the laws which made death the penalty of
heretical belief. The rest--and they mustered in the end a majority of
_three_[1044] over the advocates of toleration, while they were much
more numerous than the champions of bloody persecution--advised the king
to give to the ecclesiastical courts exclusive cognizance of heresy,
according to the provisions of the Edict of Romorantin, and to forbid
the holding of public or private conventicles, whether with or without
arms, in which sermons should be preached or the sacraments administered
otherwise than according to the customs of the Romish Church.[1045] Such
was the result of the deliberations of the Mercuriale of June and July,
1561,[1046] in the course of which opinions had been freely expressed
far more radical than those of Anne Du Bourg in the Mercuriale of 1559.

[Sidenote: The "Edict of July."]

[Sidenote: Disappointment at its severity.]

The edict for which the direction had been thus marked out was published
on the eleventh of July, 1561.[1047] It has become celebrated in history
as the "Edict of July." After reiterating the injunctions of previous
royal letters, and forbidding all insults and breaches of the peace, on
pain of the halter, Charles was made to prohibit "all enrollings,
signatures, or other things tending to sedition." Preachers in the
churches were strictly commanded to abstain from uttering words
calculated to excite the popular passions or prejudice. The most
important portion of the law, however, was that which punished, by
confiscation of body and goods, all who attended, whether with or
without arms, conventicles in which preaching was held or the holy
sacraments administered. Of simple heresy the cognizance was still
restricted, as by the edict of Romorantin in the previous year, to the
church courts; but no higher penalty could be imposed on the guilty,
when handed over to the secular arm, than banishment from the kingdom.
The punishment of all offences in which public disorder or sedition was
mingled with heresy, remained in the hands of the presidial
judges.[1048] These were the leading features of this severe ordinance.
It is true that the edict was expressly stated to be only
provisional--to last no longer than until the Universal or National
Council, whichever might be held--that pardon was offered to those who
would live in a Catholic manner for the future, that calumny was
threatened with exemplary punishment. Yet it was clear that the