CHAPTER III.

FOOTNOTES:[31]Life of Father John Gerard, p. cxxxvi.[32]I write of Sir Everard and Lady Digby; but it is improbable that he had received knighthood at the period treated of in this chapter.[33]Life of Father John Gerard, p. cl.[34]Even his under-cook was a man. Cal. Sta. Pa. Dom., 1603-10, p. 266.[35]Life of Gerard, p. cli.[36]Life of Father John Gerard; p. cli.[37]This Sir T. Gerard was committed to the Tower on an accusation “of a design to deliver Mary Queen of Scots out of her confinement.”—Burke’s Peerage, 1886, p. 576.[38]Life of Gerard, p. clii.[39]Life of Father John Gerard, p. cli.[40]Life of Father John Gerard, p. cliii.[41]Life of Father John Gerard, p. cliii.

FOOTNOTES:

[31]Life of Father John Gerard, p. cxxxvi.

[32]I write of Sir Everard and Lady Digby; but it is improbable that he had received knighthood at the period treated of in this chapter.

[33]Life of Father John Gerard, p. cl.

[34]Even his under-cook was a man. Cal. Sta. Pa. Dom., 1603-10, p. 266.

[35]Life of Gerard, p. cli.

[36]Life of Father John Gerard; p. cli.

[37]This Sir T. Gerard was committed to the Tower on an accusation “of a design to deliver Mary Queen of Scots out of her confinement.”—Burke’s Peerage, 1886, p. 576.

[38]Life of Gerard, p. clii.

[39]Life of Father John Gerard, p. cli.

[40]Life of Father John Gerard, p. cliii.

[41]Life of Father John Gerard, p. cliii.

A change of religion causes, to most of those who make it, a very forcible wrench. It may be, probably it usually is, accompanied by great happiness and a sensation of intense relief; no regrets whatever may be felt that the former faith, with its ministers, ceremonies, and churches have been renounced for ever; on the contrary, the convert may be delighted to be rid of them, and in turning his back upon the religion of his childhood, he may feel that he is dismissing a false teacher who has deceived him, rather than that he is bidding farewell to a guide who has conducted him, however unintentionally, unwittingly, or unwillingly, to the gate of safety. Yet granting, and most emphatically granting, all this, we should not forget that there is another view of his position. Let his rejoicing be ever so great at entering that portal and leaving the land of darkness for the regions of light, be the welcome he receives from his future co-religionists as warm as it may, and be his confidence as great as is conceivable, the convert is none the less forsaking a well-known country for one that is new tohim, he is leaving old friends to enter among strangers, and he is exchanging long-formed habits for practices which it will take him some time to understand, to acquire, and to familiarize.

A convert, again, is not invariably free from dangers. Let us take the case of Sir Everard Digby. A man with his position, popularity, wealth, intellect, and influence, was a convert of considerable importance from a human point of view, and he must have known it. If he lost money and friends by his conversion, much and many remained to him, and among the comparatively small number of Catholics he might become a more leading man than as a unit in the vast crowd professing his former faith; and although, on the whole, the step which he had taken was calculated to be much against his advancement in life, there are certain attractions in being the principal or one of the principal men of influence in a considerable minority. I am not for a moment questioning Digby’s motives in becoming a Catholic; I believe they were quite unexceptionable; all that I am at the moment aiming at is to induce the reader to keep before his mind that the position of an influential English convert, at the beginning of the seventeenth century, like most other positions, had its own special temptations and dangers, and my reasons for this aim will soon become obvious.

In comparing the situation of a convert to Catholicism in the latter days of Elizabeth or the early days of James I., with one in the reign of Victoria, we are met on the threshold with the fact that terrible bodily pains, and even death itself, threatened the former, while the latter is exposed to no danger of either for his religion. In the matter of legal fines and forfeitures, again, the persecution of the first was enormous, whereas the second suffers none. But of these pains and penalties I shall treat presently. Just in passing I may remark that many a convert now living has reason for doubting whether any of his forerunners in the times of Elizabeth or James I. suffered more pecuniary loss than he. One parent or uncle, by altering a will, can cause a Romish recusant more loss than a whole army of pursuivants.

Looking at the positions of converts at the two periods from a social point of view, we find very different conditions. Instead of being regarded, as he is now, in the light of a fool who, in an age of light, reason, and emancipation from error, has wilfully retrograded into the grossest of all forms of superstition, the convert, in the reigns of Elizabeth and James, was known to be returning to the faith professed by his fathers, one, two, or, at most, three generations before him. It was not then considered a case of “turning Roman Catholic,”but of returning to the old religion, and even by people who cared little, if at all, about such matters, he was rather respected than otherwise.

Now it is different. During the two last generations, so many conversions have apparently been the result of what is known as the Oxford Movement, or of Ritualism, that converts are much associated in men’s minds with ex-clergymen, or with clerical families; and to tell the truth, at least a considerable minority of Anglicans of good position, while they tolerate, invite to dinner, and patronise their parsons, in their inmost hearts look down upon and rather dislike the clergy and the clergy-begotten.

