In the meanwhile, the Archduchess Magdalen had given notice that the whole machinery of her court would be broken up in six months. Those of her ladies, ladies' maids, and attendants who desired to do so might follow her and her two sisters into their spiritual solitude at Hall, no longer as servants, but as companions in the service of God. Accordingly, by the end of October 1569, all was in readiness, and the three princesses, accompanied by six of their suite who had resolved to share their penance, removed to Hall, where they themselves performed nearly the whole of the housework, two servants only being engaged for the roughest portion of the labour. Hereupon, a storm of abuse broke over the heads of the Innsbruck Jesuits, who had, of course, originated the whole affair, seeking their own advantage. It was they who had persuaded Magdalen to found a novitiate, and it was their fault that the "queens" washed the clothes, plates, and dishes of the new community with their own imperial hands, cooking also the meals of which they partook. Rumours were afloat to the effect that the emperor and the archdukes were furious.* All this was, however, but the malicious invention of enemies, and the facts communicated to the General by the Fathers at Innsbruck reveal nothing but satisfaction on all sides. The archduke concurred in all that was done, and the princesses were brought to acquiesce in the arrangement by which the Fathers were to live at some distance from their house, and the Jesuits rejoiced, inasmuch as they were left free to use the building handed over to them as a school or a novitiate, or to put it to any use they thought fit. Father Hoffaus wrote that the archduke had accorded him a long and very gracious audience, and had assured him of his affection and esteem for the Society. On the 5th December, High Mass had been sung in their church at Innsbruck, and on the preceding day he had announced a plenary Indulgence to all who should assist at it, on account of the departure of the "queens." The archduke, the "queens," and the whole of the nobility had been present. The archduke had shown himself extremely gracious and kind, and had paid a visit to Father George Scharich, who was sick, and had sent him costly waters. By his kindness he had consoled the whole community. The same day he had conducted the "queens," his sisters, solemnly to their retreat at Hall, and on the next had left for Prague, upon which Father Hoffaus had taken possession of the new college.
* Orig. G. Epist., 9, 133.
On the 31st January 1570, the same Father wrote from Innsbruck:—
"The college at Hall is going on quietly. The queen scarcely worries us at all; she has not yet entered our house since we went there, and she seldom sends for us. In short, she leaves us in peace, and if this continues, no one can complain of her, except that she generally detains her confessor for nearly two hours after Mass. But this can be borne, as there is no danger, and as I have often called her attention to it and have blamed her for it, she is now rather more considerate."
The following extracts from "Queen" Magdalen's statutebook for her community show somewhat amusingly that the continual exhortations of the superiors of the Society had made some impression:—
"Jesuits are to be chosen as confessors. Out of confession none must speak with her confessor without the permission of her superioress, who shall not give leave unless there be sufficient reason for it. For although one may have a scruple or a temptation, this can be deferred to the next confession. An exception must be made for the superioress herself, for it is needful that she speak often with him, but not always necessary for her to take him up to the house; sometimes she can confer with him in the lodge or in the lower corridor. They must not make acquaintance with any other of the Fathers, or invite them to the house, neither must they send food to any sick Father, except in cases of great need, and only for a short time, say for a week, but not longer. Neither must they give them money daily to buy milk, butter, and such like things, but now and again, if necessary, they may give them the wherewithal to procure cheese and lard."
Notwithstanding these regulations, none must suppose that the archduchess is devoid of confidence or regard for the Fathers or for priests in general. All her life she has "loved them in God, and will continue to do so to the end; but there are many things good in themselves, and agreeable to God, which must nevertheless be avoided for the sake of a better thing still." If her spiritual daughters are careful to avoid exaggeration, and observe her precepts faithfully, they will find the Society better disposed towards them, will help them to save their souls, and will be less likely to change their confessors.
But in spite of her naivete, and of the excellent advice she gave to others, there were, for several years, innumerable difficulties with regard to the Archduchess Magdalen's confessor, Father Hezcovaus. He was infirm in health, and needed much waiting upon, day and night. Moreover, he observed the rule as little as possible, and his august penitent unwisely took his part against his superior far more than was desirable. It was at last decided that he should be dispensed altogether from keeping the rule, that he need only obey the General, and his confessor, and that he might receive from the Archduchess Magdalen all that he needed for his support. But even this was not enough, and sometimes it was debated whether Father Hezcovaus should still be included in the list of those belonging to the college.
On the 12th October 1584, the provincial, Father Bader, ordered that the servants of this Father should not come and go, and run in and out, as he and they pleased. If he required anything in the night, the other Fathers should be ready to assist him charitably and patiently.
But there were still other difficulties at Hall, in connection with the quasi-religious community, such as St. Francis Borgia had predicted, and these rose to such a pitch, that in 1596, Father Hoffaus expressed his opinion to the General, that it would be better to give up their college there, and so once for all get rid of the burden imposed on the Society by "Queen Magdalen."
The whole trend of this correspondence shows the tremendous obstacles which the Jesuits encountered, not merely at Innsbruck but throughout Austria and Bavaria, in their efforts to abstain from all that was alien to their vocation. It is curious in these days to note how much the old Society suffered from a superabundance of favour on the part of princes. And far from being stereotyped reproductions of one unvarying pattern or spiritual automata turned out of one mould, the Jesuits, as represented in their own private correspondence, which was never intended for the public eye, reveal a considerable amount of individuality. The interpretation of the rule was elastic enough to give scope to much diversity of opinion, and if superiors were jealous guardians of the Institute, they encountered sufficient idiosyncrasy among their subjects to prevent any rigidity in applying it.
It seems more than likely that if Lacordaire had had his wish, and had been able to dedicate ten years of his life to the study of the Jesuit character, he would have found on the whole that he had, after all, set himself the very ordinary task of watching a perpetual conflict between a high ideal and that frailty which is inseparable from human nature.
The revolt from Scholasticism in the sixteenth century, led by Erasmus of Rotterdam, John Colet, and other apostles of the new learning, reached farther, and was productive of other results than these had intended or anticipated.
Erasmus was called an infidel by the friars, but he always stoutly protested his adherence to the Church of which the Pope was the head; and Colet has been considered by many as a herald of the Reformation, although he died a Catholic. Erasmus, by his own showing, was no infidel, and there are sufficient indications that Colet, even had his life been prolonged, would never have gone over to the enemy; but both had given cause for apprehension by opening doors to a profound dissatisfaction, to novel theories and extravagant systems, which many friends of Erasmus carried on to a denial of all revealed religion.
In throwing discredit on the schoolmen, Erasmus had prepared the way for a contempt of Aristotle himself, and when the ex-friar Giordano Bruno of Nola appeared as a leader of revolt, distinct from Luther and Calvin, he found in Italy and France a small band of intellectual revolutionists clamouring for a philosophy that should emancipate them from the thraldrom of Christianity, and yet save them from the dishonourable name of atheists.
They wished to be called deists; not because they favoured any particular form or system of religion, but as a sign that they acknowledged, in some vague and undefined sense, a Supreme Being, and were content to follow the light and law of nature, rejecting revelation, and placing themselves in opposition to Christianity.
Bruno gave them a philosophical system that was neither platonic nor peripatetic, nor was it mystic, but a confused jumble of all three systems, and, according to Bayle, "the most monstrous that could be devised, and directly opposed to all the most evident ideas of our intelligence." He goes on to say that Bruno, in his war against Aristotle, invented doctrines a thousand times more obscure than the most incomprehensible things written by the disciples of Aquinas or Scotus.*
* Bayle, Dictionnaire, Historique et Critique, article "Bruno," vol. i.Doc. XII.
