At Rome a more prolonged and more academic quarrel had nourished the feeling against the Society.The subject-matter of this controversy is of interest only to theologians, and the whole struggle must be dismissed in a few words. In brief, a Jesuit theologian of Portugal, named Molina, had in 1588 published a work (Liberi arbitrii cum gratiæ donis concordia), in which he had made novel efforts to illumine the mystery of the consistency of human freedom with the action of grace, and the way in which God may have a foreknowledge of events which may or may not take place. When Crétineau-Joly observes that Molina "talked as if he had been admitted to the counsels of the Most High," we can understand the indignation of rival theologians of the time. A Dominican theologian, named Bañez, had a different theory of these abstruse matters, and there was soon a fierce quarrel between the two orders. When the Spanish Inquisition refused to condemn Molina, the Dominicans carried the quarrel to Rome, where it enlivened and heated the chambers of the Vatican and the religious houses for more than twenty years. A commission appointed by the Pope condemned the teaching of Molina as "a dangerous novelty," the Jesuits induced the Pope to suspend sentence, and even profane ambassadors were drawn into the sacred arena. Spain threw its influence against Molina: France, naturally, supported him. It was not until 1607 that PaulV. judiciously decided that either opinion might be held with a safe conscience; and when it proved profoundly unsatisfactory to both parties to find that their rivals were permitted to live, the Pope had, in 1611, to impose silence on the disputants. The struggle still lingers in the remote and innocuous volumes of dogmatic theology which the rival orders occasionally publish.
In fine, we must glance at the progress of the foreign missions under Acquaviva. The Japanese mission now reached its highest prosperity and entered upon the daysof persecution. In 1565 there were ten Jesuit missionaries in Japan, but thirteen more were added to these in 1577, and the work proceeded rapidly. The fathers took no money from the converts, building their churches on funds they received from Europe; in fact, we find them, as elsewhere, adopting very novel and somewhat dubious devices to extend their work and enlarge the figures of conversions which it was important to send to Europe. They received into the Society a wealthy Portuguese merchant named Almeida, and then directed him to remain in his warehouses and ply his lucrative trade in Japan, until a few years before his death, in the interest of the Society. The detail is recorded without a blush by their official historians. The chief strength of their Japanese mission lay in the Portuguese commerce with Japan. This commerce was profitable to the country, and its rulers saw little harm in purchasing it by allowing the Portuguese to preach their strange gospel to the natives.
Yet no one can read the records of the Japanese mission without realising that the success of this early Christian mission was singularly sincere and solid, and presents a most remarkable and inexplicable contrast to the experience of our own time. By the year 1580 the Jesuits announced that they had made 100,000 converts; by the year 1593 they represent this number as doubled. We may assume that a large number of very imperfectly converted Japanese help to round these generous figures, but the extraordinary number of native Christians whom we shall presently find ready to endure suffering and death for their faith must convince every candid student that the early missionaries had sincerely converted an astonishing proportion of the nation. The success is the more strange when we reflect that the Jesuits were not men of what is usually understood to be an"apostolic" character. Not only had they members of their Society making money as merchants, but they induced Philip of Spain to send out his subsidy to them in the form of fifty large bales of silk every year, and they secured the sale of these to their highest advantage. Even less edifying is the fact that in 1585 they induced the Pope to decree that no other priests than Jesuits should be allowed to enter Japan.
Two years later the clouds began, as if in punishment, to overcast their prosperity. Taicosama had usurped the chief throne of Japan in 1583, and, as the Catholic generals in the army had made no defence of their legitimate monarch, he continued for some years to favour the Church. The displacement of the native faith, however, led him to reflect that it might entail political displacements, and he is said to have seized the opportunity, when certain Christian girls refused the honour of being added to the lengthy list of his concubines, to suppress the mission. The Jesuits were to leave his kingdom within twenty days, or die; and he burned nearly a third of their 240 chapels. The Provincial Valignani returned from Italy to find his mission on the brink of destruction. He had taken a few noble Japanese youths to Europe, and was bringing them back to tell their fellows of the grandeur of Rome and Spain. As a Jesuit he was forbidden to enter the kingdom. With remarkable ease he transformed himself into an ambassador of the Viceroy of India, and was borne in a superb litter to the presence of Taicosama, on whom he showered presents and compliments. The Jesuits were allowed to remain in the country, though still forbidden to practise their religion, and the hundred priests had for some time to be content with stealthy and nocturnal ministration to their converts.
At length Taicosama turned upon them with fury,and the great persecution began. Kaempfer says that the Jesuits excited the anger of the nobles by an insolent refusal to pay them the customary respect; but a more substantial grievance came to the ears of the monarch. In 1596 a Japanese was examining a map of the earth on which the vast possessions of Spain were shown. He asked a Spanish pilot how his master had obtained this enormous territory, and the man imprudently replied that Philip first sent missionaries into a country to prepare it for subjection, then armies. The remark was reported to the Emperor, and he fell upon the missionaries with a just charge that they had violated his prohibition of the practice of the Christian cult. A number of Jesuits and Franciscans were crucified, and thousands—the Jesuits say 20,000—of the native Christians testified to the sincerity of their belief by embracing martyrdom. The death of Taicosama in the following year, 1598, put a stop to the persecution, and it is claimed that 70,000 converts were made in the next two or three years. The Protestant Dutch traders were, however, now displacing the Portuguese and Spanish, and repeating to the Japanese those dark opinions of the political intrigues of the Jesuits which were current in their own land. Once more the decree of extermination went forth, and by the year of the death of Acquaviva the mission was nearly extinct. Its second recovery and final destruction will occupy us later.
