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CHAPTER I.
Persecution of the Catholics in Holland and in
England.
As a result of the schism, the kingdom of Queen
Elizabeth and the young republic of the Low Countries had also become
missionary countries, and the prohibition of the public exercise of Catholic
worship was all the more oppressive in that the number of the Catholics was
still very considerable. In the greater part of the provinces of Holland, in
Utrecht, Gelderland, Frisia and Oberyssel, the
Catholics formed a large majority. In the first years of his pontificate
Clement VIII at once took steps to provide them with spiritual assistance, and
in the instructions given to the nuncio Caetani, who
was sent to Spain in the autumn of 1592, it may be seen what care the Pope took
to deal with the religious difficulties which had sprung up in Holland and
Zeeland. Clement’s idea was to provide a remedy by sending missionaries of the
Society of Jesus, and the Franciscan Order. He had already had much at heart
the establishment of the Franciscans in a seminary founded at Tournai in 1592. Caetani was instructed to obtain once more for this
institution the subsidy which Philip II had suspended, and at the same time to
secure the continuance of the payment of the contribution for the exiled
priests who were living at Louvain and Douai.
The idea of employing the Jesuits in the mission in
Holland had been suggested to the Pope in 1592 by the Dutch priest Jan Smith.
At the same time another Dutch priest had approached the provincial of the
Jesuits in Belgium, Oliver Manaraeus.The General of
the Society of Jesus, Claudio Aquaviva, welcomed the proposal, and in October
two Dutch Jesuits of the Belgian province were sent to Holland, and thus
founded the Dutch mission. To them, and to the Franciscans who were already labouring there is due the credit for the preservation of
the faith in Holland. The missionaries had no fixed abode, but travelled about
the country as apostles, but as there were severe edicts against the
celebration of mass, and especially a prohibition of giving hospitality to the
Jesuits, the latter were exposed to the gravest dangers. They had to disguise
themselves, and constantly change their place of residence. As in the days of
the catacombs, the celebration of mass and the administration of the sacraments
could only take place at night, while, in order to prevent a surprise, it was
necessary to set guards. At dawn the missionary went on to another place.
The mission would have been altogether prevented if
the large number of the Catholics who still remained, and the greed for money
on the part of the officials had not made it possible to evade the severe
ordinances. The right to public worship, which was granted in 1603 to the
Mahometan ambassador, was still withheld from the Catholics born in the same
land, but by means of bribes it was possible to obtain from the officials
entrusted with the carrying out of the edict the power to have mass said in secret.
For this reason the work of the Jesuit and Franciscan
missionaries was very arduous. This may clearly be seen from the reports of the
Jesuits, who had begun their mission there with two fathers in 1592. These tell
of cases where a missionary was forced to change his residence eight times in
the course of twelve days. On the other hand the zeal of the Catholics to hear
the word of God and receive the sacraments was very consoling, some of them
having been deprived of these things for thirty or even forty years. Sometimes
the fathers had to preach twice or three times in the day. The head of the
mission, Johann Bargius, who came from Amsterdam,
describes the labours that they had to undergo. “In
Frisia,” he writes, “for nine weeks I had to employ the nights as well as the
days; in the evening at dusk I set myself to hearing confessions and
baptizing, and then preached and said mass; after this there again came to me
those who wished to confess or communicate, and some whose marriages had to be
regularized. Thus there only remained three hours for sleep, for very early in
the morning I had to set out for another place.” With such labours as this, it is not surprising that Bargius died at
the age of forty-eight. “The work increases from day to day,” he says in a
report of 1604; “if only we had greater forces at our command!”
The direction of the missionaries, as appears from a
brief of Clement VIII, of 1592, as well as from other documents, was in the
hands of Sasbout Vosmeer, as vicar apostolic, who
resided almost entirely at Cologne. From a report of Frangipani of April, 1592,
it appears that at that date two Catholic priests were secretly giving the
Dutch Catholics the consolations of their religion ; at Leyden alone they
confessed about a thousand of the faithful, and brought about the conversion of
several Protestants. In 1594 there was an idea of appointing a bishop for
Holland, but this was abandoned. In 1596 the vicariate apostolic of Holland was
placed under the nunciature at Brussels. Vosmeer caused northern Holland to be
visited every year from 1594 onwards by Albert Eggis,
but when in 1601 Vosmeer appointed Eggis as
vicar-general of the former diocese of Haarlem, he met with opposition from the
chapter. In this way the government of the Low Countries discovered the
existence of a Catholic hierarchy in their own country. It was impossible to
reach Vosmeer, because he was abroad, but Eggis was
arrested in March, 1602, and proceedings were taken against him, which ended in
his banishment. The report which Vosmeer
sent to the Pope in 1602, revealed the sad state of the Dutch Catholics.
Vosmeer was then given the title of Archbishop of Philippi, but he had to
continue to live in exile at Cologne, where he made provision for the training
of priests for Holland by the establishment of a college.
The nuncio at Cologne, Ottavio Mirto Frangipani, took
the liveliest interest in, and gave every possible assistance to the Catholic
missions in Holland ; after 1596 he was in charge of the nunciature at
Brussels, established not long before, and was able to help yet more from there
than from Cologne. When disputes arose between the vicar apostolic Vosmeer and
the Jesuits, in 1598 Frangipani summoned the vicar to Brussels where an
agreement was come to, which, unfortunately, was not of long duration.
Clement VIII, who prayed daily for the Dutch
Catholics, during his last years entertained the hope, on the conclusion of an
armistice between the Archduke Albert and the revolted provinces, of obtaining
facilities for Catholic worship there. He urgently begged the Archduke and his
pious consort, Isabella, not to separate the cause of God from their own, for
otherwise they would have reason to fear lest God should abandon them.
The pontificate of Clement VIII was destined to be of
great importance for the situation in England, for the change which had been
inaugurated by Sixtus V attained to its full development under the Aldobrandini
Pope. The sacking of Cadiz by the English in 1596, and the failure of the
second Spanish Armada in 1597, manifested to the whole world the weakness of
the vast Spanish empire. Under Clement VIII the Papacy definitely and finally
renounced all hopes of seeing the ancient religion restored in England by means
of Spanish intervention or that of any other foreign power. A return to former
religious conditions, or at least to liberty of conscience, could at the utmost
be looked for by the Holy See from the accession to the throne of some prince
who was not hostile to the Catholics; in the meantime it limited itself
henceforward to an attempt to save and maintain by the peaceful means of
preaching and instruction what still remained to be saved and preserved. The
separation from Spain was further facilitated by the fact that after the
conversion of Henry IV the worldwide dominion of Charles V steadily lost its
name as the one Catholic power, and found a serious rival in France.
The changed attitude of the Pope was not immediately
grasped and followed by the Catholics in England of Spanish sympathies. It was
only gradually, and not without a temporary disagreement among the supporters
of the ancient religion, that this change of front could be brought about.
During the first years of the pontificate of Clement VIII the Spanish claims to
the succession to the English throne were still ardently maintained, especially
by the Jesuit, Robert Persons. It may perhaps be looked upon as a further sign
of such sentiments that just at that time there sprang up on Spanish soil, and
with the consent of Clement VIII a number of colleges which were to be devoted
to the training of English priests.
In 1589, a few months after the great disaster of the
first armada, Persons, who displayed unwearied courage, went to Spain in order
to obtain from Philip II, among other things, a larger subsidy for the
seminary at Douai. Soon after this it seemed to him to be more advantageous to
establish a new college in Spain itself after the model of that at Douai. A
small party of six students was at once transferred from Allen’s great seminary
to Valladolid, while many generous benefactors were found in Spain, who gave
abundant alms to the new institute. Philip II too, who had been described as
its “founder” by Clement VIII in his bull of confirmation of November 3rd,
1592, assigned to it an annual revenue of 1600 crowns, and on the occasion of a
visit to the seminary was profoundly moved at the sight of these youths who had
left their country for the sake of the faith, in order to face a life of
suffering and persecution; he thereupon increased his annual contribution, and
took all the debts of the seminary upon his own shoulders. In 1592 the
establishment had 75 students, though in 1598 there were only 53, the first
three priests being sent to England in 1593. English seminaries were also
established by Persons at Seville and Madrid, which, however, did not prosper
very much. A special position among the English foundations in the Peninsula
was held by the seminary at Lisbon, which was placed in the charge of secular
priests and of the vicar apostolic of England. It owed its origin to Nicholas
Ashton, who in the time of Queen Elizabeth had the care of the English at
Lisbon, but was only endowed with sufficient revenues in 1629 by the
Portuguese, Pedro Coutinho.
