THE FIRST JESUITS IN ENGLAND.
Thefate of the English Protestants, exiles under the Marian administration, was, as the day arrived, to be the lot of the English Papists under the government of Elizabeth. These opposing parties, when cast into the same precise position, had only changed their place in it; and in this revolution of England, in both cases alike, the expatriated were to return, and those at home were to become the expatriated.
During the short reign of Edward, conformity was not pressed; and notwithstanding two statutes, the one to maintain the queen’s supremacy, and the other strictly to enjoin the use of the Book of Common Prayer, through the first ten or twelve years of Elizabeth Romanist and Protestant entered into the same parish church. “The old Marian priests,” whom the rigid papists indeed afterwards scornfully decried, were wont to inquire of any one, to use their own term, “whether they weresettled?” and were satisfied to lure from the seduction of a protestant pulpit some lonely waverer, if by chance they found an easy surrender. There were, indeed, many who would neither “settle” nor “waver,” and these were called “Occasionalists;” they insisted that “Occasional conformity” had nothingper se malum—that human laws might be complied with or neglected according to circumstances; so learned doctors had opined! The old religion seemed melting into the new, when the Romanists, of another temper than “the old Marian priests,” protested against this pacific toleration, and procured from the fathers of the Council of Trent a declaration against schismatics and heretics: this was but the prelude of what was to come from a final authority; but this was sufficient to divide the Romanists of England, and to alarm the Protestants, yet tender in their reformation.
The sterner Romanists gradually seceded from their preferments in the church or their station in the universities, and at length forsook the land. Two eminentpersons effected a revolution among their brother-exiles, of which our national history bears such memorable traces. These extraordinary men were Dr.Allen, of Oriel College, a canon in the cathedral of York, and who subsequently was invested with the purple as the English cardinal, andRobert Parsons, of Baliol, afterwards the famous Jesuit. They left England at different periods, but when they met abroad, their schemes were inseparable—and possibly some of their writings; though it may be doubted whether the subtile and daring genius of Parsons, which Cardinal Allen declared equalled the greatest whom he had known, ever acted a secondary part.
Allen abandoned his country for ever in 1565. He soon projected the gathering of his English brothers, scattered in foreign lands; he conceived the formation for the fugitive Romanists of England of another Oxford, ostensibly to furnish a succession of Romish priests to preserve the ancient papistry of England, which was languishing under “the old Marian priests.” In 1568 an English college was formed at Douay; in twenty years Allen witnessed his colleges rise at Rheims, at Rome,1at Louvain and St. Omer, and at Valladolid, at Seville, and at Madrid. From these cradles and nurseries of holiness to Rome, and of revolt to England, issued those seminary priests whose political religionism elevated them into martyrdom, and involved them in inextricable treason.2
In these labours Allen had, as early as 1575, associated himself with Parsons, who in that year had entered intothe order of the Jesuits. Allen sought the vigorous aid of the “soldiery of Jesus,” alleging “that England was as glorious a field for the propagation of faith as the Indies.” From that time the more ambiguous policy and deeper views of that celebrated Society gave a new character to the Romish missionaries to England, and were the cause of all their calamities; a history written in blood, at whose legal horrors our imagination recoils, and our sympathy for the honourable and the hapless may still dim our eyes with tears.
Parsons, pensioned by Spain and patronised by Rome—wide and deep in his comprehensive plans—slow in deliberation, but decisive in execution—of a cold and austere temper, yet flexible and fertile in intrigue—with his working head and his ceaseless hand—once at least looked for nothing less than the dominion of England, ambitious to restore to Papal Rome a realm which had once been her fief. This daring Machiavelian spirit had long been the subtle and insidious counsellor, conjointly with Allen, of the cabinets of Madrid and of Rome. From Rome came the denunciatory bull of 1569, renewed with an artful modification in 1580, and again in 1588; and from Spain the Armada.
It has been ascertained by his own writings that the Jesuit Parsons, who had obtained free access to the presence of the Spanish monarch, left Madrid in 1585, about the time when the preparations for the Armada began, and returned to Madrid in 1589, the year after its destruction; so that the English Jesuit, whose sanguine views had aided the inspiration, had also the fortitude to console and to assure the Spanish monarch that “the punishment of England had only been deferred.” Of this secret intercourse with the Court of Madrid we have the express avowal of the English Cardinal, Allen, in that infuriated “Admonition to the Nobility and People of England,” the precursor of the Armada; in which this Italianated Englishman, contrary to those habits and that language of amenity to which he had been accustomed, suddenly dropped the veil, and, at the command of his sacerdotal suzerain, raged against Elizabeth more furiously than had the Mar-prelate Knox.
In the year 1580ParsonsandCampiancame thefirst Jesuit missionaries to their native soil. Camden was acquainted with both these personages at college. The contrast of their personal dispositions might have occasioned their selection; for the chiefs of this noted order not only exercised a refined discernment in the psychology of their brothers and agents, but always acted on an ambidextrous policy. Campian, with amenity of manners and sweetness of elocution, with a taste imbued with literature, was adapted to win the affections of those whom Parsons sometimes terrified by his hardihood. They landed in England at different ports; and, though at first separated, subsequently they sometimes met. They travelled under a variety of disguises, sure of concealment in the priests’ secret chamber of many a mansion, or they haunted unfrequented paths. A tradition in the Stonor family still points at a tangled dell in the park where Campian wrote his “Decem Rationes,” and had his books and his food conveyed to him.
We have an interesting account of the perilous position which he occupied; his devoted spirit, not to be subdued by despair, but tinged with the softest melancholy, is disclosed in a letter to the general of the order. He tells him that he is obliged to assume a most antick dress, which he often changes as well as his name; but his studious habits were not interrupted amid this scene of trouble; he says, “Every day I ride about the country. Sitting on my horse, I meditate a short sermon, which coming into the house I more perfectly polish. Afterwards, if any come to me I discourse with them, to which they bring thirsty ears.” But notwithstanding that most threatening edicts were dispersed against them, he says, that “by wariness and the prayers of good people, we have in safety gone over a great part of the island. I see many forgetting themselves to be careful for us.” He concludes, “We cannot long escape the hands of heretics, so many are the eyes, the tongues, and treacheries of our enemies. Just now I read a letter where was written, ‘Campian is taken.’ This old song now so rings in mine ears wheresoever I come, that very fear hath driven all fear from me; my life is always in my hand. Let them that shall be sent hither for our supply bring this along with them, well thought on beforehand.”
