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H6PITAL, MICHEL DE L'. 



HOPPER, THOMAS. 



4S8 



probity, he won the favour of the chancellor Olivier, and of Duchatel, 

 bishop of Tulle and librarian to Francis I. L'Hopital was named 

 ambassador to the Council of Trent, which had been just removed by 

 the pope to Bologna; but the dissensions among the members of that 

 assembly rendered his mission useless, and he was recalled to France 

 by Henri II. The Duchess of Berry, daughter of Francis I., a princess 

 fond of learning, invited L'Hopital to her court, and recommended 

 him to her brother the king, who appointed him superintendent of the 

 finance?. L'Hopital endeavoured to check prodigality, mismanage- 

 ment, and corruption, by which course he made himself many enemies. 

 There was another subject upon which he differed from the court 

 party, and that was the persecution to which the Protestants were 

 subject. L'Hopital, with several of his friends in the parliament, 

 tucli as Du Ferrier, Paul de Foix, Christophe de Thou, and others, 

 petitioned Henri II. to suspend the proscriptions and executions until 

 the newly-assembled council should decide on the religious contro- 

 versy ; but the king considered their remonstrances as rebellious, and 

 he ordered Montgomery, the captain of hia guards, to arrest Paul de 

 Foix, Louis du Faur, Anne du Bourg, and other members of the 

 parliament. Du Bourg, who had spoken the most boldly, was soon 

 after hanged, and his body burnt. During the minority of Francis II., 

 a special court, appropriately called the ' burning-chamber,' was insti- 

 tuted to punish heretics. The Guises were now all-powerful in the 

 state, and the chancellor Olivier himself signed the ordonnance by 

 which the Duke de Guise was appointed lieutenant-general of the 

 kingdom. The old chancellor died soon after, and Catherine de' 

 Medici, alarmed at the power of the Guises, chose L'Hopital, of whose 

 integrity she was assured, to replace him in 1560. His office was not 

 au enviable one in those times. He strenuously opposed the Cardinal 

 de Lorraine, who wanted to establish the Inquisition in France, and 

 he proposed instead of it to give to the bishops cognisance of matters 

 of heresy within their respective dioceses. This resolution was pro- 

 claimed in the edict called ' De Romorantin,' which the chancellor 

 laid before the parliament to be registered, observing at the same 

 time that opinions can only be subdued by exhortations and reasoning, 

 and not by violence and persecution. 



L'Hopital'a next thought was that of assembling the states-general, 

 which had not met for eighty years, but the Guises opposed the pro- 

 posal, which they feared would prove fatal to their power. L'Hopital 

 accordingly contented himself with assembling the nobility and high 

 clergy at Fontainebleau. Francis II., with his wife Mary Stuart, pre- 

 sided in the assembly, and the chancellor made a report upon the 

 state of the kiugdom, and the religious and civil discontents which 

 prevailed. Coligny next presented to the king two petitions from the 

 Protestants of Normandy ; and Montluc, bishop of Valence, and the 

 archbishop of Vienne, strongly censured the system of persecution 

 adopted against the Protestants; they tpoke of the indulgence of the 

 primitive church on similar occasions; they complained of the 

 perpetual obstacles presented by the court of Rome to the convocation 

 of a general council, which might restore peace to Christendom ; and 

 at last they proposed, as the only remedy to existing evils, the convo- 

 cation of the states-general, and also of a national synod. The Guises 

 consented to the first, but violently opposed the national synod as 

 dangerous to the faith and the unity of the church. L'Hopital 

 hastened to obtain an edict from the king, convoking the states- 

 general for the 10th of December 1560, at Orleans, and meantime 

 suspending all prosecutions on charges of heresy. But in the interval 

 Fraucis II. died, and Catherine de' Medici, regent for her second son 

 Charles IX., hesitated about opening the assembly of the states. But 

 the chancellor overcame her doubts and fears, and he opened the 

 assembly with a speech in which he explained the numerous and 

 important subjects which demanded the attention of the states, and 

 above all, he insisted on the claims of the Protestants, censuring the 

 spirit of persecution as unchristian and impolitic : " Let us do away," 

 said he, " with those diabolical words of Lutherans, Huguenots, and 

 Papists, names of party and sedition ; do not let us change the fair 

 appellation of Christiana." 



Each of the three orders composing the states now chose its own 

 orator, and it soon became apparent that no harmony could prevail 

 in the assembly. The orator of the third estate, or commons, without 

 being favourable to the Protestants, loudly censured the scandalous 

 and negligent conduct of the Roman Catholic clergy. The orator of 

 the nobility, reflecting on the wealth and luxury of the church, 

 demanded freedom of worship for the Protestants. The orator of 

 the clergy maintained that heresy was a capital crime, and ought to 

 be punished by the law, and at the same time he claimed exemption 

 for his order from all taxes and other public burdens. The only 

 useful result of the assembly was the passing of an ordonnance pre- 

 pared by L'Hopital, which abolished arbitrary taxes, regulated the 

 feudal authority of the nobles, and corrected many abuses in the 

 judicial system. Soon after, July 1561, L'H&pital obtained from the 

 regent Catherine an edict, in the name of the king, ordering the release 

 of all prisoners suspected of heresy. By another edict Roman 

 Catholics were forbidden, under pain of death, from forcing an 

 entrance into the bouses of Protestants under pretence of dispersing 

 their meetings. The parliament of Parbi opposed these measures; 