Even more important than the above-mentioned
establishments, which all devoted themselves to the teaching of theology, was
another foundation of Persons in Flanders. The English Catholics were in need
of a school for the teaching of the classics and preparation for theology.
Therefore in 1582 Persons founded such a school at Eu in Normandy, which at the
end of 1592 was transferred to Saint-Omer, after the murder of its benefactor,
the Duke of Guise. In 1595 the number of students was only 38, but in 1601 had
risen to 100, and to 120 in the following year. Philip II granted it an annual
subsidy of 1920 ducats. At first only those pupils were taken who wished to
devote themselves to the priesthood, but this restriction was afterwards
abandoned, so that Saint-Omer became a place of education for the English
Catholic aristocracy, and in this way did an important work. The largest of
these establishments were witnesses to numerous conversions among the English
Protestants, while they were a support and centre for
the Catholics.
All these establishments represented steps and
attempts to place the future of the Church in England upon a secure basis. In
other ways too Clement VIII stood for a new era for the Catholics in the
British Isles, in that they now attempted to abandon their indefinite position,
which in course of time had become intolerable, and to establish a secure state
of affairs. They were also impelled to these new methods by the death of
Cardinal Allen, which took place on October 16th, 1594.
Alien’s piety, learning, gentleness and moderation
were realized by men in Rome, who nevertheless had but a faint conception of
his real powers. But Allen, as Clement VIII informed the Archduke Ernest, was
not only a “jewel” of Catholic England, but had been, as the Pope justly added,
the man who had kept the English Catholics united, and one whose death had
deprived his fellow-countrymen of a strong support. He was indeed a man “as it
were made for the salvation of England,” and the centre round which the English Catholics gravitated both at home and abroad; “our
Moses” as the Jesuit, Holt, called him. All turned their eyes to him as to a father
and venerated master, and he had the gift of communicating to others his
unswerving courage, and his unhesitating confidence in God, and of preventing
the worst forms of discord among the Catholics of his country.
Thus, so long as he was alive, the English clergy did
not feel the lack of a leader armed with episcopal authority and jurisdiction.
Among the Catholic priests in England, who had gradually become more numerous,
there existed a relationship of subordination or superiority only in so far as
they voluntarily accepted advice and instruction from men of greater
spirituality. Thus it came about that the secular priests took their
instructions from the Jesuit Persons, and the Jesuits from Allen.
The result of this uncertain state of affairs was that
everything seemed to fall to pieces when death snatched away the man who had
been their rallying point. Many now thought of asking Clement VIII to give them
a new “Cardinal of England.” But where was the man to be found who could take
the place of Allen? The Scottish party turned their thoughts to Owen Lewis,
who, after he had been summoned to Rome by the Pope, had had a share in the
foundation of the English College, had then become vicar-general of Charles
Borromeo, and finally Bishop of Cassano. The Spanish party among the exiles, on
the other hand, asked for Persons The priests and seminarists took up his cause
eagerly, and letters of recommendation were even obtained from Alessandro
Farnese and others in high places, which paved the way for the English Jesuit
with the Pope and the Cardinals. A certain Dr. Worthington collected signatures
in his favour, while Philip II and the Protector of
the English nation seemed to have been won over to his cause. Persons, however,
who by the rules of his Order could neither aspire to the purple nor accept it
voluntarily, and who did not wish to become a Cardinal, recommended for the
position the distinguished Thomas Stapleton, who, from the summer of 1596
onwards was actually invited by the Pope three times to come to Rome.
The struggle then became acute, especially between the
supporters of Lewis and Persons, until at last the death of Lewis, on October
14th, 1595, and the exclusion of Persons by Clement VIII. put an end to the
disgraceful disputes. In May, 1597, Persons himself had come to the conclusion
that there was no one who could replace Allen, and that it was better for
England to have no Cardinal at all than one who was not fitted. After this the
disputes among the exiles from England, between the “Spaniards” and the “Scots”
came to an end as far as this question was concerned, but only to be rekindled
with even greater violence on other matters.
The Scottish group among the English exiles had been
in existence from about 1580 onwards, and had at first been limited to France,
which was ill-disposed towards Spain. It was only when their leaders, Mary
Stuart’s agents, Charles Paget and Thomas Morgan, removed in 1588 to Flanders,
that the Low Countries became the principal focus of the disputes. Their
followers called themselves the “party of the laity and aristocracy,” and spoke
of their opponents as the party of the priests or of the Jesuits. As early as
1581 Allen had had to act as peacemaker between Persons and William Tresham,
who declared that it was unworthy of a man of noble birth to be guided in
matters of politics by priests. At first the disagreement between the two
parties did not seem to be insuperable : the efforts of Allen at any rate
brought about a rapprochement, though Paget and Morgan continued to receive
annual subsidies from the Spaniards. But Allen himself, who was Spanish in his
sympathies, became a subject of dispute, and from the first the “Scots” worked
strongly against his appointment as Cardinal, and sought at any rate to oppose
to him in the person of Owen Lewis, who belonged to their party, a rival in the
College of Cardinals; the “Spaniards” replied by accusing Paget and Morgan of
having betrayed Mary Stuart, and of having brought about her death. It was a
fact that these two, by their impetuous thoughtlessness, had given assistance
to the English government against the unhappy Queen of Scots; it is also
certain that Paget had on several occasions taken steps to secure the favour of Elizabeth. In this violent dispute the Scottish
party lost ground all along the line, and Allen and Lewis drew up a joint
letter in which1 they declared before the world that they were sincere friends
and disclaimed all rivalry; in February, 1590, Morgan was arrested by Farnese
and was banished from Flanders in 1592; a search of his house had revealed the
fact that he was conspiring against Farnese, in order to substitute for him the
Duke of Savoy. Moreover, Allen himself, in spite of his moderation, had
expressly asked Farnese in 1590 to banish that disturber of the peace, Morgan.
After the death of the Cardinal of England the attacks
of the Scottish party were directed above all against the Jesuits, because they
looked upon them as the most ardent champions of the Spaniards. Persons had
given grounds for this opinion by publishing, a short time before Alien’s
death, a work defending the Spanish rights to the English throne. The Jesuits
were in every way held in high esteem by the Spanish government in Flanders;
Persons could be said to be the adviser of Philip II in all English questions,
while his confrere William Holt was entrusted with the administration of the
Spanish subsidies to the English exiles in the Low Countries. Soon the dispute
became even more embittered, and the most incredible accusations were put
forward. Denunciations were made on all sides, and an attempt was made to
obtain from the government and from the General of the Jesuits the removal from
the Low Countries of their hated adversaries. The bitter dispute reached its
climax in a denunciation of the Jesuit Holt, which was presented in 1597 to the
Archduke Albert, the governor of the Low Countries. In thirty-six articles he
was accused of attempts upon the honour, the
property, the liberty and even the lives of his adversaries! By the order of
the Archduke, the vice-provincial of the Jesuits in Belgium, Oliver Manaraeus, together with John Baptist Taxis, who did his
best in the cause of peace and reconciliation, found himself obliged to devote
his attention, much against his will, to an examination of the accusations. The
verdict of these two was in favour of Holt, and this
should have put an end to this lamentable affair. But it was now Holt’s turn to
demand a discussion of the accusations before the courts, and the excitement
only died down when in 1598 Holt was summoned to Spain by the superiors of the
Order there, and died there in the following year. One of the principal reasons
for Holt’s obstinacy lay in his friendship for Hugh Owen, one of the most
devoted adherents of Spain among the English in Flanders, for he was unwilling
to leave his friend alone to carry on the struggle against the English nobles.
