She had a very strong objection to
the coarseness, the vices, the idleness, the brutish ignorance of the
cloister; she had aspirations after a more spiritual form of religion
than the ordinary Catholicism of her day provided, and as a strong
politician she may have had something of that Gallicanism which has
always been well marked in some of the best Frenchmen, and which at
one time nearly prevailed with her great-great-grandson, Louis XIV.
But there is no doubt that, as her brother said to the fanatical
Montmorency, she would always have been and always was of his religion,
the religion of the State. The side of the Reformation which must
have most appealed to her was neither its austere morals, nor its bare
ritual, nor its doctrines, properly so called, but its spiritual pietism
and its connection with profane learning and letters; for of literature
Margaret was an ardent devotee and a constant practitioner.
Her best days were done by the time of her second marriage. After the
King's return from Spain persecution broke out, and Margaret's influence
became more and more weak to stop it.
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