CHAPTER II.

Persecution in Scotland and Ireland.—Clement VIII and James I

Among the English Catholics in Rome as well confidence in the Spanish party had waned. This change had been greatly promoted by the embassy of the appellants, sent by the English secular clergy, which had made a stay in Rome during 1602, leaning to the support of France, and working against the interests of Spain. At the same time Persons lost that prestige which he had hitherto enjoyed in high places in Rome. The appellants informed the Pope through the French ambassador, that James of Scotland would be glad to see the English Jesuit sent away from Rome. At that time Persons was ill in bed, but when on his recovery he went for a change of air to Capua, to Cardinal Bellarmine, Clement VIII forbade him to return.

It was indeed necessary to show every consideration towards the King of Scots, for he had now for some time been the only claimant to the English throne who had any serious prospect of success. He himself had spared no effort to obtain the dazzling crown of the neighbouring country, and would have accepted it from the hands of the devil himself, thought a contemporary, even though this meant the destruction of both Catholic and Protestant preachers. Thus he did not hesitate to hold out to the Pope and the Catholics the hope of his return to the ancient faith, nor to make use of their money and their influence.

It is difficult to say definitely whether at times James really had any inclination towards the old religion; in any case he detested the Presbyterianism of his own country, and had reintroduced episcopacy there. There were many Catholics among his courtiers ;he knew that his wife Anne had become a Catholic, and exacted no more from her than that she should keep the fact secret. Archbishop James Beaton, who had for many years been his mother’s ambassador in Paris, was confirmed by James in this office, as well as in the possession of his honours and titles ; the same was true of John Leslie, the Bishop of Ross.

But whatever may be thought of the sympathetic feeling of James towards the Catholics, any energetic action, based upon a real conviction, was certainly not to be looked for from a prince of such weak character. As a report of the year 1616 describes him, he was extraordinarily timorous, but at the same time had been even from his youth autocratic in the highest degree. Both his thoughts and his actions were always guided by the opportunism of the moment, and he subjected all else to this ; his conscience, his religion, his friendships, his loyalty, the lives and deaths of his sons and of the aristocracy, as well as the choice of his officials and counsellors. Thus he was not really attached to any particular form of religion, but always favoured the party that was predominant for the moment ; as King of Scots he had been a Calvinist, while later on in England he was an Anglican. He aimed with all his might at the suppression of the Catholic religion, and thought that he would be losing half his power should the Pope once more obtain ecclesiastical jurisdiction in Scotland, which might prove to be the case if the number of the Catholics greatly increased. James was a master of deceit and hypocrisy, and it meant nothing to him to break his pledged word or to fail to keep an oath ; he counted it the highest prudence to deceive the world with lies under the appearance of good faith. He was not wanting in astuteness, and as is wont to be the case with weak and timorous natures, was full of cruelty and tyranny which he vented in a horrible way upon the Catholics and upon all those whose vengeance he feared on account of the wrongs that he had done them. When he had filled himself with strong and sweet wine he poured out abominable blasphemies against the Pope, the religious, the Catholic Church, and even against God and the saints, and would not desist until his servants carried him to bed.

Already at the death of his mother in 1587 James had given proof of his want of principle. When on receipt of the news of the tragedy the Scottish nobles had thrown themselves at his feet, and with clashing arms and loud curses had demanded vengeance on Elizabeth, and when a cry of indig­nation had echoed through the country, it had been the only son of the victim thus disgracefully sacrificed who had readily accepted the excuses of Elizabeth, yet who, purely out of consideration for public opinion, had for a short time professed his willingness to give his assistance to the Armada of Philip II, but who, for the sake of an annual sum of five thousand pounds from England, had shown himself forgetful of the honour of Scotland and of his own crown, and had recently with the support of English gold implicated the Catholic Scottish aristocracy in a rebellion. Yet once again he pretended to be favourable to the Catholics. Thus, after the above­mentioned rising of the Catholic nobles, their property was confiscated, but James refused to have the sentence carried out, as well as the law threatening with loss of property those who gave hospitality to a Catholic priest in their houses.

He actually succeeded in getting the adherents of the old religion to rally to him both in Scotland and in England ; his own Catholic subjects were won over by a promise of liberty of conscience, and those of England by the expectation of his conversion. “There are great hopes of universal toleration”, runs a letter to Persons, “and the agreement of the Catholics in recognizing the king is so complete, that it seems as though God is about to accomplish great things. All the religious parties arc full of expectation and hope, and the Catholics have good reasons to look for special consideration being shown to their aspirations, for the Catholic nobles are working almost to a man on behalf of the king, and have obtained the most far-reaching promises from him.”

Nothing shows the duplicity of the king better than his efforts to obtain the good will of the Pope. He had already raised the hopes of Gregory XIIL for his return to the ancient faith, in order to obtain subsidies from Rome. Under Clement VIII. he had once again entered into negotiations, though only through secret intermediaries, who could be disavowed at any moment, and who were eventually thus disavowed.

