à la reine Jeanne. Tiens, lis la
réponse de monsieur de Pibrac, vice-chancelier de Navarre.
«Au sieur Lecamus, syndic du corps des Pelletiers.

«Monseigneur le prince de Condé me charge de vous dire
le regret qu’il a de ne pouvoir rien faire pour son compagnon
de la tour Saint-Aignan, duquel il se souvient, et à qui, pour le
moment, il offre une place de gendarme dans sa compagnie,
en laquelle il sera bien à même de faire son chemin en
homme de cœur, comme il est.
«La reine de Navarre attend l’occasion de récompenser le
sieur Christophe, et n’y faudra point.
«Sur ce, monsieur le syndic, nous prions Dieu de vous
avoir en sa garde.
«Nérac. «Pibrac,
«Chancelier de Navarre.»
—Nérac, Pibrac, crac! dit Babette. Il n’y a rien à attendre des

Gascons, ils ne songent qu’à eux.
Le vieux Lecamus regardait son fils d’un air railleur.
—Il propose de monter à cheval à un pauvre enfant qui a eu les
genoux et les chevilles broyés pour lui! s’écria mademoiselle
Lecamus, quelle affreuse plaisanterie!
—Je ne te vois guère conseiller en Navarre, dit le syndic des
pelletiers.
—Je voudrais bien savoir ce que la reine Catherine ferait pour
moi, si je la requérais, dit Christophe atterré.
—Elle ne t’a rien promis, dit le vieux marchand, mais je suis
certain qu’elle ne se moquerait pas de toi et se souviendrait de tes
souffrances. Cependant, pourrait-elle faire un conseiller au
parlement d’un bourgeois protestant?...
—Mais Christophe n’a pas abjuré! s’écria Babette. Il peut bien se
garder le secret à lui-même sur ses opinions religieuses.
—Le prince de Condé serait moins dédaigneux avec un
conseiller au Parlement de Paris, dit Lecamus.
—Conseiller, mon père! est-ce possible?
—Oui, si vous ne dérangez pas ce que je veux faire pour vous.
Voici mon compère Lallier qui donnerait bien deux cent mille livres si
j’en mettais autant pour l’acquisition d’une belle terre seigneuriale
avec condition de substitution de mâle en mâle, et de laquelle nous
vous doterions.
—Et j’ajouterais quelque chose de plus pour une maison à Paris,
dit Lallier.

Covenanting Citizens: The Protestation Oath and Popular Political Culture in The English Revolution First Edition John Walter

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Covenanting Citizens: The Protestation Oath and Popular Political Culture in The English Revolution First Edition John Walter

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Covenanting Citizens: The Protestation

Oath and Popular Political Culture in

Hugo Grotius and the century of revolution, 1613-1718 :

Cultural Theory and Popular Culture: An Introduction

The gothic in contemporary literature and popular

Ideas of Contract in English Political Thought in the

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The Monstrous-Feminine in Contemporary Japanese Popular

Following the Levellers, Volume One: Political and

Associative political culture in the Holy Roman Empire

Abbreviations and Conventions ix

Abbreviations and Conventions

BLAS Bedfordshire and Luton Archives Service, Bedford

x Abbreviations and Conventions

On 3 May 1641 members of the House of Commons assembled in a mood of

6 Russell, Fall, 295.

e­ mphasized the importance of the Protestation as a ‘common system of values . . .

The Protestation gave ‘office’ to those conventionally excluded from a formal

T he Parliame n tary P olitics of the

20 CJ, ii, 131–3.

25 TNA, SP 16/480/9. 26 PA, HC/CL/JO/1/20, p. 1. 27 POSLP, iv. 174.

41 POSLP, iv. 180.

47 BL, Additional MS 35331, fo. 79r. 48 POSLP, iv. 180–1.

Le Parisien, de tout temps, a fait des lazzi avant, pendant et

Était vêtu comme un courtisan...

—Vrai Dieu! s’écria le cardinal, les hérétiques ne le sont pas en

«Au sieur Lecamus, syndic du corps des Pelletiers.

—Nérac, Pibrac, crac! dit Babette. Il n’y a rien à attendre des

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Abbreviations and Conventions ix

e mphasized the importance of the Protestation as a ‘common system of values . . .