At present, again, a prejudice is felt in England against an old Catholic,prima facie, on the ground that he is probably either an Irishman, of Irish extraction, or of an ancient Catholic English family rendered effete by idleness, owing to religious disabilities, or by a long succession of intermarriages. It would be easy to prove that these prejudices, if not altogether without foundation in fact, are immensely and unwarrantably exaggerated, but my object, at present, is merely to state that they exist. Three hundred years ago, whatever may have been the prejudices against Catholics, old or new, they cannot have arisen on such grounds as these, and if Protestants attributed the tenacity of the former and the determined return of the latter to their ancient faith rather to pride than to piety, there is no doubt which motive would be most respected in the fashionable world.

The conduct of the Digbys, immediately after their conversion, was most exemplary. They threwthemselves heart and soul into their religion, and Father Gerard, who had received them into the Church, writes[42]of Sir Everard in the highest terms, saying:—“He was so studious a follower of virtue, after he became a Catholic, that he gave great comfort to those that had the guiding of his soul (as I have heard them seriously affirm more than once or twice), he used his prayers daily both mental and vocal, and daily and diligent examination of his conscience: the sacraments he frequented devoutly every week, &c.”“Briefly I have heard it reported of this knight, by those that knew him well and that were often in his company, that they did note in him a special care of avoiding all occasions of sin and of furthering acts of virtue in what he could.”

He read a good deal in order to be able to enter into controversy with Protestants, and he was the means of bringing several into the Church—“some of great account and place.”As to his conversation, “not only in this highest kind, wherein he took very great joy and comfort, but also in ordinary talk, when he had observed that the speech did tend to any evil, as detraction or other kind of evil words which sometimes will happen in company, his custom was presently to take some occasion to alter the talk, and cunningly to bring in some other good matter or profitable subject to talk of. Andthis, when the matter was not very grossly evil, or spoken to the dishonour of God or disgrace of his servants; for then, his zeal and courage were such that he could not bear it, but would publicly and stoutly contradict it, whereof I could give divers instances worth relating, but am loth to hold the reader longer.”Finally, in speaking of those “that knew him”and those “that loved him,”Father Gerard says, “truly it was hard to do the one and not the other.”

Like most Catholics living in the country, and inhabiting houses of any size, the Digbys made a chapel in their home, “a chapel with a sacristy,” says Father Gerard,[43]“furnishing it with costly and beautiful vestments;”and they “obtained a Priest of the Society”(of Jesus) “for their chaplain, who remained with them to Sir Everard’s death.”Of this priest, Gerard says[44]that he was a man “who for virtue and learning hath not many his betters in England.”This was probably Father Strange,[45]who usually passed under thealiasof Hungerford. He was the owner of a property, some of which, in Gloucestershire, he sold,[46]and “£2000 thereof is in the Jesuites’ bank”said a witness against him. He was imprisoned, after Sir Everard Digby’s death, forfive or six years.[47]In an underground dungeon in the Tower[48]“he was so severely tortured upon the rack that he dragged on the rest of his life for thirty-three years in the extremest debility, with severe pains in the loins and head. Once when he was in agony upon the rack, a Protestant minister began to argue with him about religion; whereupon, turning to the rack-master, Father Strange[49]“asked him to hoist the minister upon a similar rack, and in like fetters and tortures, otherwise, said he, we shall be fighting upon unequal terms; for the custom everywhere prevails amongst scholars that the condition of the disputants be equal.”

Another Jesuit Father, at one time private chaplain to Sir Everard Digby, was Father John Percy,[50]who afterwards, under thealiasof Fisher, held the famous controversy with Archbishop Laud in the presence of the king and the Countess of Buckingham, to whom he acted as chaplain for ten years. He also had been fearfully tortured in prison, in the reign of Elizabeth; and if he recounted his experiences on the rack to Sir Everard Digby, the hot blood of the latter would be stirred up against the Protestant Governments that could perpetrate or tolerate such iniquities.

In trying to picture to himself the “chapel with a sacristy”made by the Digbys at Gothurst, aromantic reader may imagine an ecclesiastical gem, in the form of a richly-decorated chamber filled with sacred pictures, figures of saints, crucifixes, candles, and miniature shrines. Before taking the trouble of raising any such representation before the mind, it would be well to remember that, in the times of which we are treating, that was the most perfect and the best arranged chapel in which the altar, cross, chalice, vestments, &c., could be concealed at the shortest possible notice, and the chamber itself most quickly made to look like an ordinary room. The altar was on such occasions a small slab of stone, a few inches in length and breadth, and considerably less than an inch in thickness. It was generally laid upon the projecting shelf of a piece of furniture, which, when closed, had the appearance of a cabinet. Some few remains of altars and other pieces of “massing stuff,” as Protestants called it, of that date still remain, as also do many simple specimens used in France during the Revolution of last century, which have much in common with them. To demonstrate the small space in which the ecclesiastical contents of a private chapel could be hidden away in times of persecution, I may say that, even now, for priests who have the privilege of saying mass elsewhere than in churches or regular chapels—for instance, in private rooms, on board ship,[51]or in the ward of a hospital—altar, chalice,paten, cruets, altar-cloths, lavabo, alb, amice, girdle, candlesticks, crucifix, wafer-boxes, wine-flask, Missal, Missal-stand, bell, holy-oil stocks, pyx, and a set of red and white vestments (reversible)—in fact, everything necessary for saying mass, as well as for administering extreme unction to the sick, can be carried in a case 18 inches in length, 12 inches in width, and 8 inches in depth. Occasionally, as we are told of the Digbys, rich people may have had some handsome vestments; but a private chapel early in the sixteenth century must have been a very different thing from what we associate with the term in our own times, and however well furnished it may have been as a room, it must have been almost devoid of “ecclesiastical luxury.”