The new philosopher was accused among other heresies of teaching that there is no such thing as punishment for sin; that the soul of man is a product of nature differing in no sense from the soul of a brute, and that God is not its author. In his deposition at his trial, Bruno begged the question of the immortality of the soul in these words: "I have held and do hold that souls are immortal, and that they are subsisting substances (that is the intellectual souls), and that speaking in a Catholic manner, they do not pass from one body to another, but they go either to Paradise, to Purgatory, or to Hell. Nevertheless, in philosophy I have reasoned that the soul subsisting without the body, and non-existent in the body, may in the same way that it is in one body be in another; the which, if it be not true, at least appears to be the opinion of Pythagoras."*
* Bayle, Dictionnaire, Historique et Critique, article "Bruno," vol. i.Doc. XII.
His disciples aver that, although Bruno did not enforce the doctrine of metempsychosis, he held it to be very well worthy of consideration. There is perhaps a distinction without a difference between the terms "immortality of the soul," and the "indestructibility of the monad," an expression dear to Bruno's followers, and frequently to be met with in his writings; but we are accustomed to associate the latter term with the worship of nature according to the pantheistic gospel which recognises a soul in every leaf that stirs; and (this brings us to the very essence of Bruno's philosophy, in so far as it is possible to arrive at any definite conclusion, amid the obscure maze of words with which he surrounded his ideas.
None of his disciples repudiate for him the title of pantheist, but Mrs. Besant,* an ardent defender of the Nolan philosopher, went a step further, and declared pantheism itself to be "veiled atheism." Moreover, she says, "So thoroughly does pantheism strike at the root of all idea of God, as taught by theists, that we can scarce think that Bruno was unfairly judged when called atheist by his contemporaries; the conception of the pantheist cannot be called a God in the commonly accepted sense of that term."
* In her Giordano Bruno, p. 5. London, 1877.
Having arrived thus far, the panegyrist breaks out into eulogy of "the grandest hero of free-thought," and claims for Bruno the proud distinction of materialist.
Others of his admirers, and notably his English biographer, Frith, declare that the aim of the Nolan philosophy is to overcome the fear of death, and to fill the soul with noble aspirations, while they maintain that its author forestalled Darwin and Herbert Spencer in their theory of evolution. "Nobody is to-day the same as yesterday. All things, even the smallest, have their share in the universal intelligence, or universal thinking power. For without a certain degree of sense or cognition, the drop of water could not assume the spherical shape which is essential to the preservation of its forces. All things participate in the universal intelligence, and hence come attraction and repulsion, love and hate. Nature shows forth each species before it enters into life. Thus each species is the starting-point for the next." These are some of the ideas, the conception of which is supposed to shadow forth Bruno's anticipation of modern thought.
Landseck, his principal German biographer, makes him the link between antiquity and the celebrated thinkers of the nineteenth century. He considers the doctrine of the indestructibility of the monad to be that belief in the immortality of the soul which was professed by the Druids, the Egyptians, the Brahmins, and the Buddhists, the belief of Pythagoras and Plato, of Plotinus, of Lessing, and of Goethe, in unison with the evolution of Darwin and Haeckel.*
* Landseck, Bruno der Martyrer der neuen Weltanschauung, p. 37.
It is not our purpose to consider here all Bruno's articles of faith or unfaith, but rather to show the general tendency of his teaching, in order to trace its effect upon his contemporaries in England. His philosophy, itself a travesty of various systems, was in its turn caricatured and vulgarised in a manner which would, perhaps, had he lived to see it, have gone far to persuade him of the risk to popular order and morality which he incurred, in taking from people their belief in a personal God, and fear of the consequences of sin.
Some years ago a statue was raised to his honour on the Campo dei Fiori in Rome, on the alleged spot of his execution, as a vindication of those principles for which he chose to die. In his own day they were held to be dangerous to the State, and subversive of public morality, and he was forced to fly before the opposition they aroused from almost every place in which he attempted to propagate them. The enmity of the Calvinists drove him from Geneva; at Toulouse the Huguenots made his life unbearable; the Oxford of Elizabeth, as intolerant as Rome, proved no agreeable sojourn, but he left traces of his passage through England, which Elizabeth, however much she favoured him at the time of his visit, was afterwards at great pains to efface.
The period of his stay in this country extended over two years, from 1583 to 1585, and although in general he met with little encouragement from the learned, he succeeded in making some proselytes. In London, he lodged at the house of the French ambassador, and went frequently to court, where he maintained his footing by pretending to be smitten by the mature charms of the queen. Among his English friends were Sir Philip Sidney, Sir Fulke Greville, Dyer, Spenser, and Temple, and it has even been asserted that his system to a certain degree influenced Bacon, and may be traced in the Novum Organon.* This is, however, an erroneous view, for Bacon's term "form" means no more than law, for the form of a substance is its very essence, whereas with Bruno, form and matter are expressions which stand for forces.** According to St. Thomas Aquinas, who followed Aristotle, form is the DETERMINING PRINCIPLE in the constitution of bodies.
* Book ii., Aphors. 1, 4, 13, 15, 17.
** Frith, Life of Giordano Bruno, p. 107. London, 1887.
Sidney's biographer,* while jealous lest any taint of error should be supposed to infect his hero, nevertheless admits unwillingly that Giordano Bruno, Sir Fulke Greville, and Sir Philip Sidney, were wont to discuss philosophical and metaphysical subjects "of a nice and delicate nature with closed doors."
* Zouch, Memoirs of Sir Philip Sidney, p, 337, note.
Dr. Joseph Warton, editor of Pope's works, says that, among many things related of the life of Sir Philip Sidney, it does not seem to be much known that he was the intimate friend and patron of the famous atheist, Giordano Bruno, who was in a secret club with him and Sir Fulke Greville in 1587. The date is incorrect, but the intimacy is confirmed by Bruno's dedication to the English poet of two of his works, the one being entitled Spaccio de la Bestia Trionfaute, a book which is admittedly blasphemous and obscene, where it is not so obscure as to be unintelligible, the other the no less notorious Heroici Furori.
Soon after Bruno's departure from England, the result of his teaching began to appear in many places throughout the country. Elizabeth's Council became alarmed. State indifferentism to religion was as yet unknown, and the new sectarianism appealing strongly to the ignorant and the profane, politicians were not slow to take cognisance that questions of the highest moment were being introduced into tavern brawls and gutter oratory. Others besides Catholics began to absent themselves from the new English Church service and sermons; and fragments of conversation that savoured of "atheism" were frequently reported to the local magistrates. An investigation into the causes and authors of the disturbances was set on foot, and it was felt that a scapegoat was needed to create a wholesome fear of the long arm of the law in the minds of would-be atheists among the people.*
* Bruno's latest biographer, Mr. L. McIntyre (Giordano Bruno, London, 1903), entirely ignores the effect of his hero's teaching in England.
Sir Philip Sidney was too much the world's darling, too elegant a figure in the Elizabethan pageant, too ethereal a poet, to be burdened with the brunt of so serious an accusation, and he was passed by for one who, with all his brilliant gifts and attainments, had ever been the child of misfortune.