The rule of Acquaviva was also memorable for the beginning of the Chinese mission. The repeated failures to gain admission drove the Jesuits to fresh expedients, and a few of their more learned members applied themselves to a thorough study of Chinese culture and religion. The first and most distinguished of these was Father Ricci, whom we find living in Chao Hing, and astonishing the local mandarins with his learning, in1583. We are not accurately informed how Ricci obtained admission, but we have seen, and shall see, that a Jesuit was prepared to make any profession whatever in order to enter a forbidden land. He seems to have concealed his religion, and posed as a lay scholar, until he was sufficiently advanced in the confidence of a few to entrust his ideas to them. He dressed as a Chinese scholar, and had (after 1587) two disguised lay-brothers in his house, which was transferred to Chao Chu. The mob, discovering his aims, attacked the house; but Ricci's able command of Western learning and appliances had greatly impressed Chinese scholars, and he made steady, if slow, progress. In the year 1600 he was invited to visit the Emperor at Peking, and shrewdly took with him a collection of telescopes, clocks, and other wonders of the West. He was allowed to live at Peking and enjoy the favour of the Emperor, and other priests quietly entered China and helped to found the mission. At one time its promise was nearly destroyed by a quarrel of the rival missionaries,—Jesuit, Franciscan, and secular,—but Ricci tactfully averted the persecution which their mutual charges brought on them. He died in 1610, and was honoured with a magnificent funeral at Peking. Numerically, there were as yet few converts. Ricci was not the kind of man to rush into the street with a crucifix and proclaim that the deities of China were false gods. It is only at a later date that we shall find a large and important mission in China.
The rest of the missionary field reported almost uniform progress under the vigorous rule of Acquaviva. Canada was opened by the French troops, and several Jesuits began to work among the Indians. Mexico proved, they reported, an easy ground; they claimed that half the population was Christian by 1608. The Brazilian mission now had a hundred and fifty priestsextending its flourishing work, and the first excursions were made into Paraguay (1586) and Chili (1593). In 1604, fifty-six fathers were sent into Peru. In the East, the Hindu mission continued to spread on the lines we have already described, and Abyssinia at last consented to admit the Jesuits. It will be convenient to defer until the next chapter a closer consideration of these missions.
This survey of the fortunes of the Society under the thirty-five years' rule of Acquaviva is a sufficient testimony to the ability of that gifted leader. When he died, on 31st January 1615, the 5000 members of the Society who had greeted his election had become 13,000, and 550 Jesuit establishments were scattered over the globe, from Peking to the slopes of the Andes. In view of the methods of the Society—the direct and at times indelicate seeking of money and the favour of the powerful—this growth cannot be regarded as singular. The Society had adopted new and very effective devices to increase their influence and membership; it is not as if other religious bodies had used the same means, and been less successful. And it is now clear that the distinctive general principles of the Society were rapidly assuming a complexion which the impatient feeling of its critics has expressed in the maxim that "the end justifies the means." This will be even more apparent when we consider, in more detail, the activity of the Jesuits in England.
I have as yet made no mention of the "Regulation of Studies" (Ratio Studiorum), which some regard as one of Acquaviva's most significant services to the Society. I am unable to see this significance in the treatise which (with later modifications) Acquaviva presented for the acceptance of the General Congregation in 1599. It is rather a disciplinary measure than aneducational code, and no improvement of Jesuit culture followed its promulgation. It attempted to impose a uniform course of two years in rhetoric and humanities (with fragmentary or expurgated editions of the classics), three years in philosophy (including mathematics), and four years in theology, on all the students of the Society. It also imposed the use of Latin in conversation except during the hour of recreation and on holidays. This scheme never was, and is not now, rigidly followed, and where it is followed the gain is disciplinary rather than cultural. We shall see better, when we come to examine Jesuit scholarship, the grave defects of the Jesuit education from a general pedagogical point of view. Its aim was narrow and specific,—the production of sound theologians,—and it would be a mistake to judge it at all from the wider educational point of view, were it not for the light and superficial praise it sometimes receives.
FOOTNOTES:[9]See Father Astrain'sHistoria de la Compañia de Jesus en España, vol. ii. chap. iii., chap. v. and elsewhere.[10]It was, and still is in Catholic countries, a custom to incline the head at the mention of the name Jesus.[11]See Count Hoensbroech'sFourteen Years a Jesuit(1911), ii. 334.[12]Jules Loiseleur,Ravaillac et ses complices, 1873.[13]I have consulted the Latin translation, by another Jesuit, of Coster's work,Sica tragica Comiti Mauritio a Jesuitis ... intentata(1599).[14]When I studied at Louvain University in 1893, I found the struggle just as it had been three hundred years before. The Jesuits still sought in vain to capture the university, and were detested as cordially as ever.
[9]See Father Astrain'sHistoria de la Compañia de Jesus en España, vol. ii. chap. iii., chap. v. and elsewhere.
[9]See Father Astrain'sHistoria de la Compañia de Jesus en España, vol. ii. chap. iii., chap. v. and elsewhere.
[10]It was, and still is in Catholic countries, a custom to incline the head at the mention of the name Jesus.
[10]It was, and still is in Catholic countries, a custom to incline the head at the mention of the name Jesus.
[11]See Count Hoensbroech'sFourteen Years a Jesuit(1911), ii. 334.
[11]See Count Hoensbroech'sFourteen Years a Jesuit(1911), ii. 334.
[12]Jules Loiseleur,Ravaillac et ses complices, 1873.
[12]Jules Loiseleur,Ravaillac et ses complices, 1873.
[13]I have consulted the Latin translation, by another Jesuit, of Coster's work,Sica tragica Comiti Mauritio a Jesuitis ... intentata(1599).
[13]I have consulted the Latin translation, by another Jesuit, of Coster's work,Sica tragica Comiti Mauritio a Jesuitis ... intentata(1599).