Here and there were exceptions, in which Catholics were very bold, but they always got into trouble. For instance, when Luisa de Carvajal came to England, she was received at a country house—possibly Scotney Castle, on the borders of Kent and Sussex—the chapel of which[52]“was adorned with pictures and images, and enriched with many relics. Several masses were said in it every day, and accompanied by beautiful vocal and instrumental music.”It was “adorned not only with all therequisites, but all the luxuries, so to speak, of Catholic worship;”and Luisa could walk “on a spring morning in a pleached alley, saying her beads, within hearing of the harmonious sounds of holy music floating in the balmy air.”What was the consequence? “The beautiful dream was rudely dispelled. One night, after she had been at this place about a month, a secret warning was given to the master of this hospitable mansion, that he had been denounced as a harbourer of priests, and that the pursuivants would invade his house on the morrow. On the receipt of this information, measures were immediately taken to hide all traces of Catholic worship, and a general dispersion took place.”I only give this as a typical case to show how necessary it then was to make chapels and Catholic worship as secret as possible.

Sir Everard Digby was anxious that others, as well as himself, should join the body which he believed to be the one, true, and only Church of God, and of this I have nothing to say except in praise. An anecdote of his efforts in this direction, however, is interesting as showing, not only the necessities of the times, but also something of the character and disposition of the man. In studying a man’s life, there may be a danger of building too much upon his actions, as if they proved his inclinations, when they were in reality only the result of exceptional circumstances, and I have no wish to force the inferences, which I myselfdraw from the following facts, upon the opinions of other people; I merely submit them for what they are worth.

Father Gerard says[53]that Sir Everard “had a friend for whom he felt a peculiar affection,”namely, Oliver Manners, the fourth son of John, fourth Earl of Rutland, and said by Father J. Morris[54]to have been knighted by King James I. “on his coming from Scotland,”on April 22nd, 1603, but by Burke,[55]“at Belvoir Castle, 23rd April 1608.”He was very anxious that this friend should be converted to the Catholic faith, and that, to this end, he should make the acquaintance of Father Gerard; “but because he held an office in the Court, requiring his daily attendance about the King’s person, so that he could not be absent for long together,”this “desire was long delayed.”At last Sir Everard met Manners in London at a time when he knew that Father Gerard was there also, “and he took an opportunity of asking him to come at a certain time to play at cards, for these are the books gentlemen in London study both night and day.”Instead of inviting a card-party, Digby invited no one except Father Gerard, and when Manners arrived, he found Gerard and Digby “sitting and conversing very seriously.”The latter asked him “to sit down a little until the rest should arrive.”After a short silence Sir Everard said:—

“We two were engaged in a very serious conversation, in fact, concerning religion. You know that I am friendly to Catholics and to the Catholic faith; I was, nevertheless, disputing with this gentleman, who is a friend of mine, against the Catholic faith, in order to see what defence he could make, for he is an earnest Catholic, as I do not hesitate to tell you.”At this he turned to Father Gerard and begged him not to be angry with him for betraying the fact of his being a Romish recusant to a stranger; then he said to Manners, “And I must say he so well defended the Catholic faith that I could not answer him, and I am glad you have come to help me.”

Manners “was young and confident, and trusting his own great abilities, expected to carry everything before him, so good was his cause and so lightly did he esteem”his opponent, “as he afterwards confessed.” After an hour’s sharp argument and retort on either side, Father Gerard began to explain the Catholic faith more fully, and to confirm it with texts of Scripture, and passages from the Fathers.

Manners listened in silence, and “before he left he was fully resolved to become a Catholic, and took with him a book to assist him in preparing for a good confession, which he made before a week had passed.” He became an excellent and exemplary Christian, and his life would make an interesting and edifying volume.

All honour to Sir Everard Digby for having been the human medium of bringing about this most happy and blessed conversion! It might have been difficult to accomplish it by any other method. In those days of persecution, stratagem was absolutely necessary to Catholics for their safety sake, even in everyday life, and still more so in evangelism. As to the particular stratagem used by Digby in this instance, I do not go so far as to say that it was blame-worthy; I have often read of it without mentally criticising it; I have even regarded it with some degree of admiration; but, now that I am attempting a study of Sir Everard Digby’s character, and seeking for symptoms of it in every detail that I can discover of his words and actions, I ask myself whether, in all its innocence, his conduct on this occasion did not exhibit traces of a natural inclination to plot and intrigue. Could he have induced Manners to come to his rooms by no other attraction than a game of cards, which he had no intention of playing? Was it necessary on his arrival there to ask him to await that of guests who were not coming, and had never been invited? Was he obliged, in the presence of so intimate a friend, to pretend to be only well-disposed towards Catholics instead of owning himself to be one of them? Need he have put himself to the trouble of apologising to Father Gerard for revealing that he was a Catholic? In religious, as in all other matters, there are cases in which artifice may be harmless ordesirable, or even a duty, but a thoroughly straightforward man will shrink from the “pious dodge”as much as the kind-hearted surgeon will shrink from the use of the knife or the cautery.