In the year 1592, we learn that James had sent two Jesuits, the Scotsmen Gordon and Crichton, openly to Rome, to treat of nothing less than the re-establishment of the Catholic religion. In 1594 Clement VIII. sent to the king an envoy with 40,000 ducats, and promised 10,000 ducats as a monthly subsidy if liberty of conscience was given to the Catholics. But even before the Papal envoy Sampiretti set foot in Scotland on July 16th, 1594, James had once again turned to the Protestant preachers, and by an edict of November 12th, 1593, had confronted many thousands of Catholics with the choice between apostasy and exile. The papal envoy and his companions fell into the hands of the heretics, but were rescued by the Earls of Errol and Angus, while the subsidy that had been sent came into the hands of the Catholic nobles. In spite of this, in 1595 and 1596 James sent a fresh envoy, the Catholic Scotsman, John Ogilvy, to Rome and to Spain ; the ends for which Ogilvy was working in Rome during the summer and autumn of 1595, though probably he was going beyond his instructions, were : the appointment of a Cardinal to represent Scotland, annual subsidies for the war against the rebels in his own country, and against the heretics throughout Great Britain, and the excommunication of all the opponents of the Scottish succession in England. This intermediary, however, met with no success, because Clement VIII. did not trust the King of Scots, but great hopes were raised in the Pope’s mind when in 1599 Edward Drummond arrived in Rome with a letter in the address of which Clement VIII was called “ Most Holy Father,” and the King of Scots signed himself as “his most devoted son.” Drummond was instructed to bring pressure to bear upon the Pope, as well as on the Grand Duke of Tuscany and the Duke of Savoy, to obtain the red hat for a Scotsman, this time for the Bishop of Vaison, William Chisholm. Clement VIII did not grant this request, but he answered the king’s letter with great kindness, expressing the hope that the king would yet find the way of return to the ancient Church. It is possible that the Papal briefs to the English Catholicswere connected with the letter of the King of Scots, but Clement VIII. would not consent to any direct recognition of James’ right to the throne.

The object which the astute King of Scots had principally had in view in writing his letter had thus not been attained, and if he thought that his relations with Rome had been kept secret, he was equally mistaken. Queen Elizabeth heard of his letter and demanded an explanation ; but he was quite able to extract himself from the difficulty ; he flatly denied his relations with Rome. A letter from the king, addressed to a Scottish gentleman, James Hamilton, who was at that time in England, charged him to assure all honest people “on the word of a Christian prince” that without any vacillation he had held firmly to his faith, and would always hold firm to it, and that as King of England he would never permit any other religion. James found himself in fresh difficulties again in 1608, when, in connexion with the “Test ” oath, Bellarmine reminded the king of his letter and the signature he had attached to it. Thereupon James, while he himself remained hidden in an adjoining room, forced his secretary to confess that it was he who had forged his signature. This confession had scarcely left the lips of Balmerino when the king came out from his hiding­place ; the secretary threw himself at his feet, but was not able to avert being condemned to death. But in spite of all this James was not able to free himself from the suspicion of having staged a comedy of complicity with the servile secretary.

That James, despite his emphatic denial, had indeed written to the Pope, is clear from a letter from his wife. This was a letter written in her own hand, ordering Drummond to make the excuses of the king to Clement VIII, and saying that James had not replied in person to the reply which the Pope had sent to the king’s letter, because Oueen Elizabeth had learned of his relations with the Pope, and had threatened him with the anger of the English Protestants, a thing which might have involved for the King of Scots the loss of the English crown.

The same letter to Drummond further contains orders to profess before the Pope in the queen’s name, the Catholic faith in accordance with the decrees of Trent, to swear allegiance to the Apostolic See, and to recommend to the Pope’s protection the royal princes, whom their mother, as far as it lay in her power, was bringing up in the Catholic faith. It was necessary, she said, for the king’s safety that he should have a bodyguard, and the Pope was asked to grant a subsidy for this purpose, either on his own account or by obtaining it from the King of France, or from the Dukes of Lorraine or Tuscany. James had granted to all his subjects liberty of conscience, so that heresy would disappear of its own accord, but in order to facilitate this action of the king the French ambassador should, at the suggestion of the Pope, ask for liberty of conscience for England as well. This request, which had already been laid before the Curia on several occasions by a Scottish prelate, was renewed by Anne because in this way the quarrel between the secular clergy and the Jesuits could be healed, and in the hands of Elizabeth this had become a principal means of preventing the conversion of England. Finally, the Pope must not take it amiss if James advanced but slowly, and especially if he and the queen took part in the celebration of Protestant worship. She was writing all this with the knowledge of James and with his consent.

Only a short time after her return to the old religion Anne had had recourse by letter to the Pope as well as to the General of the Jesuits, who was asked to represent her interests in Rome. The bearer of her letters, James Wood, Laird of Boniton, fell, however, into the hands of the Scottish Presbyterians and was executed. King James who, when Elizabeth had complained of the mission of Ogilvy and Drummond, had imprisoned the envoys, again on this occasion publicly boasted of having freed himself from the “archpapists.” The queen’s letters escaped the notice of the Presbyterians, but nevertheless, it would seem, never reached their destination.