Perhaps no one ever excited more jealousy and ill-will among his contemporaries than Sir Walter Raleigh. His life at court alternated between magnificent success and the most crushing defeat. He was successively the friend, the rival, the enemy of Essex, and when that favourite's star was in the ascendant, his waned, until a change in the queen's fickle fancy made him again, for a short period, an object of admiration and envy. A soldier of fortune, a planter of colonies, an admiral, a courtier, a statesman, a wit, a scholar, a chemist, an agriculturist, he was eminent as each of these, and his exploits in Guiana read like some fantastic tale of fictitious adventure. His History of the World, although but a fragment of what he intended it to be, is nevertheless a monument of prodigious learning, sobriety, and patience.
Edwards, in his Life of Sir Walter Raleigh, says that in his graver hours he had strong theological convictions which agreed in many points with those of the leading Puritans. Such was probably in all sincerity his frame of mind towards the end of his strange career; but up to the time of his trial in 1603, he seems to have been active in disseminating the doctrines which had become popular since the baneful sojourn of Bruno in this country. Raleigh's biographer admits that his attempt on his own life in the Tower, subsequent to his trial, is in favour of the unhappy prisoner's atheism at that time.*
* "Sir Walter Raleigh is said to have declared that his design to kill himself arose from no feeling of fear, but was formed in order that his fate might not serve as a triumph to his enemies whose power to put him to death, despite his innocency, he well knows" (The Count of Beaumont to Henry IV., 13th August 1603, Copy in Hardwick MS., p. 18).
The first apparently to accuse Raleigh of atheism in a formal manner was the Jesuit provincial, Robert Parsons, who, in a book published in 1592 and now very rare, mentions "Sir Walter Raleigh's school of atheism . . . and of the diligence used to get young gentlemen to this school, wherein both Moses and our Saviour, the Old and New Testament, are jested at, and the scholars taught among other things to spell God backwards.* Cayley treats this accusation as a calumny,** and Birch describes its author as the "virulent but learned and ingenious Father Parsons";*** but Osborn, in the preface to his Miscellany of Sundry Essays, Paradoxes, etc., in speaking of Raleigh, says that Queen Elizabeth "chid him who was ever after branded with the title of an atheist, though a known asserter of God and Providence."
* An advertisement concerning the Responsio ad Elizabethae edictum, 1592.
** Life of Sir Walter Raleigh, i. 140.
*** Life of Sir Walter Raleigh, i. 140.
The year after the appearance of Father Parsons' little book, steps were taken for proving the truth of the reports which had now become common, and it is remarkable that none of Sir Walter Raleigh's biographers seem to have been aware of an elaborate interrogatory that was drawn up and administered for the purpose of eliciting from sworn witnesses evidence concerning his religious opinions, and those of his family, dependents, and friends. The original seems to have disappeared, but a contemporary copy of this document is to be found among the Harleian papers in the British Museum, together with the evidence obtained by means of the interrogatory. As it is extremely pertinent to the subject in question, and has hitherto escaped notice, the nine questions administered with a selection of the most interesting depositions of the witnesses are here given in detail. For a complete account of the examinations the reader is referred to the manuscript.*
* Harl. 6849, f. 183.
Dorset.
Interrogatory to be ministered unto such as are to be examined in her Majesty's name, by virtue of her Highness's commission for causes ecclesiastical.
1. Imprimis. Whom do you know or have heard to be suspected of atheism or apostasy? And in what manner do you know or have heard the same? And what other notice can you give thereof?
2. Whom do you know or have heard that have argued or spoken against, or as doubting the Being of any God, or what or where God is, or to swear by God, adding if there be a God or such like; and when and where was the same? And what other notice can you give of any such offender?
3. Whom do you know or have heard that hath spoken against God, His Providence over the world? or of the world's beginning or ending? or of predestination, or of Heaven or of Hell, or of the Resurrection, in doubtful or contentious manner? When and where was the same? and what other notice can you give of any such offender?
4. Whom do you know or have heard that hath spoken against the truth of God His holy Word, revealed to us in the Scriptures of the Old and New Testament, or of some places thereof? or have said those Scriptures are not to be believed and defended by her Majesty for doctrine, and faith, and salvation, but only of policy or civil government, and when and where was the same? And what other notice can you give of any such offender?
5. Whom do you know or have heard hath blasphemously cursed God; as in saying one time (as it rained when he was ahawking), "if there be a God, a pox on that God which sendeth such weather to mar our sport," or such like? or do you know or have heard of any that hath broken forth into any other words of blasphemy, and where was the same?
6. Whom do you know or have heard to have said that when he was dead, his soul should be hanged on the top of a pole and "run God, run Devil, and fetch it that would have it," or to like effect, or that hath otherwise spoken against the being or immortality of the soul of men, or that a man's soul should die and become like the soul of a beast, or such like, and when and where was the same?
7. Whom do you know or have heard hath counselled, procured, aided, comforted, or conferred with any such offender? When, where, and in what manner was the same?
8. Do you know or have heard of any of those offenders to affirm all such that were not of their opinions touching the premises, to be schismatics and in error. And whom do you know hath so affirmed? And when and where was it spoken?
9. What can you say more of any of the premises, or whom have you known or heard can give any notice of the same? And speak all your knowledge therein.
Hereupon follows the report of the Royal Commissioners on the depositions of witnesses examined by them with the above formulary:—
"Examinations taken at Cearne, co. Dorset, 21 March, 36 Eliz., before us, Tho. Lord Howard, Viscount Howard of Bindon, Sir Ralph Horsey, knt., Francis James, Chancellor, John Williams, and Francis Hawley, esquires, by virtue of a commission to us and others, directed from some of her Majesty's High Commissioners in causes ecclesiastical."*
* On the last page is written: "These examinations are the trew copies taken at Cearne, 21 March 1593."
From the two first witnesses examined, John Hancock, parson of South Parrot, and Richard Bagage, churchwarden of Lo, no information was obtained. The third witness, John Jesopp, minister, of Gillingham, "said nothing of his own knowledge, but had heard that one Herryott, of Sir Walter Rawleigh his house, had brought the Godhead in question, and the whole course of the Scriptures, but of whom he so heard it he did not remember. (Thomas Harriot was an acknowledged deist, and Raleigh had taken him into his house to study mathematics with him.] He heard his brother, Dr. Jesopp, say that Mr. Carew Rawleigh, reasoning with Mr. Parry and Mr. Archdeacon about the Godhead [as he conjectureth], his said brother, thinking that Mr. Archdeacon and Mr. Parry would take offence at that argument, desired the Lord Bishop of Worcester [then being there] that he might argue with the said Mr. Rawleigh, for, said he, your Lordship shall hear him argue as like a pagan as ever you heard any. But the matter was so shut up, as this examinate heard his brother say, and proceeded not to argument, and further he saith that he hath heard one Allen, now of Portland Castle, suspected of atheism, but of whom he heard it he remembereth not."
William Hussey, churchwarden of Gillingham, corroborated the report ofSir Walter Raleigh's suspected atheism.
John Davis, curate of Motcomb, "to the first interrogatory saith that he knoweth of no such person directly, but he hath heard Sir Walter Raleigh, by general report, hath had some reasoning against the deity of God and His omnipotence; and hath heard the like of Mr. Carew Raleigh, but not so directly. Also he saith he heard the like report of one, Mr. Thinn, of Wiltshire, which he heard from a barber in Warminster, dwelling in a by-lane there, who told this deponent he did marvel that a gentleman of his condition should deliver words to so mean a man as himself, tending to this sense, as though God's Providence did not reach over all creatures, or to like effect.
