After three years of such deadly animosity between the two parties and the two houses, the king and the queen-mother could find no other way of stopping an explosion than to call the matter on before the privy council, and cause to be there drawn up, on the 29th of January, 1566, a solemn decree, “declaring the admiral’s innocence on his own affirmation, given in the presence of the king and the council as before God himself, that he had not had anything to do with or approved of the said homicide.  Silence for all time to come was consequently imposed upon the attorney-general and everybody else; inhibition and prohibition were issued against the continuance of any investigation or prosecution.  The king took the parties under his safeguard, and enjoined upon them that they should live amicably in obedience to him.”  By virtue of this injunction, the Guises, the Colignies, and the Montmorencies ended by embracing, the first-named accommodating themselves with a pretty good grace to this demonstration:  “but God knows what embraces!” [Words used in La Harenga, a satire of the day in burlesque verse upon the Cardinal of Lorraine.] Six years later the St. Bartholomew brought the true sentiments out into broad daylight.

At the same time that the war was proceeding amongst the provinces with this passionate doggedness, royal decrees were alternately confirming and suppressing or weakening the securities for liberty and safety which the decree of Amboise, on the 19th of March, 1563, had given to the Protestants by way of re-establishing peace.  It was a series of contradictory measures which were sufficient to show the party-strife still raging in the heart of the government.  On the 14th of June, 1563, Protestants were forbidden to work, with shops open, on the days of Catholic festivals.  On the 14th of December, 1563, it was proclaimed that Protestants might not gather alms for the poor of their religion, unless in places where that religion was practised, and nowhere else.  On the 24th of June, 1564, a proclamation from the king interdicted the exercise of the Reformed religion within the precincts of any royal residence.  On the 4th of August, 1564, the Reformed churches were forbidden to hold synods and make collections of money, and their ministers to quit their places of residence and to open schools.  On the 12th of November, 1567, a king’s ordinance interdicted the conferring of judiciary offices on non-Catholics.  In vain did Conde and Coligny cry out loudly against these violations of the peace of Amboise; in vain, on the 16th of August, 1563, at the moment of proclaiming the king’s majority, was an edict issued giving full and entire confirmation to the edict of the 19th of March preceding, with the addition of prescriptions favorable to the royal authority, as well as, at the same time, to the maintenance of the public peace; scarcely any portion of these prescriptions was observed; the credit of Chancellor de l’Hospital was clearly very much on the decline;