Necessary as they may have been, nay, necessary as they undoubtedly were, the planning, and disguising, and hiding, and intriguing used as means for bringing about the conversions of Lady Digby, Sir Everard Digby, and Oliver Manners, though innocent in themselves, placed those concerned in them in that atmosphere of romance, adventure, excitement, and even sentiment, which I have before described, and it is obvious that such an atmosphere is not without its peculiar perils.

It is certainly very comfortable to be able to preach undisturbed, to convert heretics openly, and to worship in the churches of the King and the Government; yet even in religion, to some slight degree, the words of a certain very wise man may occasionally be true, that[56]“stolen waters are sweeter, and hidden bread is more pleasant.”Nothing is more excellent than missionary work; but it is a fact that proselytism, when conducted under difficulties and dangers, whether it be under the standard of truth or under the standard of error, is not without some of the elements of sport; at any rate, if it be true, as enthusiasts have been heard to assert, that even the hunted fox is a partaker in the pleasures of the chase,the Jesuits had every opportunity of enjoying them during the reigns of Elizabeth and James I.

Besides a consideration of the personal characteristics of Sir Everard Digby, and the position of converts to Catholicism in his times, it will be necessary to take a wider view of the political, social, and religious events of his period. Otherwise we should be unable to form anything like a fair judgment either of his own conduct, or of the treatment which he received from others.

The oppression and persecution of Catholics by Queen Elizabeth and her ministers was extreme. It was made death to be a priest, death to receive absolution from a priest, death to harbour a priest, death even to give food or help of any sort to a priest, and death to persuade anyone to become a Catholic. Very many priests and many laymen were martyred, more were tortured, yet more suffered severe temporal losses. And, what was most cruel of all, while Statutes were passed with a view to making life unendurable for Catholics in England itself, English Catholics were forbidden to go, or to send their children, beyond the seas without special leave.

The actual date of the Digbys’ reception into the Catholic Church is a matter of some doubt. It probably took place before the death of Elizabeth. That was a time when English Catholics were considering their future with the greatest anxiety. Politicsentered largely into the question, and where politics include, as they did then, at any rate, in many men’s minds, some doubts as to the succession to the crown, intrigue and conspiracy were pretty certain to be practised.

FOOTNOTES:[42]A Narrative of the Gunpowder Plot, p. 89.[43]Life of Father John Gerard, p. clv.[44]A Narrative of the Gunpowder Plot, p. 89.[45]Father H. Garnet and the Gunpowder Plot, by Father Pollen, p. 15.[46]Records of the English Province.S.J. Series, ix. x. xi., p. 3.[47]Ib., p. 5, and Stoneyhurst MSS.[48]Ib., p. 3.[49]Ib., p. 4.[50]Records, S.J. Series, i., p. 527.[51]In hisMores Catholici(Cincinnati, 1841, Vol. II. p. 364), Kenelm H. Digby says that "Portable altars were in use long before the eleventh century. St Wulfran, Bishop of Sens, passing the sea in a ship, is said to have celebrated the sacred mysteries upon a portable altar."[52]The Life of Luisa de Carvajal, by Lady G. Fullerton, p. 154,seq.[53]Life of Father John Gerard, p. clxvi.seq.[54]Ib., footnote to p. cciii.[55]Peerage, 1886, p. 1173.[56]Proverbs ix. 17.

FOOTNOTES:

[42]A Narrative of the Gunpowder Plot, p. 89.

[43]Life of Father John Gerard, p. clv.

[44]A Narrative of the Gunpowder Plot, p. 89.

[45]Father H. Garnet and the Gunpowder Plot, by Father Pollen, p. 15.

[46]Records of the English Province.S.J. Series, ix. x. xi., p. 3.

[47]Ib., p. 5, and Stoneyhurst MSS.

[48]Ib., p. 3.

[49]Ib., p. 4.

[50]Records, S.J. Series, i., p. 527.

[51]In hisMores Catholici(Cincinnati, 1841, Vol. II. p. 364), Kenelm H. Digby says that "Portable altars were in use long before the eleventh century. St Wulfran, Bishop of Sens, passing the sea in a ship, is said to have celebrated the sacred mysteries upon a portable altar."

[52]The Life of Luisa de Carvajal, by Lady G. Fullerton, p. 154,seq.

[53]Life of Father John Gerard, p. clxvi.seq.

[54]Ib., footnote to p. cciii.

[55]Peerage, 1886, p. 1173.

[56]Proverbs ix. 17.

The responsibility of the intrigues in respect to the claims to the English throne, at the beginning of the seventeenth century, rests to some extent upon Queen Elizabeth herself. As Mr Gardiner puts it:—[57]“She was determined that in her lifetime no one should be able to call himself her heir.”It was generally understood that James would succeed to the throne; but, so long as there was the slightest uncertainty on the question, it was but natural that the Catholics should be anxious that a monarch should be crowned who would favour, or at least tolerate them, and that they should make inquiries, and converse eagerly, about every possible claimant to the throne. Fears of foreign invasion and domestic plotting were seriously entertained in England during the latter days of Elizabeth, as well as immediately after her death. “Wealthy men had brought in their plate and treasure from the country, and had put them in places of safety. Ships of war had been stationed inthe Straits of Dover to guard against a foreign invasion, and some of the principal recusants had, as a matter of precaution, been committed to safe custody.”[58]

When James VI. of Scotland, the son of the Catholic Mary Queen of Scots, ascended the throne, rendered vacant by the death of Elizabeth, as James I. of England, no voice was raised in favour of any other claimant, and[59]“the Catholics, flattered by the reports of their agents, hailed with joy the succession of a prince who was said to have promised the toleration of their worship, in return for the attachment which they had so often displayed for the house of Stuart.”King James owed toleration, says Lingard, “to their sufferings in the cause of his unfortunate mother;”and “he had bound himself to it, by promises to their envoys, and to the princes of their communion.”