The exchange of letters between Edinburgh and Rome still continued for a time, by means of a new envoy, the Scottish Catholic, James Lindsay, and also through Lord Sanquair. One of the queen’s letters, presented this time by Drummond, safely reached the hands of the Pope. Clement VIII replied to it on July 16th, 1602, expressing the hope that Anne would be able to win over her husband to the Catholic faith. He took a further step in two briefs, dated August 9th, 1602, which Lindsay took back with him from Rome; in these he asked of the queen and of the king the Catholic education of the heir to the crown, Henry (died 1612). If the king would follow the Pope’s advice in this, then Clement VIII, Lindsay reported orally, would be prepared to assist James with subsidies in money, and would support the king’s aspirations to the English throne.

Although this step on the part of the Pope seemed logical, after all that had transpired, it nevertheless greatly embarrassed the deceitful king. He now had to take up a definite attitude, and could no longer continue his double game. James therefore sought to gain time by putting off his reply as long as possible. He was able to do this without fear, as Elizabeth’s minister, Robert Cecil, who had formerly opposed the Scottish succession,1 had now allowed himself to be won over to it, without the knowledge of his sovereign, who was growing old, so that James no longer had any need of the Papists, as he expressed it later on. As a matter of fact his succession to the throne after the death of Elizabeth was accomplished without the least difficulty or disturbance.

Clement VIII naturally followed this event with great hopefulness, and he addressed to the king a letter of good wishes, in which he begged him to show himself well-disposed towards the Catholics as he had done hitherto. The Pope also had recourse to the Catholic princes, whose influence might have weighed with James, and expressed his desire that they should combine in taking the part of their English co-religionists. Thus on May 31st a brief was sent to the governor of the Low Countries, the Archduke Albert, on June 6th to Duke Charles of Lorraine, and another on December 10th, on August 23rd to the King of Poland, and on November 25th to the Emperor.

Several times in these letters the request is expressed that they should induce James, kindly and gently, to join the Catholic Church. As early as April 12th, 1603, the nuncio in Paris wrote that he would endeavour to obtain the mediation of Henry IV for this purpose, and in September he sent in the Pope’s name two letters of good wishes, one to the king and a special one to the queen, both of which had previously been approved by Clement VIII. It certainly was not a mere stereotyped expression when the Pope wrote to the Archduke Albert that he was tormented day and night by the thought of England and its new king, and by the question whether that kingdom, once so celebrated for its defence of the faith, would return to the Roman Church, a thing for which he would willingly shed his blood. On May 28th, 1603, he published a jubilee, in order that the faithful might pray to God for the restoration of the Catholic faith in England, Scotland and Ireland.1 In Rome itself, on April 27th, 1603, Clement VIII ordered the Forty Hours to be celebrated in all the churches for England and Scotland. But with all his zeal, he moved with great caution, so as not to excite the suspicions of the king, who was extraordinarily diffident. He rejected the project of the French nuncio to encourage the leaders of the Scottish Catholics by briefs to struggle for religious equality ; the Scottish Catholics were told, on the contrary, to recommend themselves to the good will of their king by their humility, loyalty and peaceful behaviour. When certain of the English exiles wished to avail themselves of the change in the crown in order to return home, and asked for the support of the Pope, Clement VIII first demanded guarantees that this was not a mere case of restlessness, and he even offered to deliver the king from such folk by pontificial intervention. The sad case in which two Catholic priests, the excitable Watson and Clark, had mixed themselves up in a plot against James, probably gave occasion for this offer.

Special hopes were raised in Rome by a work of the king’s, printed privately in 1599, and publicly issued in 1603 ; this was entitled “Basilikon Doron”  and laid down for the heir to the throne, Henry, certain rules for the better government of the kingdom. This condemned in severe terms the religious divisions in Scotland ; these were the result of rebellion, and were the work of men of disaffected spirit and greedy for power ; every party that weakened the kingdom and threw it into confusion had encouraged them. “Be on your guard ” it states, “against Puritans of this kind, who are a pest to the Church and to society, and who are not to be won over by gifts, nor feel bound by oaths and promises. They breathe treason and calumny. I profess before Almighty God that you will not find among the bandits of the mountains or of the border greater ingratitude, a greater spirit of falsehood, more brazen perjury, or more hypocritical sentiments, than among these fanatics.” On the other hand, in the French translation of the book, which James caused to be sent to the Pope through the French ambassador, there was not to be found a single word against the Catholics. James informed the Pope that he had purposely toned down such passages, and had desired the book to be presented to him in order to demonstrate his feeling of good will towards His Holiness. Clement VIII was indeed “ enthusiastic:” over this work, and was on the verge of shedding tears of joy when Persons informed him of some of the passages in it. But his “ enthusiasm ” was quickly cooled when he received from London the Latin version of the book, with the passages about the Pope and the Catholic religion unaltered. This translation soon found a place on the Index of prohibited books. While the King of Scots was thus encouraging the Pope by holding out constant hopes to him, the actual state of affairs in his kingdom was even worse than in the neighbouring kingdom of England under the rule of Elizabeth. In England anyone who was not a priest, and who did not hold public office, was able to remain of the old religion, even though he had to pay heavy fines ; in Scotland on the other hand, the laws only left the Catholics the choice between apostasy and banishment.1 In the kingdom of James VI. anyone might arrest the priests of the Society of Jesus, and even kill them in case of resistance. “ We live,” wrote the Jesuit Abercromby to the General of his Order, “ in cellars, hiding-holes and desolate places, always changing our abode like the gypsies, and we never sleep for two nights running in the same place.” When Abercromby had gone to the house of a Catholic inn-keeper, the other Catholics did not dare to enter by the door, but climbed up through the windows at the back of the house by night by means of ladders. The situation of the Scottish Catholics was only the better in that the laws were not enforced with the same rigour as in England. But even this apparent leniency had its limits, wherever any determined attachment to the old religion was detected. Among the aristocracy, who were for the most part still Catholics at heart, the three Earls of Huntly, Errol and Angus openly declared themselves for the Church of their fathers, but they were persecuted and threatened until in 1597 they, externally at any rate, and so as to prevent the loss of all their property, signed the profession of faith of the Scottish Church.