"To the second, third, fourth, and fifth interrogatory he saith he hath heard that Sir Walter Raleigh hath argued with one Mr. Ironside, at Sir George Trenchard's, touching the being or immortality of the soul, or such like; but the certainty thereof he cannot say further, saving asking the same of Mr. Ironside upon the report aforesaid; he hath answered that the matter was not as the voice of the country reported thereof, or to the like effect."
The next witness, Nicholas Jefferies, declared that he did not know personally any atheist in the county of Dorset, but testified to the report of many "that Sir Walter Raleigh and his retinue are generally suspected of atheism," and he quoted the above-mentioned Allen, Lieutenant of Portland Castle, as "a great blasphemer and light esteemer of religion, and thereabout cometh not to divine service or sermons." He also mentioned the circumstance that "Herryott, attendant on Sir Walter Raleigh, hath been convened before the Lords of the Council for denying the resurrection of the body."
This witness also gave a circumstantial account of the conversation between Sir Walter, his brother Carew, and Mr. Ironside at Sir George Trenchard's table, but as Mr. Ironside was himself subsequently sworn and examined, it is better to quote his own words. It is significant of the credibility of these witnesses, that the evidence of Jefferies, although he merely reported what Mr. Ironside had told him of the conversation, and could not remember all that had been said, tallies completely with the evidence of the other witnesses.
Ironside's examination comes last in the manuscript, but it is more convenient to insert it here:—
"Ralph Ironside, minister of Winterbor, sworn and examined. To the first interrogatory, he saith that for his own knowledge he will answer, but for that he hath heard and knoweth no author to justify the same, he is persuaded by counsel that he is in danger to be punished, and therefore refuseth to say anything upon uncertain report, unless he could bring in his author in particular.
"The relation of the disputation had at Sir George Trenchard's table, between Sir Walter Raleigh, Mr. Carew Raleigh, and Mr. Ironside, hereafter followeth, written by himself and delivered to the commissioners upon his oath.
"Wednesday, sevennight before the Assizes, summer last, I came to Sir George Trenchard's in the afternoon, accompanied with a fellow-minister and friend of mine, Mr. Whittle, vicar of Forthington. There were then with the knight Sir Walter Raleigh, Sir Ralph Horsey, Mr. Carew Raleigh, Mr. John Fitzjames, etc. Towards the end of supper, some loose speeches of Mr. Carew Raleigh's being gently reproved by Sir Ralph Horsey with the words Colloquia prava corrumpunt bonos mores, Mr. Raleigh demanded of me what danger he might incur by such speeches, whereunto I answered—'The wages of sin is death'—and he, making light of death as being common to all, sinner and righteous, I inferred further that as that life which is the gift of God through Jesus Christ is life eternal, so that death which is properly the wages of sin is death eternal both of the body and of the soul also.
"'Soul,' quoth Mr. Carew Raleigh, 'what is that?' Better it were, said I, that we would be careful how the soul might be saved, than to be curious in finding out the essence.
"And so, keeping silence, Sir Walter requested me that for their instruction, I would answer to the question that before by his brother was proposed unto me. 'I have been,' saith he, 'a scholar sometime in Oxford; I gave answer under a bachelor of arts, and had talk with divers; yet hitherunto in this point (to wit, what the reasonable soul of man is) have I not by any been resolved. They tell me it is primus motor, the first mover in a man, etc.' Unto this, after I had replied that howsoever the soul were fons et principium, the fountain, beginning and cause of motion in us, yet the first mover was the brain or heart, I was again urged to show my opinion, and hearing Sir Walter Raleigh tell of his dispute and scholarship some time in Oxford, I cited the general definition of Anima out of Aristotle (De Anima, cap. 2), and thence a subjecto proprio, deduced the special definition of the soul reasonable, that it was Actus Primus corporis organici agentis humanam vitam.
"It was misliked of Sir Walter as obscure and intricate. And I withal, that though it could not unto him, as being learned, yet it might seem obscure to the most present, and therefore had rather say with divines plainly, that the reasonable soul is a spiritual and immortal substance, breathed into man by God, whereby he lives and moves and understandeth, and so is distinguished from other creatures. 'Yea, but what is that spiritual and immortal substance breathed into man?' saith Sir Walter. The soul, quoth I. 'Nay then,' said he, 'you answer not like a scholar.' Hereupon I endeavoured to prove that it was scholarlike, nay, in such disputes as this, usual and necessary to run in circulum, partly because definitio rei was primum et immediatum principium, and seeing primo non est Prius, a man must of necessity come backward, and partly because definitio and definitum be naturae reciprocae, the one convertible, answering unto the question made upon the other. As for example, if one asked: 'What is a man?' you will say: 'He is a creature reasonable and mortal'; but if you ask again: 'What is a creature reasonable and mortal?' you must of force come backward and answer: 'It is a man,' et sic de caeteris. 'But we have principles in our mathematics,' saith Sir Walter, 'as totum est majus qua libet sua parte; and ask me of it, and I can show it in the table, in the window, in a man, the whole being bigger than the parts of it.'
"I replied first that he showed quod est, not quid est, that it was, but not what it was; secondly, that such demonstration was against the nature of a man's soul, being a spirit; for as a thing, being sensible, was subject to the sense, so man's soul, being insensible, was to be discerned by the spirit. Nothing more certain in the world than that there is a God, yet being a spirit, to subject him to the sense otherwise than perfectum. It is impossible.
"'Marry!' quoth Sir Walter, 'these two be like, for neither could I learn hitherto what God is.'
"Mr. Fitzjames answering that Aristotle should say he was Ens Entium, I answered, that whether Aristotle, dying in a fever, should cry: Ens Entium, miserere mei; or drowning himself in Euripum, should say: Quia ego to non capio, to me capies, it was uncertain, but that God was Ens Entium, a thing of things, having being of Himself, and giving being to all creatures, it was most certain, and confirmed by God Himself unto Moses.
"'Yea, but what is this Ens Entium?' saith Sir Walter.
"I answered it is God, and being disliked as before, Sir Walter wished that grace might be said, 'for that,' quoth he, is better than his disputation.' Thus supper ended and grace said, I departed to Dorchester with my fellowminister, and this is to my remembrance the substance of that speech with Sir Walter Raleigh I had at Wolverton."
"Ralph Ironside."
Turning to the remaining depositions, we find that Francis Scarlett, minister of Sherborne, sworn and examined, relates how that "a little before Christmas, one Robert Hyde, of Sherborne, shoemaker, seeing this deponent passing by his door, called him, and desired to have some conversation with him, and after some speeches, he entered into these speeches. "Mr. Scarlett, you have preached unto us that there is a God, a Heaven, a Hell, and a resurrection after this life, and that we shall give an account of our works, and that the soul is immortal; but now, saith he, here is a company about this town that say that Hell is no other but poverty and penury in this world, and Heaven is no other but to be rich and enjoy pleasures; and that we die like beasts, and when we are gone there is no more remembrance of us, and such like.
But this examinate did neither then demand who they were, neither did he deliver any particulars unto him, and further saith that it is generally reported in Sherborne, that the said Allen and his men are atheists. And also he saith there is one Lodge, a shoemaker in Sherborne, accounted an atheist."