The opinion that the new king would upset and even reverse the anti-Catholic legislation of Elizabeth was not confined to the Catholic body: many Protestants had taken alarm on this very score, as may be inferred from a contemporary tract, entitled[60]Advertisements of a loyal subject to his gracious Sovereign, drawn from the Observation of the People’s Speeches, in which the following passage occurs:—“The plebes, I wotte not what they call them, but some there beewho most unnaturally and unreverentlie, by most egregious lies, wound the honour of our deceased soveraigne, not onlie touching her government and good fame, but her person with sundry untruthes,” and after going on in this strain for some lines it adds:—“Suerlie these slanders be the doings of the papists, ayming thereby at the deformation of the gospell.”[61]

On the other hand, there were both Catholics and Puritans who were distrustful of James. Sir Everard cannot have been long a Catholic, when a dangerous conspiracy was on foot. Sir Griffin Markham, a Catholic, and George Brooke, a Protestant, and a brother of Lord Cobham’s, hatched the well-known plot which was denominated “the Bye,”and, among many others who joined it, were two priests, Watson and Clarke, both of whom were eventually executed on that account. Its object appears to have been to seize the king’s person, and wring from him guarantees of toleration for both Puritans and Catholics. Father Gerard acquired some knowledgeof this conspiracy, as also did Father Garnet, the Provincial of the Jesuits, and Blackwell, the Archpriest; and they insisted upon the information being laid instantly before the Government. Before they had time to carry out their intention, however, it had already been communicated, and the complete failure of the attempt is notorious. The result was to injure the causes of both the Catholics and the Puritans, and James never afterwards trusted the professions of either.

So far as the Catholics were concerned, the “Bye” conspiracy unfortunately revealed another; for Father Watson, in a written confession which he made in prison, brought accusations of disloyalty against the Jesuits. It was quite true that, two years earlier, Catesby, Tresham, and Winter—all friends of Sir Everard Digby’s—had endeavoured to induce Philip of Spain to invade England, and had asked Father Garnet to give them his sanction in so doing; but Garnet had “misliked it,”and had told them that it would be as much “disliked at Rome.”[62]

Winter had arranged that if Queen Elizabeth should die before the invasion, the news should be at once sent to the Spanish court. For this purpose, a Yorkshire gentleman, named Christopher Wright, and one Guy, or Guido, Faukes, or Fawkes, “a soldier of fortune,”of whom we shall have more to say by-and-bye, were sent to the Court of Spain in1603. Although Father Garnet disapproved of the plan, he had given Wright a letter of introduction to a Jesuit at the Spanish Court. Neither Wright nor Fawkes were able to rouse King Philip, who said that he had no quarrel with his English brother, and that he had just appointed an ambassador to the Court of St James’s to arrange the terms of a lasting peace with the English nation. Knowing something of this, Father Watson used it as an instrument of revenge against the Jesuits, who, he knew, had intended to warn King James against his own attempt to entrap him.[63]“It is well known to all the world,”he wrote, “how the Jesuits and Spanish faction had continually, by word, writing, and action, sought his majesty’s destruction, with the setting up of another prince and sovereign over us; yea, and although it should be revealed what practises they had, even in this interim betwixt the proclaiming and crowning of his majesty.”And then he enumerated some of these “practises,”among others, “levying 40,000 men to be in a readiness for the Spaniard or Archduke; by buying up all the great horses, as Gerard doth; by sending down powder and shot into Staffordshire and other places, with warning unto Catholics to be in a readiness; by collection of money under divers pretences, to the value of a million;”“by affirming that none might yield to live under an heretic (as they continually termed his majesty);”“and by open speech that the king and all his royal issue must be cut off and put to death.”In making these bitter and, for the most part, untrue accusations against the Jesuits, he complained that he was “accounted for no better than an infidel, apostate, or atheist, by the jesuitical faction,”and that he was never likely “to receive any favour”from his majesty “so long as any Jesuit or Spaniard”remained “alive within this land.”

Undoubtedly, during the cruel persecutions of Elizabeth, Jesuits, as well as secular priests, and Catholic laymen too, for that matter, had hoped that her successor on the English throne might be of their own religion; they had good cause for doing so; the Pope himself had urged the enthronement of a Catholic monarch for their country, and in fairness, it must be admitted that not a few Englishmen, who considered themselves royalist above all others, had at one time refused to regard Elizabeth herself as the legitimate possessor of the British crown; but, when James had been established upon the throne, with the exception of a few discontents, such as the conspirators in the “Bye”plot and the diminutive Spanish party, the English Catholics, both lay and clerical, acknowledged him as their rightful king. Pope Clement VIII.[64]“commanded the missionaries”in England “to confine themselvesto their spiritual duties, and to discourage, by all means in their power, every attempt to disturb the tranquillity of the realm;”he also ordered “the nuncio at Paris to assure James of the abhorrence with which he viewed all acts of disloyalty,”and he despatched “a secret messenger to the English Court with an offer to withdraw from the kingdom any missionary who might be an object of suspicion to the Council.”