In a report on Scotland in 1601, it is stated that the king was the true cause of this sad state of affairs. Whenever he made a speech it was to give utterance to nothing but blas­phemies and heresy, and the one thing that his pride aimed at was the crown of England. He hated the Catholics except when they might prove useful to his designs upon the English throne. His fears or his hopes might perhaps one day make him a hypocrite, but nothing but a great miracle of the divine omnipotence could make him a Catholic.

In these circumstances it seems an enigma how the Catholics of Great Britain and the Roman Curia can have continued to entertain hopes of the return of James to the ancient Church, and why the king made use of so many subterfuges to win the favour of the Pope. Both these problems are answered in a memorial drawn up by the Papal nuncio in Brussels, Malvasia.

Malvasia’s remarks are above all a proof of the fact that in Rome they were more and more abandoning the point of view of the Catholics who were favourable to Spain. Above all things they must not seek to better the position of the Catholics by violent measures, for such things would only drive James VI more and more into the arms of the English queen and the heretics. The Holy Sec could not supply its own lack of the necessary armed force even with the assistance of Spain, which would find no support in Scotland itself, but would on the contrary encounter armed opposition from the jealous foreign powers, such as England, Holland, Denmark and France. No hopes could be placed in the nobles of the Scottish kingdom ; it was true that the Duke of Lennox and about a dozen earls and other great nobles were Catholics at heart, but they would never take up arms, while the three earls who were definitely Catholic, Huntly, Errol and Angus, had been banished.

Moreover, since the king had on several occasions shown his good-will towards the Catholics, it would not be opportune to employ violent measures. It had only been necessary for him to have given his consent, and they would have been exterminated, but actually James had never done so ; he tolerated those who were of another religion than his own ; he willingly listened to religious discussions ; the Bishop of Dunblane, Colonel Semple, the Jesuits Holt and Morton and others had suffered imprisonment but no more. Moreover he placed confidence in Catholics, since the first president, the master of the household, the captain of the bodyguard, some of the chamberlains and others were Catholics at heart ; he allowed the queen to act in a similar way in the choice of her ladies and courtiers. He had proclaimed the Duke of Lennox as the next claimant to the throne, and had allowed the Earl of Huntly to have mass said in the royal palace itself, though with closed doors.

On the other hand the king was greatly opposed to the preachers, though naturally he did not show this outwardly, because of the populace and Queen Elizabeth, whose pro­tection made such gentry, in spite of their lowly origin, so arrogant and haughty that they tyrannized over the king himself.

The arguments of Malvasia which have been given so far naturally prove nothing more than that James knew very well how to deceive the Pope and the Catholics. The reason, however, why the astute king took so much trouble to win their sympathies, is given by Malvasia as follows : James had need of the Catholics ; if, after the death of Elizabeth, it became a question of ensuring his claims to the English throne, there were none upon whom he could rely except the aristocracy of his own country. But the greater and the more important part of the nobles of the kingdom were either openly Catholics, or were more inclined to Catholicism than to any other form of religion. All of them were filled with hatred and aversion for the preachers. If, after the death of Elizabeth, so Malvasia thought, James were to drive them out and declare himself a Catholic, then all the most powerful nobles would rally to his support, and since, according to Scottish usage, the vassals were very submissive to and devoted to their lords, these two would follow the example of the nobles.

