FOOTNOTES:[18]This rare and curious work, which was often condemned and burned in subsequent years, was published in 1654, and affords a particularly unpleasant picture of the Spanish Jesuits. It was attributed to a distinguished Dominican monk. He denied the authorship, but many believe that the denial was merely a matter of policy.[19]See the author'sIron Cardinal(1909), p. 341.[20]Crétineau-Joly suppresses the whole of these facts, and describes Père de Bérulle as "intimately united with the Jesuits"! De Bérulle's letter to Richelieu is published in theAnnales, ii. 738.[21]Many of the documents are collected in theAnnales de la Société des soi-disans Jésuites. The most familiar procedure of the Jesuits was to accuse the monks of corruption and rely on their influence at court to prevent too close an inquiry. The French Conseil d'État forced them, as late as 4th August 1654, to restore three abbeys to their lawful owners.
[18]This rare and curious work, which was often condemned and burned in subsequent years, was published in 1654, and affords a particularly unpleasant picture of the Spanish Jesuits. It was attributed to a distinguished Dominican monk. He denied the authorship, but many believe that the denial was merely a matter of policy.
[18]This rare and curious work, which was often condemned and burned in subsequent years, was published in 1654, and affords a particularly unpleasant picture of the Spanish Jesuits. It was attributed to a distinguished Dominican monk. He denied the authorship, but many believe that the denial was merely a matter of policy.
[19]See the author'sIron Cardinal(1909), p. 341.
[19]See the author'sIron Cardinal(1909), p. 341.
[20]Crétineau-Joly suppresses the whole of these facts, and describes Père de Bérulle as "intimately united with the Jesuits"! De Bérulle's letter to Richelieu is published in theAnnales, ii. 738.
[20]Crétineau-Joly suppresses the whole of these facts, and describes Père de Bérulle as "intimately united with the Jesuits"! De Bérulle's letter to Richelieu is published in theAnnales, ii. 738.
[21]Many of the documents are collected in theAnnales de la Société des soi-disans Jésuites. The most familiar procedure of the Jesuits was to accuse the monks of corruption and rely on their influence at court to prevent too close an inquiry. The French Conseil d'État forced them, as late as 4th August 1654, to restore three abbeys to their lawful owners.
[21]Many of the documents are collected in theAnnales de la Société des soi-disans Jésuites. The most familiar procedure of the Jesuits was to accuse the monks of corruption and rely on their influence at court to prevent too close an inquiry. The French Conseil d'État forced them, as late as 4th August 1654, to restore three abbeys to their lawful owners.
CHAPTER VIII
UNDER THE STUARTS
Withthe exception of the English mission, which I have reserved for continuous treatment in this chapter, we have now surveyed the whole life of the Society of Jesus during the first century of its history. The most important conclusion that one can draw from this extensive and varied body of experiences is that every attempt to impose a uniform character on the early Jesuits must fail. The uniformity in virtue and heroism which is ascribed to the Society in the florid pages of theImago Primi Sæculiis as far removed from the truth as the uniformly dark features which are imposed on the Jesuits by some writers of the opposing school. The candid historian must follow the example of Macaulay, and give contrasted pictures of the light and the darkness, the heroic devotion and the demoralising casuistry, which one equally discovers in that first century of Jesuit history; and his effort to do justice will miscarry, as that of Macaulay did, because Catholic writers will ingenuously detach the earlier and more flattering half of his verdict and represent it as his full conclusion.
This extreme variety of types is in itself an indication that the discipline of the Society had failed. Ignatius had laid stress on two rules: the novices were to be chosen with a care which the older orders had ceased to maintain, and the men were to be controlledby a system of surveillance and abject submission to authority which should have secured a large measure of uniformity. We have seen that these rules were very largely disregarded. The complaint is constant and well founded that the Jesuits looked less to character and devotion than to ability and social position in examining the candidates for admission. It is, perhaps, singular that this did not at least give the Society a more imposing intellectual status. Crétineau-Joly has industriously collected the names of the chief writers and scholars who adorned the annals of the Society during the first two centuries. One need only say that, apart from theologians, there are very few names in the list that will be found in any impartial calendar of those who contributed to the development of modern culture. This vast society of leisured and comfortable bachelors offers us a singularly meagre statement of results. Its prominent names are generally the names of politicians and pamphleteers. This comparative poverty, apart from theology, is not surprising when we reflect that the purpose of the Society was to combat heresy; it is merely necessary to note the fact because the contrary is so frequently stated. In proportion to their numbers, their resources, and their exceptional opportunities (through their schools) of attracting eligible youths, the Jesuits are not, and never were, a learned body.