Things went so far that, as it would seem, to the great displeasure of Manaraeus, some of these nobles left the Low Countries. The
bitterness of the dispute is shown by the accusations which William Gifford,
Dean of Lille, and later on a Benedictine and Archbishop of Rheims, who was
usually a man of great moderation, made against the Jesuits ; these included
even homicide, simony, theft, arrogance and ambition. Gifford for his part
withdrew these and asked for pardon, but then the Jesuits committed the error
of publishing the withdrawal far and wide.
The agitation against the Jesuits was not limited to
the Low Countries. Their prestige, which had reached its height under Gregory
XIII, had after that much declined throughout Europe. They were driven out of
Paris, while in Madrid they found adversaries in the Duke of Lerma and the
Papal nuncio Malvasia. Even more to their disadvantage was the fact that the
Pope himself was not well disposed towards them. It is true that Clement VIII
was convinced that the reconstruction and consolidation of the Catholic religion
must be based above all on the education of youth, and he therefore favoured the Jesuit colleges, but at the same time he
maintained an attitude of coldness towards the Order. His modifications of the
constitutions of the Society of Jesus, even though they were only concerned
with matters of secondary importance, and his attitude towards the dispute
concerning the doctrine of grace, made this very clear. At times he was glad to
see his advisers among the Jesuits anywhere else than in Rome; thus Persons was
allowed to recuperate his strength at Naples, Bellarmine was made Archbishop of
Capua, and the General of the Jesuits, Aqua viva, was often threatened with a
similar promotion. In Spain the Pope’s dislike involved certain Jesuits of
Alcala in a severe experience of the prisons of the Inquisition. The marginal
notes which he added at that time to the reports of the Spanish nunciature,
speak of the “pride and arrogance of those Spaniards who devise new and
dangerous doctrine ” and of the “need for the public humiliation of such
people”; when the confessor of the Queen of Spain complained to the nuncio of
the harm that was being done to his Order on all sides by unfounded attacks,
Clement VIII added the terse marginal note: “God resists the proud.”
Naturally such opinions in the most exalted
ecclesiastical circles had its influence in the most distant places. The
students of the English College in Rome once more complained of their masters
and professors; they were discontented at not receiving before their return to
England the same spiritual privileges as were enjoyed by the Jesuits; they were
embittered by the book concerning the succession to the throne, which was
generally attributed to Persons ; as they had little love for the Spaniards,
they rejoiced at their ill-success, and refused to remove their hats in the
presence of the Spanish ambassador. Things went so far that Aquaviva begged the
Pope to release the Order from the direction of the English College. A
visitation by Cardinal Sega restored peace, at any rate as far as external
appearances went, though only with difficulty, but it was only in 1597, when
Persons returned from Spain to Rome, that he was able, by his prudence and
moderation, to win over the hearts of the students, who, under his influence,
were completely changed in a few days.
The seminaries in Spain were not at that time in a
state to experience any such disturbances, but in 1603 the storm burst out
there as well. When a disobedient student at the English College at Valladolid
was being punished, all his school-fellows ran to his assistance armed with
sticks. Out of seventy-one seminarists twenty-five left the college to enter a
Benedictine monastery, while it became difficult for a time to provide bread
for those who remained, as the benefactors, who had hitherto supported the college,
stopped their donations when they heard of the occurrence. A visitation by the
Jesuit, Luis de la Puente, and a decree of the Roman Inquisition on December
10th, 1608, restored peace, which had already been inaugurated by pacificatory
negotiations between the two Orders. The prudent moderation of Persons also
contributed greatly in Spain to the cessation of hostilities.
A principal reason for the discontent among the
students was the fact that neither the Spaniards nor the Italians understood
the English character, and therefore did not know how to deal with them. When,
by Allen’s advice, those in Rome were given Englishmen as rectors, the
rebellion ceased as though by magic. The exasperation of the youths in Rome may
also have been fostered by the hostile feelings towards the Jesuits which prevailed
in Flanders, for as early as the year 1597 the Scottish party in the Low Countries
was seeking to obtain from the Pope the recall of the Jesuits from England and
from the seminaries on the continent. The college at Douai, however, took no
part in these attempts ; on the contrary, Allen’s successor, Dr. Barrett, went
to Rome on purpose to support the continuance of the Jesuits as directors of
the seminary in Rome. In September, 1596, Clement VIII spoke to him of the
complaints which had reached him from the Low Countries, and especially of the
supposed tyranny and ambition of Holt. Barrett described all this as mere
suspicion and jealousy. A document which was circulated in Flanders, and to
which were attached many signatures, begged the Pope to pay no attention to the
calumnies against the Jesuits, or at any rate to have the matter inquired into.
Barrett was not satisfied at the want of circumspection exercised in obtaining
these signatures, but all the same attached his own name to a similar petition
which came from the college at Douai.
An even greater disturbance than that of the bitter
quarrels in Flanders was occasioned by similar events on English soil, when in
the so-called “stirs of Wisbech” disputes broke out between the Jesuits and
secular clergy, which contained the germs of even more serious occurrences.
Ever since 1579 the English government had kept shut
up in the Castle of Wisbech a number of priests and laymen, whom it was
unwilling either to set at liberty or to put to death. At first their
imprisonment was very severe, but after the appointment of a new director of
prisons in 1593, it assumed a character of leniency quite unusual in England in
the case of Catholic priests. The prisoner’s were no longer supervised at their
common meals, and were allowed to visit each other, and to form a library of
books which they were even able to lend to other priests outside; they Were
also able to receive visits and to accept presents from their visitors. Some
Catholics made long journeys in order to be able to breathe once more a purely
Catholic atmosphere, as well as to seek advice and receive the sacraments.
After one such visit the Jesuit Henry Garnet wrote to the “Confessors of
Wisbech” that he had not enjoyed such consolation for seven years, and that
during the time he had passed in their midst he had felt as though he were in
heaven.
After about two years of this common and comparatively
free existence, the disadvantages of this liberty began to make themselves
felt. Among the thirty-three prisoners there were certain men of another way of
thinking, and not all of them had that intellectual greatness which for the
most part distinguished the “Confessors of Wisbech.” Three of them later on
apostatized, while others, while they were still in the seminaries, had given
proof of having intractable and difficult characters. It may be supposed that
all of them had the energy and independence which was called for by the life of
a missionary in England, but an imprisonment of so many years with the same
companions also produced in all of them an abnormal state of tension and
nerves. Thus at their meals in common violent disputes broke out ; to those who
by their natural disposition and their training were inclined to hold a strict
idea of the sacerdotal life it seemed that a too great liberty of thought was
creeping in, and they feared, rightly or wrongly, that this might lead in time
to real scandal.
This tendency to greater freedom and the tendency to
greater strictness found their champions among the prisoners in two men of
great intellect, the Jesuit William Weston and the secular priest Christopher
Bagshaw. The latter, during his period of study at Oxford, Rheims and Rome, had
shown himself to be possessed of a spirit of turbulence, a defect which robbed
all his other good qualities of their efficacy. Weston was an austere ascetic,
very severe towards himself, and not over lenient with others. After Christmas,
1594, he began to withdraw from the common meetings, and took his meals in his
own room. This example was followed by the majority of his fellow-prisoners,
and twenty of them decided upon leading a kind of community life, for which
they drew up twenty-two rules and asked Weston to be their superior. Weston
declared his readiness to accept this, provided his superior, Henry Garnet,
gave his consent. Garnet expressed- his agreement with this plan of reform, but
did not wish Weston to have the title or position of superior, nor to exercise
any power of punishment ; all that he might do in the name of his nineteen
companions and as their representative, was to settle certain rules. From that
time onward the separation and division became more and more marked, in spite
of the remonstrances of Bagshaw and his followers, and the attempt to remove
the disunion by calling in a stranger to arbitrate only made the division more
acute. At last on November 6th, 1595, a plan of reconciliation, which was
modified more than twenty times, was accepted, and those who had hitherto been
divided, embraced each other with tears and an emotion which rendered them
incapable of speech. A treasurer and a steward were chosen ; fines were fixed
for any excess which might lead to a renewed rupture, and a general common rule
was agreed upon, even by those who had hitherto been Weston’s opponents, by
which act the need for some sort of rule was recognized.