John Deuch, churchwarden of Weeke Regis: "To the sixth interrogatory this deponent saith that he hath heard one Allen, Lieutenant of Portland Castle, when he was like to die, being persuaded to make himself ready to God for his soul, to answer that he would carry his soul to the top of an hill, and run God, run devil, fetch it that will have it, or to that effect. But, who told this deponent of it, he remembereth not. To the rest of the interrogatory he can say nothing."
What punishment followed on these examinations does not appear. A fine was probably imposed on all those convicted of speaking and propagating atheism; but in spite of the investigations and the discredit thrown on the sect, it did not by any means die out.
Essex was accounted at that time the only nobleman who cared for religion. His manner was to censure all men as "cold professors, neuters, or atheists." In the declaration of W. Masham before the Lord Treasurer Buckhurst, he said that Essex told the people when he incited them to rise, that he acted "for the good of the Queen, city, and crown which certain atheists, meaning Raleigh, had betrayed to the Infante of Spain." At his execution he thanked God that he was never atheist nor papist."*
* Dom. Eliz., February 1601, Vol. 278; R.O.
On the accession of James I. the Catholics presented a petition to parliament, begging to be allowed to practise their religion, at least in secret, and they went on to say that there were "four classes of religionists in England Protestant who domineered all the late reign: Puritans who have crept up amongst them, atheists, who live on brawls; and Catholics."*
* Dom. James I., vol. i., 1603; R.O.
The stigma of atheist clung to Raleigh long after he had ceased to deserve it. In his trial for high treason in 1603, it considerably damaged his cause, and gave another handle to his many enemies. The king's attorney, in addressing him, exclaimed: "O damnable atheist!" and the Lord Chief Justice Coke, in his address to the prisoner after his condemnation, harangued him in these words:—
"Your case being thus, let it not grieve you if I speak a little out of zeal and love to your good. You have been taxed by the world with the defence of the most heathenish and blasphemous opinions, which I list not to repeat, because Christian ears cannot endure to hear them, nor the authors and maintainers of them be suffered to live in any Christian commonwealth. You know what men said of Harpool.* You shall do well before you go out of the world to give satisfaction therein, and not to die with these imputations upon you. Let not any devil persuade you (the Harleian version adds, 'Hariot or any such doctor') to think there is no eternity in Heaven; for if you think thus, you shall find eternity in hell-fire."**
* A mistake probably for Harriot. The name is variously spelt. Edwards, in his Life of Raleigh, corrects it and says, "Either he applied to the illustrious mathematician Thomas Harriot, the epithet 'devil,' or he said that Harriot's opinions were devilish" (p. 436). The judge's words are variously reported, but their purport is always the same. Stebbing, in his monograph Sir Walter Raleigh, says that Harriot was accused by zealots of atheism, because his cosmogony was not orthodox, and that his ill-repute for free-thinking was reflected on Raleigh, who hired him to teach mathematics (probably in what Father Parsons termed his school of atheism) and engaged him in his colonising projects. Harriot was the friend whose society he chiefly craved when he was in the Tower, and is doubtless the "Herryott" of the examinations.
** Dom. James I., vol. 4, f. 83.
Between Raleigh's sentence and its execution fifteen years were allowed to elapse, during which time the prisoner in the Tower occupied himself with the compilation of his famous History of the World, and with chemical experiments. And as if all should be exceptional in the life of this remarkable man, he was allowed an interval during this period in which to flash once more upon the world in another expedition to Guiana, in search of the gold mine which he had declared to be there. After the ill-fated voyage he returned into durance vile, and when at last the time came for the axe which had so long hung over him, to fall, his words showed that at least in adversity he had learned, like the great Arian chieftain Clovis, to burn what he had adored, and to adore what he had burned. His device, Ubi dolor ibi amor is significant of the change that suffering had wrought in him. His last words on the scaffold were these: "I have many sins for which to beseech God's pardon. Of a long time my course was a course of vanity. I have been a seafearing man, a soldier, and a courtier, and in the temptations of the least of these there is enough to overthrow a good mind and a good man." Presently he added, "I die in the faith professed by the Church of England. I hope to be saved and to have my sins washed away by the Precious Blood and merits of our Saviour Jesus Christ."
Then, says his biographer,* he asked to be shown the axe, and kissing the blade, he said: "This gives me no fear. It is a sharp and fair medicine to cure me of all my disease."
* Edwards, Life of Sir Walter Raleigh, i. 704.
After Raleigh's death, the Archbishop of Canterbury, writing to Sir Thomas Roe, ambassador of Great Britain with the Great Mogul, 10th February 1618, said: "Sir Walter Raleigh amongst us did question God's being and omnipotence, which that just judge made good upon himself in overtumbling his estate, but last of all in bringing him to an execution by law, where he died a religious and Christian death, God testifying his power in this, that he raised up of a stone a child unto Abraham."
His doom had been from the first a foregone conclusion. James having been fatally prejudiced against him before that royal pedant ever set foot in England, to which fact the secret correspondence of Sir Robert Cecil with James VI. of Scotland amply testifies.
But curiously enough Sir Walter's brother Carew, although more deeply dyed in atheism, never ceased to be a Persona grata with the government. He was knighted in 1601, on the occasion of the visit to England of the French Marshal de Biron.* He held several honourable and lucrative public offices under James I., and was Lieutenant of the Isle of Portland in 1608. During his brother's long imprisonment in the Tower, Sir Carew Raleigh was living in prosperity at Dounton.**
* Stebbing, Sir Walter Raleigh, p. 157.
* Ibid, p. 248.
Atheists did not as a sect entirely disappear from England after the execution of their scapegoat, but they do not seem to have been further molested for their opinions. The persecution of the Catholics was at its height, and at no time did professed atheism provoke the fierce hatred that Catholicism inspired. For obvious reasons many Catholics at this period were but indifferently instructed in their religion. Some to escape attendance at the English Church service unlawfully feigned infidelity. One man having written a seditious book, called Balaam's Ass, against the king, for which he was condemned to death, was accused at his execution of having professed atheism. He denied being an infidel, expressed contrition for his "saucy meddling in the king's matter," and declared himself a Catholic.*
* Dom. James I., vol. 109, May 1619; R.0.
The Bishop of Exeter reported that "John Lugge, organist, retains none of his popish tendencies, though his religion is as the market goes," and he added that there were very few papists in his diocese, but an infinity of sectaries and atheists.
Many of these latter may have been secret Catholics, either extremely ignorant, or too timid to suffer for their faith. A book published in 1602, entitled The Unmasking of the Politique Atheist is a violent attack upon Catholicism. Another, called A Perfect Cure for Atheists, Papists, Arminians, etc., published in 1649, is of a like nature. It is a far cry from Aristotle to atheism, but no sooner did the votaries of the new learning discard a system of philosophy which, however exaggerated by pedants, was still a guarantee of exact reasoning, than their disciples and followers fell a prey to the vagaries of their own bewildered intellects.
It was the reductio ad absurdum of the reformed religion, when weak-kneed Catholics sheltered themselves from its pains and penalties under the fairly secure roof-tree of atheism.