Our Jesuits in some respects betrayed themselves by their zeal in addressing the nation through their own publications. Parsons, under the lugubrious designation of John Howlet, that is, Owlet, sent forth his “screechings;” and Campian, too confident of his irrefutable “Decem Rationes,” was so imprudent as to publish “A Challenge for a Public Disputation” in the presence of the queen. The eye of Walsingham opened on their suspected presence. A Roman Catholic servant unwittingly betrayed Campian, who suffered as a state victim.3Parsons saw his own doom approaching, and vanished! This able Jesuit was confident that the great scheme was to be realised by means more effective than the martyrdom of young priests. His awful pen was to change public opinion, and nearly forty works attest his diligence, while he mused on other resources than the pen to overturn the kingdom.
The history of the order records that, thirty years afterwards, Father Parsons, lying on his death-bed, ordered to be brought to him the cords which had served as the instruments of torture of his martyred friend, and, having kissed them fervently, bound round his body these sad memorials of the saintly Campian.4
Two of the numerous writings ascribed to Parsons, one before the Armada, and the other subsequent to it, are remarkably connected with our national history; the ability of the writer, and the boldness of the topics, have at various periods influenced public opinion and national events. The first “A Dialogue between a Scholar, a Gentleman, and a Lawyer,” was printed abroad in 1583 or 1584, and soon found a conveyance into England. The first edition was distinguished as “Father Parsons’ Green Coat,” from its green cover. It is now better known as “Leicester’s Commonwealth,” a title drawn from one of its sarcastic phrases.
To describe this political libel as a mere invectivewould convey but an imperfect notion of its singularity. The occasion which levelled this artful and elaborate scandalous chronicle at Leicester, and at Leicester alone, remains as unknown as this circumstantial narrative descends to us unauthenticated and unrefuted. That the whole was framed by invention is as incredible as that the favourite of Elizabeth during thirty years could possibly have kept his equal tenor throughout such a criminal career, besides not a few atrocities which were prevented by intervening accidents with which the writer seems equally conversant as with those perpetrated. The mysterious marriages of Leicester—his first lady found at the foot of the stairs with her neck broken, but “without hurting the hood on her head”—husbands dying quickly—solemnised marriages reduced to contracts—are remarkable accidents. We find strange persons in the earl’s household; Salvador, the Italian chemist, a confidential counsellor, supposed to have departed from this world with many secrets, succeeded by Dr. Julio, who risked the promotion. We are told of the lady who had lost her hair and her nails—of the exquisite salad which Leicester left on the supper-table when called away, which Sir Nicholas Throgmorton swore had ended his life—of the Cardinal Chatillon, who, after having been closeted with the queen, returning to France, never got beyond Canterbury—of the sending a casuist with a case of conscience to Walsingham, to satisfy that statesman of the moral expediency of ridding the state of the Queen of Scots by an Italian philtre—all these incidents almost induce one to imagine the existence of an English Borgia, drawn full-length by the hand of a Machiavel.
If this strange history were true, it would not be wanting in a moral; for if Leicester were himself this poisoner, there seems some reason to believe that the poisoner himself was poisoned. “The beast,” as Throgmorton called this earl, found but a frail countess in the Lady Lettice, whose first husband, the Earl of Essex, had suddenly expired. The Master of the Horse had fired her passion—a hired bravo, in cleaving his skull, did not succeed in despatching the wounded lover: where the blow came from they did not doubt. Leicester was conducting his countess to Kenilworth; stopping at CornburyHall, in Oxfordshire, the lady was possibly reminded of the tale of Cumnor Hall. To Leicester, after his usual excessive indulgence at table, the countess deemed it necessary to administer a cordial—it was his last draught! Such is the revelation of the page, and latterly the gentleman, of this earl. Certain it is that Leicester was suddenly seized with fever, and died on his way to Kenilworth, and that the Master of the Horse shortly after married the poisoning countess of the great poisoner.5
Had the writer unskilfully heaped together such atrocious acts or such ambiguous tales the libel had not endured; the life of this new Borgia is composed of richer materials than extravagant crimes. It furnishes a picture of eventful days and busied personages; truth and fiction brightening and shadowing each other. Some close observer in the court circle, one who sickened at the queen’s insolent favourite, was a malicious correspondent. Some realities lie on the surface; and Sir Philip Sidney was baffled or confounded when he would have sent forth his chivalric challenge to the veiled accuser.
The adversaries of the Jesuits referred to Busenbaum, a favourite author with the order, to inform the world that among the artifices of the political brotherhood was inculcated the doctrine of systematic calumny. “Whenever you would ruin a person or a government, you must begin by spreading calumnies to defame them. Many will incline to believe or to side with the propagator. Repetition and perseverance will at length give the consistency of probability, and the calumnies will stick to a distant day.” A nickname a man may chance to wear out; but a system of calumny, pursued by a faction, may descend even to posterity. This principle has taken full effect on this state-favourite. The libel was most diligently spread about—“La Vie Abominable” was read throughout Europe. This story of the “subject without subjection,” who “shootsat a diadem” in England or Scotland, and turns England into a “Leicesterian commonwealth,” raised princely anger: the queen condescended to have circular letters written to protest against it, considering the libel as reflecting on herself, in the choice of so principal a counsellor: and though her majesty discovered that the author was nothing less than “an incarnate devil,” yet to this day the state-favourite Leicester remains the most mysterious personage in our history; nor is there any historian from the days of Camden who dares to extenuate suspicions which come to us palpable as realities. In truth, the life of Leicester is darkness; his political intrigues probably were carried on with all parties, which probably he adopted and betrayed by turns: at last his caprice stood above law. And even in his domestic privacy there were strange incidents, dark and secret, which eye was not to see, nor ear to listen to; and we have a remarkable chance-evidence of this singular fact in that mysterious sonnet of Spenser, prefixed to his version of Virgil’s “Gnat,” whose sad tale was his own, dedicated “to the deceased lord;” his “cloudy tears” have left “this riddle rare” to some “future Œdipus” who has never arisen.6
The Armada flying from our coasts evinced to Spain and Rome that Elizabeth was not to be dethroned. What then remained to hold a flattering vision of the English crown to Philip, and to cast the heretical land into confusion? The genius of this new Machiavel rose with the magnitude of the subject and the singularity of the occasion.