This general mediocrity of intellect is accompanied by a general mediocrity of character. Just as their vaunted system of education is singularly unsuccessful in developing higher ability, so their equally lauded spiritual exercises leave the great body at a very common level of character. When we have justly admired the apostles who here and there exhibit heroic self-sacrifice on the foreign missions, the communitieswhich here and there brave the horrors and dangers of a plague-stricken town, the few whose integrity of life wins the respect of people unattached to the Society, we find ourselves confronting a general body of men of no moral or spiritual distinction. During generation after generation the largest provinces of the Society persist in comfortable idleness, and the efforts of superiors to assert the despotic power they are supposed to possess are met with resentment and intrigue, and are nearly always foiled. The theoretical corpse-like passivity of the Jesuit is a sheer mockery of the facts of their history.
They stand out from the other religious congregations of the Roman world only in the attainment of greater power and wealth, and the means by which they attain them. Here alone is there a distinctive strand in the story of the Jesuits, perceptible from the foundation of the Society. Unquestionably they did far more for their Church in the first century after the Reformation than any other religious body; and they did this specifically by seeking wealth and power. They strained every nerve to secure the ear of popes, princes, and wealthy people. That was the plain direction of their founder. But we may be confident that Ignatius would not have sanctioned the fraud, hypocrisy, slander, intrigue, and approval of violence which this eagerness for power brought into the Society. In India and China, in England and Sweden, they assumed a right to lie in the service of God; and in the same high cause they counselled or connived at murder, slandered their fellow-priests, violated their sacred obligations, fostered wars, and accommodated the Christian ethic to the passions of wealthy or influential sinners. It was never necessary for a Jesuit theologian to declare that "the end justifies themeans."[22]If the phrase is regarded, not as a citation from a written book of rules, but as an interpretation of the conduct of the Jesuits, it expresses the most distinctive feature of the character of the Society during its first hundred years.
We have now to see how this characteristic will be maintained during a second century, and will at length bring a terrible catastrophe upon the Society. For half a century the Jesuits will continue to enjoy and augment their wealth and power, but the hatred which they have provoked in the minds of their co-religionists gathers thicker and darker about their splendid prosperity and at length extinguishes it. They die by the hand of Catholics, suffering the just penalty of their grave abuse of power. It will now be more convenient to follow their history continuously in each province, and we may begin with England.
We left the Jesuits struggling in disguise and penury in England at the death of General Acquaviva (1615). After the wave of anger which the Gunpowder Plot had raised had partly subsided, dozens of Jesuits stole bravely into their native land and ministered stealthily to the persecuted Catholics. There were sixty-eight of them in England in 1615; by 1619 the number had increased to nearly two hundred, and the Roman officials raised the mission to the status of a vice-province; in 1623, when there were 284 members, they were formed into a Province of the Society, with Father Blount as Provincial. The indisposition of JamesI.to persecute emboldened them to act with greater vigour. The fantastic picture of their activityin Crétineau-Joly is, of course, wholly inaccurate. We read of a Father Arrowsmith "issuing from his retreat" to challenge and defeat the Bishop of Chester in a debate, and expose himself to the prelate's vindictiveness. It was not in 1628, but some years before, that Edmund Arrowsmith argued with the Bishop of Chester; he was then not a Jesuit at all, and he did not issue from any retreat to challenge the prelate or suffer any vindictive punishment. He was arrested as a priest, happened to find the bishop eating meat on a Friday and argued the point in passing, and was released.[23]
The truth is that from 1607 to 1618 there were only sixteen persons executed on the ground of religion in England, and none of them was a Jesuit. The prisons, indeed, contained several hundred priests, and several thousand Catholic laymen, but James was disinclined to take extreme measures, and the priests had much liberty even in jail. Father Percy, a Durham man, converted 150 men and women of rank, including the Countess of Buckingham, mother of the famous minister, during his three years in the New Prison on the Thames. James himself condescended to debate with him, and Father Percy ended a long and adventurous career in bed. In 1622, in fact, when James began to negotiate with Spain for a Catholic princess for his son, four thousand Catholics were released from jail, and the execution of the penal laws was greatly relaxed. Catholics generally looked forward with eagerness to the marriage, but the Jesuits opposed it at the Vatican. It issuggested that they dreaded the coming of a bishop in the train of the princess, but it is not improbable that they preferred an alliance with France. When the Spanish negotiations failed—and they would have failed without any assistance from the Jesuits—the laws were enforced once more with some rigour. Still it was only accident or imprudence that brought punishment on the Jesuits. In 1623 one of them, Father Drury, was preaching on a Sunday afternoon to some two or three hundred Catholics in the house of the French Ambassador at Blackfriars, when the floor gave way, and the preacher and a hundred others were killed. The common folk of London made ghastly merriment over "the doleful even-song." Five years later several Jesuits were caught in a house belonging to the Earl of Shrewsbury at Clerkenwell. We find that they had there a regular novitiate and the residence of their Provincial. An imposing ceremony was to take place, and the large intake of provisions aroused the suspicion of the priest-hunters. Only one Jesuit was executed. In 1622 forty of the fathers had attended a provincial congregation of their Society in London, and they had decided to found colleges in Wales and Staffordshire.