"A fine rare show arrives from Rome, and it is all a present for the Queen, and the news of it reaches London, and the King is impatient to see it; and the Queen is lying in, and Mr. Panzani brings all the fine things to the Queen's bedchamber; and all the ladies of quality crowd in to see them; and the King with all his nobles hastens to the Queen's palace; and the boxes are opened, and the pieces are viewed one by one; and Mr. Conn comes in (though still without a red hat) to satisfy the Queen's curiosity, and Mr. Conn brings more fine pictures . . . and sees the King, and the Queen of France; and Mr. Panzani takes leave of the Queen of England (for how could he omit it?) and the Queen begs a red hat for Mr. Conn, and Mr. Conn must first do some signal service to the Church; and the King talks about Mr. Conn's red hat; and the Queen gives Mr. Panzani a fine diamond ring; and Mr. Panzani takes leave of all the ministers; and he pays his respects to all the ladies of the court; and the ladies send their compliments to the Pope, and they all beg Mr. Panzani's blessing. It was the end of the year 1636."
This Sevigne-like description was written in 179-, by the Rev. Charles Plowden, in his "Remarks on a Book entitled Memoirs of Gregorio Panzani." Panzani, a priest of the Roman Oratory, had been about two years in England, with a secret mission to report to Cardinal Barberini, nephew of Pope Urban VIII., on the condition of the Catholics, the condition of the court, and on the prospects regarding an ultimate reunion of the Anglican Church with Rome. He was to pave the way for an openly accredited envoy to the queen, was to conciliate the ministers, disarm the Puritans, and to do what he could for the Catholics, who were still smarting severely under the penal laws. Executions, it is true, had become less frequent, but the royal coffers were still replenished with the fines imposed on Catholics for their pertinacity in assembling to hear Mass by stealth. If a priest were caught, he was thrown into prison, tried, and punished with death. In dealing with the Catholic laity, Charles I. was never in favour of enforcing the extreme rigour of the law, but he was so often in want of money that he found it useful to be very severe in the matter of fines.
Panzani's mission to England falls about midway between the domestic storms which had troubled the early days of the royal marriage, and the Revolution which finally cost the most shifty of monarchs his throne and his life. Henrietta Maria had ceased to resent the expulsion of her French favourites, had consented at last to learn English and to tolerate the English people. She had thrown herself heart and soul into her husband's interests, and since the death of Buckingham was in possession of his entire confidence. If, later on, any cloud arose over their mutual relationship, it was the king's half expressed suspicion that she thought little of his powers of governing, and that however much she loved her husband, she did not admire his policy or trust his royal word as implicitly as he could wish. This is evident from one or two affectionate but querulous letters which he wrote to her when he was in the hands of the Parliamentarians.
Of the court, as well as of the private life of the king and queen, Panzani could report but favourably. The Catholics were to-be helped by the queen's influence, and as to reunion with Rome, he thought he had some reason to be sanguine. A letter from Panzani to Cardinal Barberini, of which the following is a translation, is to be found among the Stevenson and Bliss transcripts of Vatican documents in the Record Office. It is dated June 10/25, 1635:
"According to your Eminence's instructions, I have had a long talk with Father Philip (an English Capuchin and the Queen's confessor), regarding the reconciliation of this kingdom with Rome, and the means of bringing it about. He told me that there were unmistakeable signs of a desire for such a reconciliation, not only in the King, but among the clergy and laity as well, and the question is mooted almost daily. It is well, however, to be slow in drawing inferences, because those who are most in favour of a reunion do not venture to manifest their desire, but rather dissemble it under the appearance of a contrary way of thinking, on account of the severity of the law against Catholics. This same fear possesses the King also, he being of a timid nature; hence the great misfortune of not being able to count on his prudence and judgment, seeing how changeable and uncertain he and his advisers are. Moreover, if by ill-luck the present rumours of war oblige the King to arm himself, we may expect some persecution of the Catholics, for money being required, before he can go to war, it will be necessary to assemble Parliament, and the Lower House, composed mainly of Puritans, will grant no supplies unless the King makes some show of cruelty towards Catholics. For the same reason all the bishops and ministers of moderate views, and favourable to a reunion, begin to be harsh and intolerant when the time approaches for the meeting of Parliament, and do nothing but inveigh against the Pope in their sermons, solely from fear of losing their lives or their places. Father Philip says that there is no need to be alarmed at the difficulties we may encounter; but that we should be determined to overcome them, and that after God, the envoys may greatly facilitate the business, if they study with all their might how to make themselves agreeable to the King and the State.
"He who comes here should be all things to all men, in order to win all, and should take everything he can in good part, and find excuses for the King and his officers, if sometimes they do not grant the Catholics all the favours they ask. He should throw the blame on the poursuivants and the informers, and should adroitly petition for redress. He should keep Windebank (Secretary of State), considered by the Puritans to be 'Popishly affected,' and others, well informed of all that passes in Rome, and should manage to keep up communication with the papal legates, in order to have news, and at the same time to make himself agreeable to them, for they like above all things to receive marks of confidence. He must be careful, however, in publishing, the facts he thus learns, to give no offence to any of the crowned heads, nor bring our religion into bad odour.
"The envoy should distribute some gifts, and in fine, use every means to make himself beloved. He ought to be about thirty-five years old, and to have attained a certain solidity rarely met with before that age. He should also be noble and rich, and of a good presence, furnished with all qualities proper to a gentleman; and, above all, his life should be exemplary, without affectation or hypocrisy . . . . On the arrival of such an agent in London, speaking French well, which language is understood by the whole court, he should first of all contrive to please the Queen, who, being young, delights in perfumes and fine clothes, and likes people to be lively and merry. His next object should be to ingratiate himself with the court ladies and others, as much is done here by the influence of women; but he should on no account allow familiarity with the Queen and other ladies to degenerate into lightness or worse, for that would involve the ruin of the whole undertaking. It is customary to say here, 'if a man's life is good, his religion must be a good one'; but the English are shocked at every little thing. The King is extremely modest, and the Queen such, that Father Philip told me her conscience has never lost its baptismal innocence.
"Having gained the good opinion of the Queen and her ladies, the agent may aspire to greater things. The court is very accessible to bribes; it is therefore quite possible to purchase its goodwill; and to this end it will be well to send the Queen jewels of some value, ostensibly as presents to her, but in reality that she may distribute them among those ministers from whom the greatest help may be expected. The envoy should not make very valuable presents himself, but only through the Queen, lest he be suspected of ulterior views, or cause danger to the recipients of them.
"When the ministers have been won over, the Queen, instructed by the envoy how great a reputation she may acquire by the conversion of this kingdom, must try to persuade the King to abolish poursuivants and informers. This he may not be able to effect immediately, being powerless to repeal parliamentary laws, but he may be able to procure that the poursuivants and informers shall do nothing without an express and written order from the Privy Council, and only then in a manner conformable to the instructions of the same. In this way, Catholics would have nothing more to fear, because as soon as the Council resolved to proceed against any individual, the Queen would bring her influence to bear on any one of its members already on her side, and the threatened Catholic would be helped, either to fly or to elude the officials.
"This point gained, an almost tacit liberty of conscience would follow; the Catholics would take courage, and the moderate Protestants would no longer fear to declare themselves openly their protectors. Then would be the time to treat with the King, through the Archbishop of Canterbury, for the concession of religious liberty, as far as possible. This once conceded, Father Philip believes that in less than three years the whole country would become Catholic. Parliament might then safely be assembled to repeal the laws against Catholics, and reunion with the Holy See would soon follow.
"But how to obtain liberty of conscience it is not easy to say at present; neither does it yet concern us, not having arrived so far.
"This is all that Father Philip said, and whatever else he may tell me I will write to your Eminence, having nothing further to add now, except that the envoy should be guided in all things by Father Philip, who has a great reputation for prudence, and is respected by the whole court."