According to Malvasia it was also known on the authority of James himself that he was very anxious about the intrigues of Spain. Even in the time of Sixtus V, Philip II. had sent an envoy to ask for the excommunication of James VI, and in the eyes of the Spaniards and of many others, the King of Scots was not fitted to wear either the English crown or that of Scotland. For this reason James VI. greatly feared excommunication and therefore strove to keep on good terms with the Pope. As the Earl of Huntly said to Malvasia, a threat or admonition from the Pope would be well received by the king, because he would then have an excuse for favouring the Catholics, and by their means raising up a counterweight to the insolence of the preachers. Huntly was of the opinion that an envoy should be sent as soon as possible to ask for toleration and liberty of conscience for the Catholics, and, should he not obtain this, to threaten the king with excommunication. Least disturbance would be caused if the Duke of Lorraine, who was James’ cousin, were to send an envoy on some pretext ; the envoy could speak privately to the king about his return to the ancient faith, while James, out of respect for the Pope, would hear him very willingly. Besides this pressure might be brought to bear upon the king by means of the Catholic nobles, and upon the latter by the Jesuit Gordon, who, as Huntly’s uncle, had access to the nobles, and who, although he was a mere child in political matters, was learned, well-liked and respected. An attempt should also be made to increase the number of the Scottish Catholics by encouraging the work of the Jesuits, though they must not interfere in affairs of state, either in England or in Scotland, since, on account of their friendship with Spain, they were suspected by the King of Scots, and highly disliked by the alumni of the English College. Finally, priests should be trained for Scotland by the development of the Scots College, the scanty revenues of which had hitherto only sufficed for seven or eight students.

The Scots College of which Malvasia spoke had been founded in 1576 at Tournai by an exiled Scottish parish priest. During the first ten years of its existence the College was successively transferred to Pont-a-Mousson, Douai, Louvain and Antwerp, to find at length a permanent home at Douai in 1612. The poverty of this institute was known in Rome, for the gifts of various Scottish priests were not sufficient, while the annual revenues assigned to it by Gregory XIII and Mary Stuart were discontinued after the deaths of the donors. Clement VIII. therefore issued a circular in 1593 on behalf of the Scottish seminary, and again, at the intercession of Malvasia, obtained by the Scottish Jesuit Crichton, the Pope had recourse to the Archduke Albert in a brief of March 8th, 1597.

A second Scots College had existed in Paris since the XIVth century. At the suggestion of Cardinal Allen, the representative of Scotland at the French court, Archbishop Beaton of Glasgow, together with the Bishop of Ross, resolved to restore this ancient foundation in order to meet the exigencies of the times, and to supply it with revenues for the training of Scottish priests. Clement VIII. supported this project by a brief of Henry IV. The seminary at Braunsberg in East Prussia, and the Scottish monasteries at Wurzburg and Ratisbon also supplied several priests to the Church in Scotland.

But the most important and most wealthy of these estab­lishments was the Scots College in Rome ; this owed to Clement VIII not only the support which he likewise gave to the above-mentioned seminaries in Flanders and Paris, but also its existence and its ample endowment. On December 5th, 1600, the bull of foundation was issued, and two years later it was inaugurated with ten students, who attended the lectures at the Roman College, and were dependent upon the Jesuits for their spiritual direction.

None of these institutions could be compared, even distantly, with the importance of the English seminaries. The Scottish Jesuit Crichton, who was doing all in his power to supply the lack of priests in his own country, was of opinion that once the seminaries were founded, many young men would flock thither from the three universities of Scotland, which were only lacking in the matter of theological instruction, so that within two or three years there would be a number of priests at his disposal. But this forecast was not realized ; the enthusiasm with which the English youth flocked to the seminaries on the continent was not reproduced in the neighbouring kingdom, and the number of students in the Scottish seminaries remained relatively small, as it had been in the past. Though rather later than Scotland or England, the sister island to the west also had its seminaries on the continent. About the middle of the XVIIth century there were to be found Irish Colleges for the study of philosophy and theology in Rome, Salamanca, Seville, Compostella, Madrid, Alcala, Lisbon, Douai, Louvain, Antwerp, Paris, Bordeaux and Rouen; to these must be added the educational establishments at Tournai and Lille, and numerous colleges of religious. But very few of these went back to the time of the great founders of the colleges, Gregory XIII and Clement VIII. In Spain and Flanders these institutions had their beginning when in 1588 the Irish Jesuit, Thomas White, at Valladolid, and the Irish secular priest Christopher Cusack in 1594 at Douai, gathered together the students of their race into communities. Their subsequent development was due to Philip II; at the request of White, on August 2nd, 1592, he granted the students at Valladolid a college at Salamanca, while in 1596 he assigned an annual revenue of 5,000 florins for an Irish seminary at Douai, where in 1604 a site was acquired for a new and better building. The beginnings of some other Irish colleges went back further still. In 1578 there came to Paris, an exile from his country, a priest named John Lee with several students, who, however, after thirty years had hardly succeeded in establishing a permanent abode. Some Irish priests had established a school for missionaries in 1573 at Lisbon; after this had been developed in 1593 under the direction of the Jesuit John Holing, it received a permanent abode in 1595, after which White assumed the direction of the establishment. When the Archduke Albert supported a number of Irishmen in the seminary at Antwerp, he was eulogized by the Pope in 1604, as was the King of Spain at the same time on account of his generosity towards the Spanish and Flemish Irish seminaries. The Pope had already in 1597 strongly urged the Archduke Albert to care for the Irish students in Flanders. The seminaries on the continent were rendered doubly necessary as a counterweight to Trinity College, which Elizabeth had established in Dublin to act as a bulwark of Protestantism, and which was endowed, both by her and by her successors, with enormous revenues and extensive privileges. All the students and officials of Trinity College had to subscribe to the Thirty Nine Articles, while a third part of the students who were educated there were trained in Anglican theology, which was taught in a spirit entirely hostile to Catholicism.