There is, however, another aspect of the activity of the Jesuits in England which the French historian discreetly ignores. We saw in an earlier chapter how Father Parsons had intrigued to get control of the continental colleges and to prevent the sending of a bishop to England. His successors continued to exasperate the secular clergy by pursuing this selfish policy. Of the twenty-seven French and Flemish seminaries which supplied the large body of priests in England, the Jesuits controlled five, besides their colleges in Spain, and they made every effort to obtainan ascendency over the priests. When the Archpriest died in 1621, the secular clergy again appealed to the Pope for a bishop, and the Jesuits again opposed the appeal. When, after a long struggle, the Pope inclined to make the appointment, the Jesuits induced Tobie Matthews (a Catholic son of the Archbishop of York) to have James informed. The King sent word to the Pope, through Spain, that he would not suffer the appointment, but he was later convinced that he had been misled and the secular priests obtained a "Bishop of Chalcedon." He died in the following year, and his successor seems to have been imprudent, as the Benedictine monks joined the Jesuits against him. The inner history of this domestic squabble is told us by Panzani, who was the Vatican agent in England a few years afterwards. He tells us that the Jesuits made an improper charge to the King against the Bishop, and he was driven to the Continent.
Since one of the chief problems of Jesuit history is to account for the bitter hostility to them of priests who were no less devoted than they in the service of Catholicism, it is necessary to notice this unpleasant wrangling and intrigue in the very heart of an heretical land. I may, however, refer to Father Taunton'sHistory of the Jesuits in Englandfor a longer account of this domestic struggle and return to the larger historical question.
The early years of the reign of CharlesI.were not marred by any enforcement of the more drastic penal laws. The fining of lay Catholics—of whom about eleven thousand were known—still provided the King with a handsome addition to the privy purse, and indeed it was necessary to disarm the sullen suspicion with which the more zealous Protestants watched the foreignqueen and her spiritual court. No serious effort was made, however, to enforce the laws against the Jesuits, and they increased in numbers and resources. In 1628 they opened a second novitiate in London. In 1634 one of the secular clergy estimated that there were 360 Jesuits in England, and that they had 550 students in their colleges. This is evidently an exaggeration, as theAnnual Lettersreport a total of 335 members of the Province in the year 1645, and disclose the interesting fact that they had a collective income of 17,405scudi(about £35,000 in the value of modern money). It is stated by their clerical opponents that part of their income was derived from commerce. A certain soap was genially known in London as "the papist soap," and it is said that the Jesuits had, through their lay friends, shares in the factory which produced it. They were in a strong and comfortable position, and, had they been disposed to lay aside their corporate selfishness and co-operate generously with the other clergy, the story of religion in England might have entered upon a singular development.
In the reign of Charles what we now know as the "High Church" held a strong position, under Archbishop Laud, in the Church of England, and there were indications of a disposition to return to the allegiance of Rome. The head of the English Benedictine monks, Dom Jones, was sent by the Vatican in 1634 to examine and direct the situation, and he and his successor, Panzani, did much to reconcile the secular and the regular clergy. The Jesuits, however, would not be reconciled, and Panzani's reports to the Vatican are full of bitter charges against them. In the Catholic England which they foresaw they were determined to have a dominant position. It was said that they induced wealthy and influential penitents to make a special vowof obedience to themselves, and they were even charged by the clergy with impeding the general restoration of Catholicism lest the new authorities should expel them from the kingdom. They retorted with a bitter attack on the papal agent. Virulent pamphlets were discharged from camp to camp, and the Jesuits represented Panzani as a secret agent of Richelieu, seeking to unite England and France in opposition to Spain. In spite of this intestine discord the Church of Rome continued to make progress until the shadow of the Civil War fell upon the land and the success of the Puritans once more stifled the hopes of the Catholics.