The policy or the weakness of Elizabeth never consented to settle the succession; and as the queen aged, all Europe became more interested in that impending event. This was a cause of national uneasiness, and an implement for political mischief.
In 1594 was printed at Antwerp “A Conference about the next Succession to the Crown of England.” The purpose of this memorable tract is twofold. The first part inculcates the doctrine that society is a compact made by man with man for the good of the commonwealth; that the forms of government are diverse, and therefore are by Godand nature left to the choice of the people; that kings do not derive their title from any birthright, or lineal descent, but from their coronation, with conditions and admissions by the consent of the people; and that kings may be deposed, or the line of succession may be altered, as many of our own and other monarchs have suffered from various causes, being accountable for their misgovernment or natural incompetency. “Commonwealths have sometimes chastised lawfully their lawful princes, though never so lawfully descended.” This has often been “commodious to the weal-public,” and “it may seem that God prospered the same by the good success and successors that hence ensued.”7
This theory of monarchical government was opposed to those “absurd flatterers who yield too much power to princes,” and was not likely, as we shall see, to be only a work of temporary interest. Let us, however, observe that this advocate of the people’s supremacy over their sovereign’s was himself the vowed slave to passive obedience, and the indefeasible and absolute rule of the sacerdotal suzerain.
The second division is a very curious historical treatise on the titles and pretensions of ten or eleven families of the English blood-royal, “what may be said for them, and what against them.” From its topics it was distinguished as “The Book of Titles.” It was well adapted to perplex the nation or raise up competitors, while, however, it reminded them “of the slaughter and the executions of the nobility of England.” In this uncertainty of the succession, Isabella of Spain, whose ancestry is drawn from the Conquest through many descents, is shown to have the best title, and James of Scotland the worst.
The book appeared in London with a dedication to the Earl of Essex—this was a stroke of refined malice, and produced its full effect on the queen. In this panegyricon the earl’s “eminence in place and in dignity, in favour of the prince and in high liking of the people,” the wily Jesuit intimated that “no man is like to have greater sway on deciding of this great affair (the succession), when time shall come for that determination, and those that shall assist you and are likest to follow your fame and fortune.” The jealous alarm of Elizabeth had often been roused by the imprudence of the earl, and on this occasion it thundered with all her queenly rage; she herself showed him the dangerous eulogiums of the insidious dedicator, till the hapless earl was observed to grow pale, and withdrew from court with a mind disturbed, and was confined by illness till the queen’s visit once more restored him to favour.
The immediate effect of the “Conference” appears by an act of Parliament of the 35th of Elizabeth, enacting that “whoever was found to have it in his house should be guilty of high treason;” but its more permanent influence is remarkable on several national occasions. This tract contributed to hasten the fate of the hapless Charles. The doctrine of cutting off the heads of kings, “the whole body being of more authority than the only head,” was too opportune for the business in hand to be neglected by the Independents. The first part, licensed by their licenser, was printed at the charge of the Parliament, disguised as “Several Speeches delivered at a Conference concerning the Power of Parliament to proceed against their King for Misgovernment.” The nine chapters of the Conference were turned into these nine pretended speeches!8These furnished the matter of the speech of Bradshaw at the condemnation of the monarch; and even Milton, in his “Defence of the English People,” adopted the doctrines. Never has political pamphlet directed an event more awful, and on which the destiny of a nation was suspended. Even an abstract of it served for the nonce, under the title of “The Broken Succession of theCrown of England,” at the time that Cromwell was aiming at restoring the English monarchy in his own person. It was again renovated in 1681, at the time of agitating the bill of exclusion against James the Second. I believe it has appeared in other forms. Nor was the fortune of “Leicester’s Commonwealth” less remarkable in serving the designs of a party. It was twice reprinted, in 1641, as a melancholy picture of a royal favourite, and again, probably with the same political design, in 1706.
Parsons’ claim to these two memorable tracts has been impugned. My ingenious friend Dr. Bliss has referred to two letters of Dr. Ashton, Master of Jesus College, and Dean Mosse, on the subject of “Leicester’s Commonwealth,” which he considers “fully prove” that it was not the work of Parsons. I give these letters.
Dr. Ashton to Dean Mosse.
“There is nothing in the book that favours the Spanish invasion, and all the treason is only against Leicester. Parsons has been esteemed the author of it; but I can’t yet believe that ’twas his, for several reasons.
“First; there’s nothing in it of the fierce and turbulent spirit of that Jesuit; but a tender concern for the Queen and government both in church and state.
“Secondly; the book makes a papist own that several of the priests and others were traitors, and often commends Burleigh, who was the chief persecutor, and ordered the writing of ‘The Book of Justice,’ &c., which certainly Parsons would not have done, whose errand into England not long before was to renew the excommunication of the Queen, and declare her subjects freed from their allegiance, nay bound to take up arms against her; especially since Campian, his brother missionary, was one of those martyrs, and he himself very narrowly escaped.
“Thirdly; when Parsons and Campian came into England in ’80, it was to further the designs of the King of Spain, and persuade the people that upon the Queen’s forfeiture he had a right to take possession of her crown. But there’s nothing looks that way in the book, unless defending the title of the Queen of the Scots and her son be writing for the invasion. There was a book written a little before this, for the Scotch succession, by Lesly,bishop of Rosse, under the name of Morgan, even by the connivance of Queen Elizabeth, as Camden tells us; but the seminary priests and Jesuits were all upon the Spanish right by virtue of the Pope’s bull of excommunication; and upon this foot Parsons afterwards wrote his ‘Andr. Philopater,’ and ‘Book of Titles,’ in the name of N. Doleman.
“Fourthly; I can’t think Parsons capable of writing this book; for how could a man that from ’75 to his dying day (bating a few months in the year ’80) lived at Rome, be able to know all the secret transactions, both incourtandcountry, in England, which perhaps were mysteries to all the nation except a few statesmen about the Queen?
“Lastly; I can’t believe that Parsons, who was expelled (or forced to resign his fellowship in Baliol) for his immoralities, and then pretended to be a physician, and at last went to Rome and turned Jesuit, would tell that story of Leicester’s management of the University of Oxford. There are several other improbabilities.
