Even then their seminaries at Reims, Douai, and S.Omer must be rather regarded as outposts _epiteichismoi_ against England and Flanders, than, as nationally French establishments.

In France they long remained a seditious and belligerent faction.[162] [Footnote 162: It was not till the epoch of Maria de'Medici's Regency that the Jesuits obtained firm hold on France.] They had the same partial and clandestine success in the Low Countries, where their position was at first equivocal, though they early gained some practical hold upon the University of Louvain.

We are perhaps justified in attributing the evil fame of Reims, Douai, S.Omer, and Louvain to the incomplete sympathy which existed between the Jesuits and the countries where they made these settlements.

Not perfectly at home, surrounded by discontent and jealousy, upon the borderlands of the heresies they were bound to combat, their system assumed its darkest colors in those hotbeds of intrigue and feverish fanaticism.

In time, however, the Jesuits fixed their talons firmly upon the Netherlands, through the favor of Anne of Austria; and the year 1562 saw them comfortably ensconced at Antwerp, Louvain, Brussels, and Lille, in spite of the previous antipathy of the population.