Nevertheless, Father Philip's ingenious structure soon proved to be only a house of cards. He understood the Queen, and was not far wrong in his estimation of Charles, but he was mistaken in thinking the king's party to be in earnest about Catholicism, and was as wide of the mark in grasping the archbishop's bent as any Puritan in the realm.
Laud was in some respects wiser than Buckingham had been; he was content to govern through the King, throwing what power he could into the hands of the prelates. All the great offices of State were filled by churchmen. Far from contemplating any submission to the Pope, he aimed at being a species of independent Pope on his own account. Both he and Juxon, the Lord Treasurer, refused to see Panzani.
Laud's greatest passion was ambition, if anything in a nature so contracted could be said to assume the proportions of a fullblown passion. He had a marvellous capacity for dealing with small things, and all that came under his ken he studied to the minutest detail. He was a believer in dreams, and owned to being greatly troubled by them. "Thursday, I came to London," he once wrote in his diary; "the night following, I dreamed that I was reconciled to the Church of Rome. This troubled me much, and I wondered exceedingly how it should happen. Now was I aggrieved with myself (not only by reason of the errors of that Church, but also) upon account of the scandal which from that my fall would be cast upon many eminent and learned men in the Church of England. Going with this resolution, a certain priest met me, and would have stopped me. But moved with indignation I went on my way. And while I wearied myself with these troublesome thoughts I awoke. Herein I felt such strong impressions that I could scarce believe it to be a dream."
To a becoming gravity the archbishop failed to unite a saving sense of humour. His temper was hasty, but also vindictive, and he never forgot an injury, to which fact the notorious Puritan, William Prynne, was well able to testify. Laud first incurred the enmity of this man and his friends by his attempts to introduce some measure of ceremonial into the churches under him. When he began his reform, the places of public worship were nothing but buildings where discourses and diatribes against Popery were to be heard in luxuriously upholstered seats. "There wants nothing but beds to hear the Word of God on," said Bishop Corbet. The notion of a priesthood had died out of people's minds. They looked upon their clergy as preachers merely—the cure of souls was an obsolete term.
Archbishop Grindal had caused the altars to be destroyed, and the places where they had stood whitewashed, so that no trace of them might remain.* Laud had the communion tables removed from the middle of the churches into the place formerly occupied by the altar, railed in, and distinguished by altar-like adornments. Finally, it became customary to designate them by the ancient name of altar, while the officiating minister resumed the name of priest. The people, now become thoroughly Protestantised, murmured, and thought they saw indications of a return to Rome.** Some protested that all this superabundant care for externals was eating the life out of Protestantism; the bugbear of others was the appeal, now becoming customary, to the Fathers of the Church, rather than to the Protestant divines of the continent.*** St. Augustine was suspect, Calvin they knew to be orthodox.
* Articles to be inquired of in the Archdiocese of York—"Whether in your churches and chapels, all altars be utterly taken down and clean removed even unto the foundation; and the place where they stood paved, and the wall whereunto they joined whited over, and made uniform with the rest, so as no breach or rupture appear." In case any altars remained, the churchwardens were "to remove them and certify."
** Calendar of State Papers, 1635-36; Dom. Charles I.
*** Gardiner, Fall of the Monarchy of Charles.
The sequel proved that a very real source of danger lay among Laud's own familiar friends. The archbishop could not restrain the lengths to which they would go, in following up the track which he himself had laid open. Burning questions were discussed in the pulpits. Thus, Panzani, in a letter to Cardinal Barberini, dated March 13/23, 1636, says:—
"Last Sunday, one of the bishops preached before the King, on the necessity of Sacramental Confession, saying that the Church has never been in a good state wherever it was not practised."
Panzani, continuing, went on to say that reconciliation with Rome was an event anticipated by all, and that many people thought the clergy refrained from marrying, in order that they might still hold their parishes in case of reunion. "This," he adds, "is what I hear, but whether it is true or not, God only knows, who sees the hearts of men."
In the same letter he mentioned another sermon, which had lately been preached before the king and the court "touching confession, and the preacher said that its origin could be traced to the Gospel better than that of any other doctrine; wherefore he exhorted his hearers to practise it. All the court are now talking of this sermon," he continued, "and the King himself at supper afterwards spoke highly of the practise of confession, saying that one ought to mention all the circumstances of a sin. Someone who was present said he could not think it right to take away another person's reputation by naming him, if he were concerned in a sin. The King at once replied that it was not permitted to name accomplices, and turning to Father Philip, who is always present at supper, he asked him if he were not right. Father Philip answered that he was. The Earl of Carlisle, a Puritan, who was also there, assured Father Philip that he agreed with us in everything, except that the Pope had power to depose kings. 'We do not believe that either,' replied Father Philip, 'we only say that the Pope may do it in extraordinary cases, such as heresy for instance.' The Earl of Carlisle replied
'You are not all of the same opinion, because I know that some among you maintain that he has.'
"Here the subject dropped. A lady conversing with Father Philip on the same occasion said that if confession were to be practised, Protestant ministers ought to be like ours. 'Why?' asked Father Philip. 'Because,' answered the lady, 'if they have wives, no one will confess to them for fear of their repeating to their wives, straight off, the sins confided to them.'"
In a former letter, Panzani had written: "A preacher said lately that the Pope was the true Vicar of Christ, successor of St. Peter, and Chief Patriarch, and he proceeded to enlarge on Papal jurisdiction, when a tumult arose among the congregation, and afterwards the preacher was censured."
And again, "On the first day, and also the first Sunday in Lent, the Bishop of London, preaching before the King, took for his subject the preparation for our Lord's Passion, and said that it was not only needful to mortify the spirit, but also the flesh, teaching which is opposed to the doctrine of the greater number of Protestants."
Thus, the Puritans had some ground for murmuring, and it was not altogether unnatural, that they and the Catholics also should imagine that the Church of England had set its face Romewards. The above were not doctrines such as Cranmer, Ridley, Latimer, and Hooper would have owned, nor would they recognise the churches in which such language was held.
Greater still would have been the wrath of such men as Prynne, Bastwick, and Burton, had they known that the Bishop of Gloucester had applied to Panzani for permission to have a Catholic priest in his house secretly, to say Mass daily for him; and that he was strongly in favour of re-union.
William Prynne, barrister-at-law by profession, by reputation a vituperative pamphleteer, was always ready to denounce, cavil, and rail. The list of his philippics fills nearly a whole folio volume of the British Museum Library Catalogue. He had what Wharton, more graphically than politely, describes as "the eternal itch of scribbling." The subject of Sabbath-breaking to which he attributed the fresh outbreak of the plague in 1636, was to him as a red rag to a bull. Encouraged by his example a whole mass of literature appeared on the observance of the Sabbath—not the modern Sunday which was decried as an invention of Rome, but of the old Jewish Sabbath, considered by the Puritans to have a far better claim to be observed.
Prynne had no perception of the relative value of things. Sabbath-breaking, predestination, and the supreme wickedness of curls, or love-locks as they were then called, were of equal importance in his mind. Laud's innovations put him into a state of frenzy, and he declared that the Church of England was now "as full of ceremonies" as a dog was "full of fleas."