[14]When I studied at Louvain University in 1893, I found the struggle just as it had been three hundred years before. The Jesuits still sought in vain to capture the university, and were detested as cordially as ever.
[14]When I studied at Louvain University in 1893, I found the struggle just as it had been three hundred years before. The Jesuits still sought in vain to capture the university, and were detested as cordially as ever.
CHAPTER VI
THE EARLY JESUITS IN ENGLAND
Thefirst attempts of the Jesuits to carry their war against Protestantism into the British Isles have been noticed, at their various dates, in previous chapters. We remember the brave and futile journey of Brouet and Salmeron in 1541; the labours of David Woulfe, of unhappy memory, in Ireland in 1560; the fruitless adventures of Gouda among the Scottish Calvinists in 1562; and the obscure apostolate of Father King in England in 1564. Three years after the last date, Father Edmund Hay had made an equally unprofitable expedition to Scotland. He and Thomas Darbyshire, a nephew of Bishop Bonner, had been directed to accompany a Nuncio on a fresh attempt to advise and confirm Queen Mary. The Nuncio had prudently remained in Paris, and sent Father Hay, an adventurous young Scot who loved disguises and the inspiring chances of politics, to explore the kingdom. He spent two months in hiding at Edinburgh in the early part of 1567, and returned to say that there was no hope of success. At last, in 1580, a very able and remarkable English Jesuit, Father Robert Parsons, opened that stirring chapter of Jesuit history which closes with the Gunpowder Plot.
Since the beginning of the Reformation in England a number of Catholic students had gone abroad, and many of them had entered the Jesuit novitiate inBelgium, Germany, and Italy. Father More has preserved in hisHistoria missionis Anglicanæ(1660) the names of about thirty Englishmen who figure in the chronicles of one or other province down to the year 1580. Of these the most important were Robert Parsons and Edmund Campion, who opened the mission of 1580. Parson, a Somersetshire man of the yeoman class, had been a fellow of Balliol, where he had attracted some attention by his ability, his religious vacillations, and his disagreeable temper. He was compelled to resign and go abroad in 1573. Some (Camden and others) say that he was expelled for dishonest conduct, others that he was a martyr to religious conviction; but Father Taunton concludes, in his excellent study of Parsons, that he left "on account of perpetual disagreements with his fellows."[15]At Louvain he met Father William Good, who induced him to go through the exercises, and he entered the Society at Rome in 1575. He was ordained priest, and made English confessor at St. Peter's in 1578. Edmund Campion, who was the son of a London bookseller and a brilliant Fellow of St. John's (Oxford), had meantime joined the Society and was at Prague. He had known Parsons at Oxford, and they corresponded when they both became Jesuits.
The peculiar circumstances which led to theirmission, and had a most important bearing on its history, must next be told. A wealthy English priest, Dr. (afterwards Cardinal) Allen, had founded a college at Douai for supplying England with clergy to support the old faith. It was transferred to Rheims in 1578; and, as the free lodging and education which it offered to young refugees soon caused it to be overcrowded, a second college was opened at Rome and generously supported by the Pope. The Jesuit fathers lectured at this college. The rector, Dr. Clenock, was an injudicious Welshman, and the national prejudices of the English and Welsh students, who were a very turbulent lot, led to prolonged and most violent quarrels, which ended in the whole body of the young apostles marching out of the college. They demanded that the management of the college should be given to the Jesuits, and it is quite clear that the Jesuits encouraged their revolt. After a few months they found that the Jesuits also were unsuitable masters, and the trouble broke out afresh. It was then that Robert Parsons began his famous diplomatic career. He suggested that the Jesuits should co-operate with the secular priests on the English mission. General Mercurian and his counsellors demurred at first; there was no bishop in England to control the clergy, and they foresaw quarrels. The difficulty was removed by making the aged Bishop of St. Asaph ordinary for the whole of England, and inducing him to join the mission; and in April 1580, Parsons and Campion (who was summoned from Prague) set out on foot, with nine secular priests and a Jesuit lay-brother, Ralph Emerson, for Rheims.
It is disputed at what precise stage Parsons began to be a politician, but he was little known to the Papacy in 1580, and was certainly not admitted to its secretcounsels. He learned at Rheims, however, that a mission of by no means a pacific character had at the same time been sent to Ireland, and we know that a third mission, also of a political nature, was sent to Scotland, to prepare the way for a French invasion. The English authorities would naturally conclude that the mission to England was a part of this political conspiracy against Elizabeth. They had spies all over Europe, and long before the apostles reached Rheims a pen-portrait of each of them was being studied and distributed to the pursuivants at Westminster. There had as yet been little enforcement of the penal laws, in spite of the Pope's unhappy interference with the loyalty of English Catholics. It was well known that mass was said in more than one house in London, and that many a quiet manor-house sheltered nuns and priests, but there was little disposition to persecute on account of belief, and as yet little inclination of the Catholics to active disloyalty. To admit Jesuits was a different matter. What did even the Catholics of France and Spain say of them? And when this coming of the Jesuits coincided with a political activity of Guise and the Papacy against the English throne, it was inevitable that the authorities should decide to be vigilant and stringent. The missionaries were not deterred; they left their aged bishop behind, and made their way, in separate parties, to the coast. At St. Omer's Parsons and Campion learned that their names and descriptions were known in London, and officers were on the watch for them, but the spirit of romance and devotion urged them on, and they planned their campaign.
