e free discussion of the theory of government which their insolent
assumptions stimulated, weakened the cause they sought to strengthen.
Their ingenuity overreached itself.

This, however, was as nothing compared with the hostility evoked by
their unscrupulous application of these principles in practice. There
was hardly a plot against established rule in Protestant countries with
which they were not known or believed to be connected. The invasion of
Ireland in 1579, the murder of the Regent Morton in Scotland, and
Babington's conspiracy against Elizabeth, emanated from their councils.
They were held responsible for the attempted murder of the Prince of
Orange in 1580, and for his actual murder in 1584. They loudly applauded
Jacques Clement, the assassin of Henri III. in 1589, as 'the eternal
glory of France.'[175] Numerous unsuccessful attacks upon the life of
Henri IV., culminating in that of Jean Chastel in 1594, caused their
expulsion from France. When they returned in 1603, they set to work
again;[176] and the assassin Ravaillac, who succeeded in removing the
obnoxious champion of European independence in 1610, was probably
inspired by their doctrine.[177] They had a hand in the Gunpowder Plot
of 1605, and were thought by some to have instigated the Massaere of S.
Bartholomew. They fomented the League of the Guises, which had for its
object a change in the French dynasty. They organized the Thirty Years'
War, and they procured the revocation of the Edict of Nantes. If it is
not possible to connect them immediately with all and each of the
criminal acts laid to their charge, the fact that a Jesuit in every case
was lurking in the background, counts by the force of cumulative
evidence heavily against them, and explains the universal suspicion with
which they came to be regarded as factious intermeddlers in the concerns
of nations. Moreover, their written words accused them; for the
tyrannicide of heretics was plainly advocated in their treatises on
government. So profound was the conviction of their guilt, that the
death of Sixtus V. in 1590, predicted by Bellarmino, the sudden death of
Urban VII. in the same year, and the death of Clement VIII. in 1805,
also predicted by Bellarmino--these three Popes being ill-affected
toward the order--were popularly ascribed to their agency. But of their
practical intervention there is no proof. Old age and fever must be
credited, in these as in other cases, with the decease of Rom