HOSTILITY OF THE ROMAN CATHOLIC BISHOPS, CLERGY AND CONSPIRACIES DURING THE REIGNS OF JAMES I. AND CHARLES I. SOCIAL AND POLITICAL CONDITION OF THE ROMAN CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTORY. THE sensitiveness of the English conscience is wonderful, even pathetic. It is for ever seeking reasons for selfdepreciation and self-condemnation. An Englishman is no longer right in his own eyes, and self-confidence has deserted his breast. Doubtful of his own uprightness and bewailing his shortcomings, he calls in question the conduct and policy of his forefathers. When accusations of cruelty, religious persecution and perfidy are brought against the men who made England, and laid the foundations of a world-wide empire, he is afraid to vindicate their memory, and assents in silence to charges which have no foundation. Overborne by the clamour of partial writers, who had not a particle of the historic spirit, and who wrote for the purpose of depreciating his country and his government, he surrenders his loyalty to his ancestors, who have been the great promoters of freedom of thought, of justice and of civilisation throughout the world. In his humility and self-denunciation he is willing to forget that he is come of a people who have ever been distinguished by their piety, integrity, humanity, and what, is perhaps the greatest civic virtue-a love of compromise. Yet there are circumstances in his own history which might have led him to doubt the truth of these accusations. It is unquestionable that the growth of England has been accompanied with infinitely less bloodshed and rancour than that of the neighbouring nations, France, Spain and Germany. No general massacres stain his annals for a period of 800 years. The number of those who died for their religion is small indeed. His civil contests have been conducted with wonderfully little direct injury to the country at large. During the Wars of the Roses the mischief of the struggle was limited to the feudal lords and their dependants. No public buildings were demolished and no towns were sacked. Commerce went on unchecked, and even increased. The course of justice was undisturbed, and the judges went their circuits. In the great civil wars, 1642-1651, nothing was more remarkable than the reluctance of both parties to take up arms, and their constant eagerness for an accommodation. Negotiations took up nearly as much time as military operations. The Royalists and their opponents were agreed that the laws regarding private transactions and interests should be rigidly maintained. As in the Wars of the Roses, the judges went their circuits and held their courts in the provincial towns. In the midst of revolutionary confusion England was singularly exempt from crimes of violence. No bands of marauders, taking advantage of the commotions of the country, spoiled the peaceful inhabitants or pillaged their possessions. The revolution of 1688 was bloodless. If we compare our internal contests with even the modern Continental revolutions of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, we cannot but be struck by the essential difference between them. The English were limited and regulated movements in one direction-the latter were all destructive explosions. Nevertheless, in spite of reflection and the lessons of the past, the Englishman is uneasy. If the Treaty of Limerick or the Penal Laws are mentioned in his presence he hangs his head, and has nothing to say to charges of faithlessness and intolerance. Yet it is as clear as the day that the Treaty of Limerick was not violated, and that no such statement was ever made in Ireland respecting it until the establishment of the first Catholic Committee in 1756, when it was put forward as a good popular cry. As for the Penal Laws, they were extorted from an unwilling Government by the numerous attacks of the Catholic powers from without, and by the support given to those attacks by a faction among the Roman Catholics at home. This is not the opinion of one individual alone, but is supported by the testimony of many wise and learned men of that persuasion. In 1601, at the end of Elizabeth's reign, the Secular priests of England issued an address to all "true and sound Catholics". In this, they declared that the Penal Laws were brought upon their community by the causes just mentioned; that some of their own calling, if they had been members of the Queen's Council, "knowing what they do know, how under pretence of religion the life of Her Majesty and the subversion of the kingdom is aimed at," would have consented to the making of similar laws, and that no one during her reign was ever vexed "for that he was either priest or Catholic". In 1604, the Roman Catholic laity, in a petition to James I., asserted that for the first twelve years of the reign of Elizabeth, i.e., up to her excommunication by Pius V., their community was undisturbed. "No prince," say they, "was for that space better beloved at home, or more honoured or respected abroad; no subjects ever lived with greater security or contentment; never was the realm more opulent or abundant; never was both in court and country such a general time of triumph, joy 1 Important Considerations, 1601. |