The vexatious delays, and the actual persecution still harder to be borne,
which were encountered at Rouen, have been duly recorded by an anonymous
Roman Catholic contemporary, as well as in the registers of the city hall
and of the Norman parliament, and may serve as an indication of what
occurred in many other places. From the chapter of the cathedral and the
judges of the supreme provincial court, down to the degraded rabble, the
entire population was determined to interpose every possible obstacle in
the way of the peaceable execution of the new law. Before any official
communication respecting it reached them, the clergy declared, by solemn
resolution, their intention to reserve the right of prosecuting all who
had plundered their extensive ecclesiastical domain. The municipality
wrote at once to the king, to his mother, and to others at court,
imploring that Rouen and its vicinity might be exempted from all exercise
of the "new religion." Parliament sent deputies to Charles the Ninth to
remonstrate against the broad concessions made in favor of the
Protestants, and, even when compelled to go through the form of a
registration, avoided a publication of the edict, in order to gain time
for another fruitless protest addressed to the royal government.

When it came to the execution of the law, the affair assumed a more
threatening aspect. The Roman Catholics had resolved to resist the return
of the "for-issites," or fugitive Huguenots. At first they excused their
opposition by alleging that there were bandits and criminals of every kind
in the ranks of the exiles. Next they demanded that a preliminary list of
their names and abodes should be furnished, in order that their arms might
be taken away. Finally they required, with equal perverseness, that, in
spite of the express stipulation of the king's rescript, the "for-issites"
should return only as private individuals, and should not venture to
resume their former offices and dignities. Meantime the "for-issites,"
driven to desperation by the flagrant injustice of which they were the
victims, began to retaliate by laying violent hands upon all objects of
Roman Catholic devotion in the neighboring country, and by levying
contributions upon the farms and villas of their malignant enemies. The
Rouenese revenged themselves in turn by wantonly murdering the Huguenots
whom they found within the city walls.

[Sidenote: Protest of the Norman parliament.]

The embittered fee