According to medieval ideas, Ireland was a country that had special ties and obligations towards the Holy See. When Paul IV in 1555, at the request of Philip II. and Queen Mary, raised Ireland to the dignity of a kingdom, he expressly reserved the rights of the Apostolic See.6 This was probably the reason why Clement VIII, in dealing with Irish affairs, departed from his customary principles. From 1590 onwards the severity and cruelty of the viceroy had goaded the Irish leaders into rebellion, and after certain successes on the part of O’Neill, Bishop Cornelius O’Melrian addressed to the Pope on November 4th, 1595, from Lisbon a request that, on the strength of the bull of donation of Adrian IV, he would separate Ireland from England and nominate O’Neill as king. Clement VIII naturally refused this request, but when in 1598 O’Donnell and O’Neill had defeated the troops of Elizabeth at the battle of Blackwater, and O’Neill had applied to the Pope for assistance, Clement, by the agency of the Franciscan, Matteo d’Oviedo, who had recently been appointed Archbishop of Dublin, sent O’Neill a Papal brief, congratulating him on his victory and urging him to continue the war “so that the kingdom of Ireland may not henceforward be subject to the yoke of the heretics, nor the members of Christ any longer have the impious Elizabeth as their sovereign.” A brief to the commander of the army renewed the indulgences formerly granted for the crusades. There then followed a series of Papal briefs. On January 20th, 1601, Clement VIII again sent his eulogies, confirming the Irish in their struggle for religion, and promising to send a nuncio. On June 5th in the same year there was a further series of briefs : to the King of Spain, to the Archduke Albert, to O’Neill, to the clergy of Ireland, and to the notabilities of the kingdom. The Jesuit Lodovico Mansoni, who had been chosen as nuncio, was recommended in these to the protection of the king and the archduke, but his mission was postponed in accordance with the representations of O’Neill.

After the battle of Blackwater O’Neill attained to the summit of his power, and only the cities of the island still held out against him. O’Neill thought that he could easily overcome these as well if Spain would help him with troops, and especially with artillery. In the years that followed, however, his position changed for the worse in an alarming way, and the Spanish help, which arrived at last on September 23rd, 1601, under the command of Juan de Aguila, and occupied Kinsale, came too late. Kinsale was invested by the English, an Irish army that marched to its relief was defeated, and the Spaniards were forced to surrender on January 12th, 1602. With this the capitulation of Ireland was assured ; Munster and Ulster were devastated in such a way by the English that the viceroy, Mount joy, wrote to James I that nothing remained to his majesty in Ireland save to rule over corpses and heaps of ashes.

After the King of Scots had ascended the English throne, with the name of James I, he still carried on for a time his undignified double-dealing towards the Pope. In the summer of 1603 he announced to Clement VIII. his desire to resume the negotiations. At the same time he chose the zealous Catholic, Antony Standen, to be his representative in Venice and Florence, but when Standen incautiously assisted at mass in public, James had him thrown into the Tower, and sent back to Rome the sacred objects which Clement VIII had given him for the queen ; but while everyone was expecting that Standen would have to expiate his excessive zeal by death, his imprisonment was quietly changed into confinement in his own house, and he was finally set at liberty.

The hopes of Clement VIII rose high at the beginning of 1605, when James Lindsay once more made his appearance in Rome, bringing replies to the briefs which he had taken with him to London in 1602. A year before this James I had conveyed to the nuncio in Paris the royal instructions which were to guide Lindsay’s actions in Rome. As to the principal matter, which meant most to the Pope, namely the Catholic education of the heir to the throne, and to which he had so often called the attention of the king, the latter remained definitely hostile, saying that immediately after he had received the Pope’s request, James had ordered his reply to be written, and that it was only due to Lindsay’s illness that it had come to the knowledge of the Pope so late. In other respects the king did no more than make vague promises, assuring the Pope of the pleasure which he felt in his friendship, and promising to treat the English Catholics who preserved the peace with justice and in accordance with his duty.

Such expressions as these naturally contained very little to cause the arrival of Lindsay to be awaited with any particular impatience. In August, 1604, the Pope’s sentiments towards the King of England were on the whole unfavourable, while the great complaisance shown by Spain in making peace with England displeased him as much as her friendship with the heretics. Nevertheless he still saw in these events reasons to hope for an improvement in the religious position in England. He therefore insistently urged the Catholics there to give the king no grounds for suspicion. The French nuncio, Maffeo Barberini, was instructed in December, 1604, as his predecessor Bufalo had been, to maintain friendly relations with the English ambassadors in Paris, and thus prove to James I. that the Pope had no care except the salvation of souls.1 In this way Clement VIII hoped in the end to win over James I, and this hope was paramount in his mind when Lindsay actually made his appearance in Rome, bearing a letter from Queen Anne, which contained, it would appear, brilliant promises. Accord­ing to Lindsay’s report, the king was ripe for conversion, if only the Pope would renounce his authority over the princes. Clement VIII. was overjoyed, and in January, 1605, replied to the queen in a letter couched in the most friendly terms, in which he praised her in the highest way, while he appointed a special commission of Cardinals to discuss the English situation, which held two meetings on January 17th and 25th.