 but the chancellor prevailed, and the edicts were enforced. L'Hopital 

 was present at the conference of Poiuy, where Beza and other 



Protestant theologians argued on matters of doctrine against the 

 Cardinal de Lorraine and other Roman Catholic divines, but which 

 ended, as such meetings generally end, in mutual recriminations. In 

 January 1562 L'Hopital obtained from another assembly, consisting 

 of deputations from all the parliaments 'of the kingdom, an edict of 

 tolerance granting liberty of worship to the Protestants, except 

 within the walled towns, and under the condition " that they should 

 not teach anything contrary to the council of Nicaea, or to the books 

 of the Old and New Testaments." But soon after, the massacre of 

 Vassy by the attendants of the Duke of Guise became the signal of 

 fresh persecutions, followed by civil war. [GoiSE.] After the death 

 of the Duke of Guise, 1563, L'Hopital prevailed upon Catherine to 

 grant the edict "of peace," by which, among other conditions, all 

 prisoners on both sides were released, and the Protestants were 

 allowed the exercise of their religion within the towns which they 

 had occupied during the war. He also prevailed upon Catherine to 

 declare the majority of her son Charles IX., whom he afterwards 

 induced to make a tour through the various provinces of the kingdom. 

 The chancellor took this opportunity of reading some sharp lectures 

 to the various parliaments, especially that of Bordeaux, which had 

 encouraged persecution and civil war. In 1566 L'Hopital au'.iiu 

 assembled the deputies from the various parliaments and the chief 

 nobles at Moulins, where an ordonnance was issued for the reform of 

 j ustice, which is one of the best judicial regulatious adopted in France 

 previous to the reign of Louis XIV. Soon after the civil war broke 

 out again, to the great sorrow of L'Hdpital, who endeavoured, during 

 every cessation from actual fighting, to restore peace between the 

 two parties. He thus became obnoxious to the Guises, who desired 

 nothing less than the extermination of the Protestant*. At last a 

 bull came from Rome authorising the king to levy 100,000 (Sous yearly 

 on the revenues of the clergy, for the purpose and on the condition of 

 rooting heresy out of his kingdom. The chancellor opposed the bull ; 

 he besought the king and his mother not to inundate France again 

 with blood ; he seemed to have prevailed, but toon afterward* the 

 seals were taken from him, and' he retired to his country-house at 

 Viguay, in 1563, deploring the calamities of his country which he 

 could no longer prevent. After some years of retirement the news of 

 the St. Burthule'rni massacre came to give the finishing blow to his 

 exhausted frame. He was himself in danger of his life, but was 

 spared through the .influence of the Duchess of Savoy, the former 

 duchess de Berry, his early benefactress. His only daughter, who 

 had embraced the Reformed religion, was saved by the widow duchess 

 of Guise, who concealed her in her hotel at Paris. L'Hopital sur- 

 vived that horrible tragedy only six mouths ; he died at Vignay on the 

 15th of March 1573. An upright and enlightened magistrate in an 

 age of the worst corruption and ignorance, a benevolent Christian 

 amidst the most furious fanaticism, his memory is deservedly conse- 

 crated in the annals of his country. His epistles in Latin verse, 

 reflecting on public and domestic occurrences, were published, and 

 are not without poetical merit. Several of his harangues aud dis- 

 courses have also been published, as well as his testament. His life 

 bas been written by Beruardi ; aud Villemain, in his ' Kouveaux 

 Melanges LitteVaires,' has also written his biography. 



HOPPER, THOMAS, architect, was born at Rochester, in Kent, on 

 July 6th 1775 or 1776, and, according to a family tradition, was 

 descended from a natural daughter of Richard III. Thomas Hopper, 

 when very young, was placed under his father, a clever measuring 

 surveyor, and it is believed he very soon had the chief duty and 

 responsibility of the business. Thus led to direct his attention to 

 architecture, he became in some degree a self-taught architect ; and 

 being about this time introduced to Mr. Walsh Porter, a friend of the 

 Prince Regent, and a sort of authority in matters of taste, Hopper was 

 so fortunate as to please Porter, and was employed by him in extensive 

 alterations and decorations to his house at Fulham, called Craven 

 Cottage. This house became a remarkable specimen of the ' cottage- 

 ornee ' style, afterwards so fashionable, and which Hopper perhaps was 

 the means of introducing. The house contaiued a " robbers' cave," 

 entered from the top ; an octagonal vestibule, with the roof supported 

 by palm-trees ; a ' gothic ' chapel with stained glass, and other 

 whimsies ; and externally presented the appearance of a thatched 

 cottage, with trellis-work and creeping plants. Here the priuce often 

 supped. Hopper was made known to him, aud was employed at 

 Carl ton House in some alterations, as well as on the Conservatory there 

 a sort of imitation of Henry the Seventh's Chapel, which was erected at 

 one end of the lower suite of rooms, and used at the fete to the allied 

 sovereigns in 1814. Here supper-tables were placed down their length 

 being a narrow tank for water, in which live fish disported. Hopper's 

 taste, and the art of the day -the character of which last has been 

 sufficiently pointed out above were suited to one another; aud, 

 favourably introduced, and possessing great energy, a wonderful flow 

 of conversation, and high spirits, it is not surprising that, at a time 

 when there wero fewer professional architects than there are now, 

 Thomas Hopper should have speedily entered upon a large practice. 

 Amongst the buildings of all kinds which he was employed in either 

 erecting or altering, may be named Slaue Castle, in Ireland, for the 

 Marquis of Conyugham ; Penrhyn Castle, near Bangor, North Wales ; 

 Gosford Castle, Armagh; Easton Lodge, Duumow, for Viscount 

 Maynard; Leigh Court, near Bristol ; the house at Kimmel Park, near 



