after the Treaty of Cateau-Cambrésis (A.D. 1559) had pacified the dynastic conflict of the early part of the sixteenth century, and as terminating with the Treaty of the Pyrenees (A.D. 1659), which closed the struggles that had been generated by the Thirty Years War in Germany. This period of one hundred years was amazingly prolific in controversy, and unprecedentedly fruitful of writers of eminence. The task of selecting eight to represent the main currents of ideas has therefore been one of no small difficulty. Even now it is painful to reflect upon the great thinkers who have had to be excluded. One has only to mention such names as Hotman, Duplessis-Mornay, Barclay, Bellarmine, Mariana, Buchanan, Poynet, Althusius, Selden, Milton, Pufendorf, Filmer, to call to the minds of all familiar with the period the images of a whole galaxy of notable men of high powers and remarkable literary achievements. I think it will be found, nevertheless, that in the works of the eight selected thinkers most, if not all, of the leading principles which moved and guided the men of this era of conflict and controversy are expressed and expounded. Let us, for a short time, survey the era, note the leading movements, specify its dominant problems, mark its outstanding men.

II

The Treaty of Cateau-Cambrésis signalised a distinct turning-point in European affairs. For more than sixty yearsi.e., ever since Charles VIII of France, in A.D. 1494, had conducted his fateful invasion of Naples-the controlling factor in Continental politics had been the struggle between the house of Valois on the one side, and the rulers of Spain and the Empire on the other side, for dominance in Italy, for command of the Netherlands, for possession of the Rhenish Provinces, for occupation of the passes of the Alps and the Pyrenees, and generally for ascendancy in Europe. The struggle had commenced at a time when the religious horizon was clear; when Pope Alexander VI was enjoying, in care-free profligacy, the obedience and the oblations of a Catholic world which was untroubled by any aggressive heresy and unbroken by any serious schism. In the circumstances, there was nothing remarkable or peculiarly reprehensible in a war between Most

Catholic and Most Christian kings. The Popes, in fact, had incited them to the mêlée, had encouraged them in it, and had joined them in the fray. All alike-kings and Popes-had been wholly engrossed in questions relating to property and power. During the long course of the conflict, however, the condition of Christendom had radically changed. The Reformation revolt had broken out in Germany, and from Germany had spread to the rest of the Continent. The unity of the medieval Church had been rent in twain, and the very existence of Catholicism had come to be menaced. So long as the Reformation limited its subversive activities to Germany the French King welcomed it. It paralysed the arm of his enemy, the Emperor; it provided him with valuable allies in the heart of the territories of his antagonist; it saved him from too exclusive a dependence upon his other coadjutor, the Turkish Sultan. It was, indeed, to no small extent due to the fostering support of Francis I that the German Protestants were enabled successfully to defy Charles V, and ultimately to compel him to make with them the famous Peace of Augsburg (A.D. 1555) which recognised the two religions, and left the princes of the Empire free to choose between them.

By that time the Reformation had made enormous progress throughout the Continent, and the Reformers were full of hope that ere many years had passed their cause would be entirely victorious. In Germany itself, apart from the three ecclesiastical electorates, little remained to be captured from Catholicism except Austria, Bavaria, and the Palatinate. Switzerland had become the home of heresies-Zwinglianism and Calvinism -more virulent and more actively antagonistic to the old religion than was even the Lutheranism of Germany. Sweden had adopted Protestantism under Gustavus Vasa in order to inspire with religious enthusiasm her national revolt against the overlordship of Denmark. England had thrown off her allegiance to Rome in 1534, and during the reign of Edward VI (15471553) had drifted into an extreme anti-Papalism, which the brief but sanguinary reaction under Mary only tended to accentuate.

Scotland was still in 1559 nominally Catholic, under the queenship of the absent Mary Stuart and the regency of her mother, Mary of Guise; but Catholicism, which seemed to portend the absorption of Scotland into the French monarchy,

had become anti-national and intensely unpopular, and when in that very year John Knox returned to his native land, after many years of exile and wandering, he soon kindled, far and wide, a consuming flame of patriotic Calvinism. In the Netherlands the inquisitorial rule of Philip II of Spain, combined with his determined attack upon the liberties of the seventeen provinces, had roused a passion of protest that was destined soon to break out in open revolt. In particular, during this very year, 1559, Philip aggravated and alarmed the Netherlanders when he appointed as Governor not William of Orange, as had been expected, but his own half-sister, the half-manly Margaret of Parma.

