LUDWIG VON PASTOR'S

HISTORY OF THE POPES FROM THE CLOSE OF THE MIDDLE AGES

VOLUMES XXV & XXVI . PAUL V. (1605-1621)

CHAPTER XI.

The Gunpowder Plot and the Oath of Allegiance.—Paul V. and James I’s Plans for a Spanish Marriage.

(1)

The Position of Catholics in the German Diaspora, in the Republic of the Netherlands, and in Great Britain and Ireland.

It was in North Germany, where so many magnificent cathedrals still recall the memory of a Catholic past, that the storm provoked by the religious innovations, inflicted the most grievous losses to the ancient Church. Like the whole of the North of Europe, this district also came within the jurisdiction of the Cologne nuncio though in the circumstances that dignitary could do but little, for the creation of purely territorial Churches had been done with such thoroughness that no more than faint vestiges seemed to remain of the once flourishing North German Church. The handful of canons and religious who remained true to the ancient faith saw themselves doomed to extinction and the Catholic laity were almost completely deprived of all religious succour, all the more as the Catholic territories, where they might have fulfilled their religious duties, did not lie within easy reach. The most pressing need was to get information on the state of affairs in the North German diaspora. In this way, in 1607, at the instigation of the nuncio Attilio Amalteo, a memorandum was drawn up by a Jesuit on the condition of the Church in North Germany which gives some interesting details on the existing situation. It was an exceedingly gloomy one. As regards the dioceses of Munster and Paderborn, the danger of a triumph for the innovators had been staved off for the time being, but in the two other Westphalian dioceses, Osnabrück and Minden, the position was precarious. At Osnabriick, though the bishops had all been Protestants, the canons, as a body, had remained true to the Catholic faith. The following establishments in the town itself had also been saved for the ancient faith: one monastery of Canons, one convent of Dominicans, two almost empty convents of nuns, a convent of Benedictine nuns on the Gertrudenberg and, elsewhere in the diocese, one Benedictine abbey, one collegiate church of which the choir was in Catholic hands and the nave in Protestant ones, and five convents of nuns. At Minden, in 1607, there were left only five Catholic canons, and in the two collegiate churches of the town the Catholics formed likewise only a minority. One Benedictine monastery as well as a convent of nuns in Minden itself and two convents of nuns in the surrounding country had preserved the faith. In the districts of Brandenburg and Saxony, Catholicism was wholly extinct. In the dioceses of Verden, Halberstadt, Magdeburg, Bremen and Lubeck the new teaching had prevailed almost everywhere and only here and there could there be found an isolated Catholic canon or a religious house. The inmates of some of these—this applies especially to convents of nuns—clung to the ancient faith with wonderful constancy. Here as elsewhere the monasteries remained centres of Catholic life. A priest trained in the seminary of Braunsberg, Martin Stricker, did much to procure the consolations of religion for the nuns. In 1609 the nuncio of Cologne, Antonio Albergati, who had succeeded Amalteo, appointed this zealous priest as his representative for the diaspora of North Germany in which the greatly shrunken diocese of Hildesheim and Eichsfeld, which the archbishop of Mayence had recovered for Catholicism, constituted as it were two oases in a vast desert. Henceforth Stricker deemed it his life’s task to bring spiritual help to the numerous Catholics scattered in those parts, more particularly in Lower Saxony. In 1611, Albergati commissioned the Franciscan Buselius to undertake a visitation of the North German diaspora. Buselius met Stricker in the Benedictine convent at Buxtehude and sent back a glowing account of the latter’s piety, learning and zeal for the Catholic cause. Stricker acted, for a time, as Superior of the convent. In 1612, when the Jesuits saw themselves compelled to give up their station at Altona, he undertook to look after the Catholics at Hamburg. For the support of such as returned to the bosom of the Church the Cologne nuncio, Albergati, formed an association which he attached to the church of the Capuchins in Cologne: this institution received the support of Paul V.

The losses of the Church in South Germany were far less severe than those in the North. However, here also there was a diaspora because the duchy of Württemberg, the marquisates of Ansbach, Baden-Durlach, the county of Hanau-Lichtenberg, the Palatinate, Pfalz-Zweibrucken, by 1613 also Pfalz-Neuburg and a number of cities of empire, had either wholly, or, as regards some cities of empire, only partially gone over to Protestantism. Nevertheless, in many wholly Protestant towns there still existed prebends and houses of the Teutonic Knights of Malta, as, for instance, at Nuremberg, Nordlingen, Frankfort, Strassburg, Heilbronn; in some other towns there still existed collegiate churches of noble ladies, as at Lindau and Buchau. The Catholics still enjoyed the free use of all these churches.3 The situation of the Catholics of the South German diaspora was also more favourable from another point of view. Unlike their brethren in the North, they were not so completely cut off from all communication with Catholic territories. Plans were discussed as to means by which the Catholic faith might be preserved and even spread in those parts of South Germany. A memorandum addressed to the Holy See contains a number of proposals on the subject, in particular it suggests that what was being done for the religious needs of the faithful in Holland and England, should serve as a model for Germany. The writer, however, does not shut his eyes to the far greater difficulties to be overcome in the latter country, for in the Protestant territories Catholics enjoyed no toleration whatever, so that there no longer existed any considerable groups of Catholics, as was the case in the Netherlands and in England.

Every account of conditions in the Republic of the Netherlands confirms the existence there of a considerable Catholic body. Well-informed people even thought that in five out of the seven united Provinces, namely Gelders, Friesland, Overijsel, Groningen and Utrecht, the majority of the population, with characteristic Dutch tenacity, still clung to the Catholic religion. However, the Calvinists were determined not to allow them the free exercise of their religion, as was made clear during the negotiations for a truce with Spain. Paul V was no less anxious than his predecessors that the opportunity should be seized to secure religious freedom for the Catholics of the Netherlands. On June 5th, 1607, Guido Bentivoglio, the new nuncio of Brussels, was instructed to give his most earnest attention to the matter. That same year Paul V also appealed to Philip III who promised to do his best but who met with the most determined opposition. His efforts proved in vain even when he declared his readiness to recognize the sovereignty of the Provinces, on condition that they granted to the Catholics freedom to practice their religion. In view of her very unsound financial condition it was imperative for Spain to yield. Hence, on April 9th, 1609, a twelve years’ truce was signed between the rebel provinces and the regent of Belgium, archduke Albert, by which the independence of the Dutch republic was recognized.

Up to the last moment the French envoy made earnest representations to the States General in favour of the rights of the Catholics. He particularly insisted on the fact that they too had borne arms against Spain. In recognition of their conduct all public offices should surely be open to them; in any case, they should be granted that for which the Protestants themselves had fought, namely religious liberty. The States General curtly rejected this proposal; more than that, the French intervention was kept dark; but they promised a measure of moderation. When, at the Pope’s request, Henry IV endeavoured to secure for the Catholics at least the right to worship in private, he was given satisfactory assurances on the point. In this way it became possible for a number of priests to return to the Netherlands. For the time being no severe measures were taken against private Catholic worship. Soon, however, a fresh agitation broke out, which led to another set-back. In 1612, the States General issued several decrees against the activities of Catholic priests and the practice of sending children abroad to Catholic or Jesuit schools. But the ancient Church withstood this fresh outbreak also; its adherents had been chastened by their previous trials and the zealous ministrations of the Jesuits, the Franciscans and other priests had so strengthened them, that their destruction, for which the Calvinists had still hoped in the reign of Gregory XIII, was not to be thought of. Their numbers remained such that a strict application of the laws against them was out of question. In this way at least private worship was rendered possible. An Italian priest, one Vincenzo Laurefici, who visited Amsterdam in 1613, in disguise, and from there journeyed to Haarlem, Leiden, the Hague, Delft, and Flushing, gives us some exceedingly interesting details concerning the moderation of the Dutch authorities in regard to private Catholic worship—a state of affairs which, in the opinion of the Belgian nuncio, Bentivoglio, was due to personal and commercial contacts and interests. “Calvinists, Anabaptists, Lutherans, Anglicans and other sects are all allowed to hold their services in public at Amsterdam. Catholics alone are debarred from such freedom. They are permitted to meet for worship in their own houses, but even there they are forbidden to have either Mass or sermon, though, as a matter of fact, the government does not care what anyone does in his own home. Thus my own host was present, every morning, at Mass which was said secretly in his house. In all the other Provinces many act in the same way. If they are denounced, they, or the priest, has to pay a fine of 200 florins. Priests are fairly numerous everywhere. Though they are well known, they are not molested, unless they draw attention to themselves—for this reason they wear lay attire.

In these circumstances, when Philip Rovenius succeeded  Sasbold Vosmeer, the Vicar Apostolic of the seven provinces, who died in October, 1611, the Pope could well cherish the hope that Catholicism would maintain itself in Holland. This expectation was all the more justified as no real persecution was to be feared from the regent, Maurice of Orange, who in matters of religion was extremely moderate, not to say indifferent.

Conditions varied greatly from province to province. Where the number of Catholics had become much reduced, as, for instance, in Zeeland, the ministrations of the clergy were rendered exceedingly difficult. No priest was allowed to take up permanent residence in Zeeland. In the county of Holland and in Utrecht, where there still existed a large Catholic population, the penal laws were mildly interpreted and there was a fair number of priests. Owing to the fact that all Church property had been confiscated, the Dutch Catholics themselves had to support their priests, about two hundred in number; the foreign missionaries, Jesuits, Franciscans and Dominicans, received support from abroad. These missionaries received great help from the noble Nicholas Wiggers who, since the reign of Gregory XIII, had repeatedly visited Zeeland, Holland and Friesland, for the purpose of strengthening the scattered Catholics in their faith. Even when, in 1603, he entered the Order of the Observants, at Cologne, he did not forget his persecuted countrymen. In that city, where the Vicar Apostolic also saw himself compelled to reside, a seminary supported by the Catholics of the Netherlands, was established for the formation of Dutch priests. To this establishment, to which another was added at Louvain, the Holy See attached the greatest importance. Nearly every year Wiggers visited the old mission stations. On May 23rd, 1611, the nuncio of Cologne, Antonio Albergati, charged him with the visitation of the Netherlands and the adjoining territories, giving him at the same time extensive faculties for the reception of heretics into the Church. Dressed as a layman, Wiggers set out on his arduous journey, one result of which was the decision to entrust to the Franciscans of the Province of Cologne the administration of the previously founded Dutch mission station. The first administrator was Arnold von Witt. From 1613 onwards this man—whom men called the “universal providence”, journeyed from place to place, amid great perils, saying Mass and administering the sacraments at night. In 1617 he was joined by Antony Verweg who had been working at Amsterdam, Haarlem and Northern Friesland. In 1621 they were given the assistance of two other Fathers.

The Jesuits also prosecuted their missionary task. By 1606 their numbers had risen from three to six; in 1611 there were fourteen, and in 1622 no less than twenty-two Fathers were at work in the various provinces of the Netherlands. Theirs was an arduous, wandering existence, but their labours were frequently rewarded with splendid results. Thus we read of one Father converting 200 Anabaptists and another 300. The numerous disputes between the native clergy and the Jesuit missionaries were settled with the help of Paul V though by no means for good and all. This was all the more regrettable as the situation of the Catholics in the Netherlands remained painful enough. In his report of 1617, Rovenius gives some details of the persecution to which they were subjected. If Catholics do not have their marriages blessed by a preacher, they are looked upon as living in concubinage, and if their children are not christened in a Calvinist church, the parents have to pay a fine. The Jews and Mohammedans are better off in Holland than the Catholics: the Jews have their synagogues, the Mohammedans are free to hold their meetings, Dutch tolerance embraces all sects and heresies— Catholics alone are excluded.

Almost everywhere Catholics were debarred from public offices, and even the privilege of private worship had to be bought with heavy fines. The courage of the Catholics was only equalled by their spirit of self-sacrifice. To raise the sums they had to pay for the privilege of private worship, they refused to appeal to foreign Catholics, for they deemed it a privilege to contribute with their own resources to the preservation of the ancient faith. At Amsterdam, in particular, certain spirited citizens fitted out rooms in private houses, or in warehouses, for the holding of religious services. Thus it came about that to this day certain churches bear the names of old warehouses, for instance, “de Krijtberg”. A striking picture of the situation of Catholics at Amsterdam at that time is found in an account written in 1617 by the Jesuit, John Ryser, a native of that city. He points out that in that city, now a world emporium, all religions were tolerated; Catholics alone were subjected to penal laws. “Day and night,” so he reports, “the ‘Schouten’ (officials) with their spies are on the alert, with a view to disturbing the assemblies of the faithful. Women, too, are hired whose duty it is to keep an eye on all streets and houses where Catholics live; at times these women go so far as to pretend they are Catholics, in order to facilitate their treason. Quite recently we were compelled to pay 5,000 florins in order to free ourselves from further molestation on the part of the ‘Schouten’ and to make possible the escape of some priests who were on the point of being arrested. In the course of this year one of our Fathers escaped on no less than ten separate occasions when his pursuers were hot on his heels; but at last his enemies had the satisfaction of venting their rage on the Church furniture which fell into their hands.”

The nuncio of Brussels, Bentivoglio, entertained the hope that it was precisely these persecutions that would eventually lead to a great revival of religion in the Netherlands. Another consoling fact was the growing number of conversions which were due in no small measure to the disputes between the Gomarists and the Arminians and of which the Calvinist preachers were the cause. These controversies were still further embittered by political divisions. The regent, Maurice of Orange, was keen on being sole master of the country. He thought it would be to his advantage to league himself with the Gomarists, who were very numerous, and thus to crush the Arminians as well as the more important republicans. The aged Oldenbarneveldt, on a false accusation that he showed Catholic leanings, was beheaded; the famous Hugo Grotius was thrown into prison. The Synod of Dortrecht proclaimed the Calvinist doctrine of predestination in its most extreme form and deposed 200 preachers who were known to be holding Arminian opinions; others were sent into banishment, among whom were the famous scholars, John Vossius, Caspar Barlaeus, and Peter Bertius. The philologist and archeologist Bertius found an asylum in France and it was there that, on July 25th, 1620, he came back to the Catholic Church. Quite apart from the erroneousness of the doctrine proclaimed as a dogma by the Synod of Dortrecht, according to which the grace of God and justification can co-exist with the most shameful crimes, the assembly showed up the inherent weakness of Protestantism. On the other hand “it formally appealed to the promise made by Christ to His Church, that He would be with her until the end of time, whilst according to Protestant assertion He had forsaken her for a thousand years and abandoned her to the grossest errors”. The consequences of the victory of the Calvinist extremists at the Synod of Dortrecht were all the more serious for the Dutch Catholics as, with the expiration of the truce between Spain and Holland, (a.d. 1621), a stricter surveillance came in force. A decree of February 26th, 1622, forbade all foreign priests to enter Dutch territory and prohibited the exercise of Catholic worship even in private houses, under threat of heavy fines. Nevertheless, even so, there appeared no symptom anywhere that the government would attain its end which was nothing less than the uprooting of Catholicism. The Catholics, who, as Oldenbarneveldt assured the British ambassador in 1618, constituted the wealthiest as well as the most sterling section of the population, clung tenaciously to their faith. The persecution which they had to endure was all the more unjust since, as the same Oldenbarneveldt pointed out in his defence, a large section of the Papists had at all times shown themselves true patriots.