In spite of certain menaces this concord lasted until
the beginning of 1597, when there appeared at Wisbech, Robert Fisher, who
rekindled the flames. Seven of the prisoners, who were themselves divided into
parties, again withdrew from the common meals, and from that moment men took
sides with one party or the other even beyond the confines of England. For the
disputants it was now no longer a case of personal sympathies or antipathies,
nor a question of the Jesuit Weston and his supposed arrogance, but it became a
quarrel between the secular clergy and the Jesuits. In the course of the years
a great deal of hatred and jealousy of the latter had rightly or wrongly grown
up ; their labours and their successes were looked
upon as a usurpation of the rights of the secular clergy, and as an unwarranted
attack upon their good name. All this now became a matter of open discussion.
The Jesuits, it was said, were making their way into everything ; in their eyes
nothing was sacred, orthodox or lawful if it did not come from themselves ;
they tried to seize upon donations and alms for themselves alone ; in a word,
they aimed at the suppression and subjection of the secular clergy.1 These
accusations were reproduced in many pamphlets, some of which were printed and
found their way as far as Rome.
The ill-feeling against the Jesuits found its
strongest expression in the so-called “archpriest controversy."
That the Catholics of England had need of a leader was
made clear to everyone by the disturbances which occurred after the death of
Allen, while the impossibility of appointing a new English Cardinal, who should
direct the affairs of his native land from Rome, lent strength to the proposal,
so favourable for England, to set up a new centre of
Catholic life on English soil.
In order to put an end, once and for all, to so
uncertain a state of affairs, Persons brought all his influence to bear in favour of the appointment of bishops, and as a result of
his representations Cardinal Caetani, the Protector
of England, spoke to the Pope and the Cardinals of the Inquisition, who had
been instructed to discuss the matter. But Clement VIII refused to accept this
view. Persons had asked to have for his country an archbishop with his see in
Flanders, who was to be assisted by a bishop living on English soil. Another
suggestion was put forward by the secular clergy. They sought before all things
to increase their own influence, and especially over the Jseuits,
by forming themselves into an association, and proposing the election of one of
their number as bishop. The money that was received in alms and from
foundations for the support of the English clergy was to be held by a duly
appointed administration, and equitably divided, so that none should go in want
of necessaries. So far each priest had been a little Pope, and there was no one
who could demand an account, or make an admonition, and this state of affairs
was all the more deplorable because in recent years there had come to England
many priests “who were beardless youths of twenty-four,” yet had to go there as
priests in lay dress, to live in private houses among men and women, and thus
without any of those forms of control, which elsewhere of themselves restrained
priests from too great freedom of conduct.
But the authority possessed by a bishop in matters of
jurisdiction and orders exposed anyone who had it in the England of those days
to death, or at any rate to a life of imprisonment and concealment. It was
probably for this reason that Clement VIII was unwilling to appoint a bishop
for England, and for ten years the nuncios in Flanders were ordered to oppose
any suggestions of this kind. An attempt was then made to satisfy the need in
another way. Instead of the appointment, as Persons had desired, of an English
archbishop in Flanders, the nuncio in Flanders was appointed as his
representative by the Cardinal Protector of England, Caetani,
with faculties to settle all juridical questions in England as well. Instead of
a bishop on English soil, Caetani in 1598 appointed
an archpriest, without episcopal consecration, in the person of George
Blackwell. English priests who had recently left the seminaries on the
continent were to be subject to Douai, in Spain to the superiors they had had
hitherto, and in Brussels to the nuncio. The archpriest was given twelve
priests as his counsellors ; six of these were to be chosen by the Cardinal
Protector, while the other six were to be appointed by Blackwell himself.
The brief of appointment of March 7th, 1598, obviously
contains allusions to the recent controversies. The reason why the office of
archpriest was introduced, this states, was to promote peace and concord among
the brethren, and especially with the Jesuits, who together with the other
priests were labouring in the vineyard of the Lord.
They had no supremacy over the secular priests, nor did they wish for it, and
were therefore in no way an obstacle. The differences that had arisen,
therefore, could only be attributed to the cunning and deceits of the infernal
foe, who wished to destroy all that had been gained with so great labour, by making Catholics entertain and propagate
feelings of jealousy against them.
The same desire for harmony and the removal of all
differences had also led to the choice of Blackwell as archpriest. He was a
friend of the Jesuits, and the idea was perhaps entertained in Rome that if a
friend of the Order was placed at the head of the secular clergy, this would
guarantee the restoration and preservation of peace between the two bodies. But
any such idea was greatly mistaken. It is true that the appointment of an
archpriest was hailed with joy by the great majority of the about three hundred
secular priests, but all the greater was the opposition of the minority, which,
according to contemporary information, did not number, at any rate at first,
more than ten or twelve persons, but which for that reason was all the more
active. Legally, no attack was made upon the authority of the Jesuits over the
priests in the seminaries, and any attempt to do so would have been in itself
ridiculous, but it was feared that Persons, who was then all-powerful in Rome,
had sent the complaisant Blackwell in order through him to govern indirectly
the secular clergy, and to impose upon them his hated Spanish policy. This
suspicion was increased by a passage in the instructions which were given to
Blackwell together with his brief of appointment.
The wish of the Pope, so the Cardinal Protector said,
is that there should be the fullest concord between the Jesuits and the secular
clergy in the kingdom, and as the superior of the Jesuits, by his experience of
English affairs and the reputation which he enjoys among Catholics, can be of
great help in all decisions to be made by the clergy, the archpriest must endeavour, in all questions of major importance, to ask for
his advice and opinion. A false interpretation saw in these words a formal
order to follow in all matters of importance the advice of the superior of the
Jesuits, Henry Garnet, so that, as that blusterer William Watson, put it, in
future the Catholics would be dependent upon Blackwell, Blackwell on Garnet,
Garnet on Persons, and Persons on the devil, who was the author of all the
rebellions, treasons, homicides and disobediences which that cursed Jesuit had
raised up against her majesty, her safety, her crown and her life.
It was not all those who made up the minority who
thought and spoke thus bitterly. There were among them priests of the greatest
moderation and worthy of all respect, such as William Bishop, the future
vicar-apostolic, Colleton, Charnock, Mush and Bluet. Some of the malcontents
had suffered imprisonment, and two of them death, for their faith. But on the
other hand, Watson was not the only one whose words and actions call for our
attention. Bagshaw, who now, as formerly at Wisbech, took a prominent part, later
on, in the conspiracy of the Gunpowder Plot, made denunciations to the
government against his co-religionists; another, John Cecil, who was even
entrusted with a mission to Rome, was only a tool in the hands of the English
statesmen, whose duty it was to spy on the Catholics. It was soon evident that
even the reputable party among the minority held views on many subjects which
were anything but Catholic.
Discontent against the new leader of the English
Catholics led to a resolve to address complaints to Rome against the
appointment of Blackwell, but from the first his opponents were guilty of an
almost incredible mistake as to their motives and reasons for such a step. It
was not only said that the appointment of the archpriest had been made by order
of the Cardinal Protector, whereas such a measure required a Papal brief, but
certain entirely Gallican assertions were made. It was stated that the English
clergy had not been asked for their opinion before the appointment, and that
this was a violation of an ancient English right ; without the consent of the
clergy and people, who must give their opinion in a free election, the
appointment of Blackwell must be looked upon as null and void. Gallican views
were also set forth in a little work by a certain John Bishop, which was
printed in London about that time.