The new King of England treated the English Catholics in the same way as he did the Pope, for with them too he sought to arouse constant hopes, without ever intending that they should be realized. The accession of James I to the throne had been hailed by the Catholics of England with the highest hopes ; they trusted in the promises which he had repeatedly made, since even on his way to London he had renewed his assurance that he would not exact the fines for absence from Protestant worship. The superior of the English Jesuits, Henry Garnet, wrote “the death of the queen has brought about a great change; our anxiety was very great, but it has now become changed into confidence, and we are rejoicing in a period of unhoped for liberty.” Two Papal briefs concerning the succession to the throne, which had been entrusted to Garnet, and kept by him for use in case of need, were burned by him as useless ; in these the clergy and faithful of England were exhorted to support no claimant to the throne who had not sworn allegiance to the Apostolic See.

These fair hopes, however, were nothing but beautiful dreams. James was playing a double game : on the one hand he hated the religion of his mother, while on the other he feared excommunication on account of its political consequences. He therefore kept Clement VIII in suspense until 1605, deceiving him with fair words ; things even reached the point when the Pope offered to inflict ecclesiastical penalties on turbulent Catholics, and the king put forward the proposal, though to no purpose, that the power of inflicting such penalties should be conferred on an authorized agent, who naturally would use his powers in accordance with the wishes of the government. In a conversation with the French envoy-extraordinary, the future Duke of Sully, James pointed out that he had not exacted the fines for failure to attend at church, and that he desired to remain on friendly terms with the Pope, if the latter would recognize him as the head of the Anglican Church. After the conspiracy of Watson, the king again expressed himself unfavourably towards the Catholics to Beaumont, the French ambassador; he seemed, however, to calm down when Beaumont pointed out that the conspirators were only exceptions among a body that was otherwise loyal to the king, and that conspiracies were difficult to avoid unless liberty of conscience was allowed.

The practical attitude of James towards the Catholics showed even greater unreliability than his words. His promises were no more sincere, when he was striving to obtain the English crown, for they always concealed a condition or limitation which escaped the notice of the too credulous adherents of the ancient faith. “As to the Catholics,” he wrote, “I do not intend to persecute any of them who maintain the peace and obey the laws at any rate externally, and protection will not be denied to anyone who is worthy of it on account of his good services.” So long as “at least external obedience” to the laws was demanded, the king, despite these fair words, had a free hand to do as he pleased, and in fact, in direct contradiction to the sense of the promises which he had made since his arrival in England, James caused the fines for non-attendance at divine worship to be collected ; if the Catholics, he publicly declared at that time,1 professed a different religion from his own, they could not be good subjects. When, however, on July 17th, 1603, a deputation of Catholics made complaint before the Privy Council in the presence of the king, James promised that the fines should be stopped, and that the Catholics, provided they obeyed the laws, should have access to the highest offices in the service of the state. For a time the wealthy adherents of the ancient Church were no longer troubled with the fines, and those who had no means, “to the enormous loss” of the revenues of state, were excused from the confiscation of their lands. Among the Catholics of high estate, the king had admitted to his entourage in a special way, Henry Howard, a man of unprincipled character, who was later on Earl of Northampton, and was a brother of the executed Duke of Norfolk; he had to serve “the royal huntsman” as a decoy, in order to cover the king’s immorality.

The majority of the Catholics, however, proved themselves more sound in their principles than Howard, and the apparent favour of the king did not last very long. “We no longer have any need of the Papists,” the king replied, when Watson, who had hitherto been his favourite, reminded him of his promises.

The fact that the number of the Catholics had considerably increased once the laws were no longer enforced, filled the king with anxiety ; by May, 1604, the number of those who had returned to the ancient religion had risen to 10,000 in the diocese of Chester alone ; the number of those who did not attend Anglican worship increased from 2,400 to 3,433. The fear of passing in the eyes of the public as the friend of the Catholics then drove the unprincipled monarch openly to declare himself against them.

On February 22nd, 1604, James, under pressure from the Privy Council, ordered that on March 19th, the day of the opening of Parliament, all Catholic priests must leave the country. On March 22nd, in a speech before Parliament, he excused himself for his leniency towards the Catholics, by saying that he had allowed himself to be guided by the hope that proposals would be laid before the Lords and Commons for the removal of certain indefinite points in the existing laws against the Catholics, in that these had led to an excessive severity which was contrary to the intention of the legislator, and to the condemnation of the innocent. Catholic priests could not be tolerated in the kingdom so long as they professed the doctrine that the Pope had temporal authority over all kings and emperors, or that excommunicated princes could be killed with impunity. The laity too must be prohibited from drawing anyone to their own religion, in order that the Catholics might not acquire a power which contained within it danger to the liberties of the country and to the independence of the crown.