(2.)

ENGLAND.

James I, since 1603 King of England, Scotland and Ireland, fancied himself as a master in the art of governing. The double-dealing, shilly-shallying policy with which he sought to take in the adherents of the old faith as well as those of the new, in the first years of his reign, may, as a matter of fact, have appeared in his eyes as a particularly good exhibition of statecraft. In reality, however, and not least by his attitude towards Catholics, he justified Macaulay’s saying that the “Solomon of the North” the “Master of the art of governing” seemed specially predestined to call up everywhere the powers of disruption. The peaceful opening of his reign was rightly considered to be due to his explicit declarations. Hence, when he reopened the war, though there had been no provocation, he drew universal odium on himself by reason of his duplicity, and when he vacillated for a while, those able to see below the surface were no longer deceived by his double-dealing. Nevertheless, the Superior of the Jesuits, Henry Garnet, wrote in August, 1605, that he thought he could guarantee in general that the Catholics, trusting the king, or his successors, would persevere in their wonted endurance. As late as October of that year he repeated his statement, at least so far as the better sort of Catholics were concerned, but he now added that it was not possible to answer for individuals whom the tyrannical procedure of harsh officials might well drive to some desperate deed: he hoped that, in his wisdom, the king would prevent such a contingency.

Desperate deeds had in fact been preparing for some time. Daring foolhardiness and reckless violence lay in the blood of the contemporaries of Drake and Hawkins, so that it would have been strange indeed if none of the English Catholics of the period had never asked themselves whether they were really bound in conscience to suffer themselves to be robbed and slain without offering resistance, and whether to meet the violence of the king and Parliament with violence could not be considered as an act of legitimate self-defence. Robert Catesby, a wealthy and distinguished nobleman, who had been heavily fined for being a Catholic, in conversation with Garnet, gave it as his opinion, barely six months after James I’s accession, that by breaking his word the king had sown the seeds of trouble. The Jesuit replied that the Pope was opposed to violent measures and that his own General, Aquaviva, had communicated to him, in July, an instruction of Clement VIII to that effect. Garnet begged Catesby and his friend Winter to have nothing to do with a violent coup, were it only that their known relations with the Jesuits would cause the latter to be suspected of having instigated it. Thereupon Catesby promised to proceed no further.

However, his resolution did not last. Garnet had, at the proper time, informed Catesby and Winter of the two Briefs of Clement VIII, in which the Pope instructed English Catholics to give their support only to a sincerely Catholic pretender to the throne. Catesby now referred to these Briefs. If in midsummer of 1604 it was lawful to do one’s best to prevent a non-Catholic from securing the crown, it was surely permissible to try and make him lose it? This reasoning Garnet met with the new papal instruction and once again he successfully stayed Catesby’s hand; at four different times, as he subsequently wrote to his General, he had succeeded in preventing a deed of violence.

However Garnet did not delude himself: he knew that he would not be able to restrain for ever the exasperation and despair of men like Catesby. The prestige of the priests was no longer what it had been; it was bound to sink to an even lower level, since, during the disputes at the time of the appointment of an archpriest, a controversy had arisen in their own ranks as to the attitude they should adopt towards the government. The question was freely discussed whether priests, who were forever concerned with the hereafter and the supernatural, were really the right persons to issue final decisions on the concerns of this world. “Everybody is in despair,” Garnet wrote to Rome on May 8th, 1605, “and many Catholics are hostile to the Jesuits; they say that the Jesuits oppose and prevent the use of force in any shape. I dare not attempt to ascertain what their future plans are since the General has forbidden us to meddle with such things.” One day, whilst Garnet was at table with Catesby, he spoke of the duty of enduring the persecution with patience. Thereupon Catesby got very angry: “It is principles like these that are responsible for the misfortunes of English Catholics”, he exclaimed, “neither priests nor Popes can take away the right to meet wrong with violence”. As a matter of fact, at the time of Clement VIII’s prohibition of all violent measures, many Catholics had taken the liberty to ask whether the Pope could forbid them to defend their lives.

Nonetheless Catesby would have welcomed a word from a priest which might be interpreted as an approval of his scheme. To this end, and without a hint as to his ulterior intention, on June 9th, 1605, Catesby had with Garnet the fateful conversation which the latter was destined to expiate by death at the executioner’s hand. Catesby’s insidious question was thus formulated: “Supposing that it is lawful, in a given instance, to kill one or more persons, if the attempt on their lives would also cause the death of some innocent persons, would there be any obligation to consider the latter?”. Garnet replied that in every just war it was lawful to destroy houses, fortifications, castles without considering the innocent, if it was necessary for victory. When he gave this answer Garnet never dreamt that Catesby could use it to forward his own designs. Before long, however, the Jesuit’s suspicion was roused. Consequently, at their next meeting, Garnet supplemented his solution of the case with the statement that the action which would entail the death of the innocent parties must be lawful in itself, and the innocent people in question must not be persons whose lives were necessary to the general good.

Catesby’s own actions now convinced Garnet that something was in the air. In conformity with the direction of his General, he made no effort to ascertain what it was, for even mere cognizance of such things was fraught with extreme danger. According to English law he should have denounced Catesby on mere suspicion, but Garnet was anxious to use gentler means at first, and in doing so he had in mind an express papal prohibition of rebellion. In conversation with Lord Mounteagle, Catesby and his associate Francis Tresham, he obtained from all three a formal admission of the fact that an armed rising was hopeless. Thereupon Garnet remarked that this showed how unjust it was to blame the Jesuits if the Catholics did not fight for their rights; as a matter of fact, in view of the circumstances, the only possible course was calm resignation; it was in this sense that he would report to the Pope through his General.

Even before Garnet had time to act on this decision he and Blackwell received, through Aquaviva, a papal command to oppose with the utmost energy any attempt to cause a rising on the part of Catholics. He lost no time in laying the papal document before Catesby. “If the Pope knew what is at stake he would not try to stop me,” was Catesby’s answer. Garnet then urged that the papal prohibition was a formal command. Catesby replied that he was under no obligation to accept Garnet as interpreter of the Pope’s wishes. In that case, Garnet said, let him personally tell the Pope what he was aiming at. Catesby would not hear of this, because of the risk of discovery, but in the end he promised not to attempt anything until the Pope should have been informed of everything by special messenger. For this mission Garnet then proposed a certain Bainham who was going to Flanders in any case.

Garnet thought he had won the day for nothing would happen before the Pope’s decision, and it was not difficult to foresee what this decision would be. For all that, in a report to his General, dated July 24th, 1505, he painted the situation in sombre colours. The Jesuits, he said, would be able to prevent a general rising of Catholics—they still wielded sufficient authority to do that much. But should there be a rising in any part of the country, or should a few hotheads have recourse to violence, it was possible that by degrees all the Catholics would be dragged into the current. A papal prohibition couched in general terms would not be effectual with all Catholics; the Pope, therefore, should state in detail what may be done and what must be avoided, and enforce his command with a threat of excommunication and other penalties. The letter alludes to Bainham’s mission to Rome. Because of the distrust which some felt of the priests, more especially the Jesuits, they had been advised, in order to gain time, to apply to the Pope directly. Bainham’s departure was delayed until September and Garnet’s reasons for a more severe prohibition of any form of agitation were not found convincing in Rome. The fact was that he could not say all he already knew at that moment about the plot. Twice Catesby had offered to reveal his plans; twice Garnet declined the dangerous knowledge. At last he learned the secret, against his will and to his great horror. Eight noblemen had conceived the plan, on the occasion of the opening of Parliament, on November 5th, to blow up the king and the whole house of Parliament, after which they would provoke a general rising of the whole country, put one of the king’s sons on the throne and establish a regency. The Jesuit Greenway had come to know everything, in confession, through Catesby, the organizer and instigator of the plot, and with Catesby’s permission and likewise tinder the seal of confession, he had informed Garnet, his Superior, for the purpose of getting his advice. We may well believe Garnet when he assures us that he was never more upset in his whole life and that the knowledge kept him awake at night.1 There was question here, not only of a monstrous crime, but also of a piece of folly which could only have disastrous consequences for the Catholics of England in general, and for the Jesuits in particular, and he had to keep silence whilst the catastrophe was approaching, nor could he move a finger to prevent it, for according to Catholic discipline, the seal of confession is utterly inviolable and precludes any use whatever of the secret information thus obtained.

Thus the fatal fifth of November drew near, a dreadful day, not for the king and the government, but for the Catholics. At an early hour in the morning the awful news spread through the city that an enormous quantity of gunpowder had been discovered under the assembly hall of parliament, in the basement of the building, and that in the night a desperado had been arrested there who was making the final preparations for setting fire to the powder. The plot had been discovered and foiled at the last moment. Horror of the ruthless attempt, detestation of the old religion, the proud conviction that a kindly Providence had watched over the Protestants and taken their part as against the criminal Catholics—such were the feelings which, in the course of the ensuing weeks, grew ever stronger in the Protestant mass of the people. On the night of November 5th, all the bells of the city rang out and the sky was red with the reflection of the bonfires which were lit in every street. Parliament alone seemed but little effected by the general excitement. Though it had only just escaped death, it nevertheless met in that same building from the basement of which it would hardly have been possible to remove by then so enormous a quantity of powder, supposing it to have been there. Coolly, as if nothing had happened, the house discussed various measures in regard to commercial relations with Spain as well as the letter of one of its members who excused his absence by pleading an attack of gout.

The conspirators had fled on the morning of the day and attempted to bring about a rising of the Catholics. Everywhere they preached to deaf ears and all doors were closed to them. On November 8th, they were rounded up at Holbeche. In the affray Catesby and three others were shot dead, the rest, together with their servants, were made prisoners. It would seem that Catesby and those who fell with him at Holbeche, expressed regret for what they had done before they expired. Sentence was pronounced on the survivors on January 27th, amid an immense concourse of people, and on January 31st and February 1st, 1606, they died at the executioner’s hand. One of the conspirators, Francis Tresham, had died in prison, on December 22nd. When his associates fled he remained in London and the government treated him with surprising leniency.

During the next few days, following the discovery of the criminal plot, London remained in complete uncertainty as to its details. At the moment only one of the culprits was in the hands of justice, Guy Fawkes, who had been caught at the entrance of the house of Parliament, on the night before the fifth of November. The numerous interrogatories to which he had been subjected had yielded no result of any value, when the government received, from an unknown source, a list of all the conspirators. This list was promptly published, though with the omission of Tresham’s name. An account dated November 7th, to which further additions were made two days later, was supposed to give full information to the foreign princes of all that had occurred. For the populace a “True and perfect relation” was published. In March, an address delivered by James I on November 9th, to the house of Parliament, on the subject of the plot, and the two most important admissions of the conspirators, were put together in a volume which became the famous King’s Book. According to this information the original plan was to undermine the house of Parliament. To this end a nearby house was rented and, though the conspirators were not used to the rough work of the miner, since they were all gentlemen of rank, they nevertheless set themselves the task of piercing through the foundations of the house and to dig a tunnel. They were already half-way through the thick foundation of the house of Parliament when it suddenly dawned upon the clumsy toilers that their exertions were unnecessary. They could achieve their purpose in a much simpler manner by just hiring the room beneath the assembly hall of Parlia­ment which was used to store coal, wood and other odds and ends. So it was done and thirty-six barrels of gunpowder, about 9,000 pounds in all, were gradually accumulated in the vault.

However, as the date of the execution of the dreadful plot drew near, some of the conspirators became increasingly uneasy at the thought that among so many members of Parliament several Catholic peers would also meet their death. One of Catesby’s chief associates, Thomas Percy, was in the service of the Earl of Northumberland; Francis Tresham was related by marriage to Lord Stourton and Lord Mounteagle, whilst Lord Montague and the young Earl of Arundel enjoyed the esteem of all their Catholic correligionists. So it came about that one of the conspirators—Tresham, without a doubt, wrote a letter to Lord Mounteagle, couched in mysterious phrases, warning him not to take part in themopening of Parliament. Mounteagle communicated the letter to the Earl of Salisbury who, in his turn, showed it to other peers and eventually to the king himself. The cryptic turn of the letter sufficiently hinted that there was question of a murderous attempt to be brought off by means of gun­powder. There followed a search of the house of Parliament, the discovery of the powder hidden under bundles of sticks and piles of wood and, eventually, the arrest of Fawkes.

The three official accounts contain more than one contradiction and, quite apart from this fact, it cannot be denied that they are full of improbabilities. It is difficult to understand how it was possible to remove unnoticed the mass of earth, and the stones of the walls that had to be breached, whilst the tunnel was being dug. When, at a later period, the foundation walls of the house of Parliament were laid bare, there was no sign of the alleged breach. When we are further informed that about four tons of powder, in over thirty casks, were bought and conveyed first to a house on the left bank of the Thames, and from there across the river, to the house they had rented, and from there finally to the house of Parliament, all without attracting attention or suspicion, we do not think the tale a convincing one. As for the story of the letter to Mounteagle, its particulars are so peculiar that it is generally rejected.

It is highly probable that the government had long known all about the conspiracy and that it had purposely allowed it to mature in order to exploit it, at the right moment, for its own purposes. Nevertheless the main features of the traditional account appear to correspond with facts. A plan for the blowing up of Parliament was decided upon and preparations were made for its execution; how far they got will never be known.

The official reports, the aim of which was to influence public opinion in a certain direction, are adorned with exaggerated and arresting details, with a view to arousing the passions of the populace and exploiting the whole affair so as to serve the designs of the leading politicians. The intention was that the man in the street should be seized with horror and indignation at the mere thought of the sect which was known to shun the light and which was busy undermining the ground beneath the home of the honest citizen, and even beneath the State itself. These accounts were spread not in England alone, they were also dispatched to the ambassadors at foreign courts and translated into different languages and thus they found their way all over Europe. As late as the time of the Titus Oates conspiracy (1679) a new edition of the so-called King’s Book was published to add fuel to popular excitement.