Not even the more faithful and submissive Latin countries had escaped the contagion of revolt. Italy, always indifferent to religion, seemed to be lapsing into veritable paganism. Spain, where the long crusade against the Moors had kept Christian zeal unusually quick, found it necessary, in order to retain the unity of the Faith, to immolate many hundreds of heretics in spectacular autos-da-fé: it was in 1559 that Philip II, newly arrived in the peninsula, initiated on a grand scale those enormous conflagrations which effectively eliminated from his kingdom both Protestantism and progress. But it was in France, above all the other Latin countries, that the struggle between the new faith and the old was fiercest and most protracted. The politic flirtations of Francis I with Lutheranism had not survived the shock of the great French defeat at Pavia (A.D. 1525). Thenceforth Francis too desperately needed papal aid in his efforts to extricate himself from the meshes of his victorious enemy, the Emperor Charles V, to venture into ways of doubtful orthodoxy. Abandoned by the Court, and suppressed by the Church, Lutheranism in France languished and died. After a brief interval, however, a much more formidable revolt against both Church and Court commenced. John Calvin was a Frenchman, and the flawless logic of his amazing system of theology made a specially strong appeal to the lucid and legal French mind. Calvin himself, from a safe distance, impudently but not wholly unhopefully, dedicated his Institutes to Francis I (1535). If Francis I, however, had by that date wholly purged himself of Lutheranism, which was a creed highly favourable to national monarchy, he was not likely to

entangle himself with Calvinism, which (as James Stuart was later to discover and announce) was a creed that agreed with monarchy as well as God with the Devil.

Calvinism was, indeed, the creed of rebels. It reasserted the medieval ascendancy of the spiritual over the temporal power; it regarded the State as the mere agent of the Church; it located sovereignty in the general assembly of the elect; it treated kings contemptuously as inherently inferior to saints. The measure of Francis's dislike of Calvinism was, needless to say, also the measure of the approval with which it was welcomed by feudal nobles and once-powerful communes, whose privileges and prerogatives had been diminished by the expanding and encroaching power of the Valois monarchy. Calvinism was adopted as a weapon against royalty by the decadent baronage and the anti-national municipalities. Under their formidable patronage it threatened to disrupt the newly unified kingdom, break up the central Government, destroy the royal authority, and throw France back into the chaos of the early Middle Ages. Its anti-patriotic tendency became even more clearly evident when Huguenot nobles and burgesses entered into treasonable correspondence with heretics in foreign lands, making with them defensive and offensive alliances. King Henry II (1547-59), son and successor of Francis I, felt it necessary to take decisive action. He established a suggestively named Chambre ardente to deal with heresy in 1549; he secured special powers for the ecclesiastical courts in 1551; he allowed the Inquisition to begin its effective operations in 1557; he gave his confidence and support to the Duke of Guise and his brother the Cardinal of Lorraine, the leaders of the ultramontane party.

Neither France nor Spain, however, could satisfactorily cope with Calvinistic rebellion if the two kingdoms continued at war with one another. Hence the negotiations which in 1559 culminated in the Peace of Cateau-Cambrésis. By the terms of the resultant treaties all outstanding territorial disputes between Valois and Hapsburg were settled or compromised, the Most Catholic and the Most Christian Kings agreed that they would join in an endeavour to secure the meeting of a General Council to restore unity of the Church; the two Courts cemented their alliance against heresy by a marriage between

the widowed Philip II himself and Elizabeth, eldest daughter of Henry II.

III

The festivities which signalised the conclusion of the Peace of Cateau-Cambrésis, and the marriage of Philip II to Elizabeth of Valois, were marred by a tragedy which profoundly affected the future of European politics. King Henry II was mortally wounded in a tournament at Paris (June 1559). He was succeeded by his eldest son, Francis II, a boy of only fifteen, but already husband of Mary Queen of Scots, and through her allied to the powerful and bigoted family of Guise. The Duke of Guise and his brother the Cardinal now assumed the control of the government of France. Their sister, Mary of Guise (widow of the Stuart James V), was, as we have already noted, regent of Scotland. The forces of France and Scotland were therefore united to achieve the supreme object of the Guise ambition-the acquisition of the throne of England for Mary Queen of Scots. From the Catholic point of view her claim to the throne was incontestable. Catholics had not recognised the legitimacy of Elizabeth; neither did they admit the validity of the testament by means of which the excommunicated Henry VIII had excluded from the succession the Stuarts descended from his eldest sister, Margaret. Mary Stuart thus became the Catholic and legitimate claimant for the English crown as against its schismatic and revolutionary appropriator, the daughter of Anne Boleyn : she assumed the arms and style of Queen of England, Scotland, and France. In order to emphasise the religious character of Mary's claim; in order to secure the active support of the large Catholic faction in England; and in order to win the powerful assistance of the papal Curia, the Guises initiated a policy of severe persecution of heresy in both France and Scotland. In neither country was it accepted without demur. In Scotland there was an instant conflagration. The Calvinistic "Lords of the Congregation," incited by John Knox and his brethren, and secretly encouraged by Elizabeth, rose in revolt, drove out the French garrison, repudiated the papal authority altogether, and established a Presbyterian Church system (1560). In France events did not move so rapidly or so easily. Catholicism