The relation of the Jesuits to the Puritans has never been fully elucidated—perhaps can never be fully elucidated—but there is sufficient evidence that they again proved their remarkable power of adaptation to varying circumstances. We will not suppose that they themselves offered the rebels the use of their theological doctrine of the right to depose and execute kings, or put into their hands Father Parsons's convenientBook of the Succession, part of which was published by the Parliament. But there is evidence that, under the Commonwealth, they were in indirect relations with Cromwell, and used their international connections to provide him with information about France. In Ireland they opposed the papal Nuncio, Pinuccini (as he bitterly complains), and were on good terms with Cromwell. A piquant picture is offered us of the Irish Jesuit, Father Netterville, dining and playing chess with the great leader of the Puritans. These manœuvres are lightly covered by their apologists with the pretext that Jesuits knew no politics.
There is, however, another side to the story of the Jesuits during the Civil War and under the Commonwealth. While Father Taunton seems to see nothingbut their intrigues with Cromwell, their French apologist sees nothing but a long series of bloody executions at the hands of the Puritans. Certainly, whatever the personal inclination of Cromwell was, and whatever use he may have made of the Jesuits, they suffered heavily in the Puritan reaction. Father Netterville himself, as well as Father Boyton, Father Corbie, and other Irish Jesuits, were executed. Father Holland had been executed in 1642, Father Corbie suffered the horrible death of a traitor at Tyburn in 1644, and Father Morse followed him in 1645. Morse was permitted to spend the night before his execution in prayer with the Portuguese ambassador, and representatives of the French, Spanish, and German ambassadors, and the French and Portuguese ambassadors accompanied him devoutly to the scaffold. Father Harrison was executed at Lancaster in 1650, and several other Jesuits perished in consequence of their rigorous treatment in prison. It will be noticed that these executions took place in the early fury of the Puritans, and it must be remembered that the Catholic laity were, in proportion to their numbers, the most generous and ardent supporters of the King. It is a fact that the executions cease when Cromwell becomes Protector (1653), and it is not impossible that, as we are told, he used the Jesuits to give a secret assurance to the Vatican in regard to religious persecution.
The less savage penal laws were, however, severely enforced, as one would expect in that Puritan atmosphere, and the records of the Jesuits become meagre and uninteresting. We know that in Ireland they were reduced to eighteen fathers, who, living in the marshes or on the bleak hillsides, ministered in great danger and privation to the oppressed people. In England they were confined to an obscure and discreet attempt to hold together the persecuted Catholics. The domestic quarrel was silenced by the fresh catastrophe that had fallen on them.
In 1660 CharlesII.entered upon his reign, and Catholics came out into the sunlight once more. It is fairly established that during the first twelve years of his reign Charles was disposed to see the country return to its old faith. His personal inclination to Catholicism was so little profound that he could lightly abandon it the moment political events made it expedient to do so, but he was not insensible to the great advantage which was enjoyed by the Catholic autocrats of France and Spain. He therefore lent an indulgent ear when, at the beginning of his reign, the Catholics petitioned for relief. The body of the nation was still strenuously Protestant, and the cry was raised that at least the Jesuits must be exempted from any measure of toleration. Many of the Catholics pressed the Jesuits to sacrifice their province to the general good of the Church, but we can hardly be surprised to learn that they emphatically refused, and a long wrangle ensued. When it was urged that their teaching that the Pope could depose kings unfitted them to remain in the country, they promptly repudiated that doctrine. They remained and prospered. After a few years, in fact, they were brought into friendly relations with Charles in a singular and secret way.
Their constitutions as well as stringent papal decrees forbade them to receive men of irregular birth into the Society, but we have often found them doing this, when the sin of the parent was redeemed by the distinction of his position, and we can imagine their joy when one of the illegitimate children of CharlesII.presented himself at their Roman novitiate in 1668. James de la Cloche, as the youth called himself, was known bythem to be in reality James Stuart, and it was not unknown that Charles was attached to him and thought his accession to the throne a not impossible dream. Genial letters passed, in secret, between the English monarch and the General of the Jesuits; money was sent to General Oliva from London, and after a time the young Jesuit was stealthily conveyed to London and permitted to enjoy the embrace of his father.
It is not surprising that the Society prospered. In 1669 there were 266 members of the English province. In the same year their Provincial, Father Emmanuel Lobb, converted the Duke of York to the Roman faith, and, although the secret was carefully guarded from Protestants for a time, the news gave great joy and hope to the Catholics. A little later Charles himself told some of the leading Catholic nobles that he wished to embrace their creed, and would openly declare it if he could be assured of defence against Protestant anger. In the following year a secret treaty was signed at Dover with LouisXIV.Charles was to declare his adoption of the Roman faith, and Louis was, in case of need, to supply French troops for the subjection of the English Protestants and, in any case, to provide large sums of money for the unscrupulous King of England. Whether Charles and the Catholic nobles really believed that LouisXIV. would consider the conversion of England a sufficient reward of his generosity, it would be difficult to say. The design was treasonable for all concerned.