Catesby’s mad attempt came most opportunely for the government. The king’s honour was tainted by perjury: for after giving to the adherents of the old religion grounds to hope for toleration, he had cruelly disappointed them. But he would be safe from reproach, the new persecution would be justified and the lingering respect for the ancient Church would be profoundly shaken, if this unfortunate deed could be represented as the act of Catholics and if people could be made to believe it. Salisbury desired the destruction of Catholicism; moreover, up to that moment, he had not been popular, nor was he sure of the favour of his Sovereign. The plot provided him with an occasion to prove to king and people alike how indispensable he was.

A popular proverb of the period, “Property lost, reason lost!” may help us to understand to some extent how the most elementary moral principles came to be lost sight of by men such as Catesby and his associates. An even greater confusion of ideas is revealed in the efforts for the destruction of Catholicism on which the leading English statesmen were now about to enter. All regard for truth and justice was cast aside by them with almost incredible callousness; deliberate lying, cheating, falsification, were deemed legitimate means when there was question of dealing a blow to the greatly hated Church.

In this respect the king himself gave the example. Not long after the discovery of the plot the archpriest Blackwell, in a circular, had condemned the plot in severest terms. On his part the Pope had repeatedly forbidden every form of rebellion or violence. As soon as the attempt became known, Paul V, through the French ambassador in London, assured the king that he abhorred and condemned the authors of the dastardly attempt more than any man; if it is proved, as has been mooted, that some of the Jesuits played a part in it, they must be punished with the rest; the Pope’s only desire was that the innocent should not be lumped together with the guilty and that the former should not be made to suffer instead of the criminals.

Even before this declaration James I was well acquainted with the views of the Roman court. For all that, in an address to Parliament, on November 9th, 1605, he threw the responsibility for the plot on the papacy and its teaching. Neither Turks, nor Jews, nor idolaters, the king said, no, not even the pagans of Calicut who worshipped the devil, in a word, no sect of any kind had ever affirmed, on grounds of its own religion, that it was lawful, or, as the Catholics say, meritorious, to kill princes or to work for the subversion of the State. No doubt there were honourable men, even among the Popes, who either did not know or did not believe in, the horrible and accursed doctrines of the papacy, that true “mystery of iniquity”; hence not all the papists of past times were to be thought of as excluded from eternal life; but no man who has adopted the principles of that superstition with full knowledge, and who clings to them with obstinate tenacity, may lay claim to be a true Christian or a good citizen. In his letters, James I spoke even more bitterly : “I learn from his Majesty’s messengers,” writes John Harrington, “that these attempts were not engineered by a few persons only, but the whole legion of Catholics was called to counsel; the priests soothed their consciences and the Pope granted a general absolution for this splendid undertaking from which so much glory would accrue to God and to His holy religion.” Politicians also talked of machinations which proceeded from Rome and from Satan. In February, 1606, Salisbury explained to Hoboken, the Flemish envoy, that the Pope had instigated the plot which was itself but the outcome of Catholic teaching.

In the interrogation of the conspirators the government did its best to obtain evidence of the complicity of the priests. Fawkes was made to undergo torture as early as May 9th, for a long time all efforts were in vain. Eventually he confessed  that he had confided his plans to Hugh Owen, but he was not a priest but a soldier. The conspirators, he further confessed, took an oath of secrecy and, with a view to confirming it, received Holy Communion in an adjoining room; he insisted, however, that Gerard was wholly ignorant of the plot. Another conspirator, Thomas Winter, swore that no priest was among the conspirators, whilst a third, Digby, declared that but for the opposition of the priests, trouble would have broken out long ago for the purpose of liberating the Catholics. When Tresham was questioned in his turn, it was soon seen that he knew nothing of the alleged complicity of the priests.7So they questioned him on the mission which was sent to Madrid in 1602, for the purpose of securing Spain’s help for the Catholics of England. He admitted that the Jesuits, Garnet and Greenway, knew of it, but later on, on his death-bed, he added that Garnet had nothing to do with the discussions. Garnet imagined that the journey was for the purpose of collecting alms for the English Catholics.

The accused, who were all of gentle birth, stuck to these declarations to the end; in fact they displayed such courage and constancy that one can only regret that they were not used in the service of a better cause. However, one of their servants, a man of the name of Bates, had been let into the secret and he, on December 4th, was induced to make a deposition against the Jesuit Greenway. We have no means at this date to ascertain the nature of his deposition. In a later statement he pretended that all he meant was that he thought Greenway knew of the affair; that he regretted his former statement, but trusted God would forgive him, for he had made it not through ill-will but to save his life. On its part the government exhibited a confession of Bates in which he was made to assert that he had discussed the plot with Greenway in confession and that the latter had given it his approval. Father Greenway himself declared, on his salvation, that Bates had never breathed a word about the  plot, neither in confession nor out of it. In a further statement by Bates, on January 13th, Garnet’s name also appears; Bates confessed that after the discovery of the plot and the escape of the conspirators, he took a letter of their’s to Garnet. Thus the names of at least three Jesuits were mentioned in the depositions of the witnesses and against two of them there were grounds for suspicion which justified a summons. From this time onward, in official documents, the government spoke as if the complicity of the Pope and the priests were a proven fact about which there could be no controversy. On January 15th, 1606, a proclamation was issued for the arrest of the three Jesuits, Gerard, Greenway and Garnet, as the special instigators of the plot, and though there was no charge against him, Gerard’s name headed the list. On January 21st, 1606, Parliament ordered a special service of thanksgiving for its escape. In the preamble of the ordinance “the Jesuits, the Seminarists and the Roman Priests” are described as the instigators of the plot. From that time the following rubric was inserted in the calendar of the Book of Common Prayer under November 5th: “Papists’ Conspiracy,” and in the official prayers of the day 7 thanks were returned “for the wonderful and mighty salvation” of the royal family, the peers, the clergy and the commons who had been by popish treachery appointed as sheep to the slaughter, in a most barbarous and savage manner, beyond the examples of former ages.

The indictment on the ground of which the instigators of the plot were tried on January 27th, 1606, does not show any more regard for truth. It asserts that Henry Garnet, Oswald Tesmond (Greenway), John Gerard, and other Jesuits had traitorously met together, and had maliciously, cunningly and traitorously alleged that the king, the peers, the clergy and the Commons were all heretics and excommunicated and had thereby incited the accused and their accomplices, now no longer living, to murder them. The speeches of the attorneys are couched in similar terms.

The accusations against the Jesuits did not remain unanswered. Gerard had handbills scattered in the streets of London in which he condemned the plot and denied his having had any knowledge of it. In a letter to Salisbury and to members of the Privy Council he likewise protested his innocence. Garnet also wrote in a similar strain to the Privy Council, on November 30th, 1605. But these protests carried no weight with the masses. The definite charges contained in official documents were bound to prejudice public opinion against the accused. Thus, by means of bold lies, the government successfully got public opinion on its side. When in the course of the sitting of January 27th, one of the accused, Digby, alluded to the promises which the king had made to the Catholics and which he had not kept, Northampton boldly denied that James had ever given such assurances previous to his arrival in England. Salisbury added that in July, 1603, the king had merely promised the remission of unpaid fines.

Two of the three Jesuits thus publicly accused, viz. Greenway and Gerard, made good their escape over sea. Garnet, their Superior, made no attempt to flee, but lay in hiding in the old castle of Hindlip. There on January 30th, 1606, together with his brother in religion, Oldcome, he fell into the hands of the pursuivants.

The name of the hated Superior of the Jesuits was known throughout England. His arrest was an event. When he was taken to Whitehall, on February 13th, to be questioned, the streets were thronged with people all eager to see the “provincial”, the “Young Pope”. The government plan was to exploit their catch in order to brand in his person the whole Jesuit Order, but even more so the whole Catholic Church, and to ruin it in public opinion. In the words of the “True and perfect Relation”, the trial was an opportunity “whereby there might be made visible an anatomy of popish doctrine, from whence these treasons have their source and support”.

On the very next day after Garnet’s arrest the last of the conspirators were executed. The authorities were thus ready to forego the possibility of extorting any further charges against the Jesuit, but they did all they could, by threats and by snares, to entrap him by means of his own statements, weight to his utterances; he was obliged to speak in this way merely to please the king and the people  for, as Salisbury wrote, “we are forced, after so long a suffering, to run a course more violent than standeth either with the ordinary rules of moral policy, or with the moderation of his Majesty’s mind”. When the interrogatories failed to yield any results, the governor of the prison was instructed to induce Garnet, by pretending interest and sympathy, to enter into epistolary relations with his friends. When his letters also failed to yield anything of consequence, the governor pointed out to Garnet a chink in the door of the next cell, in which Oldcome was confined; hidden listeners then reported the conversation of the two Jesuits. Garnet and Oldcorne had had ample opportunity, at Hindlip, to exchange views concerning the plot; for all that they dropped several remarks which could be used as pointers at the interrogatories.

A treatise on a question of moral theology, which was found in the house of Tresham, furnished a pretext, in the absence of other evidence, to represent Garnet as an arch-rogue to whose deposition no credence could be given. The treatise was on what is called “equivocation”, and it bore corrections in Garnet’s own hand so that it could be taken as expressing his ideas. A few explanatory remarks on “equivocation” are in order here, for in those days it played a role not at Garnet’s trial only.

It is related that on one occasion, when St. Athanasius was escaping upstream, his boat was overtaken by the barque of the imperial police. Thereupon the patriarch of Alexandria had his boat turned round and when his pursuers inquired where Athanasius was, he himself replied: “He is not far from here.” Everyone will agree that such an answer is not a lie and no fault can be found with it. If we grant this much, we must also admit that a statement is not a lie because it misleads another, even though the mistake is foreseen or permitted by the speaker. The wrongfulness of a lie consists in that the speaker thinks one thing and says another, though he wishes his words to be taken as the true expression of his thought. Now there was no such opposition between St. Athanasius’ thought and speech for his words truly represented his thought, though they also bore another meaning which, in fact, was the one in which the police took them; it was the only one they could think of. So we must allow that “equivocations” of this kind are lawful, when there is reasonable ground for their use and if the words can also be taken as a statement of fact.

However, it is necessary to go a step further. The presence of mind which enabled St. Athanasius to answer as he did, is not the gift of everybody and at every moment; there are a hundred cases when, in practice, a secret can only be effectually kept from unauthorized questioners if it is lawful to put them off with a decided “No!”. A denial of this kind has always been held to be lawful whenever, in view of the circumstances of time, place, and so forth, it could be taken in two senses. If, for instance, a criminal is asked by the judge, previous to any evidence against him, whether he is guilty, he can reply in the negative for in the circumstances his “No” can be taken as meaning that no one can be compelled to be his own accuser and that the accused leaves the onus of proving his guilt to his judges.

Garnet thought he could adopt the latter course at his own trial. To the question whether he had any knowledge of the plot, or whether he conversed with Oldcorne through the chink in the door, he at first replied in a decided negative. But eventually, when driven into a comer, he had to retreat step by step, and to make more than one admission. In an ordinary accused, this would have called forth no surprise, but in a priest it created a painful impression, all the more so as the average Englishman’s entire mental outfit would probably lead him to admire a Guy Fawkes who, when arrested, smilingly admitted a deed which, he knew well, would lead to his being quartered, but who scorned every form of trickery or subterfuge. Garnet soon realized his mistake; he now gave an explanation of the line of conduct adopted by him up till then, and since a plain statement of the facts could not hurt anyone, for the conspirators were all dead, he decided, on March 9th, to make a full confession. On the following day he added a few complementary details. He admitted that he had a vague knowledge that some violent attempt was preparing, which he did his utmost to prevent, but that the real nature of the plot came to his knowledge solely under the seal of confession. However, Catesby had given him permission to make use even of the knowledge thus acquired.

That the interrogatories had yielded but scant material is shown by the embarrassment of the judges to find, for the final examination on March 28th, 1606, an accusation which would sufficiently compromise Garnet, and in his person, the Catholic Church. They were unwilling to condemn him for being a priest or for keeping the secret of confession, for they wanted him to die as a traitor, amid the execration of the populace. His not having denounced Catesby and thereby handed him over to the executioner, as soon as he came by some vague knowledge of the former’s schemes, might seem too slight an offence. In consequence, the indictment formally asserted that on June 9th, Garnet conspired with Catesby to kill the king and the heir to the crown, and that for this purpose he had had powder conveyed under the house of Parliament. It was on June 9th, that Garnet had with Catesby a conversation in which he gave it as his opinion that in a just war it was lawful to kill the guilty even though the innocent perished with them. If, when he gave this decision, Garnet knew that Catesby was thinking of an attempt on the life of the king, he would, without any doubt, be an accomplice in the conspiracy, hence some sort of evidence would have to be produced at least for the first part of the indictment.

Evidence in support of the assertion was not to be thought of, but this consideration did not greatly trouble the judges or the people. When there was question of a political crime, the accused could scarcely ever hope for an acquittal in the England of those days. If the government of the time imagined that its tranquillity and security were being under­mined by some dark power, its one thought was to destroy the secret plotter at one blow; whether this entailed an infringement of justice or the sacrifice of an innocent life was a secondary consideration. If this applied to any judicial procedure, how much more so in the case of a trial in which the Pope, the Catholic clergy, the seminarists, and the priests could be branded for ever?

Nothing was left undone to make Garnet’s condemnation an important political event. The royal commission was made up of the highest officials and peers of the realm, the Lord Mayor of London, the Earls of Nottingham, Suffolk, Worcester, Northampton and Salisbury, the Lord Chief Justice, the first Lord of the Treasury together with Justice Selwyn. There could have been no greater display had there been question of a Roman Cardinal, was Lord Salisbury’s comment.6 Consequently the sitting of March 28th, caused an immense stir; from all sides people pressed into the Guildhall and the king himself listened to the trial from a secret hiding place. The examination of evidence against the accused and his conviction were a mockery of all justice. The Attorney-General, Edward Coke, who was in the habit of playing the role of accuser in every important political trial, and who was none too punctilious in regard to truth, appeared on this occasion also. His marshalling of evidence was extremely weak; he talked of all sorts of things which had nothing to do with the case; when he came to the point on which everything depended, he had nothing to submit except a few probabilities strung together at haphazard. Sallies against the doctrine of equivocation had to fill the gaps. By means of interruptions and exclamations an attempt was made to lessen the effect of Garnet’s defence. But most worthy of condemnation is the fact that the government did not shrink from manifest falsifications of the minutes of the interrogatories. Thus the two conspirators, Fawkes and Winter, had unanimously attested that after binding themselves by oath to secrecy, they received Holy Communion from the hand of Gerard, but added that the priest knew nothing of their oath. When the minutes of the interrogatories were read, this clause was omitted by order of Coke, and in the text of the speech of the Attorney-General, as given by the True and Perfect Relation, we read : “At the same time the Jesuit Gerard tendered this oath to Catesby, Percy, Christopher Wright and Thomas Winter, and on another occasion it was tendered by the Jesuit Greenway to Bates and the rest”. Garnet’s confession of March 9th, which contains the fullest account of his relations with the conspirators, was not read at all, by order of the king, and in the admissions which the jury were allowed to hear, Coke ordered the omission of the passages in which Garnet expresses his dis­approval of the plot. However, these are not the only forgeries committed on this occasion.