Giles Widdowes, entering the lists for the archbishop, argued that "men should take off their hats on entering a church, because it was the place of God's presence, the chiefest place of his honour amongst us, where His ambassadors deliver His embassage, where His priests sacrifice their own and the militant Church's prayers, and the Lord's Supper, to reconcile us to God, offended with our daily sins." "Ergo," answered Prynne, "the priests of the Church of England are sacrificing priests, and the Lord's Supper a propitiatory sacrifice, sacrificed by those priests for men's daily sins!"
Widdowes also wrote in defence of the practice of bowing at the name of Jesus; and considering doubtless that men should be fought with their own weapons, took a leaf out of Prynne's book and belaboured soundly "the lawless, kneeless, schismatical Puritan."
Prynne retorted promptly, entitling his reply, "Lame Giles his Haltings." Soon afterwards, being cited to appear and defend himself for having used intemperate language in a book against plays and players, he was sentenced to have his ears shorn off. As many copies of his book as were forthcoming were burned by his side as he sat in the pillory. He was degraded and prevented from pleading as a lawyer. He only wrote the more. The titles of his book are ingenious, and would ensure their sale at any time. As for their contents, odious as was the language he used, Prynne always hit the nail he intended, and was very good at a blow. In Rome's Masterpiece, he declared that the archbishop was a "middle-man, between an absolute Papist and a real Protestant, who will far sooner hug a Popish priest in his bosom than take a Puritan by the little finger."
Prynne's fellow pamphleteers, Bastwick and Burton, were not far behind him in the violence of their invectives, but the lawyer must be admitted to bear the palm for sharp sayings.
In John Bastwick's Litany, instead of "from plague, pestilence, and famine," we have "from bishops, priests, and deacons, good Lord, deliver us."
In 1637, Laud summoned the three men before the Star Chamber, to answer to a charge of libel. Bastwick's crime was for writing against the "Pope of Canterbury." They were all three found guilty, fined 5000 pounds each, condemned to lose their ears, and to be imprisoned for life, an astoundingly heavy sentence. But in addition Prynne was to be branded on both cheeks with the letters S L for slanderous libeller. Chief Justice Finch ordered the scars left by his former punishment to be laid bare. "I had thought," said he, "that Mr. Prynne had no ears but methinks he hath ears." Three years before, the executioner had only clipped off the outer rims; but now Prynne was to suffer the full rigour of the sentence. A contemporary thus describes the process:—
"Having burnt one cheek with a letter the wrong way, the hangman burnt that again, and presently a surgeon clapped on a plaster to take out the fire. The hangman hewed off Prynne's ears very scurvily, which put him to much pain, and after, he stood long in the pillory before his head could be got out, but that was a chance." *
* Documents relating to Prynne, Camden Papers.
He seems to have borne this martyrdom with great coolness, for on his way back to prison, he composed a Latin distich on the letters S L, which he interpreted "Stigmata Laudis"—the scars of Laud.
Although the sentence had been imprisonment for life, Prynne and Burton entered London in triumph three years later; and if revenge is sweet, Prynne was yet to swim in a sea of sweetness. When by a strange irony of fate he was hired to search the imprisoned archbishop for papers, he carried off Laud's diary.
If Panzani could have seen this strange record of the archbishop's dreams, desires, and impressions, he would doubtless have ceased to look upon Laud as an important factor in his scheme of the corporate re-union of the nation with Rome.
Under date 14th August 1634, Prynne read and gloated over those remarkable entries:
"That very morning at Greenwich there came one to me seriously, and that avowed ability to perform it, and offered me to be a cardinal," and two days later—
"I had a serious offer made me to be a cardinal. I was then from court, but so soon as I came hither (21st August) I acquainted His Majesty with it. But my answer again was that somewhat dwelt within me, which would not suffer that, till Rome were other than it is."
No doubt, in declining the cardinalate, if indeed the offer were not a figment of his own brain, Laud would have been diplomatic enough not to allow his reasons to transpire, and probably the Pope never knew them. The importance of the statement lies for posterity entirely in the anti-Roman tendency which he expressed in his diary. For the archbishop himself, to have committed the matter to writing, whether it were true or imaginary, proved fatal, the entries serving his enemies as the text of one of the chief indictments against him, when he was brought to trial. Nothing he could plead made any impression on the minds of his accusers. His refusal of the purple ought to have vindicated him; but they maintained that for the offer to have been made to him at all, he must have been friends with the Pope. Moreover, had he not objected to the term "Idol of Rome"? and had he not expressed doubt if not denial of the Pope's being anti-Christ? These things were more than enough for fanatics whose piety consisted chiefly in denunciations and impolite epithets. It was as clear as daylight to their minds that the archbishop had "a damnable plot to reconcile the Church of England with the Church of Rome."
Presumably, Mr. Prynne's ears were for something in the overwhelming potency of the argument. But another and scarcely less important article of the indictment related to some pictures of the Life and Passion of our Lord, which Laud had once had bound up in Bibles. He had been so greatly pleased with the result that he ordered them to be called the Archbishop of Canterbury's Bibles. The Puritans thought they saw in this strong proof of his "popish and idolatrous affection," their ignorance of human nature actually leading them to imagine that on seeing an image or picture of a divine person men would be forthwith moved to prostrate themselves in adoration of the material of which it was composed, no other explanation of the word "idolatrous" being possible in this connection.
But we must now return to the year 1636, when popular passion ran so high that the opinion of an onlooker is our only means of arriving at a fairly accurate appreciation of events. Panzani, who although wrong in his inferences was correct as to facts, describes the archbishop and his works with great moderation. In his letters to Cardinal Barberini, he tells him that Laud is "short in stature, aged about sixty, is unmarried, and is first in the privy council. His views are moderate, and he is not unfriendly to the Catholic religion. He has the King's interests thoroughly at heart; he studies to increase the revenue, and perhaps for this reason is preferred by the King to all his other advisers. He is ready for any amount of work, and all ecclesiastical affairs receive his personal attention. He is reputed an Arminian, and in nearly all dogmas approaches nearly to the Roman Church. With the King's permission he has made innovations in the Scotch as well as in the English churches, has erected altars, and put sacred pictures in many places. He has the honour and glory of the clergy extremely at heart. Many think his aim is to reconcile this Church with Rome, others hold quite opposite views, and both extremes have some show and reason, for on the one hand, one sees in him great ambition to imitate Catholic rites, and on the other, what looks almost like a positive hatred of Catholics and their religion. Sometimes he persecutes them, but this is interpreted by many to mean only prudence, and a way of escape from the murmurs and quarrels of the Puritans."
The Queen and Panzani were on excellent terms. Cardinal Barberini had sent Henrietta Maria some very costly presents, and she was anxious to show him a similar attention. Father Philip considered that English horses would form a most suitable gift, but the Queen asked him to consult Panzani. "If her Majesty wants to send a really acceptable present to Rome, let her send the heart of the King," said the envoy, smiling. Father Philip replied that this treasure she wished to keep entirely for her own.
"I make no doubt," answered Panzani, "that in sending the King's heart to Rome, the Queen would only possess it the more entirely, and without danger of rivalry from conflicting religious sects."
Father Philip then told her that if it pleased the Father of Mercy, she should send this truly precious gift, and that his Eminence cared for no horses.
Soon after this, Panzani returned home, and was made Bishop of Miletus. Meanwhile George Conn, a Scotchman, had been chosen to replace him, the papal court considering that he possessed the rare qualities described by Panzani as necessary for the delicate position of papal envoy to the Catholic queen of a non-Catholic country.