Unfortunately, the discovery of the two conspiracies above mentioned, in which Catholics were implicated, weighed more with James than any assurances of goodwill from the Pope or his emissaries. Had not Watson given King’s evidence? Had not foreign invasion been implored by Catholics? Had they not intended “the Lady Arabella”as a substitute for his own Royal Majesty upon the throne? And had they not treasonably united with their extreme opposites, the Puritans, in a design to capture his precious person, with a view to squeezing concessions out of him, if not to putting him to death? To some extent he did indeed endeavour to conciliate the higher classes among his Catholic subjects, by inviting them to court, by conferring upon them the honour—such as it was—of knighthood, as in the case of Sir Everard Digby, and by promising to protect them from the penalties of recusancy, so long as by their loyalty and peaceable behaviour they should show themselves worthy ofhis favour and his confidence, but he absolutely and abruptly refused all requests for toleration of their religious worship, and more than once, he even committed to the Tower Catholics who had the presumption to ask for it.

The times were most trying to a recent convert like Sir Everard Digby. I will again quote Lingard[65]to show how faithless was James to the promises he had made of relief to his Catholic subjects:—“The oppressive and sanguinary code framed in the reign of Elizabeth was re-enacted to its full extent; it was even improved with additional severities.”

And then, after describing the severe penalties inflicted upon those who sent children “beyond the seas, to the intent that”they “should reside or be educated in a Catholic college or seminary,”as well as upon “the owners or masters of ships who”conveyed them, and adding that “every individual who had already resided or studied, or should hereafter reside or study in any such college or seminary, was rendered incapable of inheriting or purchasing or enjoying lands, annuities, chattels, debts, or sums of money within the realm, unless at his return to England, he should conform to the Established Church, he says:—”Moreover, as missionaries sometimes eluded detection under the disguise of tutors in gentlemen’s houses, it was provided that no man should teach even the rudiments of grammar withouta license of the diocesan, under the penalty of forty shillings per day, to be levied on the tutor himself, and the same sum on his employer.”

And again, when James had been a year on the throne, the execution of the penal laws enabled the king “... to derive considerable profit,”says Lingard.[66]“The legal fine of £20 per lunar month was again demanded; and not only for the time to come, but for the whole period of the suspension; a demand which, by crowding thirteen separate payments into one of £260, exhausted the whole annual income of men in respectable but moderate circumstances. Nor was this all. By law, the least default in these payments subjected the recusant to the forfeiture of all his goods and chattels, and of two-thirds of his lands, tenements, hereditaments, farms, and leases. The execution of this severe punishment was intrusted to the judges at the assizes, the magistrates at the sessions, and the commissioners for causes ecclesiastical at their meetings. By them warrants of distress were issued to constables and pursuivants; all the cattle on the lands of the delinquent, his household furniture, and his wearing apparel, were seized and sold; and if, on some pretext or other, he was not thrown into prison, he found himself and family left without a change of apparel or a bed to lie upon, unless he had been enabled by the charity of his friends to redeem them after the sale, or to purchase withbribes the forbearance of the officers. Within six months the payment was again demanded, and the same pauperizing process repeated.”

It may be only fair to say, however, that Mr Gardiner thinks Lingard was guilty of exaggeration on one point; for he says[67]“the £20 men were never called upon for arrears, and, as far as I have been able to trace the names, the forfeitures of goods and chattels were only demanded from those from whom no lands had been seized.”

A letter in Father Garnet’s handwriting to Father Persons on these topics should have a special interest for us, as it was pretty certainly written at Gothurst, where he seems to have been staying at the time it is dated, October 4 and 21, 1605. It says[68]:—“The courses taken are more severe than in Bess’s time.... If any recusant buy his goods again, they inquire diligently if the money be his own: otherwise they would have that too. In fine, if these courses hold, every man must be fain to redeem, once in six months, the very bed he lieth on: and hereof, of twice redeeming, besides other precedents, I find one here in Nicolas, his lodging,”i.e., in the house of Sir Everard Digby. “The judges now openly protest that the king will have blood, and hath taken blood in Yorkshire; and that the king hath hitherto stroked papists, but now will strike:—and this is withoutany desert of Catholics. The execution of two in the north is certain:”—three persons, Welbourn and Fulthering at York, and Brown at Ripon, had in fact been executed in Yorkshire that year for recusancy.[69]Father Garnet continues:—“and whereas it was done upon cold blood, that is, with so great stay after their condemnation, it argueth a deliberate resolution of what we may expect: so that you may see there is no hope that Paul,”i.e.Pope Paul V., “can do anything; and whatsoever men give out there, of easy proceedings with Catholics, is mere fabulous. And yet, notwithstanding, I am assured that the best sort of Catholics will bear all their losses with patience: but how these tyrannical proceedings of such base officers may drive particular men to desperate attempts, that I cannot answer for;—the king’s wisdom will foresee.”

Mr Gardiner, in noticing the fines levied on recusants, mentions[70]one point in connection with them which would be peculiarly vexatious to a man of Sir Everard Digby’s temperament and position. “The Catholics must have been especially aggrieved by the knowledge that much of the money thus raised went into the pockets of courtiers. For instance, the profits of the lands of two recusants were granted to a foot-man, and this was by no means an isolated case.”