Even after Garnet had been sentenced, an attempt was made, by means of repeated interrogatories, to extract further information from him. During the last days of his life, the condemned man grievously reproached himself for one point of his conduct; he now thought that he should have informed the government that he knew that some violent attempt was preparing. In an explanation dated April 4th, 1606, and addressed to the king, he confessed this fault and begged forgiveness. On the other hand he protested, even on the scaffold, that he only knew of the plot through confession.

It is said that 20,000 spectators witnessed Garnet’s execution on May 3rd. The sight of his person inspired reverence, and his dignified manner silenced the jeers of the scoffers; the crowd would not suffer him to be quartered before he was quite dead, and there was no answer when the executioner held up his heart as that of a traitor.

However this mood did not last. In the official account of the execution the government made the ambiguous statement that on the scaffold Garnet had confessed his guilt: this the people naturally construed into an admission of complicity in the gunpowder plot, which he had emphatically denied. Whereas the Catholics, even immediately after the arrest of the conspirators, felt convinced that Salisbury was “playing false”, and that the Privy Council “had spun the web in order to entangle these poor gentlemen in its meshes”, in Protestant opinion Garnet became, for centuries to come, an arch­conspirator, “the rotten roote of this corrupted tree of treason.” Official accounts and the yearly celebration of Guy Fawkes’ day, on November 5th, when a caricature of the Pope was dragged through the streets and finally burnt, were effective means by which to keep the Gunpowder plot alive in the memory of the public as “the Jesuits’ treason”  and the “Popish Conspiracy”. In 1606, Vincenzo Giuliani saw in all the streets of London caricatures of the Pope and of Catholic priests. The Gunpowder plot came as a handle for Salisbury to use against various persons that failed to please him. Thus his greatly feared rival, the Earl of Northumberland, lost his liberty, his offices and a large part of his possessions because of his relations with Percy, one of the conspirators. Three Catholic peers were condemned to heavy fines on trivial grounds. Hugh Owen, the officer in the Netherlands, had long ago incurred the displeasure of the government; hence Coke was instructed, in the course of the interrogatories in connection with the plot, to make the heaviest accusations possible against Owen. The attempt seems to have failed badly. True, the printed text of Fawkes’ confession of November 17th, 1605, contains an allusion to Owen, but in the original text that particular sentence is missing. Long negotiations now began with the regent of the Netherlands for the extradition of Owen; their issue was that, in 1611, Owen was compelled to leave Flanders. Likewise on the plea of his having had cognizance of the plot, the expulsion from the Netherlands of the Jesuit Baudouin was demanded by the government and acceded to by the regent. Whilst travelling in the Palatinate, Baudouin was recognized by the elector Frederic V who had him taken to England. Though he could not be convicted of complicity, he remained shut up in the Tower for eight years until he was exchanged for an English prisoner of the Roman Inquisition. The elector of the Palatinate made the Gun­powder plot a pretext for a display of his anti-Catholic feelings. By his orders, on the last three Sundays of the year, thanksgiving was “offered in all the churches for deliverance from the blood-thirsty and inhuman attempts of antichrist and the conspiracy of his idolatrous band”, and the preachers were instructed to expatiate on the idolatry and blood lust of the Pope.

On account of the Gunpowder plot, Parliament had been adjourned from November 9th, 1605, until January 21st, of the following year.3 On May 27th, 1606, it passed fresh laws against Catholics. The king had already been warned not to drive those who professed the old religion to despair by inhuman severity. Henry IV instructed his ambassador to make similar representations. All was in vain; the government seemed determined to make the best of so favourable an opportunity and to make further acts of desperation impossible by stamping out Catholicism itself. The penalties imposed on Catholics by the new laws covered almost every imaginable situation. Husbands and wives, unless they had been married by a Protestant minister, forfeited every benefit to which he or she might be entitled from the property of the other. If they did not have their children baptized by a Protestant minister, or if they did not have their dead buried in the Protestant cemetery, they were fined £100 in the former case and £20 in the latter. A child sent beyond the sea to be educated was debarred from any inheritance or gift, in favour of the Protestant next-of-kin, until it should return to the national church. A whole series of fresh molestations and fines was devised against those who refused to attend Anglican worship. Without the written permission of four of the nearest magistrates, Catholics could not journey beyond a radius of five miles from their residence; they could not appear at court nor within the boundaries, or within ten miles of the boundaries, of the capital. Whoever did not assist at Anglican worship was incapable of practising surgery or the law and he was treated as if he had been excommunicated formally and by name. His house could be searched, his religious books or objects might be burnt and his horses and arms taken from him at any time, by order of the nearest magistrate. As regards unpaid fines for non-attendance at Church, it was now left open to the king whether to raise the fine of £20 per lunar month, or to confiscate in its place the whole of the movable property, or the immovable property up to two-thirds. Every householder, of whatever religion, receiving Catholic visitors, or keeping Catholic servants, was liable to a fine of £10 per lunar month.

Thus did Parliament reply to the wretched crime of a few men by the enactment of an unjust and barbarous statute, and thousands were to suffer for centuries to come for the insane plans once conceived by a Catesby. Nor was this all.

The government took pleasure in representing the Gunpowder plot as the fruit of Catholic teaching; hence, lest fresh disastrous floods should spring from such a source, it must, be choked. To this effect a special oath was tendered to the adherents of the old religion, the refusal of which would entail confiscation of property and perpetual imprisonment. Every Catholic had to swear that he believed James I to be his rightful sovereign, that the Pope had no power to depose him, or to absolve his subjects from their oath of allegiance to him. The juror, therefore, promised loyalty and obedience to his sovereign, without attending to any papal excommunication, to defend him against conspiracies and attempts against his life, and to give information of them; he swore that he rejected the impious, heretical and damnable doctrine that sovereigns excommunicated by the Pope or deprived of their realms could be deposed and put to death by their subjects; that he believed it to be of faith and a dictate of conscience that neither the Pope nor anyone else had power to absolve from this oath; that all this he swore according to the natural meaning of the words, without equivocation; that he promised it from his heart, freely and sincerely, on the faith and loyalty of a Christian.

If we bear in mind the story of the Stuarts from James I to James II, the formula is not without a smack of tragedy. On the plea of fear for his throne and life, the monarch of England entrenches himself against the ancient Church, yet it was precisely this passion for unlimited independence that led to the deposition and death on the scaffold of James’ son, and to the loss of the crown for his whole House under his grandson; it was this that, in the terms of Logan’s epigram, opened an era which learnt precisely from the story of Charles I not to spare sovereigns; an age in which the assassination of princes ended by becoming a sinister epidemic and in which the papacy appeared as the bulwark of law and order. It sounds like a mockery of the wisdom of the British Solomon, when we are told that out of the 500 gentlemen who bled for the cause of his son, no less than 200 came from the ranks of the down-trodden Catholics.

Owing to its wording, James I’s oath was a formidable weapon against Catholics. It branded their Church as an enemy of the State and of civilization and provided the further advantage, in case of refusal, of covering religious persecution with a political cloak. It looked as if the times of Nero had come back when the mere fact of being a Christian made a man “an enemy of mankind”. Moreover the formula had been disguised as a snare for the guileless and a wedge by which to split the unity of the Catholics. Every one of its clauses betrays the hand of its author, an apostate priest, who took advantage of his familiarity with things Catholic to cause his former correligionists the worst embarrassment and to sow discord and division in their ranks. It was impossible to take the oath without denying Catholic principles. The very first words of the formula were offensive. They styled James, “Our sovereign lord,” that is, in the literal sense of the words, supreme also in things spiritual. At the conclusion it stated that the oath was tendered “by competent and rightful authority”. Now in the oath of allegiance there was question not of temporal things but of affairs of conscience; hence to attribute to the king full authority in this sphere was practically the same thing as rejecting the Pope and taking a disguised oath of supremacy. As regards the kernel of the formula, the overwhelming majority of theologians of the period maintained the Pope’s right to depose princes. Popes and councils, and quite recently Pius V, had claimed it; and since in the opinion of the Middle Ages, an excommunicated prince could not rule over Christians, deposition was deemed a natural consequence of the Pope’s right to exclude from the Church, a right no Catholic could deny. It was not, therefore, lawful for an individual Catholic to decide, on his own authority, between the Gallicans and all the other theologians and thereby to arrogate to himself a power which belonged exclusively to the Church. Still less was he justified in rejecting the universal teaching of theologians as impious, heretical and damnable, if he was not also prepared to maintain that for centuries the Church had tolerated an impious and heretical doctrine. Least of all could he concede to a Protestant king the right to decide what was orthodox and what was not, and thus to attribute to him the power to introduce new dogmas into the Church. Even the Gallicans, who denied the Pope’s deposing power, could not take the oath, since they did not defend their particular opinions as certain but as merely probable; hence they could not swear that the contrary view was erroneous. Above all, the formula was cunningly made to look perfectly harmless. Nowhere is an uncontroverted dogma or an expressly defined opinion directly attacked. Whatever was calculated to perplex is placed amid propositions which could not be attacked, and is so worded that a moderate explanation did not seem excluded. Thus, for instance, it is not the doctrine that the Pope may depose an excommunicated prince that is styled “impious and heretical”, but the claim that the subjects had such a right, and even here there was not simply question of deposition only, but of “deposition and assassination”. It was, therefore, doubtful whether the epithets, “impious and heretical,” referred to the deposition alone, or to deposition and assassination. Before taking the oath, the juror could take the more moderate view, but once he had sworn it was open to the government to give prominence to the stricter interpretation. This applies also to the clauses which ascribe to the king supreme authority, in fact it is true of the whole formula. Why take the worst meaning as the only possible one? many a one would say to himself. Why attach so much importance to inaccuracies in the wording of the oath? The government knows nothing of theological subtleties; it imagines that it is possible to draw from Catholic dogmas conclusions that might endanger the State and it is in this sense that it demands their rejection. Very well, we will swear just in that sense; we swear to be loyal to the king as our temporal lord, and we also attest on oath that our Catholic faith does not make of us either traitors or regicides.

As a matter of fact differences of opinion on the oath and its lawfulness soon arose among Catholics. Only a few years earlier, thirteen priests from the party of the Appellants, had made an offer to Queen Elizabeth to take an oath which, in many of its clauses, was not unlike the formula of James I. At this time, Blackwell, the archpriest, had among his counsellors priests drawn from the ranks of the Appellants and these exercised considerable influence over him. In a proclamation of July 10th, 1606, the king had reverted to his old plan of banishing the priests, yet at the same time he assured the laymen that he would only consider those as disloyal who, “under plea of zeal really aimed at preaching rebellion and at bringing about the subversion of the Church and society.” In his polemical writings, James repeatedly asserts that his formula demands no more than what is demanded by the ordinary loyalty to the king and by civil obedience.

For all that, Blackwell’s first thought had been publicly to condemn the oath. On the occasion of a deliberation with three of his ordinary advisers and the Superiors of the Jesuits and the Benedictines, the two religious and one of the secular priests pronounced against the oath whereas the two other secular priests sided with Blackwell. It was decided to consult Rome in the matter and meanwhile to let each individual Catholic decide for himself. Nearly all the laity took the oath but the greater part of the secular clergy and the Jesuits and Benedictines condemned it and refused to take it.

In the meantime Blackwell’s agent in Rome, Singleton, did all he could to defend the oath, but, as was to be foreseen, he failed to win over a single Cardinal to his view. Nor was the opposition idle. The English Jesuits in Flanders had dispatched two of their number to the eternal City. On the other hand the French ambassador, de Breves, begged the Pope not to irritate James; in time his own master would no doubt succeed in bringing him round to better sentiments. Paul V fell in with this view; he even sent one of his chamberlains, the Baron de Magdelene, on a secret visit to London, to congratulate the king on his escape from the Gunpowder plot, to plead on behalf of the Catholics of his realm and to assure him of their loyalty and of the goodwill of the Holy See. The French ambassador in London, Lefevre de la Boderie, worked in the same sense.

All these efforts having proved in vain, on September 22nd, 1606, a papal Brief was published which, after giving the full text of the oath, went on to declare that there were many things in it which were contrary to the faith and to the welfare of souls, hence it was not lawful to take it. The Pope expressed his conviction that the Catholics of England would courageously prefer the most cruel tortures and death itself to an outrage against God’s majesty. In conclusion the Brief exhorts them to preserve concord and charity, as Clement VIII. had exhorted them on October 5th, 1602, on the occasion of the question of the archpriest. Let the Brief of his predecessor be observed literally and without cavilling. This warning refers to the unsuccessful attempt of the party of the Appellant priests, who, through their emissaries Cecil and Champney, sought to obtain from Paul V what Clement VIII had refused. The matter was not again to be brought up in future. The papal Brief was sent from Rome to the Superior of the English Jesuits, Holtby, through whom it came into the hands of Blackwell. However, Blackwell would not publish it: the Brief, he declared, had not been delivered to him with the formalities prescribed by Canon Law and he was surely not bound voluntarily to put the rope round his neck.

The government obtained early information of the Brief. An order was issued for Blackwell’s arrest at any cost. On June 24th, 1606, the archpriest fell into the hands of the pursuivants, and with him the whole of the correspondence with Rome. At the residence of the archbishop of Canterbury, Bancroft, he declared before a deputation of bishops and doctors that, notwithstanding the papal Brief, he still believed that the oath was lawful. In that case, Bancroft urged, let him take it! Blackwell did so, appealing at the same time to the explanation of the oath given by the king himself. In a circular of July 7th, 1607, he exhorted the clergy to follow his example and to urge the laity in this sense. Bancroft hastened to make the best of his triumph by broad­casting Blackwell’s letter over the whole of England. During thirty years of persecution, the Jesuits wrote in their annual reports, no heavier blow had ever befallen the Church in England.