“The book seems to be written by a man moderate in religion (whether Papist or Protestant, I can’t say), but a bitter enemy to Leicester—one that was intimate with all the court affairs, and, to cover himself fromthe bear’sfury, contrived that this book should come as it were from abroad, under the name of Parsons.”
Dr. Mosse’s Notes on the above Letter.
“First, He points out several facts to show that the book must have been written at the end of 1584, certainly between 1583 and ’85, when in ’85 Leicester went general into Holland, of which there is no mention in the book, as Drake observes.
“Secondly, The design. I see nothing in the book relating to the invasion, the design being to support the title of the Queen of Scots and her son. Dr. James was the first who in print affirmed Parsons to be the only author—which was then in many mouths, that he wrote it from materials sent him by Burleigh. But as it is not very likely that Parsons, who lived at Rome, should be acquainted with all the transactions set down in that book, so ’tis less probable that Burleigh should pitch upon him forsuch a work; and I take the report to be grounded only on a passage in the book that mentions thepapersBurleigh had against Leicester.”
Dr. Mosse then gives what Wood has written, and Wood’s inference, that neither Pitts nor Ribadeneira giving it in the list of his writings is a sufficient argument; and the doctor concludes—
“In short, the author is very uncertain; and, for anything that appears in it, it may as well be a protestant’s as a papist’s. I should rather think it the work of some subtle courtier, who for safety got it printed abroad, and sent into England under the name of Parsons.”9
Allowing these arguments to the fullest extent, they are not sufficient to disprove the authorship ascribed to Parsons. The drift and character of this English Jesuit seem not to have been sufficiently taken in by these critics. There would certainly be no difficulty in the Jesuit assuming the mask of a moderate religionist, and a loyal subject; for the advantage of the disguise, he would even venture the bold stroke of condemning the martyrs. The conclusion of Dr. Mosse, that the book might be written by either a protestant or a papist, betrays its studied ambiguity. It was usual with the Jesuits to conform to prevalent opinions to wrestle with them. Sometimes the Jesuit was the advocate for the dethronement of monarchs, and at other times urged passive obedience to the right divine. In truth, it is always impossible to decide on the latent meaning of the Jesuitic pen. Pascal has exhausted the argument.
Dr. Ashton may be mistaken when he asserts that Parsons and Campian came to England in 1580, to further the designs of the King of Spain. The policy of the Roman Catholic party at that moment did not turn on the Spanish succession; during the life of the Scottish Mary, the party were all united in one design; it was at her death, in 1587, that it split into two opposite factions. At the head of one stood the Jesuit Parsons; in his rage and despair, having failed to win over the Scottish prince,he raised up the claims of the Spanish line, reckless of the ruin of his country by invasion and internal dissension: the other party, British at heart, consisting of laymen and gentlemen, would never concur in the invasion and conquest of England by a foreign prince. This curious contingency has been elucidated by our ambassador at the court of France, Sir Henry Neville, in a letter to Cecil.10It is therefore quite evident why “the book did not lookthat way,” as Dr. Ashton expresses it, and why all Parsons’ subsequent writings did.
Dr. Ashton considers it impossible that Parsons, who lived abroad so much of his lifetime, should be so intimate with the secret transactions of the court and country of England. But Parsons kept up a busy communication with this country. This he has himself incidentally told us, in his “Memorial for Reformation,” written in 1596; he says, “I have had occasion,above others, for more than twenty years, not only to know the state of matters in England, but also of many foreign nations.” It is recorded that he received three hundred letters from England on his Book of Titles. He was very critical in the history of our great families, and had a taste for personal anecdote, even to the gossip of the circle. In a remarkable work which he sent forth under the name of Andreas Philopater, a Latin reply to the queen’s proclamation, he describes her ministers assprung from the earth. Of Sir Nicholas Bacon, he says that he was an under-butler at Gray’s Inn; of Lord Burleigh, that his father served under the king’s tailor, and that his grandfather kept an alehouse, and that for himself during Mary’s reign he had always his beads in his hand. In this defamatory catalogue, the Earl of Leicester is not forgotten: the son of a duke, the grandson of an esquire, and the great-grandson of a carpenter; a more flagitious man, a more insolent tyrant England never knew;never had the Catholics a more bitter enemy; books, both in the French and the English language, have exposed his debaucheries, his adulteries, his homicides, his parricides, his thefts, his rapines, his perjuries, his oppressions of the poor, his cruelties, his deceitfulness, and the injuries he did to the Catholicreligion, to the public, and to private families. This is quite a supplement to Leicester’s “Commonwealth,” condensing all its original spirit.
That Lord Burleigh should have supplied materials for this political libel, stands next to an impossibility. One passage asserts that “the Lord Treasurer hath as much in his keeping of Leycester’s own hand-writing as is sufficient to hang him, if he durst present it to her majesty.” This could only have been a random stroke of the hardy writer; for were it absolutely true, that sage would never have entrusted that secret to any man. It would have been placing his own life in jeopardy. As for the tattle of the lady who, in delivering a letter from Leicester into the hands of Lord Burleigh, “at the door of the withdrawing chamber,” was instructed to drop it in a way that it might attract the queen’s notice, and induce her majesty to read it, it surely was not necessary for Lord Burleigh to communicate this “shift” of Leicester’s practices; the lady might have deposited this secret manœuvre in the ear of the faithless courtier who unquestionably contributed his zealous quota to this Leicesterian Commonwealth.
With regard to “the Conference,” the Roman Catholic historian, Dodd, and others, have inclined to doubt whether Parsons was the author; and their argument is—not an unusual one with the Jesuits—you cannot prove it, and he has denied it. Cardinal Allen and Sir Francis Englefield may have contributed to this learned work, but Parsons held the pen. It appeared under the name of Doleman; and it is said that the harmless secular priest who bore that name fell into trouble in consequence. We may for once believe Parsons himself, that the name was chosen for its significance, as “a man of dole,” grieving for the loss of his country. He has in other writings continued the initials, N. D., associating his feelings with these letters. On the same querulous principle, he had formerly taken that of “John Howlett,” or Owlet. He fancied such significant pseudonyms, in allusion to his condition; thus he took that of “Philopater.” He varied his initials, as well as his fictitious names. He was a Proteus whenever he had his pen in his hand; Protestant and Romanist, Englishman and Spaniard.
