In answer to the question "When were Huguenots prohibited from acting as royal officials?" this, from Roger Mettam's excellent "Louis XIV and the Persection of the Huguenots" (which can be found in Irene Scouloudi, ed. Huguenots in Britain and their French Background, 1550-1800. Published by the Huguenot Society of Great Britain and Ireland). "One striking difference can be seen in the attitude of the crown to the Huguenots after the year 1679. Before then, most (royal) correspondence on that subject had referred to specific individuals or events. Now there began to be a host of more general pronouncements, some asking for information, others commanding royal officials to take action throughout the kingdon. New Protestant institutions were to be closed, and those which were well established were to be scrutinized with extreme care to ensure that they were not adding to their legitimate functions. There was always the danger that secret preaching might be taking place in Huguenot libraries, hospitals and poor-houses. It was decreed that members of the RPR should not be appointed to specific judicial offices, and this prohibition was soon extended to include many other posts. Colbert himself remarked that he would appoint fewer Huguenots to offices which lay in his gift. [MD: Colbert favored Huguenot agents for revenue-related positions, largely because of what he perceived to be their probity and efficiency.] "It should immediately be observed that these royal bans on entry into office for Protestants were far from effective. Frequently the proscription was simply disobeyed and many local officials seemed disinclined to enforce it. When one of the forbidden posts was already in Huguenot hands, it was now required that the holder should convert or sell his position to a Catholic. Often it proved impossible to find such a purchaser, in which case the crown had two laternative courses of action, neither of which was practicable. The government could buy the office itself or could arbitrarily suppress it without compensation. The former course would be costly, and Colbert was unwilling to permit it. Much revenue was being lost from the policy of granting fiscal exemptions to converts (from the RPR to Catholicism, the "abjurers"), because the local communities were not making good the lost taxes. The treasury simply could not have borne this additional burden. As for dismissing a venal officer without reimbursing him, that was the kind of high-handed action which had provoked the first Fronde of 1648-9 and might again prompt bureaucrats, of both faiths, to unite against such a threat to their tenure. Privately Colbert was pleased that it was therefore difficult to remove some of these officials, because many of them were able and skilled bureaucrats." [MD: It is worth remembering that by the mid-1600s, roughly 1 in 2 royal offices was venal: that is, purchased/purchasable. Some of these offices had lovely-sounding titles, including secretary-to-the-King. It is also worth remembering that the paulette, the fee paid by a venal office holder to render his office transferable and inheritable, was a lucrative source of income for the royal treasury. Finally, we need to keep in mind that holding many offices for 3 consecutive generations within a family led to enoblement -- the noblesse de robe. There were, by 1679, quite a number of venal Protestant office-holders, particularly in the financial and judicial networks, with their own clientele networks, and a good bit of political clout. As Peter has said, more than once, this urban, merchantile, moneyed, collaborating Protestant middle class-on-the-make is something that frequently gets washed out in our "prosecuted-and-driven-from-pillar-to-post mythmaking.]