However, Blackwell’s prestige was not such as to render a papal Brief nugatory. As Singleton wrote to Paul V from Brussels, the interrogatories of the Jesuit, William Wright, a fellow prisoner of Blackwell’s in the archiepiscopal palace, greatly helped to open the eyes of many to the real significance of the oath. Others, it is true, sheltered themselves behind the assertion that the Pope had been ill-informed when he published the Brief which represented the views of the Jesuits  alone. In consequence, on August 22nd, 1607, Paul issued a second Brief in which he protests against such interpretations; his judgment, he wrote, sprang from his own decision, from personal knowledge, and was the fruit of long and mature deliberation. Through Persons and more particularly through Bellarmine, Paul V sent an earnest exhortation to Blackwell. In his letter, Bellarmine describes the subtle devices by which it was sought to attenuate the formula of the oath as a cunning attempt by which the devil endeavoured to attack, overtly or covertly, the Catholic dogma of the primacy of the Apostolic See; the oath tended, in reality, to put at the head of the Church not the successor of St. Peter but the successor of Henry VIII. It was idle pretence to say that the king’s life would be in danger if the Pope wielded in England the authority which he has everywhere. At no time in the Church’s history had a Pope ordered the assassination of a prince, or approved the deed when it had been committed. The whole formula, with its mixture of harmless and erroneous assertions, was a reminder of the tricks of Julian the Apostate who ordered the statues of the idols to be placed beside his own, so that a Christian could neither pay, nor refuse to pay, the customary homage to the imperial likeness without being accounted either an idolater, or an enemy of the emperor. Many may be tempted to imagine that in the formula there was question only of trifles and theological subtleties, but where the interests of God are concerned, not a syllable may be sacrificed. Let Blackwell rise from his fall with renewed vigour. In a matter of such gravity he must not rely too much on his own judgment, lest his splendid career should be spoilt by an end which would cause grief to his friends and joy to his enemies.

Blackwell still maintained that Rome had not properly understood the oath of allegiance. In his reply to Bellarmine he explains that, in the received opinion of theologians, the Pope was not the judge of princes, in virtue of his office; only in extraordinary cases could he interfere with their temporal power, and more than this the oath did not affirm. The error of this explanation was soon to be brought home to him. His reply to Bellarmine was intercepted; once more face to face with his judges, the archpriest had to explain his interpretation of the oath. The weakness of the unhappy old man now became apparent. Under the ever-increasing pressure of the judges he ended by signing a document to the effect that the Pope had no power whatever to depose princes, not even when it was question of the needs of the Church and the spread of Christianity. With this new clause, and in this sense, they made him take the oath once more.1 Blackwell's removal from office could no longer be put off. On February 1st, 1608, a papal decree named George Birkhead as his successor. On August 16th, 1611, Birkhead found himself in the necessity of proclaiming that his predecessor, as well as all priests who had taken the oath, had incurred the penalties of excommunication and suspension. Notwithstanding his subservience to the government, Blackwell did not escape life-long imprisonment—that is, precisely the penalty for the refusal of the oath. He died shortly after his deposition, as Bancroft’s prisoner, protesting that he wished to end his life as a true son of the Catholic Church. But he had not submitted to the papal decisions. He boasted of the approval of the Sorbonne; as a matter of fact, several doctors of Paris secretly defended the lawfulness of the oath. Not a few English priests continued to share Blackwell’s view, even after publication of the papal decrees. Among them was the Superior of the English Benedictines, Preston, who had at first rejected the oath as unlawful. Under Preston’s influence and inspiration, Roger Widdrington wrote in defence of the oath but when his writings were condemned he submitted to the sentence.

James I was greatly perturbed by the Briefs of Paul V, notwithstanding Blackwell’s pitiful exhibition of weakness. The king still feared a sentence of excommunication, and, in fact, a papal intervention of any kind. It would seem that he had tried to take advantage of previous dealings with the Curia to prevent a papal expression of opinion on the oath. Through the mediation of the Belgian envoy it was hinted in Rome that James was prepared to acknowledge the Pope as the first sovereign in Europe if Paul V would issue a declaration that it would never be lawful, not even on the plea of religion, for subjects to refuse obedience to their sovereign, or to lay hands on his person. But Rome was not to be taken in; Paul V briefly answered that the Holy See would never direct Catholics to lay hands on the king.

Thus secret diplomacy had not succeeded in preventing a papal manifestation on the oath of allegiance. Nevertheless, not long after publication of the second Brief, the government felt anxious to effect a reconciliation with Rome. To this end they almost completely dropped the various clauses of the oath. In Ireland, the Earl of Tyrone was suspected of a secret understanding with Spain. Tyrone forestalled the attempt to lure him over to England, with a view to his arrest, by escaping to the continent, together with the Earl of Tyrconel and other noblemen. The news raised great alarm in England; for a moment it was feared that the two earls would return at the head of a new Armada, and the tension became so acute that a general rising of the Catholics of England, Scotland and Ireland was being talked of. Before the end of October, through the Spanish ambassador, Zuñiga, Salisbury, apparently by order of the king, laid the following proposals before the Pope: not only should his Holiness use the threat of excommunication, in order to prevent the Catholics from rising against the king, he should, on the contrary, command them to defend him with arms in hand. In that eventuality all fines would be remitted and the government would no longer forbid Catholics to have priests in their houses. Rome did not think the proposal worthy of an answer. As late as October, 1608, there prevailed so great a fear of the Irish and the Spaniards, that the Spanish ambassador was assured that Tyrone’s pardon and toleration of the Catholic religion were being seriously considered.

In these circumstances it was all-important for the government to nullify the effect of the Pope’s condemnation of the oath by representing it as harmless and its condemnation as unjust. Here was a task for theologians. James himself took up his pen in an attempt to refute the two Briefs, and above all Bellarmine’s letter to Blackwell.

In vain his ministers pointed out to him that it was not seemly for a crowned had to enter the lists against learned controversialists : James stuck to his resolution. He fancied himself as Europe’s first theologian and he was particularly keen to have a tilt at Bellarmine, the most renowned opponent of the new doctrines. In 1607, the king was closeted with his divines, reading and writing for days on end. Even affairs of State had to take second place and only now and again would he indulge in his favourite pastime, the chase. At last, on February 27th, 1608, James was able to send a copy of his work to the French ambassador, together with an assurance that it contained nothing for which the Gallican Church did not likewise contend, and the boast that he had given Cardinal Bellarmine a sound thrashing. The book appeared without the author’s name but with the royal coat of arms on the title page, and copies were presented to the foreign ambassadors, so that the king’s part in its compilation was an open secret. In its pages James repeatedly states that the oath of allegiance demanded no more than civil obedience. He then endeavours to prove from the Scriptures and the Fathers that no human authority has power to release subjects from their duty to their sovereign, even if the prince is an unworthy and criminal personage. Occasionally James does not take the burden of proof very seriously. As against Bellarmine’s statement that the Pope had never commissioned any man to murder a prince, he points to the Emperors Henry IV, Frederick Barbarossa, Frederick II, whom fear of papal assassins alone caused to humble themselves before the Popes. For the rest the book shows proof of not a little reading of the Fathers and the Councils. The effect on Catholics was that many accepted the royal explanation of the oath of allegiance and took it. The answer to the royal apology was not long in coming: Persons replied in English, Bellarmine in Latin. Since the king’s book bore no author’s name, Bellarmine published his refutation under the name of his chaplain, Matteo Torto. James I was greatly roused by Bellarmine’s reply. His opponent had not only subjected the oath of allegiance to a searching analysis, in consequence of which many Catholics either refused to take it, or retracted it if they had already sworn, but he had also pointed to the king’s grave errors and mistaken interpretations of texts from the Bible and the Fathers and in the places where James   speaks of his own relations with the Catholics, he reproaches him with a distortion of the facts and deliberate falsehood. The royal controversialist was exceedingly angry. Once again he shut himself in with his divines for the purpose of crushing Bellarmine. In vain did his wife beg, and the kings of France and Denmark exhort him to desist from a task which so ill became him. The king of Denmark was told to remember his youth and to blush for his folly at offering advice to a prince so much older and wiser than himself. Nevertheless a few weeks later James deemed it wiser not to give to the public the fruit of his arduous labours. He stopped the sale of the previous book and ordered all the printed copies to be called in, “in order,” he said, “to amend the errors which, through the fault of the copyists and printers, had crept into the texts adduced in the arguments.” Four bishops toiled many days correcting texts. At length, in February, 1609, the French envoy was able to announce that the king’s amended work was in the press and that, enriched with a long preface and an appendix addressed to the rulers of Europe, it would soon see the light. The king had the book so much at heart that, to the great annoyance of the court, notwithstanding the lure of spring and the plague which raged in London, he refused to leave the capital until the printed volume was in his own hands. This time the book appeared under his name. In the preface James repeats his assertion that the oath demanded from Catholics no more than civil obedience, and he adduces a few fresh proofs for his previous assertions. He then endeavours to shift the controversy into a sphere which had nothing whatever to do with the oath of allegiance. To prove that Bellarmine was politically dangerous, he discusses in detail the Cardinal’s teaching on the immunity of the clergy from the secular power, and on the origin of the State; then, in a lengthy profession of faith, he states his views on the motives of faith, the veneration of Saints, relics and images, Purgatory, the authority of bishops and the Pope and ends with a special effort to prove that the Pope is antichrist.

Thus the preface dealt for the most part with things that had nothing to do with the question in dispute. The French envoy gave it as his opinion that the book was the maddest and the most pernicious that had ever been written on such a subject; everybody regretted its publication. Henry IV advised the Pope to make no reply and even, by his apostolic authority, to forbid any answer whatever. However, in view of the fact that James I had sent his work to every court, Paul V was anxious that the refutation also should be read. At his bidding Bellarmine took up his pen once more. To his refutation of the preface he added, this time under his own name, a reprint of his former book against James. At one moment the Pope thought of sending a copy of Bellarmine’s refutation to every Christian prince; he desisted eventually in order not to irritate the king uselessly. From the Catholic princes the king earned but scant recognition of his literary labours. In Spain, the British ambassador was advised that it would be better not to present the book to the king—he would certainly refuse to accept it. In Flanders, Savoy, Milan and Florence, the book was also declined. James thought, however, that Venice and France would show more interest. In point of fact in the city of the lagoons the Doge at first accepted the book, but at the instance of the Inquisition an edict soon came forth forbidding the printing and selling of James I’ book within the territory of the republic. Thereupon the British envoy, Wotton, judged it helpful to threaten with his departure, but by doing so he embarrassed his master not a little, for when Venice enquired whether London approved the attitude of Wotton, the king, on the one hand, could not very well disavow his representative, nor on the other, forfeit the friendship of the republic. The matter was settled with difficulty but the prohibition of the book, which had given rise to the misunderstanding, remained in force.

In France also the king’s book was strictly prohibited. Nevertheless, at the instigation of James, it was secretly translated and printed. Henry IV similarly forbade Bellarmine’s two refutations. This attitude of the French king was due to the role of mediator which he had taken up from the outbreak of the quarrel. Of the way in which James I had tried to make game of the Holy See at the time when he was only king of Scotland, Henry knew nothing, or very little. He was of opinion that, owing to his not being acquainted with conditions in the North, the Pope’s manner towards James was too stem, to the harm of English Catholics. Hence, just as he sought to bridle James’ anti-Roman ardour, so did he dissuade the Curia from condemning the oath of allegiance and after the condemnation he made no secret of his annoyance. Henry IV may have been strengthened in his view when Paul V acknowledged his expostulations with the polite reply that in future, on occasions of this kind, he would first ask the advice of the king of France. James I’s polemical writings still further confirmed Henry IV in his opinion. In opposition to Ubaldini’s advice, he accepted the book and caused it to be examined by Cardinals du Perron and La Rochefoucauld and the Jesuits Coton and Fronton du Duc. When the examiners gave it as their opinion that James was more moderate in his opinions than other Protestants, Henry conceived the hope that it might be possible to bring the crowned theologian back into the Catholic Church. Once again the nuncio was asked to discuss with the above-mentioned Cardinals and Jesuits appropriate ways and means towards this end. Even Du Perron was of opinion that the Roman theologians were harsh; it would be a good thing to let a Frenchman reply to the king. The nuncio, who was justifiably suspicious of the Gallican ideas of many Frenchmen, suggested that it would be far better to send a theologian to London, for an oral discussion; that Du Perron was the right man for that, and that, in point of fact, the Popes had shown great leniency to James I. The condemnation of the oath of allegiance was unavoidable. However, Du Perron did not go to England. On being sounded on the point, James replied that he would be very glad to listen to a theologian, provided he was not a Cardinal. Paul V also would not hear of a Cardinal being despatched to a heretical court.

Henry IV’s friendly attitude was most opportune for James I; it enabled him to influence Rome through Paris, with a view to keeping the Pope in suspense as to his real feelings, and, notwithstanding his polemical writings, to restrain him in case he should be inclined to pronounce against him the dreaded sentence of excommunication. To the French envoy the astute monarch explained once again that he was ready to acknowledge the Pope as the first among bishops and the Head of the Church in spiritual things, on condition that Paul V renounced his claim that he could depose kings. This news was bound promptly to reach Rome by way of Paris. The Pope declared to the French ambassador that if he were to make such a concession he would himself be considered a heretic.

James I. could safely risk the above mentioned information by the round-about way of Paris, though his earlier relations with the Pope had caused him the greatest embarrassment only a short while ago, for in his first pamphlet Cardinal Bellarmine had revealed the fact that on a previous occasion James had written in friendly fashion to Pope Clement VIII, as well as to Cardinals Aldobrandini and Bellarmine; that he had suggested the nomination of a Scottish Cardinal and that, through his ambassador, he had even hinted at his own return to the Catholic Church. That the letter in question was written in James’ name, and with his knowledge and approval, was attested not long after by his own wife Anne. But just as on a previous occasion he had denied having written to the Pope when questioned by Elizabeth, so did he now play a fresh comedy in order to whitewash himself in the eyes of his people. His former private secretary, Lord Balmerino, who happened to be in London at the moment, was summoned before the king and questioned on the subject of the letter. As previously arranged between them, the secretary, falling on his knees, confessed that none other than he himself wrote the letter and laid it before the king together with divers other documents, and that the king signed it together with these documents, without acquainting himself with their contents. Some witnesses were in hiding in another room from which they overheard this avowal. James submitted the whole affair to his Privy Council. “Ye were born strangers to the country where this was done,” he wrote to the councillors, “yet are ye no strangers to the king thereof; and ye know, if the king of Scotland prove a knave, the king of England can never be an honest man. Work so, therefore, in this as having interest in your king’s reputation.” Balmerino pleaded guilty both before the Council and subsequently before a Scottish court at St. Andrew’s. He was condemned to death but the king commuted the sentence into imprisonment for life within his own house. The whole pre-arranged plot, as well as Balmerino’s condemnation, was looked upon for what it was—a piece of bluff—even in James’ lifetime. In his replies to Bellarmine’s pamphlet James carefully avoided all reference to his letter to the Pope, but the two letters to Cardinals Aldobrandini and Bellarmine he never attempted to deny.

