CHAP. XXXII. FIRST ENTRANCE OF THE JESUITS INTO ENGLAND-SEVERE 6 XXXII. It was at Midsummer 1580, that Jesuits came into CHAP. England for the prosecution of those objects for which their English pupils had been trained.' The two first entered privily; travelled up and down secretly over the country, and to popish gentlemen's houses in disguised habits; sometimes of soldiers, sometimes of gentlemen, sometimes as ministers, and sometimes as apparators, lustily performing what they had in charge.' Of these two, Parsons, who was constituted superior, a man of seditious and turbulent spirit, brake so far forth with the papists about deposing the queen, that some of them thought to have delivered him into the magistrates hands." The queen about the same time issued a proclamation, commanding those who had children or relations beyond the seas, to recall them; and forbidding 6 1 Campian and Parsons led the way. Campian had been missioned by the Jesuits at Rome to Bohemia for eight years; after which he was sent to England, and passing first to Rheims to confer with Allen, entered our island 24 June 1580. Ribad. p. 508, 9. 2 Camden Eliz. p. 217, 18. The number of names they assumed as they shifted their appearances, we see from Garnett's indictment. This Jesuit came into England in 1586. He lived here under the several appellations of Wally, Darcy, Roberts, Farmer and Phillips. State Trials, v. 1. p. 240. BOOK any to receive into their houses seminary priests or Jesuits, on pain of being proceeded against as the favorers and supporters of rebellious and seditious persons. The entrance and progress of the Seminarists and Jesuits, were managed with great address and secrecy; but the privy council obtained such information of their number and practices, as to deem it necessary to apply for the aid of parliament, to repress the growing mischief. A statute of great severity was enacted for this purpose, and was enforced on several persons afterwards, who chose, in prosecution of their own purposes, to violate its provisions and to dare its punishment. It was a melancholy truth, arising from the dire necessity of the case, that the features of the national laws became unusually stern; and their execution fatal to the lives of many; and that the government assumed a conduct of rigor, suspicion, and punishment towards its Catholic subjects. But it is clear that the Camd. 217. Sanders de Schis. p. 441-3. The official document charges them with coming with special mandates from the pope, to withdraw the subjects from their legal obedience, and to instigate them to something by which the public peace would be disturbed. Sand. p. 442. On 23 Nov. 1584, the statute was passed, which, reciting, 'That Jesuits, seminary priests, and other priests made such beyond the seas, have been sent, and daily come into England, of purpose, as hath appeared, as well by sundry of their own confessions as by other proofs, to withdraw subjects from obedience, and to stir up rebellion and sedition and open hostility,' ordered all such who had been ordained since Midsummer 1559, to depart the realm within 40 days, or as soon as wind and weather served; and no others to come into England, under the penalties of high treason. It was also made felony to receive such, knowing them to be so. Englishmen brought up in any foreign seminary, were to return within six months, and take the oaths of allegiance and supremacy, or to be reckoned traitors. None were to send money to any Jesuit or seminary priest, nor their children, beyond seas, without a licence; and to know of such Jesuit and priest, and not to discover them, was to be subject to fine and imprisonment. Stat. 27 Eliz. c. 2. 5 XXXII. harshness and severity were reluctantly resorted to: CHAP. and no one who wilfully enters a country in direct contradiction to its established laws, and therefore in defiance of them, has a right to complain of their penal inflictions. He voluntarily incurs the evil, which he braves and suffers from; and it was the peculiar character of these laws, that they were defensive; not attacking measures. The proscription did not precede the offence, nor the penal law the disturbing mischief which compelled it into existence. The warfare was neither desired nor provoked by Elizabeth. Her inveterate enemies chose to assail her with mysterious conspiracy and undermining rebellion; and then had the ingenuity and the "When the popish faction published in print, that the bishop of Rome and Spaniard had conspired together to conquer England, of purpose to give courage to their party, and terrify the rest,' the queen published an admonitory edict, declaring that she had attempted nothing against any prince, but for the preservation of her own kingdom, nor had invaded the provinces of any other, tho often provoked and invited.' She exhorted her faithful subjects to continue immoveable in their allegiance: and the rest, she commanded not to provoke the severity of justice; for she would no longer offend in such sort, that by sparing the bad, she should be cruel against herself and her good subjects.' Camd. 218. "One of these is the Jesuit Ribadineira, who, with all the facts before him, chose in 1594 to write, that all the miseries which the Catholic church had suffered from Gentiles, Arians, Goths, Vandals, Lombards, Mahometans, Hussians, and Huguenots, or from any other diabolical sect of heretics and pagans, might be seen as in a mirror, in this persecution of Elizabeth.' p. 534. He then subjoins, The cause of their death was their confession of the