It is an amusing and characteristic picture which Parsons draws of his journey to London. He was a big, burly man of thirty-four, and wore the uniform ofan officer returning from the wars in the Low Countries. The befeathered hat and gold-laced coat and military swagger fitted him so nicely that the officers not only passed him, but got a horse for "the captain" and promised to pay every attention to his friend the jewel-merchant (Campion), who was to follow him in a few days. By the end of June they were together in the house that had been taken for them in Chancery Lane. At Rome, Parsons had met an enthusiastic and wealthy young Englishman named George Gilbert, and, instead of making a Jesuit of him, had sent him on in advance to prepare the way for them. He had boldly taken rooms for them under the nose of the chief official charged to arrest them—who was probably searching for them in the warrens by the river or the villages beyond the gates—and had formed a secret association of Catholics throughout the country to help them in their travels. The news soon spread through the Catholic world that two Jesuits were in England, and the secular priests, whom they met and endeavoured to conciliate, urged them to return to the Continent. It is difficult to look back and not see that they would best have served the cause of Catholicism in England by quitting it at once; the few thousand converts they made, or waverers whom they strengthened, were a small service in comparison with the fierce hostility they brought on the faithful, the political conspiracies in which they involved them, and the bitter dissensions they caused amongst the clergy. But for the coming of the Jesuits and the plots of foreign Catholics, Catholicism might have lived on in England as a considerable sect, overlooked by the authorities, until the Pope's blunder was forgotten and the penal spirit abandoned.
Yet we must respect the two Jesuits—to omit the humbler services of Emerson—for refusing to save theirlives by an immediate flight, and no historian, whatever his religious views, can read that first chapter of their story in England without sympathy and admiration. Each was provided by Gilbert with two horses and two suits and a servant, and they bade farewell to each other and set out to make their way, separately, through the legions of spies and officers. When they entered a county, the secret members of the association would send warning to the scattered Catholics along the route, and it would be given out that an acquaintance was expected. Toward evening the Jesuit, in some strange disguise, would ride into the courtyard and receive, under the eyes of the servants, the common civilities which one owed to a passing acquaintance; but when the inner chamber was reached, and the door closed, master and mistress would fall on their knees and kiss the hand of the traveller, and the broad-brimmed hat would be removed to disclose the face of the priest invoking a blessing on the persecuted faithful. Then Catholic neighbours might come, and confessions be heard, and the evening would be spent in sober discussion of the awful catastrophe that had befallen their Church. In the early morning a chalice and an altar-stone and vestments would be found among the luggage of the supposed soldier or merchant, and the little group would gather in a guarded chamber for mass. Possibly in the midst of the ceremony the sentinel would whisper that the pursuivants were upon them, and some stolid Catholic servant would hold the men at the door until priests and vestments were safely lodged in the pit which had been dug beneath the floor or the secret chamber cut out of the solid wall. When mass was over, the disguised Jesuit would, as a rule, give a last blessing and take to the road again, dining at inns where hemight see on the wall a description of himself and an intimation that the Government wanted to hang, draw, and quarter him. Parsons carried his bluff so far as to tear down one of these bills, and ask the landlord what he meant by confronting an honest traveller with reminders of that villainous Jesuit.
The two met again at Uxbridge in October, when Elizabeth had issued a third proclamation against them, and the search was being pressed vigorously. Campion returned to the provinces, and Parsons decided to remain in or near London. He had a bold design of setting up a press and stealthily issuing Catholic books, but it is reasonable to believe that he was now becoming convinced that only a large political action could save the faith in England. He saw much of the Spanish ambassador, Mendoza, even living in the embassy as a servant for a time; and from his conversations with Mendoza we may confidently date that idea of a Spanish invasion of England which was to dominate the remainder of his unfortunate life and cause incalculable mischief. Not only the general rule of his Society, but a most explicit command laid on him by Mercurian when he left Rome, forbade him to meddle with politics, yet he gradually became wholly absorbed in a political and treacherous project, and we may safely date its birth about this time.
Somewhere out of London—at East Ham, Simpson conjectures—he set up his press, and infuriated the Council by disseminating books which their advisers pronounced to have been printed in England. Hundreds of arrests were made, the rack was busy at the Tower, and the laws were made more drastic; yet the "howling wolf" (Parsons) and the "wandering vagrant" (Campion), as they were described in adebate in Parliament, continued to evade the zealous officers. Two other Jesuits, Cottam and Bosgrave, who attempted to join them, were arrested at once and put in the Tower; while the Irish Jesuit, O'Donnell, was hanged, drawn, and quartered at Cork.
In the early part of 1581 Fathers Holt and Heywood penetrated the Protestant defences and joined Parsons. He sent Holt on to Scotland, to further the political scheme he now cherished, and later had Father Crichton sent on direct to Edinburgh from Rouen. A genial page of Mr. Andrew Lang'sHistory of Scotland(ii. 282) tells how these Jesuits "let the pigs run through the job" in Scotland. The romance of hiding in Holyrood and assisting the great enterprise of the invasion of England seems to have exalted them, and they gave Mary, whom they would rescue, a very poor opinion of their qualities as diplomatists. They made airy promises of armies, to be provided by some foreign power, until at last even Mendoza begged them to confine themselves to the saving of souls and leave State affairs to statesmen. Father Hay, another Scottish Jesuit who joined them, advocated the assassination of the leading Protestant nobles. These Jesuits returned in the course of time to the Continent; Father Ogilvie, in 1615, was the only Catholic who was executed on the ground of religion in Scotland after a formal trial.
