It is the conviction of monks and preachers during these times, that parricides and the most horrible assassinations are greeted as miracles and the works of God.” Pierre de l'Estoile's scathing denunciation of the preachers who celebrated the assassination of Henry III in August 1589 was very much in character. Even though he was at times harshly critical of Henry III, L'Estoile came from a magisterial family, and he naturally associated political stability with the monarchy. That anyone could celebrate such a blow to public order was unfathomable to him. The preachers who celebrated the assassination of Henry III, however, clearly disagreed. Many of them were closely affiliated with the Paris-based Catholic League, a radical political association that had emerged in 1585 to prevent the succession of the Protestant Henry of Navarre to the French throne. These clerics were convinced that the death of Henry III in 1589 was necessary for the salvation of France. For fifteen years they and other French Catholics watched in dismay as the monarch they once thought would crush French Protestantism negotiated with Calvinist leaders and even permitted some Calvinist worship. The death of Henry III's brother François-Hercule in 1584 left Navarre as heir presumptive, a situation that not only accelerated confessional division in France but also threw open for public debate the very nature of the French monarchy itself. The French monarchy was a Christian institution to be sure, but was not a Christian institution necessarily Catholic?