The Jesuits were now at the summit of a wave of hope. The King was a secret Catholic, and was married to a Catholic, Catherine of Braganza, who was under their control. The marriage seemed to be sterile, but the Duke of York, the next heir to the throne, was more devoted to them than any otherprince in Europe. The alliance with France was controlled by them, as LouisXIV.was at that time entirely docile to his famous Jesuit confessor. To the increasing horror of the Protestants, Jesuit fathers now began to appear confidently in public. Two of them ministered to the Queen; two guarded the conscience of the Duke of York. At the same time war was declared with Holland, and Charles issued his Declaration of Indulgence. It seemed that at last the clouds were being swept from the heavens, and, whatever the political development was, the Jesuits were on the way to attain power over the throne. With English laws (or royal declarations) and French troops they would soon make an end of Protestantism in England, and, with the combined forces of England and France, return to the attack on the northern Protestants.
Then there occurred the "Popish Plot," or the imaginary plot of Titus Oates, and a furious storm whistled about their ears. Charles had soon realised the futility of the French alliance, made peace with the Dutch, and appeased his Protestant subjects by revoking the Declaration of Indulgence. On the whole, it paid him better to remain a Protestant. The natural and proper attitude for the Catholics was now to await in silence the accession of the Duke of York, as Catherine remained childless, but the Protestants were already looking to William of Orange and not obscurely hinting that the Catholic Duke of York was unfit to ascend the throne. Dutch agents distributed money among nobles and parliamentarians; French and Catholic agents distributedlouis d'orin the interest of York and Catholicism. Whatever we may say of the Dutch, a secret and treasonable correspondence was maintained by the Catholics with France. This correspondence wasmaintained on the English side by a zealous secretary of the Duke of York, named Coleman, a pupil and friend of the Jesuits. We shall see that Coleman was afterwards arrested, and his papers seized, so that there is no dispute about the fact that from 1675 to 1678 Coleman was in treasonable correspondence with the French. French money and, in emergency, French troops were to be employed for the destruction of the Established Church. The letters were generally in cipher, and at times the secret message was written in lemon-juice (which would become legible if held before the fire) between the lines.
We are now asked to believe that this plot originated in the exalted imagination of Coleman, and that the Jesuits were not privy to his correspondence with Versailles. Jesuits in London were on such a footing at St. James's Palace that they were allowed to hold their secret meetings in its chambers, and on the French side the whole correspondence was conducted by the famous Jesuit confessor of LouisXIV., Père la Chaise; and the apologists would have us believe that this correspondence, of such profound import to the future of the Jesuit body in England, was carried on for several years without their knowledge and connivance. We should have to believe, in fact, that even the Duke of York was ignorant of it, since he concealed nothing from the Jesuits, and that Père la Chaise did not give the least inkling of it to his colleagues. One would need an extraordinary measure of credulity to imagine the Jesuits frequenting St. James's Palace week after week for years and being entirely ignorant that their friend Coleman was receiving important messages all the time from their French colleague.
Hence Mr. Pollock concludes, in his recent and ablestudy of the "Popish Plot,"[24]that we may adopt, or adapt, the familiar verdict of Dryden on the plot:—
"Some truth there was, but dashed and brewed with lies." It is now universally admitted that Titus Oates and his chief witnesses were little more than reckless liars, playing upon the inflamed Protestant feeling of the time, but it would be generally admitted thataplot, such as I have described, was really afoot. Since, however, Mr. Pollock also concludes that the Jesuits probably instigated and procured the murder of the London magistrate, it is necessary to reopen the question.
Titus Oates, a little full-bodied man with large purple face and a complete lack of moral feeling, had joined the Catholic Church and been admitted by the Jesuits to their college at Valladolid. He was expelled, but it seems likely that he had gleaned some information about their hopes and designs in England, and, when he returned to London, he entered into communication with a fanatical anti-Papist named Dr. Tonge, though he continued to move amongst the Catholics. It says little for the discrimination of the Jesuits that they then admitted the man to the college at St. Omer's, from which he was once more expelled. Tonge and he then brewed the Popish Plot, and had the King informed that the Jesuits sought his life. Charles smiled, and, in September, the conspirators went before a well-known magistrate, Sir Edmund Berry Godfrey—a Protestant, but a personal friend of Coleman and well disposed toward the Catholics—and laid information of a ghastly project of the Catholics to destroy the Protestants of London. The situation—a Catholic heir to the throneawaiting the death of a Protestant king, with a Dutch pretender gaining ground in London—seemed so ripe for a plot that London was seized with a dramatic terror, and the Privy Council was compelled to listen seriously to a story which was palpably false in many details and ridiculous in others. Father Whitbread, the Jesuit Provincial, and two of his colleagues were arrested; and, when the letters of Coleman were seized and found to have references to "the mighty work on our hands," the story seemed to be confirmed. Then Sir Edmund Berry Godfrey was found dead in a ditch at the foot of Primrose Hill, and the city was shaken with frenzy. For months the trained bands were kept under arms at nights, and citizens slept nervously with arms beside them, ready to spring up at a cry that the firing of houses and massacre of Protestants had begun.
