After his conversion to Catholicism, and during the whole of his reign, it was one of Henry IV.’s constant anxieties to show himself well-disposed towards his old friends, and to do for them all he could do without compromising the public peace in France, or abdicating in his own person the authority he needed to maintain order and peace.  Some of the edicts published by his predecessors during the intervals of civil war, notably the edict of Poitiers issued by Henry III., had granted the Protestants free exercise of their worship in the castles of the Calvinistic lords who had jurisdiction, to the number of thirty-five hundred, and in the faubourgs of one town or borough of each bailiwick of the realm, except the bailiwick of Paris.  Further, the holding of properties and heritages, union by marriage with Catholics, and the admission of Protestants to the employments, offices, and dignities of the realm, were recognized by this edict.  These rights, in black and white, had often been violated by the different authorities, or suspended during the wars; Henry IV. maintained them or put them in force again, and supported the application of them or decreed the extension of them.  It was calculated that there were in France eight hundred towns and three hundred bailiwicks or seneschalties; the treaties concluded with the League had expressly prohibited the exercise of Protestant worship in forty towns and seventeen bailiwicks; Henry IV. tolerated it everywhere else.  The prohibition was strict as regarded Paris and ten leagues round; but, as early as 1594, three months after his entry into Paris, Henry aided the Reformers in the unostentatious celebration of their own form in the Faubourg St. Germain; and he authorized the use of it at court for religious ceremonies, especially for marriages.  Three successive edicts, two issued at Mantes in 1591 and 1593, and the third at St. Germain in 1597, confirmed and developed these signs of progress in the path of religious liberty.

[Illustration:  The Castle of St. Germain in the Reign of Henry IV.—­107]

The Parliaments had in general refused to enregister these decrees a fact which gave them an incomplete and provisional character; but equitable and persistent measures on the king’s part prevailed upon the Parliament of Paris to enregister the edict of St. Germain; and the Parliament of Dijon and nearly all the other Parliaments of the kingdom followed this example.  One of the principal provisions of this last edict declared Protestants competent to fill all the offices and dignities of the kingdom.  It had many times been inserted in preceding edicts, but always rejected by the Parliaments or formally revoked.  Henry IV. brought it into force and credit by putting it extensively in practice, without entering upon discussion of it and without adding any comment upon it.  In 1590 he had given Palleseuil the government of Neuchatel in Normandy; he had introduced Hurault Dufay, Du Plessis-Mornay and Rosny into the