James I’s repeated statement in his writings against Bellarmine and on other occasions as well, that the oath of allegiance demanded submission in civil matters only, was accepted by not a few Catholics so that they took the oath as thus interpreted. The Catholic members of the Upper Chamber, of whom there were more than twenty, accepted the condition, with the sole exception of Lord Teynham who, in order to elude an act that would have weighed on his conscience, had recourse to the expedient of not taking his seat on more than one day during each session. In so far as the oath was understood as an oath of civil obedience and not in its literal meaning, it did not, in the opinion of those who took it, imply a denial of Catholic principles. For all that it was and remained a heavy blow for the faithful remainder of the ancient Church. In 1613, the nuncio Bentivoglio wrote that the government had two things in view when it demanded the oath: they wanted a fresh pretext for a more intense persecution of Catholics, and a new wedge with which to split the concord of the Catholic clergy. In both these respects the enemies of the Church achieved considerable success. Many Catholics had been punished with fines and imprisonment for refusing the oath and every day a great number were incurring these penalties. With regard to the clergy, it was true that some priests and religious had been induced to take the oath—when they had gone so far, these men strayed even further from the right path, for they did not hesitate to assert that it was not against the Catholic faith. However, only a very small minority was thus subservient to the government and this minority was recruited from among the least fervent and the least respected. The rest of the clergy, with one accord, opposed the oath, and the bulk of the religious were similarly determined, nay, many among the secular and regular clergy have publicly refuted it with ability and with not a little courage, in view of the fact that they are surrounded by dangers and threats of death.

The oath of allegiance remained James I’s chief weapon in his war against the ancient Church, though, on the whole, his persecution was less bloody than that of Elizabeth. In the years 1609, 1611, 1613-1615, 1618-1625, no Catholic blood flowed for the sake of the faith; in the other years, sixteen priests and two laymen were executed for the sake of religion. It is generally believed that they could have saved themselves by taking the oath. Though less bloody, the persecution was not less dangerous; by using milder means it was thought that the remainder of the ancient Church would be destroyed all the more surely, though more slowly. The prisons were crowded with Catholics. In 1622, the number of priests confined in various prisons was reckoned at 400. When in 1606, in order to gain Spain’s good will, the victims of the penal laws were set at liberty, the Puritans complained that 4,000 idolaters were now let loose, to pollute the soil purified by the true doctrines of the gospel.

In Yorkshire and the North, so we read in 1607, Catholics were being most cruelly treated: their cattle was driven away, their houses were plundered, their walls pulled down, chests and secret drawers broken open and searched. “On all sides we only hear of violence and severity on the part of the authorities.” It was possible to escape ill treatment by taking the oath of allegiance. “The officials of the authorities are not content to plunder; they seize those whom they have robbed, summon them and again let them off on bail. If on the expiration of their bail they present themselves in court, they are thrown into prison unless they pay a heavy ransom; if they fail to appear they are condemned to pay heavy fines. Thus condemnation succeeds condemnation and violence violence. Moreover the minions of the law take more than they are entitled to.” In order to squeeze out of the non-jurors all they wanted, it was enough to threaten legal proceedings. From a royal proclamation against these abuses we gather that silver and jewelry were seized without further formality, on the pretext that they were serving superstitious purposes or that they belonged to the Jesuits and other priests. Thus the oath became “a mere contrivance for filling the pockets of the courtiers”. The Catholics of Yorkshire, by the king’s order, suffered much at the hands of the bishop of Bristol. This man was in the habit of first depriving his victims of their flocks and of subsequently allowing them to buy back what was their own, only to seize it once more. In this way it came about that a certain Catholic bought back his own property on seven separate occasions. In the end parliament put a stop to these exactions. The chief instigators of the persecution were the archbishop of Canterbury and the bishop of London.

The assassination of Henry IV of France brought fresh troubles on the heads of the Catholics of England. An act was passed by Parliament that every Englishman, without exception, must take the oath of allegiance on reaching his 18th year. For the first time also a law was passed in regard to married women who did not attend Protestant worship. They must either receive the sacrament in church or go to prison, unless their husbands redeemed them with a monthly fine of £10. The persecutors of the Catholics were given a fresh opportunity to satisfy their rapacity; “neither pot nor pan, nor bedding, neither rings nor jewels or anything else escapes their rapacity,” we read in a letter of the time. Another contemporary letter states that the Catholics hide themselves from their persecutors in holes and caves or flee the country.

The year 1613 had another surprise in store for Catholics when Edward Coke became Lord Chief Justice. This man’s hatred for the ancient Church was sufficiently known to them ever since the trial of Garnet. Coke used his extensive knowledge of English law to dig up all the old enactments against Catholics, many of which had fallen into abeyance, and began to apply them in all their rigour. No marriage was valid unless it had been contracted before a Protestant minister, no baptism was recognized unless it was administered by him, and in consequence of all the fines they had to pay, there remained to the adherents of the old religion less than a third of their income for the support of their household. Even poor people and domestic servants were condemned to fines. “Thank God, at last I have a house from which I cannot be evicted,” a poor old man said on his deathbed on hearing that his grave was ready. After the death of his wife, at a time when he had several daughters to support, the poor man had found himself compelled to sell the copper pan on his hearth in order to satisfy his oppressors and for a time, much against his conscience, he had attended the parish church.

On the subject of the oath Coke was unbending. Four times a year the justices of the peace had to send all Catholics of every age and sex before his court in London. Neither sickness nor age or poverty, neither distance nor the inclemency of the season, or sickness of wife and children could be pleaded in excuse. It was said that from one county alone, out of England’s fifty, 400 persons were thus summoned. An old woman of eighty having been thus compelled to undertake a journey of over eighty miles, in the depth of winter, refused the oath, had all her property confiscated and saw herself condemned to prison for life. Even when he had taken the oath, a Catholic could not feel safe. Coke was well aware that it was only taken outwardly; hence he demanded its renewal four times a year. For many this meant a journey of anything from two hundred to six hundred miles, at all seasons of the year. It is said that up to 1615, no less than 16,000 Catholics were summoned by Coke in connection with the oath. None the less, at the beginning of 1614, James spoke once more of his wish that a general council, convened by the Pope, and at which England would be represented, would re-establish the unity of the Church. But Rome was not to be taken in.

Since several priests, notwithstanding the papal Briefs, declared the oath lawful, many Catholics came to the conclusion that, though the Pope had forbidden it, one might likewise assist at Protestant services; hence Paul V issued yet another Brief, prohibiting attendance at Anglican services. As a matter of fact the Pope never lost sight of England; he seized every opportunity to help its oppressed Catholics or at least to get persons of influence to exert themselves on their behalf.

In 1608 the Pope had a memorandum drawn up on the ways and means by which something could be done for religion in England. The suggestions of its compiler are remarkable for many reasons. It has come home to him that by reason of its geographical situation the island is out of reach of a hostile attack, whilst it is itself in a position to stir up all Europe, as well as the Indies. Hence England is also a danger to religion; a new Calvinistic Church, with an anti­Pope at its head, is in the act of rising there, and both the spiritual and temporal power is in the hands of the king. The danger can no longer be conjured by means of armed intervention by the Catholic king. The very extent of its territories is a handicap for the Spanish world-empire, more than anything else, and the war in Flanders has ended by paralysing it altogether. It is even a good thing, the memorandum suggests, that, at the peace, Spain omitted to make religious freedom for English Catholics one of the conditions of the treaty—one that it was easy to secure—for now the Protestants can no longer accuse the Catholics that their conduct is dictated by political considerations for Spain. In view of this accusation it would be a good thing if the victims of English judicial murders were solemnly declared to be true Martyrs who underwent condemnation and death for the sake of religion, not on political grounds. It would seem that the hope of bringing back England as a whole to the Church was pretty well given up. The writer has only two suggestions to make; the first is to go on sending to England learned and irreproachable priests, both secular and regular. In order to raise the necessary funds for their training, the Pope should urge the Catholic princes to support the seminaries. If, by this means, the old religion revives among the people of England, it may be possible, in the end, to win over the king himself, as was done in France. The second means by which the Catholics of England might be assisted is direct action on the king. One might try to obtain for them the free exercise of their religion at least within the four walls of their own houses. Unlawfully acquired Church property should be left to the ministers and Anglican bishops. The king of France, the grand duke of Tuscany and the other princes to whom James, as king of Scotland, had promised his conversion, should press for the fulfilment of the promise, in the same way as the king of Spain has done and is still doing. The princes are bound, under grave sin, to intervene with James I, with a view to making him leave his Catholic subjects in lawful possession of the religion they have inherited, for it was only on this condition, and because they relied on his pledged word, that they had consented to promise him obedience; let the Pope remind the princes of their duty in this matter. After weighing the pros and cons, the writer is of opinion that James I’s return to the ancient Church is not altogether hopeless; in order to promote it, he should be assured that the loyalty of his Catholic subjects will not be wanting if he treats them as a king should treat his subjects: if he acts otherwise he would have to fear the Holy See. True, the Pope was “without hands, feet or strength” by reason of the discord among Christian princes, but that was just why every nerve should be strained to re-establish concord between them. The writer then explains in detail how so happy a result might be brought about. He makes more than one reference to the Gunpowder plot; he thinks it was the work of a handful of laymen who would listen to no advice from any priest and that it was provoked, or at least promoted, by the government which carefully saw to it that the chief witnesses should meet a premature end and which, thereupon, against all probability, charged three Jesuits with the crime.

After so many collisions with the Pope, James I’s matrimonial plans for his children brought him once more in touch with Rome. The king was being pressed on all sides to conclude a family alliance with some reigning Catholic house, for among the princes who shared his own Calvinist creed the choice was really too limited; the petty Lutheran potentates of Germany and the kings of Sweden and Denmark could hardly stand comparison, as regards splendour and wealth, even with the dukes of Savoy and Florence, not to speak of the sovereign houses of Spain, Austria and France. Besides, James viewed himself not a little complacently in the role of a great mediator, for by allying himself with a Catholic power, he would be able to initiate a reconciliation between the Catholic and Protestant peoples. His always empty purse would best be served by the rich dowry of a Catholic daughter-in-law. An influential party at Court and one that was still Catholic at heart, headed by the earl of Northampton, seconded these plans; these men saw in the restoration of the old religion the surest bulwark against puritanism, hence they were anxious for the heir to the crown to marry a Catholic princess.

However, to enable him to form an alliance with a Catholic ruling family the king of England needed the consent of the Pope. He was to have an unpleasant reminder of the fact as early as 1608. At that time James was using his influence in Madrid with a view to the betrothal of his daughter Elizabeth to the nephew of Philip III, the son of the Duke of Savoy. The king of Spain was not unfavourably disposed, but the plan came to nought owing to the objections of Paul V. In 1611, the Duke of Savoy took it up once more; Elizabeth, he hinted this time, might become a Catholic. However, the discussions led to no better result than did the efforts of even a far more distinguished suitor for Elizabeth’s hand, namely the king of Spain himself, a widower since 1611. On February 14th, 1613, with great pomp and amid the jubilations of the Protestants, the English princess was married to the leader of the Calvinist party in Germany, Frederick V, elector Palatine, subsequently known as “the Winter King”. Though James I protested—but only after the failure of his efforts for a Spanish alliance—that nothing would persuade him to give his daughter to a Papist, he nevertheless did not relax his efforts to secure a Catholic bride for Henry, the heir to the crown. In 1611, the Duke of Savoy had proposed the marriage of his son with Elizabeth, and that of his daughter with the Prince of Wales. Not long after that, at the instigation of the Spanish envoy, Velasco, James I thought of betrothing his son, in the first instance, to the Spanish Infanta Anne, then to Anne’s sister Mary, then a child of six years old, and finally to a sister of the grand duke of Tuscany. Salisbury, who had been in charge of the negotiations with Florence since 1611, did not fail to make discreet inquiries about the amount of the dowry that might be expected. The grand duke laid the matter before the Pope who declared that he could not sanction the proposal. The duke of Savoy felt fewer scruples than the Medici, for he saw the advantages of having England for an ally against Spain. He promised a dowry of 700,000 ducats; as for the rest, he declared himself satisfied if the future queen could practise her religion in secret. Marie de Medici, the regent of France, was even less troubled by religious scruples when James I, at the prompting of the duke de Bouillon, proposed to her to marry the Prince of Wales to her daughter Christina, then only six years old. She was prepared to let the child be taken to England in the following year when she would certainly have been brought up as a Protestant.

All these plans were rudely upset by the death, on November 6th, 1612, of prince Henry. Thereupon, James’ second son, Charles, was to step into his brother’s place, even as the future husband of Christina. In France, in November, 1613, the affair was considered as settled. The more moderate Protestant elements, and the Scottish favourites of the king of England, had been won over to the plan.

However, the friends of Spain at the English Court were not idle. Since 1613 the Spanish ambassador in London was Diego Sarmiento de Acuña, count of Gondomar, a clever diplomat who had been purposely chosen with a view to restraining James from entering into an alliance with France and the Protestant Powers. Gondomar gained such an ascendancy over the weak king that soon he came to hold the first place in James’ entourage and to make the king his willing tool. Among the royal counsellors Northampton, to whom James’ all-powerful favourite, Somerset, was wholly devoted, supported the interests of Spain. Queen Anne also entertained Spanish sympathies, for though she accompanied her husband to Protestant sermons, she never took the Anglican Communion and heard Mass in secret. But when Philip III made it known that he would never give his hand to a Protestant, the Spanish party in London turned its attention to one of the daughters of the Duke of Savoy.

In the following year, however, the king of Spain tried to resume negotiations. James assured Sarmiento that he would gladly give up the French marriage provided Philip did not make impossible conditions. Thereupon the envoy advised his master not to insist on the royal heir becoming a Catholic previous to the marriage, nor on the repeal of the anti­Catholic laws; the first of these conditions might cost the king his life; the second was beyond his power without the consent of Parliament. Let him press the king to liberate the priests from prison; not to exact fines, and to refrain from supporting the Protestant powers; then the old religion would once more triumph of its own accord, Protestantism would collapse on the Continent and the king of England would see the necessity of returning to the Church.