To return to England, Parsons found in the early spring of 1581 that his lodging in East Ham was suspected, and he moved the press to Dame Stonor's park near Henley, where Campion came to control the printing of hisTen Reasons: a Latin work, not hampered by modesty, which greatly stirred the Protestant divines of the time. Gilbert, who wasnow under surveillance and had lost most of his property in the cause, was sent to Rome to report that 20,000 Catholics had been added to the list of the faithful in a year—a quite incredible number, as only 50,000 recusants were known to the Council in the whole of England. On 11th July the two comrades parted, for the last time; Campion was caught at Lyford in Berkshire about a week afterwards. He had imprudently returned to a house at which he had ministered, and the officers closed round it. For a day and a night Campion lay hidden in the "priest's hole," but the officers at last discovered him, and sent him to London, conspicuously labelled "Campion the seditious Jesuit." We will not linger over the racking, the thrusting of spikes between his fingers and nails, and the other horrible devices by which the Council sought to extract a betrayal of others; though we might remind those who, like Crétineau-Joly, speak of these things as the hideous inventions of Protestant hatred, that these appalling instruments were, on the contrary, already stained with Protestant blood. Campion's great courage wavered under the long and terrible strain, and he supplied a few names of Catholic houses, to the great scandal of the faithful at the time; but he expiated his momentary weakness, on 1st December, by meeting with great bravery the ghastly death of a "traitor" at Tyburn. One of the two secular priests who were condemned to die with him, Father Briant, was admitted by him to the Society the night before the execution, and died a Jesuit. Father Cottam was executed in the following May (1582).
Parsons left Henley, where his press was discovered a month later, and went into Sussex. The secular clergy were now so eager to get the Jesuits out ofEngland that some of them threatened to betray him, and he went to France in March. Probably the feeling that he could promote his political scheme more effectively on the Continent had more to do with his flight than the fear of death or the pressure of the secular clergy. He remained at Rouen, smuggling English books from there into England and doing all that he could to press the Scottish enterprise. It was from Rouen that he sent Crichton into Scotland, and he was in constant correspondence with Mendoza and the Duke of Guise, who would help in the enterprise. Crichton presently returned to tell of the large and imprudent offers of help he had made to Lennox in Scotland, and they decided to make an effort to get armies for the rescue of Mary Stuart. Crichton was sent to Rome, and Parsons went to Madrid.
The chief interest of the work of the English Jesuits remains with the indefatigable Parsons on the Continent during the next five years, and a few words will suffice to tell the story of his colleagues in England. Besides two secular priests, Metham and Pound, who were admitted to the Society in prison, and Emerson, who was in prison (and remained there for twenty years), Heywood was now the only Jesuit in England; Holt had been captured in Scotland, and sent back to the Continent. Heywood caused a great deal of irritation by his masterful ways, and the secular priests indignantly describe him as driving in a luxurious coach, like a baron, and living so comfortably that he contracted gout. He was recalled to the Continent, but was captured and kept in the Clink until 1585, when he was banished. His place as Vice-Prefect of the mission—Parsons was Prefect—was taken by Father Weston, a new arrival, whose powers in expelling demons were so singular and spectacular that he used to take possessedpersons about with him in his stealthy visits to the Catholic gentry, and give most amazing displays—until it was discovered that the "mediums" were frauds. It had paid them, apparently, to swallow nauseous drugs and allow themselves to be mauled by Father Weston. He was captured and lodged in Wisbeach Castle in 1587, but Fathers Garnet and Southwell had then arrived, as we shall see presently. We must follow the feverish political activity of Parsons, which culminates in the sending of the Armada.
From Paris Parsons had made a swift journey, on horseback, to Madrid, where he greatly impressed PhilipII. By this time, at least, Parsons deliberately advocated the transfer of the English crown to Philip, and was therefore a traitor to his country and to the rules of his Society. He obtained from Philip a large sum of money for James of Scotland, a pension for the seminary at Rheims, and a promise that Spanish influence would support his claim of a red hat for Allen: he was anxious to remove Allen from the colleges he had founded, so that the Jesuits could control the supply of priests to England. A severe illness kept him for some months in Spain, but he was back at Paris in May 1583. During the summer he was in close correspondence with Guise and d'Alencon, who were now advocating and plotting the assassination of Elizabeth as the simplest solution of the situation. In August Parsons went to Rome, to excuse his activity, which scandalised the Parisian Jesuits, and to induce the Pope to subsidise the Scottish expedition and remove Allen to a loftier sphere. He returned in the autumn, having secured a bishopric for Allen and another pension for the college at Rheims. In spite of the protests of the French Jesuits he continued to pursue his plots. The French dukes withdrew from the enterprise, and the SpanishKing was now quite willing to move, if the Pope would be generous with funds. Gregory died in the spring of 1585, and Parsons and Allen went to Rome to win the new Pope, SixtusV.
There is at this date, and during the next few years, no room for doubt about the aim of Parsons. We have it repeatedly in his own words that he worked to seat Philip on the throne of England, and he shrewdly advised Philip to conceal his intention, from the English Catholics, Scotland, France, and the Papacy, until his expedition was successful. The death of Mary Stuart did not disturb him, and he gradually discarded the idea of attacking through Scotland. Philip was to make a direct attack, and the English Catholics were to be instructed to look to Philip, not as a future king, but as restorer of the faith. All the world knows the result. The great Armada (with several Jesuits on board) sank to the bottom of the Channel, and Parsons had the mortification of learning that even Catholics had loyally taken arms to repel the Spaniard. There ended the second phase of his remarkable career, and we may return to England.
In July 1586 Henry Garnet and R. Southwell landed on the Norfolk coast, as Dr. Jessopp so finely tells, and resumed the work which I have previously described. Garnet was, if somewhat less boisterous and masterful, the new Parsons; Southwell, a retiring and amiable man, the new Campion. As Weston was arrested in 1587, Garnet became Vice-Prefect. In the following year John Gerard and Edward Oldcorne joined them, and the story of adventurous ministration went on. On one occasion the four Jesuits were nearly caught in a batch, saying mass in a Catholic house; and in 1594 Garnet was caught and imprisoned for three years. He escaped from the Tower, with outsideassistance, in 1597, and returned to work. Southwell was betrayed by a Catholic lady in 1592, and, after three years in the Tower, was executed at Tyburn in 1595. In the same year Henry Walpole was arrested on arrival, and executed at York. Father Greenway was the only other Jesuit to enter the country before 1600, and we must leave these fathers pursuing their adventurous work and consider the growing quarrel of the Jesuits and the secular clergy.
