XVI.

French.

La Cité franche de liberté fait serue, Des profligés & resueurs fait azyle, Le Roy changé a eux non si proterue, De cent seront devenus plus de Mille.

English.

The free City from a free one shall become slave, And of the banished and dreamers shall be a retreat, The King changed in mind, shall not be so froward to them. Of one hundred they shall become more than a thousand.

ANNOT.

Here you must observe that the Author being a Papist, speaketh this concerning the City of _Geneva_, which he saith from a free City became a slave, when it shook off the Duke of _Savoy_’s domination, and became a retreat to the Protestants, whom he called the _banished_ and _dreamers_.

In the third Verse, by _the King changed in his mind that shall not be so froward to them_, he meaneth, _Henry_ IV. who having changed the Protestant Religion, to be a _Roman_ Catholick, did undertake their protection against the Duke of _Savoy_ their Prince.

Hence followeth the explication of the fourth Verse, when he saith, that _of one hundred they shall become more than a thousand_; for in few years the Protestants became so numerous, that they drove the _Roman_ Catholicks wholly out of the Town, and so have remained to this day Masters of it.