In that period of rage and panic the character of the witnesses who came forward to claim the offered reward was not examined, their inconsistencies were ignored, and several men of low character became passing rich by swearing away the lives of others. Three men, who were probably innocent, were hanged for murdering Godfrey in Somerset House (then the Queen's Palace), and three Jesuits—Father Le Fevre (the Queen's confessor), Father Walsh, and Father Pritchard—were accused of having hired the assassins. In the end seven Jesuit priests and a lay-brother were executed, a large number of Jesuits, secular priests, and laymen were imprisoned, and a reign of terror fell upon the Catholic population. It seemed as if the great dream of the conversion of England was once more ruthlessly dissipated.
The witness Bedloe, who accused the Jesuits, was so mean a character, and so well rewarded for making a charge which people wanted, that we must ignorehis evidence. If we attach any importance to the declarations of the Catholic witness Prance, as Sir J. Fitzjames Stephen and others have done, it would seem that Bedloe had really learned something about the murder, and it may or may not be true that the Jesuits were involved in it. We certainly cannot admit this on the evidence of Bedloe. On the other hand, few, except Roman Catholics, who read the evidence will doubt that Godfrey had been murdered and his body had been conveyed to the spot where it was found. There was hardly any trace of blood at the spot, and Godfrey's sword had been driven through his body in a way which precludes the idea of suicide. It was still clearer that he had not been murdered for the purpose of robbery. The circumstances point to a political assassination, and, as there is ample evidence that Godfrey expected an attack on his life, it is natural to suppose that he was removed lest he should betray some secret of which he had become possessed.
The hypothesis of Mr. Pollock is that Coleman had told Godfrey of the meeting of the Jesuits in St. James's Palace. Oates had declared that the Jesuits met to concert their plot, at the White Horse Tavern in the Strand, on the 24th April 1678. James II. admitted some years afterwards that the Jesuits met on that date, but at St. James's Palace, and the Jesuit Father Warner has left it on record that they did hold their Provincial Congregation on that date in St. James's Palace. If it were known at that time that forty Jesuits had held a secret council in the Duke's Palace the consequences might have been very serious, and there is therefore some plausibility in the statement of a later witness, Dugdale, that the Protestant magistrate was removed because he learned this fact from Coleman. We know that Godfrey secretly consultedColeman after he had received the depositions of Oates and Tonge; we have good reason to believe that he laid those depositions before Coleman; and it is not improbable that Coleman refuted the testimony of Oates by disclosing that the Jesuit meeting took place in James's Palace, not in the White Horse. It would assuredly be a grave matter for the Jesuits if this were known, and it would almost be enough to prevent the succession of JamesII.
This must remain a mere hypothesis. I may recall that, according to the teaching of many Jesuit theologians, the assassination of a man in order to prevent grave harm to the Church was not a crime, but a laudable act. But many others, besides the Jesuits, would be interested in taking drastic measures to ensure the position of the Duke of York, nor is it more than a conjecture that Godfrey learned of the meeting. It is possible that this meeting was by no means an innocent "congregation" of Jesuits to discuss their affairs; and it is just as possible that the real cause of the murder has never yet occurred to us. It remains one of the numerous unsolved problems in the story of the Jesuits.
The remaining years of the reign of CharlesII. were years of suffering for the Jesuits. They continued to enter the country in disguise and minister to the fiercely persecuted Catholics. We learn that in 1682 the Province counted 295 members, and that in 1685 they had no less than 102 priests working in England. In those harsh times they endured the worst rigours of an apostolic life. Whether or no they were innocent of murder, many Catholics felt that their presence in England was inflammatory and their conduct indiscreet, and familiar houses were closed against them. Several of them died from the privations which they had tosuffer. But an ardent and steady hope fired them to meet their perils and sufferings, and in the first week of February 1685 the news rang through the stricken and scattered ranks that Charles was dead and a devoted Catholic about to ascend the throne of England.