That long and interesting story must be told very briefly here. Wisbeach Castle had been chosen as a prison for captured priests, and when Weston arrived there in 1587, he very plainly tried to assume a leadership. As his various suggestions were rejected, he made a party among the priest-prisoners, got himself appointed director of it, and initiated a bitter and prolonged feud which spread far beyond the walls of Wisbeach. To the secular priests' charges of arrogance and ambition, the Jesuit writers retort that even in jail the English priests were so prone to drunkenness, gambling, and immorality that Father Weston was forced to live apart with the more virtuous. A profane historian must not attempt to judge between them. It is enough that, especially in the years 1595-1597, reports of violent quarrels reached Rome; and these coincided with complaints from Belgium of the behaviour of Father Holt (who had been sent as agent of PhilipII. to Brussels and was denounced to the authorities for his violent political partisanship), and another rebellion of the students of the Roman college. Not only did these complain of their Jesuit masters, but they occasionally fell into the hands of the papal police in wine-shops and other improper places, and were found to be a very poor and undisciplined body of youths. Mr. Law insists that the Jesuits kept theEnglish priests at a low level of culture in order to control or overshadow them the more easily.
Parsons was now recalled from Spain and political intrigue to deal with this new menace. He had spent several years in Spain, founding new English colleges (at Valladolid, Seville, and Madrid) under his own control and working out his learned theory that the crown of England belonged of strict right to Spain. He failed to induce Philip to send a second Armada, and now devoted himself to proving that the Infanta was the heir to the crown of England. That is the idea of the book,A Conference on the Succession, which he published, anonymously, in 1594: a year after the fifth General Congregation of his Society had once more sternly decreed that no Jesuit must meddle with politics.
In 1597 he reached Rome and quickly pacified the students of the college. Some of them, it seems, thought that he ought to be made a cardinal for his great services, and he hastened, with tearful eyes, to ask the Pope to spare him that dignity; and we will trust that he was relieved when the Pope coldly observed that he had not had the least idea of imposing it on him. They then turned to the great question of Wisbeach, and the settlement of it doubly interests us; partly because a Jesuit supremacy in Wisbeach might be a good precedent for the time when a Catholic monarch succeeded Elizabeth, and partly because it throws a very singular light on Jesuit procedure.
The Jesuits submitted that the clerical prisoners in England desired some kind of canonical leader. ClementVIII., who had, like his great predecessor SixtusV., had some alarming experience of the state of the Jesuits (as we shall see later), required proof of this. They brought before him certain English priests, friendly to themselves, who assured the Pope that there was no discord in theirranks in England; the largeness of their "mental reservation" may be judged from the fact that a later inquiry showed that 343 out of the 400 priests in England were against the Jesuit proposal. The Pope was deceived, and he yielded to Parsons's suggestion to make George Blackwell, a former student under the Jesuits, "Archpriest" of the English clergy. Blackwell went to England to exercise this newly invented authority, and Parsons returned to his plots. He had then several secretaries to conduct his enormous correspondence, and he was so sure of a Catholic succession to the throne that he marked out various houses in London for use as Jesuit colleges.
After a time there came to Rome some of the English clergy, saying that they had received the Archpriest with amazement, and begging the Pope to withdraw him. The Pope was not in Rome, and Parsons took care that they should not reach him. He induced the papal authorities to arrest them, as rebels, and lodge them in the college controlled by the Jesuits; and when they persisted in appealing to a Roman tribunal, he secured the dismissal of the appeal. Later, a fresh batch of appellants came to Rome, and Parsons knew that their evidence would be very damning. Not only had the Jesuits, who controlled the moneys gathered for the support of the imprisoned priests, attempted to use this power to subdue them, but when the Pope had ordered that no more pamphlets should be written on the subject, Blackwell had refrained from publishing the decree until Parsons had time to issue one; and this one mendaciously purported to have been written by some "priests united in due subordination to the Archpriest." The secular priests had appealed to Elizabeth, and she had actually heard and set four of them at liberty, in order that they might plead their cause atRome. They now had the support of the French embassy, and, in spite of all the libels which Parsons circulated concerning them and the English clergy generally, they won a partial victory. Blackwell was to remain Archpriest, but he was not to consult the Jesuits.
From this domestic but instructive feud we return to the action of the Jesuits in England. Under ten different names Garnet had continued, amid a hundred adventures, to elude his pursuers, and his colleagues were only a little less active. We cannot, however, do more here than attempt to trace their share in the political scheming which culminated in the Gunpowder Plot. The Jesuits in England carried out the suggestion of Parsons that, instead of putting their faith in the eventual accession and conversion of James of Scotland, they should teach the Catholics to look to Philip. In December 1601 we find Garnet meeting Catesby, Tresham, and Winter in the house of Anne Vaux at Enfield Chase, and discussing the question of a mission to Spain. The issue of it was that Winter and Father Greenway went to Madrid, and obtained a large sum of money from PhilipIII.It was intended for the relief of the poor Catholics, Garnet afterwards said: in which case we do not very well understand why he "misliked" the expedition, as he says.