The danger of such principles does not seem to have
entered the minds of the malcontents, for towards the end of the summer of 1598
they sent William Bishop and Robert Charnock to Rome in order to win over the
Pope to their side. The requests that they wished to lay before him privately
were concerned with the appointment of a bishop for England, who was to be
elected by a majority of the votes of the English clergy, and with the consent
of the association of secular priests. The Pope was also to be asked to take
away the English College in Rome from the Jesuits, and to make the publication
of controversial writings against the queen and the English government
dependent upon the approval of the ecclesiastical superiors.
In the meantime the other party had naturally not
remained idle. The superior of the Jesuits, Henry Garnet, also had recourse to
Rome in a letter bearing the signatures of nineteen Jesuits and secular
priests. This asked the Pope to confirm the archpriest in his office and to
address a severe admonition to the two appellants, and only to allow them to
return to England if they completely changed their views.
The two appellants gave yet further proof of their
ingenuous confidence in the success of their undertaking when, in December,
1598, they knocked at the gates of the English College, in order to ask the
hospitality of Persons, their most dangerous adversary. They very soon realized
that they had found lodging in what was their prison. An order for their arrest
from the Pope forbade them to leave the seminary, and in February, 1599, they
had to appear before Cardinals Caetani and Borghese,
the Protector and vice-Protector of England, and submit themselves to legal
proceedings. With truly English tenacity Bishop set himself to defend before
the Cardinals the plan for an association of priests, though later on (February
20th), he advised his friends in England to abandon this project. In April the
sentence was delivered : all the requests of the appellants were rejected.
Bishop was sent to live in Paris, and his colleague Charnock was sent to
Lorraine ; they were not to return to England, nor make their homeward journey
together, nor communicate with each other in any way. They had not succeeded in
seeing the Pope, while a Papal brief of April 6th, 1599, which confirmed the
dignity of the archpriest, removed all hopes of their obtaining from him a more
favourable judgment than they had received from his representatives.
If the appellants did not wish to become open rebels,
there remained no course open to them but to submit, which they accordingly
did. By the summer of 1599 peace seemed to have been restored. “Thanks be to
God,” Persons wrote to Bishop at that time, “for now, owing to the wise
measures taken by His Holiness, everything is systematized and in order.”
But the cure was not very deep, and secret agitations
against the Jesuits still continued. The rancour against the Order now led two representatives of the extreme party to a fatal
step: abandoned by the Pope, and filled with Gallican ideas they sought the
support of the civil authorities., Watson denounced them to the English
government, and accused them before the King’s Proctor of high treason, for
having defended the Spanish succession. Charles Paget, Mary Stuart’s former
agent, got into personal touch with the English ambassador in Paris, and worked
upon his feelings against the so greatly hated religious.
The imprudence of Blackwell was the cause of the
dispute breaking out in public. The archpriest was convinced that the
malcontents were guilty of schism, and had incurred the penalties appointed by
the canon law, and that they were therefore obliged to confess their fault and
ask for absolution. The accused resisted this unjust supposition, and an
opinion of the University of Paris, of May 3rd, 1600, was given in their favour. Blackwell, exceeding his powers, prohibited, under
pain of an interdict, any sort of defence of this
decision, but his adversaries paid no attention to his prohibition. Blackwell
then forbade two of the clergy, who were among the eldest and most deserving,
to exercise any of their sacerdotal functions. After this fresh abuse of power,
the struggle broke out again all along the line.
Feeling certain that this time they undoubtedly had
right on their side, the adversaries of Blackwell had recourse once more to
Rome, and a deed of accusation, of November 17th, 1600, summarized in an
extremely objective form, and with the addition of proofs, all the accusations
against the archpriest. This document was drawn up at the castle of Wisbech,
and bore the signatures of thirty-three priests.
While the reply of the Pope was being long awaited, an
embittered literary war broke out in England, in which, even more than against
the archpriest, the attacks were made upon the Jesuits, whose instrument and
mouthpiece Blackwell was supposed to be. Blackwell had attempted to support his
view as to the supposed schismatics by the help of a “Roman decision,” that is
to say by certain expressions of English Jesuits, one of whom, Thomas Lister,
defended the view in an intemperate work, which was approved by the archpriest.
As Blackwell wrote on October 22nd, 1600, to Clement VIII, the Jesuits had
protected him against the disturbers of the peace, and had stood by his side in
his danger, both for attack and defence. All the
hatred of Persons and the Society of Jesus which had been accumulating in
recent years now broke out in the form of numerous and violent polemical
writings, which were almost equalled in the violence
of their language by some of the replies of Persons. This literary warfare was
begun by a polemical work of Lister.
The goal at which the malcontents were aiming was the
removal and recall of the Society of Jesus from England, and their quarrel with
the Jesuits had gradually led them far away from those principles which
hitherto had guided the attitude of the Catholics, especially towards the
government. Was it necessary, so the appellants asked themselves, to attach
such importance to the bull of excommunication of Pius V? If the question was
put to the martyrs : What would you do if the Pope were to send an Armada to conquer
England ? had it really been necessary to reply with such great caution, and by
that exaggerated caution irritate and rouse the suspicions of the government ?
In any case was it not possible now to change their attitude, and seek for a
reconciliation with the queen? “We ought to act towards her, our true and legitimate
queen, and towards our country, very differently from the way adopted by so
many Catholics, and above all by the Jesuits,” was the reply given to such
questions in a work by Watson. Elizabeth, Watson insisted, had from the first
treated the Catholics with kindness and favour ; all
good sense was on her side, and all the wrong on the side of the Catholics ; if
the Pope should give orders for the conferring of the crown on an enemy of the
country, there would be no obligation to obey him ; the bull of excommunication
of Pius V, which John Bishop described as erroneous, was merely treated by
Watson as surreptitious.
The Jesuits formed a serious obstacle to any
conclusion of peace on the basis of such opinions, and therefore the idea
gained more and more ground among their adversaries of suggesting to the
government that they should renounce their co-operation in England as the price
of the restoration of peace and the toleration of the old religion. The laws
that were still in force against the Catholics could be abrogated and changed
into laws against the Jesuits.
The statesmen who governed England could not fail to
rejoice that the internal quarrels of the Catholics should thus become more and
more acute, and the appellants met with the greatest sympathy and ready support
from them. One of the prisoners of Wisbech, the secular priest Thomas Bluet,
was summoned in the summer of 1601 to present himself before the Bishop of
London, Richard Bancroft, to explain his views more fully; he declared that the
Jesuits were a danger to the state, but that the secular clergy, on the
contrary, were loyal subjects and were being unjustly persecuted. Further
negotiations with the royal councillors followed, and
Bluet was even allowed to appear before Elizabeth herself to explain his views.
Their complaisance went even further : although, according to the English law,
an appeal to the Pope was looked upon as a crime deserving of the stake, Bluet
even dared to present a petition that he and certain other secular priests
might be allowed to go to Rome in support of the appeal already presented
there, or better still to press the Pope for the recall of the Jesuits.1 The
government accepted this proposal ; the prison doors were thrown open, and,
furnished with English passports, at the beginning of November, 1601, certain
prisoners of state, who had been declared worthy of death, went to Rome in
order to induce the Pope, who from every pulpit had been declared the greatest
enemy of England, to enter into an alliance with England against Catholic
priests. The ever astute Elizabeth even thought it well to allow a few words of
adulation from her sovereign lips.to come to his ears : “unlike Pius, Gregory
and Sixtus, those warlike Popes” so she expressed herself to Bluet, “Clement,
as his very name shows, should be a peaceful Pope.” So as to make the journey
of Bluet and his companions less noticeable, they were “banished” from
England, after they had been given the opportunity of collecting the necessary
funds for their journey to Rome.