In this way James revealed himself to the whole country as a good Protestant, but the cunning monarch at the same time did not wish to irritate the Catholics too much. After his edict against the priests he told the Spanish ambassador that he had not been able to act otherwise because of the Privy Council, but that the enforcement of the law would be wanting in any kind of rigour. As a matter of fact, a month afterwards, not one of the persons concerned had been banished, and a priest who had been arrested for saying mass was once again set at liberty.

The Catholics, however, were under no illusion as to the continuance of such a state of affairs. Good Protestants bitterly complained that Catholics enjoyed a liberty such as they had not had for years past. James accordingly anticipated their wishes. On May 17th, 1604, he expressed in Parliament his disgust at the increase of the Catholics, and urged the passing of a law to set bounds to it. On June 4th a proposal to that effect was laid before the House of Lords, which was confirmed by the Commons in July. In this the existing laws against the Catholics were renewed and made more severe ; all the alumni of the seminaries over-seas were declared incapable of possessing land or any other property on English soil, while all professors were forbidden to set up a school without the approval of an Anglican bishop. James I rejected a petition of the Catholic priests offering to take an oath of allegiance to the king, as well as another in which the laity pledged themselves for the good behaviour of the Catholic priests whom the law should allow them to have in their own houses; he merely confirmed the law.

In spite of this the king did not wish even now altogether to cut his bridges behind him, and his negotiations with Rome still continued. In dealing with the representatives of the old Church, James I. spoke of a General Council, which should settle the question of reunion among the churches by a free discussion of their points of difference j1 he assured the French ambassador that for the moment he had no thought of enforcing the laws, and had excused the sixteen nobles who refused to attend church the monthly fine of twenty pounds. In a conversation with a representative of the Duke of Lorraine he declared his readiness to accept the Roman Church as his mother, and the Pope as universal bishop, with universal ecclesiastical jurisdiction. If the Roman Church would take one step towards the restoration of unity, he would take three. It was distasteful to him to have been forced against his will to give his assent to the new law, and he would not enforce its penalties on religious grounds. In the same sense on September 24th, 1604, even the Privy Council had decided by seven votes to three that the persecuting laws should not be enforced in the case of the laity.

Their enforcement, however, had already been entrusted to over-zealous officials. During the years 1604 and 1605 at least six Catholics died at the hands of the executioner on account of their faith. But James I. naturally had no part in their condemnation, and six other Catholics, five priests and one layman, who had been condemned to death by the courts during these same years, were pardoned by him.

It was, however, easy to foresee that the leniency of the king would not last long, and that the first concessions made to the Protestants must soon be followed by others. At the end of September, 1604, he caused all the Catholic priests who were incarcerated in the English prisons to be sent out of the kingdom over-seas. From November 28th onwards absence from Anglican worship was again punished by heavy fines. It is possible that this measure was solely due to the financial straits of the king, and as the heavy fine of twenty pounds a month could only be paid by the most wealthy Catholics, it only affected thirteen gentlemen. But when the action taken by James against the Puritans aroused a suspicion of his favouring the Catholics, and the public obtained some inkling of his negotiations with the Pope, the king preferred his reputation as a good Protestant to any sense of justice towards the Catholics. On February 10th, 1605, he declared at the Privy Council that he detested in the highest degree the superstitious religion of the Papists, and if he thought that his son and heir would show the slightest favour to them, he would rather see him buried before his eyes. The Lords of the Council and the other bishops must instruct the judges that the laws were to be enforced with all possible severity.

The effects of this exhortation were not long in making themselves felt, for on the day after its proclamation by the Lord Mayor of London, forty-nine citations were issued in the capital and the county of Middlesex. 5,560 persons were condemned in the various districts of England for having failed to attend Protestant worship.[193] Enormous fines were once more levied upon the wealthy Catholics, while many had two-thirds of their property confiscated. In October, 1605, the superior of the Jesuits wrote1 that the action taken by the government was even more severe than in the days of Elizabeth

Strict investigations in private houses were the order of the day, and every six weeks a special court of justice sat, which despoiled the Catholics of their possessions ; the enforcement of the laws was entrusted to the most rigorous Puritans, who in other respects were disliked by the king. If one of the “recusants” offered to buy back his confiscated property, he exposed himself to the risk of losing the sum thus offered as well. If this process continued, said Garnet, they would have at last to be content with buying back every six months the bed in which they slept. The justices openly said that the king wanted blood ; he no longer desired caresses for the Papists as of yore, but blows. In the county of Hereford 409 families were reduced to beggary at a single blow. The bishops were instructed to excommunicate the more wealthy Catholics ; these could then be thrown into prison, and thereby lost a number of their civil rights ; they could not even recover their debts, buy or sell anything, nor dispose of their property by will.

Death spared Clement VIII the sorrow of witnessing this last development.

CHAPTER III.

Attempted Catholic Restoration in Sweden.