Elizabeth died on 24th March 1603, and James Stuart peacefully acceded to the throne. We need not stop to consider the shifts by which Parsons now sought the favour of James; he had, he boldly and untruthfully said, abandoned the idea of a Spanish succession at the death of PhilipII. in 1598. James was not to be deceived, and, in his negotiations with Rome, made a point of having the Jesuits excluded. The conflicting counsels in regard to the Catholics ended, as is known, in adecision to tolerate lay Catholics, but not priests, and the bitter agitation began which led up to the famous plot. Catesby and Winter conceived the horrible idea of blowing up the Parliament House when the King, the Royal Family, and the Lords and Commons were assembled in it for the opening of Parliament. Guy Fawkes, Thomas Percy, and J. Wright were admitted to the secret, and in March 1604 they met and swore to accomplish the plot. In an adjoining room a priest said mass for them, and Fawkes and Winter afterwards said that this priest was Father Gerard; Gerard, however, denied this, and the point is not important, since it is not at all probable that Gerard was ever admitted to the secret, and no priest knew of the plot until long afterwards. Gerard's idea was that toleration could be bought, but he failed even to find the money. For more than a year and a half the conspirators brooded over their ghastly scheme, and made preparations for carrying it out; and on 5th November 1605 Fawkes was arrested in the cellar beneath the House beside a mass of powder.
It is agreed that no Jesuit inspired this plot; the point we have to determine is whether the Jesuits were aware of the plot and acquiesced in it by their silence. The whole subject has been fully and repeatedly discussed, and I propose to rely almost entirely on the "Declarations" which Father Garnet addressed to the authorities during his trial and imprisonment.[16]The living Jesuit, Father Gerard, may express an ingenuous doubt whether there ever was a Gunpowder Plot at all; his predecessor of the seventeenth century, who ought to know, was concerned only to extricate himself, by a series of confessions, evasions, and untruths to which no parallel can be found in the history ofmartyrs, from the very grave moral and legal charge of having known that this horrible slaughter was contemplated and made no effort to disclose or prevent it.
Garnet confesses that on 9th June 1605 Catesby came to his lodging, at a costermonger's house in Thames Street, and, "finding me alone," asked if, "in case it were lawful to kill a person or persons, it were necessary to regard the innocents who were present." The Jesuit replied that the killing of innocent people in a lawful attack upon others was not immoral; he pointed out that soldiers had often, in besieging a town, to slay the civilian with the soldier. He professes in his declaration that he had no idea that Catesby had in mind an actual plot to be carried out in England. He had written to Parsons a few weeks before that many of the Catholic laymen were "offended with the Jesuits" on the ground that they "hindered forcible enterprises"; and he would have us believe that when one of these laymen, whose character he knew well, finding him alone, puts to him a singularly abstract question of this nature, it does not even occur to him that he has a "forcible enterprise" in mind. When Catesby was leaving, however, he assured Garnet that he would under no circumstances betray that he had consulted the Jesuit. Even then the innocent Jesuit failed to understand, and it was only on reflection, he says, that he thought it possible that Catesby was plotting. He therefore felt it to be his duty to "admonish" Catesby, the next time he met him, that he "must first look to the lawfulness of the act itself, and then he must not have so little regard of innocence that he spare not friends and necessary persons for a Commonwealth, and told him what charge we had of all quietness, and to procure the like in others."
Even if we suppose that this "admonition" was really given to Catesby as he describes it—one hesitates, because Garnet's conduct throughout is a classical example of casuistic perversion of truth—we can readily believe that Catesby took it very lightly, as Garnet says. Even if we could bring ourselves to admit that Garnet at the secret interview saw only an innocent and abstract moral issue, such as might be discussed in an open drawing-room, in Catesby's question, and therefore unwittingly sanctioned a bloody massacre, it is certain that he perceived on reflection that some such massacre was contemplated; yet he can only warn him to have regard for "friends and necessary persons," and feebly remind him of their duty of "quietness." Indeed in July, he confesses, he received "a very earnest letter" from General Acquaviva, who said, on behalf of the Pope, that they were vaguely conscious that something was contemplated by the English Catholics, and that the Pope and Acquaviva himself rigorously forbade any recourse to violence, as it would do more harm than good. He showed this letter to Catesby, because, he says, "I doubted he had some device in his head." Catesby admitted that he had, and offered to tell it to him. He refused to hear it, and merely stipulated that a layman should be sent to the Continent to learn if it were true that the Pope would not disapprove: a mission which, as Garnet knew, had no issue.
This last interview with Catesby occurred in the latter half of July, more than two months before the proposed opening of Parliament (3rd October). By that time, therefore, Garnet was quite aware, without the least reference to the seal of confession, that the Catholic laity contemplated some deed which directly aimed at taking life on so large a scale that the innocent would suffer with the guilty, and it wouldneed very little reflection to foresee that this deed was directed at the court or the Parliament, or both. Further, in order not to be obliged formally to condemn it, he refused, contrary to his plainest duty, to learn the details of it. The clue to his frame of mind seems to be given in his letter to Parsons in May. The laymen were "offended with the Jesuits" because they would not consent to "forcible enterprises"; he would therefore not interfere with their plot. He could, without violation of any sacramental confidence, because Catesby's admission to Father Greenway comes later, have prevented the plot from going any further, but he allowed this vague horror to proceed, and defied the emphatic command of the Pope and his General, in order that the Jesuits might not lose favour with the leading Catholic laymen. It is probable that he also trusted that the outrage would be justified by the result. Whatever his motives, his conduct was shifty, cowardly, and treacherous, and he fitly died the death of a traitor. He admits later in his "Declaration" that he "might have hindered all" by speaking to Catesby. He claims that he pressed the Roman authorities, through Parsons, to send a stronger condemnation of plots; but we have a letter of his to Parsons, dated 4th September, in which he assures Rome that the English Catholics are now quiet and submissive.
It is therefore unnecessary to decide whether he afterwards learned all the details of the plot under the seal of confession, and whether it was morally impossible for him to disclose such a communication. The guilt of Henry Garnet is clear enough, however we decide the further issue. Yet it is of interest, and the further development may be briefly recounted.