It is now, however, too late to hesitate in fixing on the true parent of these twin-productions; twins they are, though in the intellectual state twins are not born on the same day. These productions are marked by the same strong features; their limbs are fashioned alike; and their affinity betrays itself, even in their tones. The author could not always escape from adopting a peculiar phraseology, or identical expressions, which unavoidably associate the later with the earlier work, the same in style, in manner, and in plan. Imitation is out of the question where there is identity. One pen composed these works, as they did thirty more.
The English writings of the JesuitParsonshave attracted the notice of some of our philological critics. Parsons may be ranked among the earliest writers of our vernacular diction in its purity and pristine vigour, without ornament or polish. It is, we presume, Saxon English, unblemished by an exotic phrase. It is remarkable that our author, who passed the best part of his days abroad, and who had perfectly acquired the Spanish and the Italian languages, and slightly the French, yet appears to have preserved our colloquial English, from the vicissitudes of those fashionable novelties which deform the long unsettled Elizabethan prose. To the elevation of Hooker his imagination could never have ascended; but in clear conceptions and natural expressions no one was his superior. His English writings have not a sentence which to this day is either obsolete or obscure. Swift would not have disdained his idiomatic energy. Parsons was admirably adapted to be a libeller or a polemic.
1At Rome there was “The English Hospital,” founded by two of the kings of our Saxon Heptarchy; a thousand years had consecrated that small domicile for the English native; but now the emigrants, and not the pilgrims, of England claimed an abode beneath the papal eye. It had been a refuge to the fugitives from the days of Henry the Eighth; subsequently this English Hospital, under the auspices of Cardinal Allen, assumed the higher title of “The English College at Rome,” and the Jesuit Parsons closed his days as its rector without attaining to the cardinalship.2The seminarists were universally revered as candidates of martyrdom.—See Baronius, “Martyrol.” Rome, 29 Dec. St. Philip Neri, who lived in the neighbourhood of the English Seminary in Rome, would frequently stand near the door of the house to view the students going to the public schools. This saint used to bow to them, and salute them with the words—“Salvete flores martyrum.”—Plowden’s “Remarks on Missions of Gregorio Panzani,” Liege, 1794, p. 97.3As Roman Catholics usually interpolate history with miracles, so we find one here; being assured that the judge, while passing sentence on Campian, drawing off his glove, found his hand stained with blood, which he could not wash away, as he showed to several about him who can witness of it.—Lansdowne MSS., 982, fo. 21.4“Hist. Soc. Jesu.” Pars quinta, Tomus posterior. Auctore Jos. Juvencio, 1710.5This remarkable incident, in keeping with the rest, was discovered by Dr. Bliss in a manuscript note on “Leicester’s Ghost,” as communicated by the page to the writer from his own personal observations.—“Athenæ Oxon.,” ii. col. 74.If this voracious Apicius did not die of a surfeit, the fever might have been caught from the cordial. The marriage of the Master of the Horse seems to wind up the story.6See the subsequent article on “Spenser.”7“There is,” continues our author, “a point much to be noted,” which is, “what men have commonly succeeded in the places of such as have been deposed?” The successors of five of our deposed monarchs have been all eminent princes; “John, Edward the Second, Richard the Second, Henry the Sixth, and Richard the Third, have been succeeded by the three Henries—the Third, Fourth, and Seventh; and two Edwards—Third and Fourth.”8I have not seen this edition of “The Conference,” or “Speeches,” but it must assuredly have suffered some mutilations; for Parsons often puts down some marginal notes which were not suitable to the republicans of that day. Such, for instance, as these—“A Monarchy the best Government;” “Miseries of Popular Governments.” Mabbott, the licenser, must have rescinded such unqualified axioms.9Cole’s MSS., xxx. 129. Cole adds, that Baker, in a manuscript note upon Pitt’s and Ribadeneira’s silence, observes, “That’s no argument—the book was a libel, and libels are not mentioned in catalogues by friends.”10Winwood’s “Memorials,” vol. i., p. 51.
1At Rome there was “The English Hospital,” founded by two of the kings of our Saxon Heptarchy; a thousand years had consecrated that small domicile for the English native; but now the emigrants, and not the pilgrims, of England claimed an abode beneath the papal eye. It had been a refuge to the fugitives from the days of Henry the Eighth; subsequently this English Hospital, under the auspices of Cardinal Allen, assumed the higher title of “The English College at Rome,” and the Jesuit Parsons closed his days as its rector without attaining to the cardinalship.
2The seminarists were universally revered as candidates of martyrdom.—See Baronius, “Martyrol.” Rome, 29 Dec. St. Philip Neri, who lived in the neighbourhood of the English Seminary in Rome, would frequently stand near the door of the house to view the students going to the public schools. This saint used to bow to them, and salute them with the words—“Salvete flores martyrum.”—Plowden’s “Remarks on Missions of Gregorio Panzani,” Liege, 1794, p. 97.
3As Roman Catholics usually interpolate history with miracles, so we find one here; being assured that the judge, while passing sentence on Campian, drawing off his glove, found his hand stained with blood, which he could not wash away, as he showed to several about him who can witness of it.—Lansdowne MSS., 982, fo. 21.
4“Hist. Soc. Jesu.” Pars quinta, Tomus posterior. Auctore Jos. Juvencio, 1710.
5This remarkable incident, in keeping with the rest, was discovered by Dr. Bliss in a manuscript note on “Leicester’s Ghost,” as communicated by the page to the writer from his own personal observations.—“Athenæ Oxon.,” ii. col. 74.
If this voracious Apicius did not die of a surfeit, the fever might have been caught from the cordial. The marriage of the Master of the Horse seems to wind up the story.
6See the subsequent article on “Spenser.”
7“There is,” continues our author, “a point much to be noted,” which is, “what men have commonly succeeded in the places of such as have been deposed?” The successors of five of our deposed monarchs have been all eminent princes; “John, Edward the Second, Richard the Second, Henry the Sixth, and Richard the Third, have been succeeded by the three Henries—the Third, Fourth, and Seventh; and two Edwards—Third and Fourth.”