Philip III, decided to lay the matter before the Pope. As was to be expected, Paul V’s decision was unfavourable. He praised the king’s first reply to England in which he had stipulated for the heir’s conversion to the Catholic faith and informed the king of England that he would never betroth his daughter to a non-Catholic. Philip III should abide by this decision; unless the royal prince returned to the Church, the Pope could only disapprove and exceedingly abhor such a betrothal since he had successfully maintained, both by written exhortations and by personal envoys, a similar attitude towards other princes. His reasons were many: there was the Church’s prohibition of mixed marriages; the scandal for Catholics and the encouragement of the Protestants; the danger to which the faith of a young princess would be exposed through daily intercourse with heretics, more particularly because of certain delicate points in the oath of allegiance which the less instructed might deem irrelevant from the standpoint of orthodoxy. Moreover the children would be brought up in heresy; the consequent intercourse with heretical countries would be fraught with disastrous results; divorce was allowed in England; a very bad example would be set to other Catholic countries. In view of the prevailing conditions in England and the unsatisfactory character of the king, no good result could be expected, hence it was essential that the royal prince should first become a Catholic. The promised concessions were inadequate; the danger of the future queen being drawn into heresy and of her children being brought up as Protestants still subsisted, even if she was permitted to practise her religion in secret and was promised liberty of conscience. A tacit concession of freedom of conscience was worthless because it by no means excluded the possibility that the queen and her children would be driven into the arms of heresy; the mere word of the king was no guarantee of this concession; since he would not explicitly grant religious freedom, he would always be able either to break his promise, or arbitrarily to interpret it. If the tacit concession were equivalent to an express one, he would not confine himself to the former; hence it is clear that he is not honest. To talk of liberty of conscience, without the free exercise of Catholic worship, would not greatly benefit Catholics.

Philip III. refused to be satisfied with this answer. He called a council of theologians and asked for their opinion on James I’s proposals, without, however, laying the papal letter before them. The prospect of freedom of conscience for the Catholics of England so impressed the meeting that it pronounced in favour of the marriage, subject to the Pope’s assent. Thereupon the Privy Council determined the conditions of the match : a change of religion on the part of the heir to the throne was no longer a necessary preliminary, and the remission of the fines by a mere act of grace on the part of the king was approved, on the plea that the Puritans would likewise benefit if the laws were repealed. Meanwhile Paul V was of opinion that his previous decision was in no way altered by the opinion of the theologians; so he merely pigeon-holed their memorandum. In London and Madrid the exchange of opinions on the marriage pursued an uninterrupted course. Digby, who was in charge of the negotiations at Madrid, bluntly told the king that a Protestant princess was preferable to a Catholic one, notwithstanding the Infanta’s rich dowry. A Catholic princess would provoke trouble in the country; Catholics would so increase that stern measures would be needed to repress them. However, if they insisted on a Catholic princess for the heir to the throne, it was, of course, best to look to Spain for there they found the purest royal blood in conjunction with the greatest quantity of the best ducats.

However, at that very time James I was undecided whether, after all, he should not prefer France to Spain. Just then the French stood high in James’ estimation. The famous Spanish theologian, Suarez, had written a refutation of the king’s book on the oath of allegiance, and to James’ boundless joy, Suarez’s book, owing to its incompatibility with Gallican principles, had been burnt in Paris by the hand of the public executioner. So the envoy, Edmondes, was instructed to return to the French capital with fresh proposals for a marriage settlement, different from those he had made in February. However, Marie de Medici had no wish for an alliance with England, so that James needs must turn to Spain once more. Sarmiento thought he might indulge in a little jubilation. If the conditions of the contract in favour of the Catholics are carried out at once, he wrote in December, 1614, and if the Infanta delays her journey to England for a few years, the Catholic religion would have had time to make good progress. Circumstances might be such that the Prince of Wales would be married in Spain and assist at Mass and a sermon in the church of our Lady of Atocha.

At one moment it looked as if Sarmiento had judged the situation aright. Digby set out for Spain and behind his back, Somerset, the king’s favourite, also entered into negotiations with Philip III. At the beginning of May, James was acquainted with Spain’s conditions. All the children of the future queen were to be baptized Catholics and brought up as such by their mother, and if they wished to remain Catholics that fact was not to be a bar to the succession. All the servants of the Infanta were to be of her faith, and the adherents of the old religion who lived at court were to be assigned a public church, or chapel, to which anyone might have free access; the clergy of that church should be permitted to appear in clerical attire in the open street, and in the meantime the penal laws were to be suspended.

At the moment when these conditions came to his knowledge, James I was in anything but a friendly mood towards Spain. Because of the remark of a certain Owen, that excommunicated princes might be killed, the naturally timorous monarch lived in constant dread of assassins. He slept in a bed which was protected by a barricade of three other beds; whenever he showed himself in public he was surrounded by a troop of soldiers so that no one could get near him and the whole cortège had to march as fast as possible. James’ excited imagination conjured up before his eyes a vision of his own son using the Spanish alliance in order to bring about —with the help of the Catholics—a rebellion against his own father; he already saw himself, as an old man, spending his days behind prison bars or even ending them by the hand of a hired assassin. Hence his fear of getting in closer touch with Spain; hence also the annotations on the back of the document containing the Spanish conditions, which he wrote with his own hand, are for the most part in the negative.

However, this mood did not last. By the end of May the negotiations for a French princess of Wales appeared pretty hopeless, so once again an alliance with the king of Spain appeared in rosiest hues. About the middle of June, 1615, he was prepared, subject to a few minor modifications, to accept the Spanish conditions as a basis for further negotiations. “He was mad with delight,” he said, “at having been made the channel of such a communication.” “At last,” he added, “a prospect was opened of his being able to live and die a professed Catholic, as his ancestors had done before him.” Sir Robert Cotton, destined, later on, to become famous as an archaeologist, communicated the news to the Spanish envoy by James’ command.

In March, 1616, James’ envoy, Digby, was back from Madrid. He had succeeded in obtaining some modifications of the conditions. Lerma had agreed that in the marriage settlement nothing should be said of the Catholic baptism and upbringing of the children, nor of a mitigation of the penal laws, and as for the domestic staff of the future queen, the only thing agreed upon was that the king of Spain should select its members. Nevertheless Digby counselled the king rather to choose a German princess as a future queen, for the king of Spain could do nothing without the Pope’s approval, hence he was not in a position to dispose of the hand of his own daughter.

In the course of the year, James made a last attempt to secure the hand of a French princess for his son. Notwithstanding the low level of his exchequer, which induced the king to sell the peerage for gold, his agent, Lord Hay, entered Paris in great state. Legend has it that the horses’ silver shoes had been purposely fastened so loosely that they were bound to come off as the cortege trotted along. For all that the English proposals and conditions, chief among which was once more the guarantee of a dowry, were declined by Paris and thus an end was put to the prospect of a French marriage.With regard to the negotiations with Spain, which had been resumed a few weeks after Digby’s return, a preliminary  difficulty had to be solved. James had had inquiries made in Madrid whether the Pope would refuse to sanction the marriage a priori and in principle, even if he made reasonable concessions? Philip III’s reply was that it would be an insult to the Pope to ask him whether he would give his sanction to conditions which had not even been laid before him. Nevertheless, through Cardinal Borja, the king of Spain sounded Paul V who happened to be at Frascati. After a somewhat lengthy delay the answer came, in October, 1616, that the Pope would only give his consent to the match if the Prince of Wales became a Catholic and if English Catholics were granted religious freedom.

In accordance with this decision the Spaniards now strove for a marriage contract with which the Pope could be satisfied. The religion of the heir to the crown must be left to his own choice, hence this point was only lightly touched upon in the discussions between Digby and Luis de Aliaga, the king’s confessor. On the other hand, the Spaniards were all the more insistent that, until they came to the age of maturity, the royal children should remain in the care of their mother. As regards English Catholics, Digby was willing to promise toleration, but only a tacit toleration. On the other hand he insisted that Philip III should pay immediately an advance of half a million ducats on the dowry; to this the Spaniards would not agree.

In 1618 the British agent returned to England. His return was the signal for lengthy discussions of the Privy Council. When Gondomar returned to Spain that year, they were far from having reached a decision, and they were no nearer two years later, when he was back in London. Nevertheless James I did not fail to impress on the returned traveller how much he had at heart the two million ducats, a fact which caused Gondomar to complain to Buckingham in forceful language. Thereupon James summoned the Spaniard into his presence, assured him that henceforth Catholics might practise their religion, and, with his hand on his breast, swore that no man loved the king of Spain more than he did.

As a matter of fact just then James I had a special reason to court Spain’s friendship. His thoughtless son-in-law, Frederick, Elector Palatine, had accepted the crown of Bohemia at the hands of rebels and was now in danger of losing not only Bohemia, but even his own hereditary State. Spain, by reason of her geographical position in the Netherlands, exercised a real influence over affairs in Germany and could intervene decisively for or against the elector. However the concessions to which James agreed under pressure of circumstances did not yet satisfy Spain. True, he had promised that henceforth no Catholic priest would be executed solely for carrying out his ecclesiastical functions, and that he himself was resolved to extend the utmost consideration to the Catholic recusants. But these promises only implied a modification, not a repeal, of the penal laws, and as for the Infanta, he had conceded free Catholic worship only within the walls of the palace, but not a public church. Nevertheless, by degrees, opinion in Madrid veered round in favour of James. Gondomar pleaded that the king had given proof of good will and that he had already directed that the penal laws should be suspended; once the Spanish marriage was settled he could be relied upon to do still more. Thereupon the Spanish royal council advised Philip first to obtain from Rome the desired permission for the marriage and then only to demand full religious freedom for Catholics.

Accordingly, at the beginning of 1621, Diego de la Fuente was dispatched from Madrid to Rome, whilst in May George Gage, a Catholic, also came to Rome from London, but Paul V died before they had had time to get in touch with him and before his successor, Gregory XV could attend to their proposals, Philip III also died—March 21st, 1621. It is said that, on his deathbed, he counselled his son and successor to win the imperial crown for the head of the much-wooed Infanta. Six months earlier Philip III had, in effect, promised the hand of his daughter to the future emperor Ferdinand III. The Infanta’s ducats seemed definitely lost to James I.

Though under Paul V relations with James I had become very close, they nevertheless failed to exercise on the position of English Catholics the favourable influence that might have been expected and which was even taken for granted, especially in Spain. English Protestants would not hear of a Spanish marriage and the prospect that they might possibly have a Catholic successor to the throne only added fuel to their hatred for Catholics, and just as the expectation of the marriage of the Prince of Wales with the Spanish princess kept the whole country in suspense, so was the marriage already concluded by his elder sister with the elector Frederick a source of scarcely less trouble. England was overjoyed when Frederick accepted the crown of Bohemia at the hands of rebels. “It is marvellous,” we read in an English report of 1619, “what new hopes the disturbances in Bohemia have excited in the minds of the people, and how much is made of the Prince Palatine by all classes. He is regarded as one raised up for the destruction of the Papists, for the advance of the gospel, and the conquest of Rome. These vauntings are used by high and low, the children have songs about them, they enter into every sermon and conversation. False reports of the Prince’s achievements add fuel to the fire, and the mischief is that public feeling is daily more and more incensed against Catholics, with a strong desire to oppress them, as though they were opposed to the general interests of the country.” Instigated by the Privy Council, local authorities subjected Catholics to fresh acts of violence. Especially was the oath of allegiance insisted upon. Thus at one and the same time Protestants could exult that the Bohemians had deposed their lawful sovereign whilst Catholics were treated as guilty of high treason if they refused to swear that princes could not be deposed. The irony with which history forces the hypocrite to condemn himself out of his own mouth is not always so clear-cut, even under James the double-faced, as it appears in this instance.

When the hopes which had been placed on the elector abruptly collapsed at the battle of the Weissen Berg, the anger and embitterment of English Protestants flared up as never before. His death spared Paul V the spectacle of the further developments of these events.

However threatening, and at times wellnigh desperate, the condition of Catholics under James I. may have appeared, they themselves never lost sight of the internal development of their affairs which had begun under Clement VIII. The efforts to secure a bishop for England were renewed under Paul V. For this purpose, shortly before his death in 1621, the archpriest, Harrison, under pretext of asking for a dispensation for the Spanish marriage of the Prince of Wales, dispatched the priest John Bennet, to the Eternal City. The death of Paul V prevented the settlement of the affair.

An event of importance for the Church in England was the return of the Benedictines to a country which owes its Christianity to their Order. Many natives of England, for the most part pupils of the English seminaries abroad, had become monks in various monasteries. The request that some of their number, on the completion of their studies, might be sent as missionaries to England, was granted by a decree of the Inquisition of December 5th, 1602. This led to a powerful influx of vocations into the Benedictine monasteries in Spain, both from England itself and from the seminary of Valladolid, which was under the direction of the Jesuits. In 1603, in consequence of internal troubles, no less than twenty-five students of the seminary sought admission with the Benedictines. The incident gave rise to some friction between the two Orders which had to be smoothed down by a decree of the Inquisition on December 10th, 1608.

There was still living at the time a member of the ancient abbey of Westminster, which had been restored in the reign of Queen Mary, namely Dom Sigebert Buckley, who had lingered in prison during forty years for the sake of the faith. In 1607 a few English monks of the Cassinese Congregation joined him, Paul V subsequently ratifying all that had been done. In this way all the rights of the former abbey of Westminster passed, through Buckley (d. 1610) to the new body and the connection with the old pre-reformation Benedictines remained unbroken. In 1612 Paul V approved the confederation of the English Benedictines formed from members of the Spanish and Italian monasteries, and on August 23rd, 1619, he approved the English Missionary Congregation which had come into being at a conference held in Paris under the presidency of the nuncio Bentivoglio. In 1615 there were seventy English members of the Spanish, and twelve of the Cassinese, Congregation. There were many splendid missionary priests among them and not a few gave their lives for the faith. On the Continent they had monasteries at Douai, at Dieulouard in Lorraine, and at Paris, to which others were added at a later date.

The year 1618 also witnessed the restoration of the English Franciscan Province, for in that year John Genning established a convent of Observants at Douai. Henry Garnet had done much for the internal consolidation of the English Jesuit mission. In 1619 it was given the status of a vice-Province and in 1623 that of a Province. Though there is frequent mention of the Jesuits in the last years of Elizabeth, their number was very small. In 1593 there were only eight Jesuits in England. In 1598 there were fourteen at liberty and four in various prisons. The erection of a vice-Province gave the impulse to rapid growth. By 1625 the youthful foundation counted 115 members in Flanders, 152 in England and a total of 366 in 1634, though from that year numbers began to fall off.