When they arrived in Belgium the envoys learned that
Rome had already (August 17th, 1601) given its decision on the dispute.
Blackwell too had received a Papal brief, but he took the liberty of keeping
this secret for several months, until January, 1602, when the last of the
polemical writings of Persons appeared in print. This brief, which “unites in
the happiest way the two-fold purpose of defending both justice and
ecclesiastical discipline,” rejected the appeal, but admits the reasonableness
of the appellants, in that it rejected the accusation of schism, and threatened
with excommunication anyone that dared to make it. All further polemical
writings on the matter were prohibited, as well as those which had appeared so
far, among these especially the work of Lister. The brief contained a clear
admonition both to Blackwell and his adversaries, and exhorted them to
obedience.
If the English envoys had only been sent in support of
their appeal, they ought in that case to have returned home. The nuncio in
Flanders, Frangipani, who informed them of the Papal brief, tried in every way
to induce them to do so, but only succeeded in the case of one of their number.
Frangipani knew perfectly what it was that the appellants were seeking, for on
August 22nd, 1602, he had already written to Rome to say that Elizabeth had
given them permission to make the journey in order that she might be freed from
the Jesuits. But when the latter, in February, 1602, sent a commission of their
own to Rome, which arrived there on April 9th, it was only natural to fear a
perpetuation of the quarrel, from which Frangipani feared the greatest evils
for the Church in England.
But all his attempts at pacification had no effect
upon the appellants, who were still full of hope. “If I, poor worm that I am,
have obtained so much from the queen,” said Bluet later on in Rome, “how much
may not be effected by the prestige of His Holiness, added to the support of
the King of France, for the relief of the English Catholics?”. The toleration of the Catholics was at that
time a thing so greatly desired in Rome that there were some who could well
believe that the sacrifice of the Jesuits would count for nothing.
Blackwell had laid his complaints against his
adversaries before the Inquisition in 1601, and this tribunal was given the
charge of inquiring into the matter. The discussions began in April; some
thought that they were safe in prophesying that they would be very protracted,
as the Pope seemed determined to have the whole unpleasant affair gone into
this time with all possible completeness. But about a month later the rumour was spread that Clement VIII. had quickly settled
the matter. Both the Pope and the Cardinals were weary of the affair, because
the noisy complaints of the appellants had only been caused by unworthy
motives, so that it only required the temporary absence of Persons to quiet the
whole business. The authors of the accusation had therefore to listen to words
of severe admonition from the Pope, on account of the impatience with which
they had attempted at all costs to relieve themselves of persecution, as well
as on account of their relations with heretics and with Elizabeth, whom they wrongly
looked upon as their queen, though she was excommunicated and dethroned, as
well as on account of their hostility towards an Order which was recognized by
the Church.0 It is reported that as to this last charge the appellants refused
altogether to admit in Rome that they had ever tried to get the Jesuits driven
out, while they repudiated the writings of Watson and others. They found a
powerful supporter in the French ambassador in Rome, while the Spanish
ambassador was opposed to them.
But in England in the meantime matters were pursuing
their course, and the appellant priests were filled with confidence in the
success of their cause. Bancroft, together with certain ministers of state,
continued to give them support, while it was said of the queen herself that she
gladly welcomed the development of the quarrel, so as thus to introduce discord
into the College of Cardinals, to hold back the Pope from making any decision,
and to deprive the Spaniards of any hope of finding their party strengthened by
the English Catholics. To the disgust expressed by the Puritans at her apparent
rapprochement with the Catholics, the queen replied by increasing the
persecution and by executing several priests. The written attacks of the
appellants on the Jesuits continued, and they were not ashamed to present to
the government a detailed list of the hiding places of their hated adversaries.
The Protestants watched with joy these disagreements among the Catholics, and
the writings of the appellants found eager readers among them.
On July 20th, 1602, the long expected judgment of the
Inquisition was delivered. By this the appellants were justified in so far that
the accusation of schism was declared unfounded, while, for the sake of peace,
the archpriest was forbidden to take counsel with the Jesuits about the affairs
of his office, and Blackwell was advised to refer directly to the Pope or the
Cardinal Protector. He was, moreover, warned not again to exceed his powers.
But in all other matters the appellants met with no success. They must, when
they return home, submit to the reproofs of the English Secretary of State for
not having fulfilled their promises, and for not having obtained either the
recall of the Jesuits or the removal of the archpriest. Moreover the Jesuits
were left in possession of their English colleges on the continent, while all
further negotiations with the heretics to the injury of other Catholics were
prohibited. Anyone who disobeyed in this matter would ipso facto incur
excommunication.
Clement VIII waited for another two months before he
gave his final judgment on this unpleasant affair ; in the meantime Persons
attempted to obtain a mitigation for Blackwell and his followers, but in vain,
and the brief to the archpriest, dated October 5th, 1602, was in all points in
accordance with the suggestions of the Inquisition. In two respects it went
even further : the faculties of the archpriest were more exactly defined, and
he was compelled to appoint three of the appellants to the first three places
among his counsellors, which should become vacant. The zeal and piety of the
Jesuits were praised, and thus scrupulous care was taken that none of the
interested parties was wronged, and no one was given cause for complaint.
In the meantime Elizabeth was preparing a surprise for
the appellants at home ; this was her last edict against the Catholics. This
distinguished between the Jesuits and their adherents, and the secular clergy.
The former were without exception declared guilty of high treason, because they
aroused foreign princes against their country and placed the life of the queen
in danger. The secular clergy were spoken of as anti-Jesuit and less perverse,
but they too are disobedient and disloyal subjects, who, under a mask of
conscience, steal the hearts of the simple and ingenuous people, and attach
them to the Pope. The Jesuits and their adherents must therefore leave the
country within thirty days, if they do not wish to incur the punishment of the
law against Catholic priests. Other priests were allowed a period until January
1st, or at the latest, February 1st, 1603 ; if by that time they had made a
formal act of obedience before the queen’s court, they would then be proceeded
against leniently. The edict complains in strong terms of the audacity of those
priests who showed themselves in the streets in full daylight, and who brought
the queen under the suspicion of intending to tolerate two religions in the
country. God, who can read the hearts of men, knew well that she was not guilty
of any such madness, and that none of her advisers had dared to lay any such
proposal before her, which would not only disturb the peace of the Church, but
would also throw the State into confusion.
This edict had a two-fold purpose ; it was in the
first place to exonerate the queen in the eyes of the Protestants from the
suspicion of favouring the Catholics, and in the
second, it was to be a test as to how far the appellants had progressed along
the mistaken course which they had adopted. It had seemed at first that the
latter were in no hurry to obey the sentence of the Pope, yet the royal edict
only brought one priest to make his act of submission, and induced another to
refuse to accept the Papal briefs. Even though there were still as before
comings and goings of the appellants to the house of the Bishop of London, and
Bluet was even lodged there for a time, there is no reason to see in this a
formal act of disobedience, because all relations with the heretics was not
forbidden. Such conduct, however, was still a matter for suspicion, as was the
fact that the appellants asked, through one of their representatives, for the
support of the French government against the Jesuits ; the English ambassador in
Paris was kept closely informed of these negotiations. But something more than
mere suspicion was aroused by the fact that polemical writings against the
Jesuits still continued to appear in print.
It was not, however, possible to be content with half
measures if the malcontents intended to remain Catholic priests. On the other
hand, the latter did not wish altogether to reject the hand held out to them by
the government ; if in an official edict a distinction had been drawn between
priests and priests, this marked a step forward and held out a ray of hope.