8I have not seen this edition of “The Conference,” or “Speeches,” but it must assuredly have suffered some mutilations; for Parsons often puts down some marginal notes which were not suitable to the republicans of that day. Such, for instance, as these—“A Monarchy the best Government;” “Miseries of Popular Governments.” Mabbott, the licenser, must have rescinded such unqualified axioms.
9Cole’s MSS., xxx. 129. Cole adds, that Baker, in a manuscript note upon Pitt’s and Ribadeneira’s silence, observes, “That’s no argument—the book was a libel, and libels are not mentioned in catalogues by friends.”
10Winwood’s “Memorials,” vol. i., p. 51.
HOOKER.
Thegovernment of Elizabeth, in the settlement of an ecclesiastical establishment, had not only to pass through the convulsive transition of the “old” to the “new religion,” as it was called at the time; but subsequently it was thrown into a peculiar position, equally hateful to the zealots of two antagonist parties or factions.
The Romanists, who would have disputed the queen’s title to the crown, were securely circumscribed by their minority, or pressed down by the secular arm; they were silenced by penal statutes, or they vanished in a voluntary exile; and even their martyrs were only allowed to suffer as traitors. A more insidious adversary was lurking at home; itself the child of the Reformation, it had been nourished at the same breast, and had shared in the common adversity; and this youthful protestantism was lifting its arm against its elder sister.
A public event, when it becomes one of the great eras of a nation, has sometimes inspired one of those “monuments of the mind,” which take a fixed station in its literature, addressed to its own, but written for all times. And thus it happened with the party of theMar-prelates; for these mean and scandalous satirists, and their abler chiefs, were the true origin of Hooker’s “Ecclesiastical Polity.” The scandalous pamphlets of theMar-prelatesmet their fate, crushed by the sharper levity of more refined wits; the more solemn volumes of their learned chiefs encountered a master genius, such as had not yet risen in the nation.
In the state of the language, and the polemical temper of these early opposite systems of church, and indeed of civil government, it was hardly to be expected that the vindication of the ruling party should be the work of an elevated genius. The vernacular style was yet imperfectly moulded, the ear was not yet touched by modulated periods, nor had the genius of our writers yet extended to the lucid arrangement of composition; moreover, none hadattained to the philosophic disposition which penetrates into the foundations of the understanding, and appeals to the authority of our consciousness. On a sudden appeared this master-mind, opening the hidden springs of eloquence—the voice of one crying from the wilderness.
It had been more in the usual course of human affairs, that the whole controversy of ecclesiastical polity should have remained in the ordinary hands of the polemics; the cold mediocrity of the Puritan Cartwright might have been answered by the cold mediocrity of the Primate Whitgift. Their quarrel had then hardly passed their own times; and “the admonition,” and “the apology,” and all “the replies and rejoinders,” might have been equally suffered to escape the record of an historian.
But such was not the issue of this awful contest; and the mortal combatants are not suffered to expire, for a master-genius has involved them in his own immortality.1
The purity and simplicity of Izaak Walton’s own mind reflected the perfect image ofHooker; the individualising touches and the careful statements in that vital biography seem as if Hooker himself had written his own life.
We first find our author in a small country parsonage, at Drayton-Beauchamp, near Aylesbury, in Buckinghamshire; where a singular occurrence led to his elevation to the mastership of the Temple.
Two of his former pupils had returned from their travels—Sir Edwin Sandys and George Cranmer, men worthy of the names they bore; for the one became hisardent patron, and the other the zealous assistant in his great work. Longing to revisit their much-loved tutor, who did not greatly exceed them in age, they came unexpectedly; and, to their amazement, surprised their learned friend tending a flock of sheep, with a Horace in his hand. His wife had ordered him to supply the absence of the servant. When released, on returning to the house, the visitors found that they must wholly furnish their own entertainment—the lady would afford no better welcome; but even the conversation was interrupted by Hooker being called away to rock the cradle. His young friends reluctantly quit his house to seek for quieter lodgings, lamenting that his lot had not fallen on a pleasanter parsonage, and a quieter wife to comfort him after his unwearied studies. “I submit to God’s will while I daily labour to possess my soul in patience and peace,” was the reply of the philosophic man who could abstract his mind amid the sheep, the cradle, and the termagant.
The whole story of the marriage of this artless student would be ludicrous, but for the melancholy reflection that it brought waste and disturbance into the abode of the author of the “Ecclesiastical Polity.”
According to the statutes of his college he had been appointed to preach a sermon at Paul’s-cross: he arrived from Oxford weary and wet, with a heavy cold; faint and heartless, he was greatly agitated lest he should not be able to deliver his probationary sermon; but two days’ nursing by the woman of the lodgings recovered our young preacher. She was an artful woman, who persuaded him that his constitutional delicacy required a perpetual nurse; and for this purpose offered, as he had no choice of his own, to elect for him a wife. On his next arrival she presented him with her daughter. There was a generosity in his gratitude for the nursing him for his probationary sermon, which only human beings wholly abstracted from the concerns of daily life could possibly display. He resigned the quiet of his college to be united to a female destitute alike of personal recommendations and of property. As an apology for her person, he would plead his short-sightedness; and for the other, that he never would have married for any interested motive. Thus, the first step into life of a very wise man was a folly which was toendure with it. The wife of Hooker tyrannized over his days, and at last proved to be a traitress to his fame.
The mastership of the Temple was procured for the humble rector of Drayton-Beauchamp by the recommendation of his affectionate Edwin Sandys. But not without regret did this gentle spirit abandon the lowly rectory-house for “the noise” of the Temple-hall. Hooker required for his happiness neither elevation nor dignities, but solely a spot wherein his feeble frame might repose, and his working mind meditate; solitude to him was a heaven, notwithstanding his eternal wife Joan!
Hooker might have looked on the Temple as a vignette represents the greater picture. The Temple was a copy reduced of the kingdom, with the same passions and the same parties. What had occurred between the Archbishop Whitgift and the Puritan Cartwright, was now opened between the lecturer and the master of the Temple.
The Evening Lecturer at the Temple was Walter Travers—an eminent man, of insinuating manners and of an irreproachable life. He had been nursed in the presbytery of Geneva, and was the correspondent of Beza in the French, and of Knox in the Scottish Church; above all, Travers was the firm associate of Cartwright, and the consulted oracle of the English dissenters. He ruled over an active party of the younger members, and, by insensible innovations, appears to have there established the new ecclesiastical commonwealth, which at first consisted of the most trivial innovations in ceremonies and the most idle distinctions. Travers was looking confidently to the mastership, when the appointment of Hooker crossed his ambitious hopes.