The historian who realises that this was to be the last chance which the fates would offer to the Catholic Church of obtaining power and majority in England reads the story of those three years of triumph and ineptitude with strange reflections. Never was a great opportunity more tragically wasted. The overwhelming majority of the nation, the officials, and the Parliament were not merely Protestant, but feverishly vigilant and intensely suspicious of the Jesuits. It was a time for infinite patience and restrained diplomacy, and, so far as we can ascertain, the Vatican itself, and Cardinal Howard who advised the Papacy at Rome, fully realised the need. But the Jesuits were in command, and they gave the most flagrant exhibition in their annals of the unwisdom and mischief of their distinctive methods. Although a Protestant prince grimly smiled on their blunders in Holland, and his agents in England eagerly magnified every indiscretion, they proceeded with the most imprudent defiance of Protestant feeling. Within two years they were spreading schools and churches over London, talking of the speedy capture of the universities and the magistracy, and placing one of their own number among the Privy Councillors. And in less than four years JamesII.was flying ignominiously for France, with the Jesuits in his train.
This romantic episode has inspired one of the finest chapters of Macaulay'sHistory of England, and, whatever blame be laid on the shoulders ofSunderland, there is no question but that the Jesuits were very largely responsible for the unhappy counsels of JamesII.One of his first acts was to lodge Father Edward Petre in the princely chambers of St. James's Palace, and put the Chapel Royal under his charge; and in a short time he made Petre Clerk of the Closet. The prisons were opened, the recusants now emerged boldly from their secluded homes, and the Jesuits summoned their continental colleagues to come and share the work of harvesting. New chapels were opened in London; and in more than one case, when other priests proposed to open chapels, royal influence cut short their design and secured the buildings for the Jesuits. Free "undenominational" schools were opened, and hundreds of Protestant, as well as Catholic, boys were attracted to these insidious nurseries of the faith by the unwonted absence of fees.
In all this we may see only undue haste and indiscretion, but the policy developed rapidly. When Parliament refused to carry out the wishes of the monarch and his advisers, he proceeded by "dispensing power," and tampered with the judges in order to have his power ratified. Four Catholics were introduced into the Privy Council, and the nobles and officials gradually realised that baptism was the first qualification for higher office. When the Bishop of London refused to suspend a priest for attacking Romanism, an ecclesiastical commission was created to suspend the bishop and stifle the voices of the Protestant clergy. On his own authority James suspended the penal measures, issued a Declaration of Indulgence, interfered with the rights of Protestants in Ireland, solemnly received a papal Nuncio at Windsor, and sent the Earl of Castlemaine as ambassador to the Papacy. The civil and military offices were rapidlytransferred to Catholics, and before the end of 1686 Oxford and Cambridge began to feel the illegal pressure of the royal authority in favour of the Catholic creed.
As these things coincided with the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes and persecution of the Protestants in France (from which James, like his brother, received royal alms) the Protestants saw before them a prospect of violence and persecution. Yet James multiplied his indiscreet and, in many cases, illegal acts with blind fanaticism. When the inevitable catastrophe came, the Jesuits deplored the injudiciousness of their patron and cast all the blame on Sunderland. While, however, Sunderland remained a Protestant until a few months before the fall of James, the monarch was throughout the three years surrounded by Jesuits and abjectly devoted to them. A letter written by the Jesuits of Liège to the Jesuits of Freiburg, and intercepted by the Dutch, informs us of the influence they had on JamesII.[25]He is a devoted son of the Society; he is determined to convert England by its means; he refuses to allow any Jesuit to kiss his hand. And the public action corresponds to the secret letter. Father Warner, the Provincial of the Society, is the King's confessor; Father Petre, a vain and pompous mediocrity, is so much esteemed by him that he besieges the Vatican with a demand of a red hat for Petre. Already courtiers pleasantly address the conceited Jesuit as "Your Eminence." But InnocentXI. is stern and will not countenance the blunders of the English monarch. Castlemaine vainly seeks to impress the Pope with his ambassadorial splendour, and is forced to return with a curt reminder that Jesuits cannot receive dignities. So James makes the Jesuit a Privy Councillor, andFather Petre takes the Oath of Allegiance (with its supposed heresy) and sits in clerical garb in the supreme council of the land. His Roman superiors have not a word to say, either when Petre acquiesces in the demand for a red hat or when he becomes a Privy Councillor. M. Crétineau-Joly is shocked; Father Taunton opines that the whole policy is directed by the Jesuit authorities at Rome.
