160 A DISCOURSE IN PRAISE 



by the great mortality by the hand of God, and the 

 rather because it is known she did never much affect 

 the holding of that town to her own use ; it was left, 

 and her forces withdrawn, yet did that nothing di 

 minish her merit of the crown, and namely of that 

 party who recovered by it such strength, as by that 

 and no other thing they subsisted long after : and 

 lest that any should sinisterly and maliciously inter 

 pret that she did nourish those divisions; whoknoweth 

 not what faithful advice, continual and earnest soli 

 citation she used by her ambassadors and ministers 

 to the French kings successively, and to their mother, 

 to move them to keep their edicts of pacification, to 

 retain their own authority and greatness by the 

 union of her subjects ? Which counsel, if it had been 

 as happily followed, as it was prudently and sin 

 cerely given, France at this day had been a most 

 flourishing kingdom, which now is a theatre of 

 misery. And now at last, when the said house of 

 Guise, being one of the whips of God, whereof them 

 selves are but the cords, and Spain the stock, had by 

 their infinite aspiring practices wrought the miracles 

 of states, to make a king in possession long esta 

 blished to play again for his crown, without any title 

 of a competitor, without any invasion of a foreign 

 enemy, yea, without any combination in substance 

 of a blood-royal or nobility ; but only by furring in 

 audacious persons into sundry governments, and by 

 making the populace of towns drunk with seditious 

 preachers : and that king Henry the Third, awaked 

 by those pressing dangers, was compelled to execute 