With the disciples of parity, a free election, and not a royal appointment, was a first state principle. To preserve the formality, since he could not yet possess the reality, Travers suggested to the new master of the Temple that he should not make his appearance till Travers had announced his name to the body of the members, and then he would be admitted by their consent. To this point in “the new order of things,” the sage Hooker returned a reasonable refusal. “If such custom were here established, I would not disturb the order; but here, where it never was, I might not of my own headtake upon me to begin it.” The formality required was, in fact, a masked principle, which cast a doubt on his right and on the authority which had granted it. “You conspire against me,” exclaimed the nonconformist, “affecting superiority over me;” and condensing all the bitterness of his mingled religion and politics, he reproached Hooker that “he had entered on his charge by virtueonly of an human creature, and not by theelection of the people.” WithTraversthe people were more than “human creatures;” the voice of the people was a revelation of Heaven; this sage probably having first counted his votes. These were the inconveniences of a transition to a new political system; the parties did not care to understand one another. These two good men, for such they were, now brought into collision, bore a mutual respect, connected too by blood and friendly intercourse. But in a religious temper or times, while men mix their own notions with the inscrutable decrees of Heaven, who shall escape from the torture of insolvable polemics? Abstruse points of scholastic theology opened the rival conflict. A cry of unsound doctrine was heard. “What are your grounds?” exclaimedTravers. “The words of St. Paul,” repliedHooker. “But what author do you follow in expounding St. Paul?” Hooker laid a great stress on reason on all matters which allowed of the full exercise of human reason. Two opposite doctrines now came from the same pulpit! The morning and the evening did not seem the same day. The son of Calvin thundered his shuddering dogmas; the child of Canterbury was meek and merciful. If one demolished an unsound doctrine, it was preached up again by the other. The victor was always to be vanquished, the vanquisher was always to be victor. The inner and the outer Temple appeared to be a mob of polemics.
Travers was silenced by “authority.” He boldly appealed to her majesty and the privy council, where he had many friends. His petition argued every point of divinity, while he claimed the freedom of his ministry. But there stood Elizabeth’s “black husband,” as the virgin queen deigned in her coquetry to call the archbishop. The party of Travers circulated his petition, which was cried up as unanswerable; it was carried in “many bosoms:” Hookerwas compelled to reply; and the churchmen extolled “an answer answerless:” the buds of the great work appear among these sterile leaves of controversy.2
The absence of Travers from the Temple seemed to be more influential than even his presence. He had plenteously sown the seeds of nonconformity, and the soil was rich. Hooker had foreseen the far-remote event; “Nothing can come of contention but the mutual waste of the parties contending, till a common enemy dance in the ashes of them both.” It must be confessed that Hooker had a philosophical genius.
It was amid the disorders around him that the master of the Temple meditated to build up the great argument of polity, drawn from the nature of all laws, human and divine. The sour neglect and systematic opposition of the rising party of the dissenters had outwearied his musings. Clinging to the great tome which was expanding beneath his hand, the studious man entreated to be removed to some quieter place. A letter to the primate on this occasion reveals, in the sweetness of his words, his innate simplicity. He tells that when he had lost the freedom of his cell at college, yet he found some degree of it in his quiet country parsonage: but now he was weary of the noise and opposition of the place, and God and nature did not intend him for contention, but for study and quietness. He had satisfied himself in his studies, and now had begun a treatise in which he intended the satisfaction of others: he had spent many thoughtful hours, and he hoped not in vain; but he was not able to finish what he had begun, unless removed to some quiet country parsonage, where he might see God’s blessings spring out of our mother earth, and “eat his own bread in peace and privacy.”
The humble wish was obtained, and the great work was prosecuted.
In 1594, four books of the “Ecclesiastical Polity” were published, and three years afterwards the fifth. These are for ever sanctioned by the last revisions of the author. The intensity of study wore out a frame which had always been infirm; and his premature death left his manuscripts roughly sketched, without the providence of a guardian.
These unconcocted manuscripts remained in the sole custody of the widow. Strange rumours were soon afloat, and transcripts from Hooker’s papers got abroad, attesting that in the termination of the “Ecclesiastical Polity,” the writer had absolutely sided with the nonconformists. The great work, however, was appreciated of such national importance, that it was deemed expedient to bring it to the cognizance of the privy council, and the widow was summoned to give an account of the state of these unfinished manuscripts. Consonantly with her character, which we have had occasion to observe, in the short interval of four months which had passed since the death of Hooker, this widow had become a wife. She had at first refused to give any account of the manuscripts; but now, in a conference with the archbishop, she confessed that she had allowed certain puritanic ministers “to go into Hooker’s study and to look over his writings; and further, that they burned and tore many, assuring her that these were writings not fit to be seen.” There never was an examination by the privy council, for the day after her confession this late widow of Hooker was found dead in her bed. A mysterious coincidence! The suspected husband was declared innocent, so runs the tale told by honest Izaac Walton.
These manuscripts were now delivered up to the archbishop, who placed them in the hands of the learned Dr. Spenser to put into order; he was an intimate friend of Hooker, and long conversant with his arguments. However, as this scholar was deeply occupied in the translation of the Bible, he entrusted the papers to a student at Oxford, Henry Jackson, a votary of the departed genius.
On the decease of Dr. Spenser, the manuscripts of Hooker were left as “a precious legacy” to Dr. King, bishop of London, in 1611. They were resigned with themost painful reluctance by the speculative and ingenious student to whom they had been so long entrusted, that he looked on them with a parental eye, having transcribed them and put many things together according to his idea of the system of Hooker.3During the time the manuscripts reposed in the care of the bishop of London, an edition of the five books of the “Ecclesiastical Polity,” with some tractates and sermons, was published in 1617;4had Dr. King thought that these manuscripts were in a state fitted for publication, he would have doubtless completed that edition. He died in 1621, and the manuscripts were claimed by Archbishop Abbot for the Lambeth library.