Catholic faith, and not recognizing the queen's supremacy.' p. 538. But he admits that the English government published that this was not the true cause of their death; but, that they had devised, at Rheims and Rome, the death of the queen, and conspired against the kingdom, and were procuring other princes to invade it and to usurp the crown.' ib. p. 538. He is pleased to add, 'These things they sought to prove by false witnesses, hired and paid!!' ib. His own connections in his society and its records, and his papal friends, and their published books, must have taught him to know, that the charge of the English cabinet was not untrue; tho later writers may have repeated such assertions from honest ignorance. BOOK sincerity to deny their own treasonable or seditious purposes; and to assert that the remedial statutes which the welfare of the nation had, in the judgment of its government, and to the conviction of the general population, made indispensable, were a cruel, uncaused, and Neronian persecution of unoffending piety, and of peaceful innocence. But such virtues would have ensured the respect of Elizabeth, under every form of worship. It was against the Criminal, the Agitator, and the Traitor, that the harsh statutes, to which she gave the regal sanction, were alone directed. The life of Elizabeth was now repeatedly aimed at. A book was published, exhorting the queen's women to commit the like against her, as Judith had done, with commendations, against Holofernes." As she passed down the river, a man discharged his piece upon her majesty's barge, and hurt certain persons in her presence.' Dr. Parry, who had 7 Camden El. p. 262. This was in 1584. As the author could not be traced, the printer suffered for it. There was an absurd scandal raised by the Spaniards, (Camd. 199,) which Ribadineira repeats, that she employed Egremont Radcliffe to kill don John of Austria. But he was Philip's agent and pensioner. He is thus noted in Murdin's State Papers: Egremont Radcliffe came to Madrid 2d May 1572. The king gave him in July 300 ducats, and 2d September 200 more. On 10th September he departed for Milan, where the king gave him a ducat a day. He returned thence a year after, and at his return the king gave him 300 ducats He departed from Madrid toward France in May 1574.' Murd. 243. I derive this fact from the old book, ‘Leicester's Commonwealth,' published with the name of Robert Parsons, Jesuit. He says of the act by error, as was thought;' and that ‘sir Christopher Hatton, in a very great assembly, made an eloquent oration, at the pardoning and delivery of him from the gallows.' p 95. We have the account of another project of assassination from Elizabeth herself, in lord Shrewsbury's letter of 18th October 1582. Her majesty told me, that on a time having had notice of a man who had undertaken to execute mischief to her, and the stature and some scars of his face being described to her, she happened, as she was in progress among a multitude of others, to discover this man; yet, not being astonied at the 10 XXXII. opposed the act against the Jesuits in the house of CHAP. Commons, being accused by a person with whom he had been tampering, was taken up, and confessed that a Jesuit at Venice had applauded his design; which was to assassinate the queen, and had recommended him to the pope's nuncio there, under whose sanction he applied to the pope." At Paris he learnt that many English Catholic priests, with their usual rightness of feeling, pronounced his design to be utterly unlawful." But as he had pledged himself to it in Italy, he would not relinquish it, if he should obtain the pope's allowance and absolution.13 He advised with a Jesuit at Paris, who commended him in confession," and he wrote the view of him, she called my lord Leicester, and shewing the party to him, he was apprehended, and found to be the same.' Lodge Illust. 2. p. 288. 9 He' was the only man that stood up to speak for them [the Jesuits], declaiming that the said law was cruel, bloody, full of desperation, and hurtful to the English nation.' Camd. 272. From 1570 to 1580 he had been one of the queen's household servants, but being then disgraced for wounding a gentleman of the Temple, he became discontented; and in September 1582, went abroad to Italy. Confess. in State Trials, 1. p. 122. 10 There I became acquainted with father Benedicto Palmio, a grave and learned Jesuit. I conceived a possible mean to relieve the afflicted state of the Catholics, IF the same might be well warranted in religion and conscience by the pope or some learned divines. I asked his opinion: he made it clear; commended my devotion; comforted me in it.' Parry's Confess. in State Trials, v. 1. p. 122. 11 And made me known to the nuncio Campeggio, resident there for his holiness. By his means I wrote to the pope, presented my service, and sued for a passport to go to Rome. Answer came from cardinal Como, that I might come, and should be welcome.' ib. 12 State Trials, p. 123. The Jesuit Creichton was one of these honorable opposers of this assassination. Camd. 273. Yet even he could embark in a plan of treason. See note 21. 13 Notwithstanding all these doubts, I was gone so far by letters and conferences in Italy, that I could not go back, but promised faithfully to perform the enterprise, if his holiness, upon my offer and letters, would allow it, and grant me full remission of my sins.' ib. 123. 14 I wrote my letters, 1st January 1584, and took advice upon them in confession of father Annibal a Codreto, a learned Jesuit in Paris; |