A few days after he had seen Catesby, in thelatter half of July, Father Greenway came to consult him. He was troubled about a "devise" that Catesby had submitted to him, and he proposed to submit it to his superior "by way of confession." Garnet then learned the details of the plot; he had forbidden Catesby to tell him, but was willing to learn them without Catesby's knowledge. He pronounced the plot "horrible," and said that Greenway must return to Catesby and condemn it. The Pope, he said, would send him to the galleys if such a plot came off. He urged Greenway to dissuade Catesby, and adds: "so we parted, yet with this compact, that if ever I should be called in question for being accessory unto such a horrible action, either by the Pope, or by my superiors beyond, or by the State here, I would have liberty to utter all that passed in this conference." He expected to see Catesby in October—he could undoubtedly have seen him before then—and says: "I assuredly had [if they met] entered into the matter with Mr. Catesby, and perhaps might have hindered all." He undoubtedly could have "hindered all" at any moment by an explicit declaration that the plot was a mortal sin, and by a threat of the Pope's penalties.
An attempt has been made to relieve Garnet of the heavy responsibility which this declaration lays on him by pleading that the Church binds a priest, under the gravest moral obligation, not to communicate anything learned "by way of confession." In the first place, Garnet does not say that Greenway learned the plot in confession. He says that he asked Greenway this, and he does not give his reply. It is, in fact, quite certain from Garnet's own words and conduct, that the communication was not made under the seal of confession at all. If it were, Garnet had no powerwhatever to speak to Catesby about it, as he says he intended to do: Greenway had no power whatever to permit Garnet to "utter all that passed in this conference" if he were brought to task: and Garnet committed a mortal sin and cowardly sacrilege in eventually revealing that he had heard of the plot from Greenway. There are obscure points about the theological doctrine of the "seal," but these things are not obscure or disputed. Catesby told Greenway in ordinary confidence, as he offered to tell Garnet. Even if it had been otherwise, Garnet's plain duty was to see that his colleague approached Catesby and made it a matter of conscience to abstain from such a design.
It is, in the next place, even clearer that the communication made by Greenway to Garnet did not come under the seal of confession. Garnet plainly intimates that there was no confession at all, and merely hints that it might be regarded as forming part of some future confession. The teaching of moral theologians is clear that a consultation for the sake of direction does not, unless it be intended as "a preparation for confession," come under the seal.[17]Greenway was not a penitent at all, and even a sinner cannot put a confessor under the seal when he chooses; he must confess his sins. In any case, the above considerations apply here also. Garnet would have no right whatever to approach Catesby if he learned the plot in confession; Greenway had no right whatever to name Catesby in a confession; Garnet would have no right to say, in confession, whether he would or would not listen to this "penitent"; and Garnet would most decidedly have no right to claim permission to break the seal if hisneck were endangered. To introduce "the seal of confession" is to make Garnet's conduct worse than ever.
It is plain that Garnet and Greenway feared to offend the laity by thwarting them, and it is probable that they thought the slaughter might help their cause. They locked the secret in their hearts, and nervously went about their work. In August Garnet went to the north, and in December, when the conspirators were slain and Greenway and Gerard had fled to the Continent, he sought refuge at Hinlip Castle, near Worcester, with Father Oldcorne. They were betrayed by a Catholic and discovered, after a full week's search of the castle. An astute jailer then tricked Garnet into a conversation with his colleague, and learned that there was one man who could connect him with the plot. In the presence of the rack he then declared that he was permitted to speak in such an emergency, and he related the "conference" with Greenway. He remained shifty and mendacious to the end, using the doctrine of mental reservation with an appalling flippancy. When charged with writing a letter to Greenway, he swore "on his priesthood," and without reservation, that he had not written it; and the Council then showed him the letter, which they had intercepted. He was justly, if barbarously, executed on 3rd May, on the ground of the general knowledge he had of the plot from Catesby himself. Equivocal to the end, he declared to the authorities that he had sinned against God and the king in not revealing the plot; while to the Catholic Anne Vaux he pleaded that "it was not his part to disclose it." He did not represent it as matter heard in confession.
As the innocent and estimable Oldcorne had been executed on 7th April, the Jesuit mission was over for atime, and the hopes of Catholicism blasted. Crétineau-Joly gives an inaccurate list of seven Jesuits who "perished" under Elizabeth, and airily adds "a hundred others." The truth is that from 1580 to 1606 there had only been a score of Jesuits in England, even including the secular priests who were permitted to take the vows in prison in order that their martyrdoms might illumine the chronicle of the Society; that only seven of these, including the seculars I have mentioned, were put to death; and that of the five regularly admitted Jesuits who were put to death, two obtained a remission of punishment by giving information. Yet their story is, on the whole, a story of heroism thwarted by political intrigue.
Two other Jesuits, Hunt and Worthington, had arrived before the plot, and in 1607 others began again to penetrate the defences of the country. The houses of wealthy Catholics were no longer available as they had been, and the life of the missionary was harder than ever; but the colleges on the Continent continued to send their ardent apostles into the field, and by 1615, when Acquaviva died, there are said to have been sixty-eight Jesuits in England. The prestige of Parsons had fallen low, but he remained, intriguing, on the Continent. For some years students had been passing from the Jesuits to the Benedictines, and in 1602, in spite of the opposition of Parsons, the Benedictines obtained from the Pope the right to work in England. ClementVIII.had received so many complaints that he threatened to expel Parsons from Rome, and Parsons, at a hint given him by Acquaviva, went to Naples for the advantage of his health, and remained there until the death of Clement. He returned with the accession of PaulV.in 1605, and continued to fight the secular clergy in regard to the archpriest. The extraordinary course of deception andintrigue which he maintained until his death in 1610 must be read in the spirited narrative of Father Taunton. His death closes the chief interest of the English mission under Acquaviva, and we will return to the struggling apostles at a later stage.