Again, in 1632, the five undoubted genuine books were reprinted. Laud, then archbishop of Canterbury, attracted probably by this edition, examined the papers—he was startled by some antagonist principles, and left the phantom to sleep in its darkness; whether some doctrines which broadly inculcatejure divinowere touches from the Lambeth quarter, or whether the interpolating hand of some presbyter had insidiously turned aside the weapon, the conflicting opinions could not be those of the judicious Hooker.
But their fate and their perils had not yet terminated; the episcopalian walls of Lambeth were no longer an asylum, when the manuscripts of Hooker were to be grasped by the searching hands and heads of Prynne and Hugh Peters, by a vote of the Commons! At this critical period the sixth and eighth books were given to the world, announced as “a work long expected, and now published according to the most authentique copies.” We are told of six transcripts with which this edition was collated. It is perplexing to understand when these copies got forth, and how they were all alike deficient in the seventh book, which the setter forth of this edition declares to be irrecoverable.After the Restoration, Dr. Gauden made an edition of Hooker; in the dedication to the king he offers the work as “now augmented and I hope completed, with the three last books, so much desired and so long concealed.” This remarkable expression indicates some doubt whether he possessed the perfect copies, nor does he inform us of the manner in which he had recovered the lost seventh book. The recent able editor of the works of Hooker favours its genuineness by internal evidence, notwithstanding it bears marks of hasty writing; but he irresistibly proves that the sixth book is wholly lost, that which is named the sixth being never designed as a part of the “Ecclesiastical Polity.”
Both the great parties are justly entitled to suspect one another; a helping hand was prompt to twist the nose of wax to their favourite shape; and the transcripts had always omissions, and we may add, commissions. Some copies of the concluding book asserted that “Princes on earth are only accountable to Heaven,” while others read “to the people.” We perceive the facility of such slight emendations, and may be astonished at their consequences; but we need not question the hands which furnished the various readings. When we recollect the magnificent entrance into the work, we must smile at the inconclusive conclusion, the small issue from so vast an edifice. “Too rigorous it were that the breach of human law should be held a deadly sin. A mean there is between extremities,if so be that we can find it out.” Never was thejuste milieusuggested with such hopeless diffidence. Such was not the tone, nor could be the words, of our eloquent and impressiveHooker. From the first conception of his system, his comprehensive intellect had surveyed all its parts, and the intellectual architecture was completed before the edifice was constructed. This admirable secret in the labour of a single work, on which many years were to be consumed, our author has himself revealed to us; a secret which may be a lesson. “I have endeavoured that every former part might give strength unto all that follow, and every latter bring some light unto all before; so that if the judgments of men do but hold themselves in suspense, as touching the first more general meditations, till in order they have perused the rest that ensue, what mayseem dark at the first will afterwards be found more plain, even as the latter particular decisions will appear, I doubt not, more strong, when the other have been read before.”5Here we have an allusion to a noble termination of his system.
This great work of Hooker strictly is theological, but here it is considered simply as a work of literature and philosophy. The first book lays open the foundations of law and order, to escape from “the mother of confusion which breedeth destruction. The lowest must be knit to the highest.” We may read this first book as we read the reflections of Burke on the French revolution; where what is peculiar, or partial, or erroneous in the writer does not interfere with the general principles of the more profound views of human policy. And it is remarkable that during the anarchical misrule of France, when all governments seemed alike unstable, some one who had not wholly lost his senses among those raving politicians, published separately thisfirst book of Ecclesiastical Polity; a timely admonition, however, alas! timeless! I was not surprised to find classed among “Legal Bibliography” the works of Hooker.
The fate of those controversies which in reality admit of no argument, is singularly exemplified in the history of this great work. These are the controversies where the parties apparently going the same course, and intent on the same object, but impelled by opposite principles, can never unite; like two parallel lines, they may run on together, but remain at the same distance, though they should extend themselves to infinity. Opposite propositions are assigned by each party, or from the same premises are educed opposite inferences. In the present case both parties inquired after a model for church-government; there was none! Apostolical Christianity had hardly left the old synagogue. Hooker therefore asserted that the form of church-government was merely a human institution regulated by laws; and that laws were not made for private men to dispute, but to obey. The nonconformist urged the Protestant right of private judgment and a satisfied conscience. Hooker, alarmed at this irruption ofschisms, to maintain established authority, or rather supremacy, was driven to take refuge in the very argument which the Romanist used with the Protestant.
The elaborate preface of Hooker is a tract of itself; it is the secret history of nonconformity, and of the fiery Calvin. Yet was it from positions here laid down that James the Second declared that it was one of the two books which sent him back to the fold of Rome. It is not therefore surprising that when a part was eagerly translated by an English Romanist to his Holiness, who had declared that “he had never met with an English book whose writer deserved the name of an author!”—so low then stood our literature in the eyes of the foreigner,—that the Pope perceived nothing anti-papal in the eloquent advocate of established authority, while he was deeply struck at the profundity of the genius of “a poor obscure English priest;” and the bishop of Rome exclaimed, “There is no learning that this man has not searched into; nothing too hard for his understanding, and his books will get reverence by age.” Our James the First, who it must be allowed was no ordinary judge of polemics, on his arrival in England inquired after Hooker, and was informed that his recent death had been deeply lamented by the queen. “And I receive it with no less sorrow,” observed the new English monarch, “for I have received more satisfaction in reading a leaf in Mr. Hooker than I have had in large treatises by many of the learned: many others write well, but yet in the next age they will be forgotten.”
The attestations of his Holiness and our James the First, to some of my readers, may appear very suspicious. They are, however, prophetic; and this is an evidence that the “Ecclesiastical Polity” must contain principles more deeply important than those which might more particularly have been grateful to these regal critics. Our sage, it is true, has not escaped from a severer scrutiny, and has been taxed as “too apt to acquiesce in all ancient tenets.” What was transitory, or what was partial, in this great work, may be subtracted without injury to its excellence or its value. Hooker has written what posterity reads. The spirit of a later age, progressive in ameliorating the imperfect condition of all human institutions, must often returnto pause over the first book of “Ecclesiastical Polity,” where the master-genius has laid the foundations and searched into the nature of all laws whatever.Hookeris the first vernacular writer whose classical pen harmonised a numerous prose. While his earnest eloquence, freed from all scholastic pedantry, assumed a style stately in its structure, his gentle spirit sometimes flows into natural humour, lovely in the freshness of its simplicity.