Sir Everard Digby’s great friend, Father Gerard,also testifies at great length to the persecutions under Elizabeth and James.[71]Father Southwell was put “nine times most cruelly upon the torture,”and the law against the Catholics “put to cruel death many and worthy persons,”and “many persons of great families and estimation were at several times put to death under pretence of treason, which also was their cloak to cover their cruelties against such priests and religious as were sent into England by authority from His Holiness to teach and preach the faith of Christ, and to minister his sacraments.”

Again, “their torturing of men when they were taken to make them confess their acquaintance and relievers, was more terrible than death by much, &c.” “Besides the spoiling and robbing laymen of their livings and goods, with which they should maintain their families, is to many more grievous than death would be, when those that have lived in good estate and countenance in their country shall see before them their whole life to be led in misery, and not only themselves, but their wives and children to go a-begging.” “And to these the continual and cruel searches, which I have found to be more terrible than taking itself. The insolencies and abuses offered in them, and in the seizures of goods, the continual awe and fear that men are kept in by the daily expectance of these things, while every malicious man (of which heresy can want no plenty) is made an officer in theseaffairs, and every officer a king as it were, to command and insult upon Catholics at their pleasure.”It may be readily imagined how the writer of all this would discuss this bad state of affairs with Sir Everard at Gothurst.

I have no wish to exaggerate the sufferings endured by Catholics during the reigns of Elizabeth and the early Stuarts. I willingly admit that in many cases the legal penalties were not enforced against them, nay, I would go further and frankly remind my Catholic readers—Protestants may possibly not require to have their memories thus stimulated—that half a century had not elapsed since Protestants were burned at the stake in Smithfield for their religion by Catholics. Besides all this, it is certain that toleration, as we understand it, is a comparatively modern invention, and that if Mary Queen of Scots had ascended the English throne, or if it had fallen into the hands of Spain, Protestants in this country might not have had a very comfortable time of it, especially in the process of disgorging property taken from the Church, and that, under certain circumstances, some of them might even have suffered death for their faith; but, while readily making this admission, I doubt whether any Catholic government ever attempted to oblige a people to relinquish a religion, which it had professed for many centuries, with the persistency and cruelty which the governments of Elizabeth and James I. exercised in endeavouring to oblige every British subject to rejectthe religion of his forefathers. Instances are not wanting of Catholics dealing out stern measures towards those who introduced a new religion into a country; this, on the contrary, was a case of punishing those who refused to adopt a new religion.

Nor was this the only ground on which the persecutions by James appeared unfair, tyrannical, and odious to Catholics. During the reign of Elizabeth they had endured their sufferings as the penalties of a religion contradicting that of their monarch. Perhaps they did not altogether blame her so much for her persecutions, as for persecuting the right religion in mistake for the wrong; and, after all, they knew she had been persuaded by her Council that, for purposes of State, it was necessary to break off relations with the Apostolic See, and to maintain the newly-fangled Anglican faith; they knew that the refusal of Rome to acknowledge her legitimacy, threatened the very foundations of her throne, and consequently made every Catholic seem a traitor in her eyes; they knew, too, that the Holy See had favoured Mary Queen of Scots, whom she had regarded as her most dangerous rival. Under these circumstances, therefore, while they found their troubles and trials excessively bitter, they may not have been very profoundly astonished at them. But when James, after a brief respite, continued and even increased the persecutions of the previous reign, they looked at the matter in quite a different light. In the first place,they expected that the Protestant son of so Catholic a mother, who had suffered imprisonment and death because she was a Catholic, could scarcely become the friend and accomplice of those who had betrayed and martyred his mother. I am not trenching on the question of the martyrdom of Mary Queen of Scots; I am merely writing of the feeling respecting her death, prevalent at that time among members of her own religion in this country. Secondly, unlike Elizabeth, James had no cause for fearing the Holy See; it never questioned his legitimacy; it had assisted him when King of Scotland; its adherents in England had almost universally hailed his accession to the crown with loyalty and rejoicing; and, as I have already shown, the Pope had sent messages to him, offering to assist in assuring the allegiance of the Catholics by removing any priests who might be obnoxious to him.

Even Goodman, the Protestant Bishop of Gloucester, wrote[72]:—“After Sixtus Quintus succeeded Clement Octavus, a man, according to his name, who was much given to mercy and compassion. Now to him King James did make suit to favour his title to the crown of England, which as King James doth relate in his book,Triplici nodo triplex cuneus, the Pope did promise to do.”James said that he would show favour to Catholics[73]“were it not that the English would take it ill, and it would much hinder him in his succession; and withall, that his own subjectsin Scotland were so violent against Catholics, that he, being poor, durst not offend them. Whereupon the Pope replied, that if it were for want of means, he would exhaust all the treasures of the church and sell the plate to supply him.”And again, says Goodman of the English Catholics and King James[74]:—“And certainly they had very great promises from him.”Nevertheless,[75]“he did resolve to run a course against the papists,”and “at his discourses at table usually he did express much hatred to them.”