Convents of Nuns for English ladies were likewise founded on the Continent. It was precisely in the sphere of female religious associations that an original foundation occurred which was destined to have considerable bearing on the future of these communities: this was when, in 1609, Mary Ward, with a few companions from England, founded a convent in Flanders. The scope of the community, viz. the education of girls, was nothing new; what was original was that with the “English ladies” (as they are called in Germany) the whole organization of the Institute was, for the first time, closely adapted to that scope, chiefly by means of the appointment of a Superior General for the whole Institute, the absence of enclosure and choir and various other details.

The English Seminary in Rome received from Paul V a fresh confirmation of its privileges and more than once the Pope appealed to princes and magnates on behalf of the English Colleges on the Continent.

(3.)

SCOTLAND & IRELAND

The Catholics of Scotland were so hard pressed that the French envoy wrote they were even more deserving of pity than their correligionists in England. Thus it was strictly forbidden to let a house to anyone who was merely suspected of being a Catholic. To give lodging to a Papist was to be suspected of heresy. Three citizens of Edinburgh, who had given hospitality to a priest, saw themselves condemned to death, though the sentence was not carried out. John Logan had to expiate the “crime” of having been present at Mass with a fine of £1,000 Scots (£5,000 sterling); others were punished with banishment, and one John Due, who consented to apostatize, had to do penance in sackcloth and ashes for the space of eight days. In 1609, the papal Secretary of State, Cardinal Borghese, was informed that permission to leave Scotland had to be asked of the king, and it was only granted on the traveller promising not to become a Catholic whilst abroad. Catholics leaving the country could only take part of their property and had to leave their children behind; these were then brought up in England, in the Protestant religion. Whosoever was present at Mass, whilst abroad, forfeited his whole property for himself and his heirs, in favour of the crown. The same penalty befell those who were excommunicated by the preachers because of their obstinate adherence to popery.

The death penalty against Catholics was but seldom carried out in Scotland. An exception was the execution of the Jesuit, John Ogilvie, which was carried out at Glasgow in 1615. By this execution the new bishops, whom James I had forced upon presbyterian Scotland, hoped to clear themselves of any suspicion that their episcopal office had anything in common with the old religion. Nor were there in Scotland any fines for not attending church. For all that, as a contemporary relates, the persecution was no less severe there. If it had been possible, in Scotland, to buy off the persecution with money, few, if any, among the more distinguished members of the aristocracy would not gladly have given a third of their fortune for the sake of liberty to live openly as Catholics. At present people were made to hope for milder treatment if they attended heretical services; soon, however, they were pressed to sign an heretical creed; if they refused, they were punished with confiscation of their property, imprisonment for life, or banishment. In the opinion of the informant, imprisonment was more cruel than death itself; if they were given the option of an heroic death for the faith, there would not be enough prisons and executioners. Conditions such as these accounted for the apostacy of many and for the prevailing opinion that English Catholics were stauncher in the faith than the Scots. This opinion was an erroneous one for many members of the aristocracy were in exile for the faith, whereas this was not true to the same extent of the nobility of England.

On the whole the nobles of Scotland remained Catholics at heart and it was precisely the chief aim of the Protestants to induce them to forsake the ancient faith. On the other hand the writer of the report quoted above chiefly based his hopes for Scotland’s return to the Church on the country gentry. The Scottish nobles, he explains, whose country houses are scattered over all the land, enjoy such power and influence, that the common people pay to them almost greater regard than to the king himself; on the other hand, the nobles of the same family stick together and show greater readiness to obey the head of the clan than the sovereign. The cause of the people’s attachment to the aristocracy is an economic one. Whereas the English landlord leases his land for a term of fifty years and thereafter has practically no power over either tenant or land, so long as the former regularly pays his rent, the Scottish landlord may evict his tenant at any time; besides he ties him down, beforehand, to all manner of services, especially to military service in the army of his lord. This fact explains how it was possible for the nobles so often to offer armed resistance to their king. Moreover, in Scotland, rent is paid, not in cash, but in kind, the tenant surrendering part of his crops. Thus owner and tenant are incomparably more dependent on each other than they are in England where the rent has to be paid in cash. Hence the English landlord has far more ready money than his Scottish colleague, but the Scottish aristocracy has far greater authority over its dependents than the English, and it never lacks cattle, corn or coal. The compiler of the report, obviously a Scotsman, ends with the suggestion that a beginning should be made with Scotland rather than with England if it was resolved to win back the northern island kingdom to the Catholic faith. Moreover nearly all English harbours are held by government troops who exercise a strict control over all travellers, whereas in Scotland the harbours are in the power of the nearest nobleman.

Paul V, during his cardinalate, had been in charge of Scottish affairs. In acknowledging an address of congratulation from the Scots’ college at Douai, the Pope declared that, for the above reason, he still cherished a special affection for Scotland, and he proved his interest by recommending the college to archduke Albert. For the rest, neither the above memorandum nor any other pressure succeeded in persuading him to intervene in Scotland. The draft of the special Bull against the oath of allegiance for which a request had come from Scotland, was indeed written but the Bull was never published.

From Ireland also complaints of a fresh “terrible and unheard of blow against Catholics” came to the ears of Paul V almost as soon as he had succeeded to Peter’s throne. On July 4th, 1605, James I had had an order published which made attendance at Anglican worship compulsory for all and which ordered the forcible expulsion from the country of all priests who would be discovered after December 10th.

The measure, in so far as it concerned the priests, was undoubtedly illegal for no act of Parliament having force of law in Ireland permitted such a penalty. For that reason alone the royal edict was bound to meet with resistance. When the apostate bishop Miler Magrath, convoked in the market­place, to the sound of the bugle, the counsellors and burgesses of Cashel, that they might listen to the proclamation of the edict, not a soul obeyed the summons and every door and window was closed. The expulsion of all priests proved unfeasible. In order to compel people to go to church, recourse had to be had to illegal means, for the law of Ireland did not impose a fine exceeding one shilling for every absence from church. Though for the poor even such a charge was an intolerable burden, the well-to-do were not greatly inconvenienced. Consequently, Chichester, the viceroy, took it on himself to go beyond the law and to impose penalties on his own authority. In October, 1615, he summoned the aiderman and the more important burgesses of Dublin into his presence. He had no wish whatever, so he explained, to do violence to their consciences; as a matter of fact, what he wanted them to do was not a matter of conscience at all. All that was asked of them was that, on a given day, and at an appointed time, they should take a seat in church. They would then have to listen to a sermon though they need not agree with its subject matter—the whole thing amounted to no more than a gesture of submission to the law.

However, the Irish were not yet ripe for such moral finessing. Chichester’s audience unanimously declared that their conscience would not allow them to do such a thing. The viceroy’s answer was an order, on November 13th, for all to be in church on the following Sunday. When none put in appearance, sixteen of their number received a summons to appear before the magistrates, on November 22nd, when one of them lectured them on their duty. Can the king appoint bishops and give them their episcopal power, he argued, and not demand the people’s obedience to an authority which he has himself established? Can he order a bishop to give a living to a minister, and at the same time refrain from commanding the parishioners to come to his sermons? Can the king impose on his subjects the duty to serve the State but not that of serving God? The proceedings ended with the submission of one of the sixteen and in the condemnation of nine of their number to a fine of from £50 to £100; all the others were similarly punished. Further acts of violence followed. Before sentence was pronounced the principal peers and burgesses of the country round Dublin presented a petition to the royal Council. They asked for a stay of execution of the royal ordinances until they had had time to bring to the king’s notice the unjust proceedings of the Council. Chichester, who had waxed bolder because his first steps against Catholics had yielded an increased attendance at church, threw those who had prompted the petition into prison, though most of them were soon set at liberty after they had prayed for the government’s pardon. The fines ordered by the tribunal were not paid and the officials who attempted to collect them found all doors shut against them. In two instances the authorities had the doors opened by force but the consequence was that all Dublin resounded with complaints against such violations of justice.

Nevertheless Chichester, for the time being, went on with the policy he had inaugurated. Juries were selected for the purpose of assessing the value of properties which it was intended to seize instead of the fines that had not been paid. Thereupon the owners, seeing themselves threatened with confiscation of their goods, transferred their property to third persons by means of conveyances ante-dated six months; so great was the general embitterment that the juries did not dare to declare these transactions invalid; on the contrary, they stated that there was nowhere any property for the government to seize, and in the end the Supreme Court had to give a special decision declaring all these fictitious conveyances null and void.

Chichester then took yet another step; he resolved to claim even from those less well off the fine of one shilling for every absence from church. Four hundred persons received an official summons in Dublin; eighty-eight complied, 149 were sentenced, the rest did not put in an appearance. Similar proceedings took place in the county of Munster.

Certain subordinate government officials already cherished the hope that Ireland would soon be for the most part Protestant. Chichester knew better. He had his spies all over the country and received early information to the effect that his measures would have already provoked a rising if the horrors of the last civil war were not still vividly present to the minds of all. On the other hand, the viceroy’s military effectives—880 foot and 234 cavalry—were far too small to deal with a revolt. So Chichester sought to obtain his end by milder means. On June 3rd, 1603, he wrote to the Privy Council that little could be done with those of the Irish who were of a certain age and fairly prosperous; they should try the young people and the poorer classes. The best prospect of success lay in the education of the young. In the circumstances even the Privy Council in London disapproved the coercive measures that had been applied. On July 3rd, 1616, the Irish Council was called upon to justify its illegal action. It delayed its reply until December 1st: it is a tissue of sophisms and shows the embarrassment of the Irish government. However the English bench, whose opinion had been sought, found the document satisfactory. Even so the authorities in Ireland did not dare to go on with the policy’ on which they had embarked. On the very day on which the Irish Privy Council wrote its apologia, Chichester stated his own views in a private letter to Salisbury; he declared himself opposed to violent measures and gave it as his opinion that an improvement in the situation could only be looked for from the education of the young. In consequence of a protest by Lord Buttevant against the proceedings in Munster, the English Privy Council on July 26th, 1609, advised a milder treatment of the Catholics of Ireland.

It was precisely in Munster, where Henry Brounker, a decided enemy of Catholicism, was in power, that the persecution was particularly severe. Notwithstanding all exhortations to mildness, priests were being hunted day and night, so we read in a letter of James White to Baronius, written in 1606. One priest who, at the moment of his arrest, made known his profession, was hanged on the spot and three other prisoners were also put to death on the suspicion that they were priests. Fines and terms of imprisonment reduced layfolk to the utmost poverty. The oath of allegiance, which was being enforced in Ireland also, provided a fresh opportunity for cruelty and extortions. In 1607, some priests met in Dublin and reported to the Holy See that a reward of 2,000 florins was offered for the denunciation of a Jesuit and one of a thousand for that of a secular priest. If a servant of a priest fell into the hands of the pursuivants, he was whipped until he revealed his master’s hiding-place. Soldiers scoured the whole country for priests and bandits, and when caught they were hanged out of hand, as if the country were under martial law. Lay folk, too, ran the risk of being arbitrarily condemned to death or of having their houses looted. One bishop, one vicar-general, several religious and secular priests and a great number of lay folk languished in prison.

Another calamity befell the Catholics of Ireland when, in 1607, the two powerful earls, Tyrone and Tyrconnel, who owned vast tracts of land in the north of the island, saw themselves forced to flee the country, inasmuch as their emphatic protests against a series of illegalities and the oppression of religion would have brought on them a sentence of imprisonment for life. It would seem that archbishop Lombard of Armagh, who resided in Rome, had led the two earls to hope that the Pope would help them to restore religious liberty in Ireland. True, the nuncio of Brussels, Bentivoglio, pointed out to the two noblemen that such help was beyond the power of the Pope, and Cardinal Borghese subsequently denied that Paul V had ever given them ground for such expectations. Nevertheless, on the advice of archduke Albert and the Spanish ambassador, they went to Rome where Paul V gave them a solemn reception, just as Catholics in general had given them a great welcome on their arrival on the Continent. However, the air of Rome did not agree with the men from the North: Tyrconnel died in the Eternal City as early as 1608, and Tyrone in 1616.

The government’s own fear and the hope of the Catholics that the two earls would obtain help in Spain for their oppressed countrymen led to a temporary abatement of the persecution immediately after their flight, as well as to a fresh influx of priests. On the other hand, Catholics in Northern Ireland suffered a loss the consequences of which no one could calculate, for with the two fugitives they had lost their mainstay, the formers’ possessions being confiscated by the crown and leased to English colonists. Henceforth only those who had taken the oath of supremacy were employed on these extensive estates, or were allowed to acquire some of the land, but neither of these possibilities were open to natives of Ireland. In 1609, archbishop Kearney, of Cashel, wrote to the Holy See as follows: “Day by day colonists come over from England who oppress the Catholics with servitude, fear and terror. Yet hardly one Irishman in a thousand suffers himself to be infected by heresy. It is calculated that the lands confiscated at divers times by James I constituted an area of 4,279,000 acres.

Soon after the flight of Tyrconnell, as we learn from archbishop Kearney, the priest-hunters got busy once more. Before returning to his native land, Eugene Matthews, whom Paul V had appointed to the see of Dublin on May 2nd, 1611, asked for the privilege of the portable altar for Mass inasmuch as all the churches of Ireland had been either ruined or desecrated. In 1617, the government set a price of £500 on the head of archbishop Matthews. Bishop Cornelius O'Devany, a Franciscan, fell into the hands of the government and was publicly executed in 1612. In 1616 the viceroy, Chichester, was indeed recalled, but his successor persecuted the Church with no less violence.

Catholics were not a little excited when in 1613, after a prorogation of twenty-seven years, Lord Chichester once more convoked the Irish Parliament. There were rumours of fresh penal laws. In the Upper House, owing to the presence of Protestant bishops, the enemies of the Catholics were in the majority and in the Lower House the king helped them to secure a like ascendency by creating over thirty new constituencies. In consequence, differences broke out already at the election of the Speaker when the Catholics walked out of the House. Thereupon the viceroy found himself compelled to promise that there would be no fresh penal laws against the adherents of the old religion. The Catholics consequently returned to their places in the house and assented to Tyrone and Tyrconnell being declared traitors and to the confiscation of their property by the Crown. The spoliation of Catholics was still further extended by various illegal means.

Paul V did what he could for the unfortunate island; repeatedly he addressed to the Vicar Apostolic, James White, and to the Irish people, words of comfort and encouragement. Day and night, he said in one of his letters, the fate of Ireland lay heavy on his mind; if he could put an end to the persecution by shedding his own blood, gladly would he do it. On several occasions he recommended the Irish seminaries to the generosity of the Christian princes. On September 22nd,1606, he condemned the oath of allegiance which was being enforced in Ireland.

CHAPTER XII.

Russia and Poland—The End of the False Demetrius— Catholic Restoration under Sigismund III, King of Poland—The Union of the Ruthenians.