Thomas Stukley, born around 1520 and raised the son of Sir Hugh Stukley, of Afheton, near Ilfracombe in north Devon, a well-off clothier and knight of the body to King Henry VIII, and Jane Pollard.

Descended on his mother's side from a noble line, Thomas is supposed by some of his contemporaries to be an illegitimate son of Henry VIII himself.

He had been present at the siege of Boulogne in 1544-1545, and again in 1550 on the surrender of the city to the English.

A standard-bearer at Boulogne from 1547 to 1550, he had then entered the service of Edward Seymour, 1st Duke of Somerset.

A warrant had been issued against him in 1551 after his master's arrest, but he had succeeded in escaping to France, where he serves in the French army.

His military talents have brought him to the attention of Henri I Montmorency, and he is sent to England with a letter of recommendation from Henry II of France to his supposed half-brother Edward VI of England.

He proceeds on arrival on September 16, 1552, to reveal the French plans for the capture of Calais and for a descent upon England, the furtherance of which, according to his account, is the object of his mission to England.

John Dudley, 1st Duke of Northumberland, evades the payment of any reward to Stukley, and seeks to gain the friendship of the French king by pretending to disbelieve Stukley's statements.

Stukley, who may well be the originator of the plans adopted by the French, will be imprisoned in the Tower of London for some months.

Montmorency had been released from two years of Spanish captivity under the Treaty of Cateau-Cambresis, by which time the Guises have supplanted him and the fifteen-year-old king Francis II treats him with indifference.

Montmorency has to give up his Great Master status to the Duke of Guise.

However, his son Henri is appointed marshal by way of indemnity.

He himself retires to his estates.

Francis II ‘s powerful Guise in-laws, who see an opportunity for power and an opportunity to destroy the Huguenots in France, dominate the weak-willed French monarch.

The ensuing persecution provokes the Huguenot Conspiracy of Amboise, a plot hatched by Louis de Bourbon, prince de Condé and Huguenot leader, to abduct Francis and arrest his Guise mentors.

Some Huguenots surround the Château d’Amboise in March 1560 and attempt to seize the King in an abortive coup d'etat, but the authorities, having discovered their plan, bloodily crush the incipient rebellion.

Francois de Lorraine, second duc de Guise, Duc D'aumale, and Prince De Joinville, who had become the head of the ultra-Catholic faction in France after the death of King Heny II, had also become the sole commander of the royal army after the capture of Montmorency at Dreux in December, 1562.

As lieutenant general of the kingdom, Guise moves to besiege Orléans, where, mortally wounded by a Huguenot assassin, he dies on February 24, 1563.

A third party of moderate Catholics, known as the Politiques, emerges under the family of Montmorency at the end of 1572, following the deaths of several thousand French Huguenots in what has become known as the Saint Bartholomew's Day Massacre.

Both Philip II of Spain and Pope Gregory XIII declare themselves pleased with the outcome, which is naturally viewed with horror by their religious opponents throughout Europe.

In France, it solidifies Huguenot opposition to the crown.

Condé, whose forced conversion, together with that of his cousin, Henri of Navarre, had saved him from death in the Massacre, has spent the past few years raising money, troops, and support from the German princes, particularly Jan Casimir, the son of Friedrich III of the Palatine.

A relative of the Coligny brothers, Henri de Montmorency, Sieur de Damville, governs the heavily Protestant Languedoc region as an "uncrowned king of the south," and, though himself Roman Catholic, brings another substantial army to the Protestant side.

The Catholic League, led by the ultra-Roman Catholic Henri I de Lorraine, third duc de Guise, forces the moderate but devious King Henry III to ban Protestantism and attempts to exclude from the succession his brother-in-law, the Huguenot leader Henry of Bourbon, king of Navarre and heir presumptive to the French throne.

The result is the War of the Three Henrys.

Anne, the eldest son of Guillaume, Viscount de Joyeuse, when very young had been admitted to the royal court, where he had carried the title of Marquis d'Arques (after one of his father's lands).

King Henry III, having just lost his former favorites, had taken a great liking to Anne and in 1581 had created him Duke de Joyeuse with precedence over all other peers of the realm except for princes of the blood and certain sovereign families.

Henry had also made Anne admiral of France in 1582 and governor of Normandy in 1586 and married him to Marguerite de Lorraine-Vaudémont, younger sister of the queen.

A champion of Roman Catholic reaction against Henri I de Montmorency's tolerant policy toward the Huguenots in Languedoc, Anne leads an army against the Huguenots in Guyenne and ...

...massacres some of them at Mont-Saint-Éloi.

Duke Anne is recalled to court at this inopportune moment because of the intrigues of jealous rivals, and, when he marches a second time against Henry of Navarre, he is captured and killed on October 20 at the Battle of Coutras, which Henry, with English financial aid, wins.