Father Gerard writes that[76]there were “particular embassagies and letters from His Majesty unto other Princes, giving hope at least of toleration to Catholics in England, of which letters divers were translated this year into French and came so into England, as divers affirmed that had seen them.”He was also “well assured that immediately upon Queen Elizabeth’s sickness and death, divers Catholics of note and fame, Priests also, did ride post into Scotland, as well to carry the assurance of dutiful affection from all Catholics unto His Majesty as also to obtain his gracious favour for them and his royal word for confirmation of the same. At that time, and to those persons, it is certain he did promise that Catholics should not only be quiet from any molestations, but should also enjoy such liberty in their houses privately as themselves would desire,and have both Priests and Sacraments with full toleration and desired quiet. Both the Priests that did kneel before him when he gave this promise (binding it with the word of a Prince, which he said was never yet broken), did protest so much unto divers from whom I have it. And divers others, persons of great worth, have assured me the same upon the like promise received from His Majesty, both for the common state of Catholics and their own particular.”

It is dangerous to make too much of evidence against which there may be the shadow of a suspicion. Father Gerard’s personal testimony can be accepted without the smallest hesitation; but that of Father Watson, who was probably one of the priests he mentioned who “did kneel before”James when he made the solemn promise which Father Gerard heard of at second hand, should be received with more caution. Lord Northampton’s statement in his speech at Sir Everard Digby’s trial should certainly obtain very careful consideration. “No man,”said he,[77]“can speak more soundly to the point than myself; for being sent into the prison by the King to charge him with this false alarm” (i.e., the report that James had promised toleration to Catholics), “only two days before his death, and upon his soul to press him in the presence of God, and as he would answer it at another bar, to confessdirectly whether at either or both these times he had access unto his Majesty at Edinburgh, his Majesty did give him any promise, hope, or comfort of encouragement to Catholics concerning toleration; he did there protest upon his soul that he could never win one inch of ground or draw the smallest comfort from the King in those degrees, nor further than that he would have them apprehend, that as he was a stranger to this state, so, till he understood in all points how those matters stood, he would not promise favour any way; but did protest that all the crowns and kingdoms in this world should not induce him to change any jot of his profession, which was the pasture of his soul and earnest of his eternal inheritance. He did confess that in very deed, to keep up the hearts of Catholics in love and duty to the King, he had imparted the King’s words to many, in a better tune and a higher kind of descant than his book of plainsong did direct, because he knew that others, like sly bargemen, looked that way when their stroke was bent another way. For this he craved pardon of the King in humble manner, and for his main treasons, of a higher nature than these figures of hypocrisy, and seemed penitent, as well for the horror of his crime as for the falsehood of his whisperings.”

Probably Northampton may have exaggerated, possibly he may have lied, in making this statement; but there is this to be remembered, that owing to hisfalse testimony against the Jesuits, already recorded in this chapter, Father Watson must be regarded as a somewhat discredited witness, and it will not do for us Catholics to accept his verbal evidence against King James, and then to turn round and repudiate the evidence against the Jesuits in his own handwriting,[78]without some very strong reason for so doing. A reason of a certain strength does indeed exist; for Watson’s evidence against James was given freely and uninterestedly; whereas his evidence against the Jesuits may very probably have been offered in the hope that it might be accepted as the price of pardon, or at least of some mitigation of the awful sufferings included in the form of death to which he had been sentenced.

Even if we altogether discard Watson’s evidence of James’s promises, enough remains to satisfy my own mind that the new king had given the Catholics more or less hope of toleration; and, if I am too easily satisfied on this point, there can be no sort of question that Sir Everard Digby, who was often with Father Gerard, and that many other English Catholics had been assured, rightly or wrongly, and believed, wrongly or rightly, that King James had solemnly promised to give them immunity from persecution, if not freedom of worship, and that he had basely and treacherously broken his faith with them andsold them for the price of popularity among his far more numerous Protestant subjects: who, then, can blame them for considering themselves to have been most unjustly, perfidiously, and infamously treated by that monarch?

It may be worth while to quote here again from Goodman, the Protestant Bishop of Gloucester, respecting the persecutions of the Catholics in the reign of James.[79]“Now that they saw the times settled, having no hope of better days, but expecting that the uttermost rigour of the law should be executed, they became desperate; finding that by the laws of the kingdom their own lives were not secured, and for the coming over of a priest into England it was no less than high treason. A gentlewoman was hanged only for relieving and harbouring a priest; a citizen was hanged only for being reconciled to the Church of Rome: besides, the penal laws were such and so executed that they should not subsist:—what was usually sold in shops and openly bought, this the pursuivant would take away from them as being popish and superstitious. One knight did affirm that in one term he gave twenty nobles in rewards to the doorkeeper of the attorney-general; another did affirm, that his third part which remained to him of his estate did hardly serve for his expense in law to defend him from other oppressions, besides their children to be taken from home to be brought upin another religion. So they did every way conclude that their estate was desperate, etc.”If objection should be taken to Goodman as a witness on the Protestant side, on the ground that he eventually became a Catholic, I would reply that, at the time he wrote what I have quoted, he was, as the editor of hisCourt of James the Firstsays,[80]“an earnest and zealous supporter of the Church,”of England, and of James I., Goodman himself writes[81]in that very book:—“Truly I did never know any man of so great an apprehension, of so great love and affection—a man so truly just, so free from all cruelty and pride, such a lover of the church, and one that had done so much good for the church.”Such an admirer of King James might certainly be trusted not to say a word that he could honestly avoid about the ill-treatment endured by any class of his subjects during his reign.

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