Christianity in the 16th century intermittent conflicts, known as the Wars of Religion. The civil wars were helped along by the sudden death of Henry II in 1559, which saw the beginning of a prolonged period of weakness for the French crown. and outrage became the defining characteristic of the time, illustrated at its most intense in the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre of August 1572, when the Catholic Church annihilated between 30,000 and 100,000 Huguenots across France. The wars only concluded when Henry IV, a former Huguenot, issued the Edict of Nantes, promising official toleration of the Protestant minority but under highly restricted conditions. Catholicism
St Day the richest and perhaps most famous copper mining district in the world from the 16th century to the 1830s. The population, wealth and activity in St Day declined steadily from about 1870 onwards, today the population is smaller than in 1841. It is now essentially a residential village. The Wheal Gorland mine is the type locality for the minerals: clinoclase, cornwallite and liroconite. A St Day mine site has been used for short-oval stock car racing for many years. Stock car drivers from Cornwall have won 11 World Championships. The population of St Day was 1,821 at the census 2011