Moreover, a special tribunal had been set up, composed of the archbishop, the
Keeper of the Privy Seal, the Lord Treasurer and others, who were to summon
each priest before them and decide as to the question of his exile, and as to
the manner and terms of its enforcement ;this too seemed to show a tendency to
greater leniency, for it was left to the good-will of this tribunal to change,
for example, the punishment of perpetual imprisonment for the lesser penalty of
exile. Accordingly, on the last day before the expiration of the term allowed,
thirteen priests assembled, not to make an act of submission to the government,
but merely to declare their loyalty as subjects. The queen, it is stated in a
work by William Bishop, has the same authority as her predecessors, and has the
right to the same obedience as is paid by Catholic priests to Catholic
sovereigns, and no one in this world can dispense them from this duty. In the
case of a conspiracy, or of an invasion of England, even in the name of
religion, they would be bound to take the part of the queen against all her
enemies, and to make known to her all such attempts. The excommunication which
might in the event be launched against
her they judged to be invalid. In the Pope, however, they recognized their
supreme ecclesiastical pastor and the successor of Peter. “Just as we are
absolutely ready to shed our blood in the defence of
her Majesty and our country, so too would we rather lose our lives than offend
against the lawful authority of the Catholic Church of Christ.”
In spite of this last phrase there can be no mistaking
the fact that these thirteen priests were placing themselves in a position with
regard to the Pope, the danger of which was destined to become perfectly clear
in the years to come. The attitude of the opposing party was far more logical
and in conformity with Catholic principles. When the Papal decision of the
question, which had been so long pending, was imminent, the superior of the
Jesuits, Henry Garnet, issued a circular to his subjects, calling for a sincere
and reverent obedience to the Pope, and exhorting them to peace and concord
with the secular clergy. At the very beginning of the dispute, on March 1st,
1598, Garnet had issued a similar document as well as a kind of declaration of
loyalty, though this was not addressed to the government but to the whole of
the clergy of England. “ Eighteen years have gone by,” he says in this, “since
our Society came to your England to join you, who are labouring so generously in the vineyard of the Lord. During all this time we have
experienced the greatest affection on your part towards us, and by the grace of
God have lived in such a way as to take every care that every one of you shall
receive the honour which is your due, and to assist
every one of you with all zeal, rendering to you all the services that were in
our power, and thus embracing each of you with all the fervour of charity of which the human soul is capable. Our consciences bear testimony
to this, and I have no doubt that more than one of you will confirm it, and
that none of you has any just ground for complaint of us. In saying this we do
not venture to state that all that we have done has been without blame, for we
are but mortal men, and in a situation that is so full of mire, it may well be
that perchance some dust has collected on our feet. But however weak and
imperfect we may be, we at least desire to be better, and your affection has
most certainly preserved us from the fault of having voluntarily offended
against any one of you. In spite of all this there has come into our hands a
passage from a memorial which was sent to the Holy Father, and which contains
things than which nothing more unworthy could have come from your pen, and
nothing more monstrous could have been brought against us, not even by the
heretics, and this has been presented to His Holiness by two persons, the one a
priest and the other a layman,1 in the name of the English clergy. To you,
therefore, priests of England, I have recourse, to you who are the nursery of
our renascent Church, the ornament of the Catholic world, and the training
ground of heroic martyrs. Tell us if these monstrous accusations really emanate
from you.”
They had not, indeed, emanated from the majority of
the secular clergy, and even if the minority, by reason of its polemical
writings, seemed to be speaking for itself, there were not lacking the
expressions of those who thought differently. Even at Wisbech, the true hot-bed
of the hostility to the Jesuits, and from whence had come the denunciation of
Blackwell in 1600, there gathered together in the following year a number of
secular priests in order to give to their fellow labourers of the Society of Jesus a shining proof of their friendship. As at that time
the old complaints of the arrogance of Weston had been sent even as far as
Rome, these gave, in a collective letter to the Pope, a brilliant testimony to
the accused.
The minority of the secular clergy were guided by
sound reason when they judged that they must not count upon violent measures,
or look to the foreign princes for any help for the old religion. In this, they
coincided with the ideas of the Pope himself, and in 1596, in a memorial to
Cardinal Aldobrandini, the nuncio in Flanders, Malvasia, expressed himself in
the same sense. The nuncio was of the opinion that it would be possible to
bring pressure to bear upon Elizabeth through Henry IV; it should be suggested
to her that she should put an end to the fierce persecution of the Catholics,
and, following the example of so many other princes, who tolerated various
forms of religion in their countries, grant to them, at any rate in their own
houses, if not in public, the right of Catholic worship. The queen would then
have for the future loyal subjects in the English exiles in Flanders, who were
now dependent upon the subsidies of Spain, which were hardly ever paid, and who
often, in their misery, allowed themselves to be drawn into the most desperate
undertakings ; she would be set free from a thousand dangers, from the constant
fear of conspiracies and treason, and from the endless expense of defending
herself against the King of Spain. Once she was set free from disturbances of
the peace at home, the queen need no longer fear the slow-moving and distant
foreign enemy, all the more so as jealousy of the mighty King of Spain would
attract many allies to her side, once religious scruples no longer stood in the
way.
Just as in this respect Malvasia partly forestalled
the proposals of the appellants, so was it in another matter. The nuncio, who
was not well disposed towards the Jesuits, wondered whether it would not be
wise to withdraw them from England, at any rate for the time being, as they
were especially hateful to and suspected by the queen. So as still further to
pacify Elizabeth, it might be well, under pain of ecclesiastical penalties,
possibly even of excommunication, to forbid the returned exiles to make any attempts
upon the crown, or to take any part in politics.
Clement VIII was less disposed to make such
concessions,2 and England was, and always remained for him, a child of sorrow.
“Cut off though you are from us by space,” he wrote on October 31st, 1597, to
the English Catholics, but united to us by faith and charity, we ever think of
you and rejoice in your steadfastness. All Catholics look to you and thanks to
you give praise to God. Persevere therefore in your expectation of an eternal
reward.” The Pope never abandoned the hope that England would return to the
ancient Church, and in the meantime made use of every opportunity of obtaining
the mediation, little valuable though it was, of the Catholic princes, on
behalf of the persecuted Catholics of England.
While Elizabeth, deaf to all entreaties, was working
for the extermination of the old religion, the signs of her own approaching
death became more and more clear. In vain she tried to deceive the world and
herself as to the steady failure of her powers, and with the energy that
characterized her this woman of more than sixty forced her broken body to take
part in balls and hunting-parties, but at the opening of Parliament in 1601,
crushed under the weight and splendour of her royal
attire, she fell in the arms of the knight who was standing near her ;soon
after this a visitor to the court found her worn to a skeleton and plunged in
melancholy, an intolerable burden to herself and to those about her.
But even now the queen remained obstinately determined
to take no steps to settle the succession to the throne. Anxiety as to this
assumed all the greater proportions in England as the whole question had been
hopelessly complicated by the caprices of Henry VIII. The whole country had
been forced to swear allegiance to Elizabeth when she was still an infant ;
when she was three years old her own father had caused her to be declared by
Parliament incapable of succeeding to the crown, and by his will he had left
Mary Tudor heir to the throne. Mary Stuart, on the other hand, who was legally
the next heir, had been completely passed over by Henry in his will ; after the
death of Mary Tudor, she could no longer be considered the heir to the throne,
because she was looked upon as the future Queen of France, and France was at
war with England, and the act of Parliament which, after Elizabeth had ascended
the throne, confirmed the will of Henry VIII, once more tacitly excluded her
from the succession. From that moment Mary Stuart assumed the arms of England,
and this tacit assertion of her rights never again fell into oblivion. After
her death it was Mary’s son, the King of Scots, to whom English statesmen for
the most part turned their eyes, even though, besides James, many other
claimants to the crown were entitled to aspire to it.
But besides the question of primogeniture, there was
another motive which weighed heavily in the matter of the succession, according
as men were Catholics or Protestants. Both parties were resolved not to give
the crown to anyone who was not of their own faith. The hopes of the Catholics
had been greatly raised once Henry IV. had made his abjuration, a thing which
seemed to secure a preponderance in Europe to the Catholic powers. After 1591
it seemed that the Catholics were resolved to uphold the claims of Ferdinand
Stanley, but he, who was Earl of Derby from 1593, definitely refused the honour, and an English exile who, it is said, had gone to
him with such a proposal, was handed over by him to the government, and thus to
execution, which took place on November 29th, 1593.