In later years, when the Jesuits and courtiers gathered about the fallen monarch in his pleasant exile, the entire blame for the folly was naturally laid upon the wicked Earl of Sunderland, and historians have, perhaps, paid unnecessarily serious attention to this charge. We need not stay to analyse the possible motives of Sunderland, who assuredly had no sincere wish to see England return to its old creed. Like LouisXIV., PedroI., and CharlesII., who then ruled in France, Portugal, and Spain, JamesII.was surrounded by a junta of Jesuits, and he was even more docile than his fellow-monarchs to their suggestions. Those who find it possible may believe that these Jesuits were so reluctant to interfere in politics that they silently permitted an unscrupulous minister to blast the prospects of their Society and Church. We have, on the contrary, sufficient documentary evidence that they applauded, if they did not inspire, every rash step taken by the King, and we recognise their familiar maxims in his whole policy. They were, no doubt, well acquainted with the political principles advocated by their colleague, Adam Contzen, a Jesuit professor at Munich. In a work which he published in 1620 (Politicorum libri decem), Father Contzen, incidentally, proposed some effective devices by which a Catholic monarch might lead his heretical country back to the faith. After very properly condemning "the impious doctrine of Machiavelli," FatherContzen enumerates a number of measures that should be taken, and he expressly mentions England as a field of experiment. Violence is recommended as an obvious course; the leaders of the heretics must be expelled, and they must be forbidden to hold either public or private meetings. But the distinctive suggestions of the learned Jesuit are, that the prince must cover his initial efforts with a profession of toleration, he must first choose for attack those heresiarchs who are unpopular, he must ingeniously set the rival sects to rend each other and "take care that they often dispute together," he must enact that no marriage shall take place unless it be preceded by a profession of the true faith, and he must transfer all the offices and dignities of the State to Catholics.
On these principles, or maxims, JamesII.was proceeding in his zealous attempt to destroy the Church of England in five years. All the Lord Lieutenants and most of the judges were already Catholic, the Jesuits boasted, and in a short time all the magistrates in England would be Catholic. Trinity College, Dublin, was already promised to the Jesuits, and Oxford was not showing a very stern resistance to their advance. Soon all education and civil and military government would be in Catholic hands. The Queen had as yet given no heir to the throne, it was true, but they had ground to believe that, if he died childless, James would leave the English crown at the disposal of LouisXIV.
Then James, besides sending Judge Jeffreys to deal with insurgents in the provinces, made a bolder attack upon the Church. He ordered the bishops to direct the clergy to read from their pulpits his declaration of liberty of conscience. It is well known how seven of the bishops refused, were committed to the Tower, and acquitted by the jury, to the frenzied delight ofthe city. Just at this time the Queen was delivered of a son, and the announcement was greeted with derision. Another trick of the Jesuits, people said; but, genuine or not genuine, the child meant a continuance of the tyranny of the Catholic minority, and the Prince of Orange was invited to come and seize the crown. He set sail in four months; and before Christmas, William entered London, and James and his Jesuits were in exile. Six of them shared his luxurious retreat at St. Germains, and discussed with him the naughtiness of Sunderland and the appalling wreck of their hasty enterprise.
The English Province of the Society continued to exist, and had a large number of members, until the suppression. Although the penal laws were again enforced, and it was decreed that any Jesuit who was found in the kingdom after 25th March 1700 would be imprisoned for life, the fathers still exhibited the courage and devotion which do so much to redeem their errors. In 1701 there were 340 members of the Province, though most of these were in Belgium or with the Catholic colonists in Maryland. In 1708 we find 158 members of the Society in England, generally living in the houses of the Catholic nobility and gentry. Their work was now almost confined to a ministration to the depressed Catholics. They reported only 3000 conversions to the faith between 1700 and 1708, and many of these were soldiers quartered in Belgium. In 1711 they had 12,000 Catholics under their spiritual charge. But even in this restricted sphere they maintained the struggle against the secular clergy, and published many pamphlets against them. "Jansenism" was the latest heresy they had discovered, and they denounced the secular clergy to Rome as tainted with it. At last, as the eighteenth centurywore on, they realised that all these old conflicts were yielding to a mighty struggle. The Society is fighting for its life against Catholic opponents. In 1759 it is suppressed, with great ignominy, in Portugal; in 1762 it is suppressed in France; in 1767 even Spain ruthlessly expels the body to which it had given birth.
The English Jesuits had already begun to suffer from this terrible campaign. When LouisXV. ordered the expulsion of the Jesuits from his kingdom, the Paris Parlement saw to the closing of their college at St. Omer. A long procession of waggons, containing the teachers and pupils, trailed drearily across the country, and deposited them, in great misery and dejection, at Bruges. There, ten years later, they suffer the supreme punishment of suppression by the Papacy, and the Privy Council of Brussels carries out the sentence with the harshness which in every country teaches them how deeply they are hated. The 90 members of the English Province who are found in Belgium, and the 184 fathers who are at work in England, sadly divest themselves of the familiar costume and face the bleak future. This is the tragic culmination of two centuries of heroic struggle and sacrifice; it is the price of the blunders and crimes of their politicians and the casuistic excesses of their theologians.