Soon after this another step was taken by the Catholic
party. Two years before (in 1591) the Puritan Peter Wentworth had dared not
only to raise the question of the succession in Parliament, but also to publish
a work on the subject ; he had had to pay for his audacity by imprisonment in
the Tower, from which he was only freed by his death in 1596. The Jesuit
Persons, who had not yet given up hopes of seeing a Catholic ascend the English
throne, and with him the old religion, also formed the idea of writing a work,
asking for an impartial examination of the various claims to the succession,
but actually emphasizing the rights of the royal house of Spain, in that Philip
II counted Edward III among his ancestors, and before the setting out of the
Armada had asked Sixtus V to nominate him as King of England. The General of
the Order, Aquaviva, learned of this intention with dismay ; more far-seeing
than his subject, he at once realized that Persons was exposing the whole Order
to obvious peril for the sake of an impossible project. The author of the work
could not remain unknown, he wrote to the English Jesuits, and if it was still
possible to do so, its publication must be prevented.
This advice of Aquaviva arrived too late, and even
before he had received Persons’ reply, what he had feared had taken place. Not
all the Catholics took the part of Persons and Spain, and a party among the
English exiles in the Low Countries, very hostile to the Jesuits and little
scrupulous about their choice of means, had adopted the cause of James of
Scotland as successor to the throne. One of their agents, Charles Paget, had
been able to procure from an employe of the printers, for a sum of money, the manuscript
of the book, while another member of the party, Dr. Gifford, recognized the
handwriting; the greater part of the book was by Verstegan,
with long additions and corrections by Persons. Gifford at once laid
accusations against the book before the Papal nuncio Malvasia, who reported it
to Rome in accordance with Gifford’s ideas ; Paget denounced it to the English
authorities. It would seem, however, that the government refused to take any
steps, and the book, which appeared under the pseudonym of “Doleman,” did no
harm to anyone except its authors.
By this injudicious book, the authorship of which was
only partly his, though he was entirely responsible for its publication,
Persons showed that he was quite out of touch with his own country. The
Spaniards had very few partisans in England, while the appearance that the
Catholics were pledged to their interests gave their adversaries a welcome
opportunity for attacking them. “I cannot see,” wrote the Scottish Jesuit
Crichton to Persons, “that this book has done the least good, though its
disastrous consequences are manifest. The French have a proverb : You cannot
catch a hare with a drum. The preachers are hammering incessantly upon this
drum of yours, from the English as well as from the Scottish pulpits.”
But Persons did not even yet give up his hopes in
Spain; when in June 1596 an English fleet had sacked Cadiz, Philip II. planned
a new expedition against England. In the event of this proving successful
Persons had obtained a promise from the King of Spain that he would leave
England as an independent kingdom, or at any rate under the regency of his
daughter Isabella Clara Eugenia. Persons even drew up a memorial3 as to the
manner in which Catholic reform should be effected in England, and went to Rome
to get this accepted in accordance with Spanish ideas.
At the Vatican, however, at the beginning of April,
1597, he found a state of affairs that was but ill-disposed both to the Jesuits
and the Spaniards; while France was making every effort to undermine Spanish
influence. Nevertheless Persons’ skill brought it about that at the end of May
the Secretary of State wrote to the legate in France on the subject of the
succession to the English throne in a sense that seemed to reflect the ideas of
Persons. It is true that the suggestions were expressed in very vague terms;
there was no mention of definite plans, and no word of agreements or subsidies.
Evidently it was intended to await the result of the new Spanish Armada.
When in 1598 the last attack of Philip II upon England
met with an inglorious fate, Spanish prestige came to an end. It was
immediately realized that the failure of the great undertaking of 1588 as well
could not be attributed to chance, but to the weakness of the Spanish power.
Philip II now sought to make peace with France, and this was concluded on May
2nd, 1598, at Vervins.
Henceforward the Spanish preponderance passed to
France, and even Persons began to lose his confidence in Philip II, and in the
very same year, 1598, turned to Henry IV for support for the English Catholics.
The question of who should obtain the crown of Elizabeth now seemed to depend
upon the King of France. But Henry IV. was very far from wishing to put himself
forward as the champion of the Catholic Church ; rather was it his aim to
subjugate the Hapsburgs by means of a league of the Protestant powers with
France at their head.
Once Henry IV had decided in favour of James VI his rights to the succession were assured, in spite of all acts of
Parliament. During the years that followed they still continued to occupy
themselves in Rome and Madrid with the important question of the succession to
the English throne, but these negotiations were marked with but little clarity
or energy.
In Rome Persons still remained the important
personality in this matter, and a messenger from England with supposedly
important instructions was sent on by the nuncio in Madrid to Rome, as the Pope
wished to order the English Jesuit to take this matter into his own hands,
notwithstanding the fact that the rules of his Order forbade him to interfere
in any affairs of state. On July 12th, 1600, the Pope sent three briefs to the
nuncio in Flanders, which he was to keep until they could be made use of; one
of these exhorted the English Catholics to concord, and the two others warned
the archpriest and the nuncio not to support any claimant to the throne who was
not a Catholic. Certain letters attached to the briefs and containing
instructions to the nuncio, were composed by Persons. In one letter to Persons
on August 19th, 1600, the nuncio Frangipani remarked that the briefs in their
indefinite form would probably make very little impression : it was necessary
to decide upon a definite successor to the throne and give his name. Persons
had a conversation with the Pope as to this on September 12th. It would seem
that Rome would most willingly have supported the claims of the house of
Farnese, which could be strengthened by a marriage with Arabella Stuart, the
niece of Darnley. It was necessary, however, to take Henry IV. into
consideration, and the King of France replied to his Cardinal, Ossat, by whom these projects had been reported to him,
with a definite refusal. He wrote that the party which the Pope and the Spaniards
were supporting was so weak that the position of the English Catholics would
become even worse should they have recourse to force. He added that if the
Spaniards tried to obtain a footing in England, he would oppose them.
In Spain the burning question of the succession to the
English throne was a perpetual subject of discussion, and in two letters of May
11th and June 12th, 1600, the Spanish ambassador called attention to the
importance of the matter. As a result of this the Spanish Privy Council decided
that it would be well to put forward the claims of the Infanta Isabella Clara
Eugenia, and to place 200,000 ducats at the disposal of the Spanish ambassador
in Flanders. But the matter ended with this decision, and nothing further was
done.
It would seem, however, that the matter was dealt with
a little more energetically two years later. Although the greater part of the
English Catholics patiently bore the religious persecution, there were among
them some who were not averse to violent measures, especially those who, like
Lord Monteagle, Tresham, and Catesby, had either once been Protestants, or had
been brought up among Protestants. All these names appear among those who had
taken part in the rising of Essex, names which later on became so unfortunately
celebrated in connexion with the Gunpowder Plot. At
the beginning of 1602 Thomas Winter was sent by this group to Spain, to find
out what could be hoped for from Spain in the case of a rebellion. The
government at Madrid refused to allow itself to be drawn into making definite
promises, though it would seem that it held out certain hopes to the envoy, and
even took certain steps in the same direction. In the same year, 1602, the
Infanta Isabella, now the wife of the Archduke Albert, Governor of the Low
Countries, sent Captain Thomas James to Madrid with orders to say that both she
and her husband were absolutely opposed to any claim being made on their behalf
to the English crown. After this renunciation Philip III. gave up all further
hopes of the English succession, and declared his readiness to support whatever
claimant the Pope preferred. When Henry IV at last showed signs of a
rapprochement with Spain, there was again much discussion of the subject in the
Spanish Privy Council in February and March, and it seemed as though something
really would be done in the matter of the succession, but certainly nothing was
done.
Persecution in Scotland and
Ireland.—Clement VIII and James I
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