to brag of. Here you have a prince born a heretic, and becoming a
Catholic so quietly that his people know nothing about it. The Church
declares that faith without works is dead. Well, it is true that
Charles's life was in perpetual discord with his faith. We certainly
do not propose our neophyte as a model penitent; it is enough if the
reasons which led to his conversion afford his countrymen another
proof of the divine origin of Catholicism. It is surely a startling
circumstance that this slave to voluptuousness should turn his back
upon the easy-going Anglican Church, so complacent even to the
monstrous passions of Henry VIII., and choose the most inflexible of
all Christian communions, the one which preferred losing her hold upon
the glorious and powerful Island of Saints to conniving at adultery;
which defended the innocent Catharine of Aragon against her ferocious
spouse, and might, one hundred and forty years later, have protected
Catharine of Portugal also had a royal caprice again attempted to
displace a virtuous queen in order to raise a vicious favorite to the
throne of England. This monarch, timid by nature, and surrounded by
sanguinary fanatics, knew that the bare accusation of "popery" would
be enough to stir up his whole kingdom against him; yet he did not
hesitate to become a "papist"--he upon whom the laws conferred the
title, so much coveted by his predecessors, of supreme head of the
Established Church. Do we not see in this a signal triumph of God over
man, of truth over falsehood?
Should it be asked why this correspondence has remained so long
unpublished, we answer that it was by its nature strictly
confidential. So long, too, as the Stuarts maintained their
pretensions to the English crown the publication of such letters would
have seriously compromised them. Then came the suppression of the
society, after which it would appear that all trace of the
correspondence was lost, until it was recently brought to light by the
learned Father Boero. [Footnote 87] The original letters form part
of a collection of autograph manuscripts of Charles II., Father Paul
Oliva, Christina of Sweden, James II., the queen-mother, Henrietta of
France, Catharine of Braganza, and other celebrated persons of the
time. The letters of Charles are impressed with the Royal seal.
[Footnote 87: _Istoria della conversione alla Chi?? Cattolica di
Carlo II., Re d'Inghilterra, caveta da ???trure autentiche ed
originali_.]
{579}
II.
It is easy enough to mention circumstances which would naturally have
prepossessed Charles in favor of the Church. In the first place, he
was indebted for his life, after the defeat of Worcester, almost
entirely to Catholics, who at great risk to themselves concealed him
from the soldiers of Cromwell and enabled him to escape to France. In
Paris he must have seen many things to influence his religious
sentiments. The most profound impression, however, was made upon him
by the venerable M. Olier, the founder of St. Sulpice. "God opened to
him," says his biographer, the Abbé Faillon, "the English monarch's
heart. In the new conferences which he had with this prince, he showed
him the beauty and truth of the Catholic religion with so much grace,
force, and energy that Charles II. was constrained to acknowledge
afterward to one of his friends that although many distinguished
persons had spoken to him about these matters, there was none of them
who had enlightened him so much as M. Olier; that in his words he
recognized and felt an extraordinary virtue; in fine, that he had
fully satisfied him. There can be little doubt that M. Olier had
persuaded the king to abjure his errors and to take the first step
toward a return into the bosom of the Church; that is to say, by
sending a secret abjuration to the Pope, who, as has been said above,
required nothing more. For, in the first place, it was rumored all
through France and England that Charles had sent to the Pope a secret
abjuration; and beside, M. de Bretonvilliers, after mentioning that
his majesty recognized and felt an extraordinary virtue in his
conversations with M. Olier on the truth of the Catholic religion,
adds these significant words: 'At present, I can say no more.' This
reticence naturally leads us to infer that Charles had taken some step
toward becoming a Catholic which it was not then prudent to make
known."
III.
Two years after his restoration to the throne, and under the
influence, probably, of the queen-mother and the queen-consort, he
resolved to open with the Holy See a negotiation which he hoped might
lead to the restoration of the English people to religious unity. It
was necessary to proceed with the greatest caution. He chose for his
envoy Sir Richard Bellings--the same to whom he afterward intrusted
the most secret and delicate of his missions to the court of Louis
XIV. Sir Richard set out for Italy under pretext of attending to
affairs of his own; and as soon as he could do so safely, he quietly
went to Rome. His first business was to ask for a cardinal's hat for
Louis Stuart, duke of Richmond and Lennox, better known under the name
of the Abbé d'Aubigny. He was a near relative of the king's, and had
been summoned from Paris to fulfil the functions of grand almoner to
Queen Catharine. Charles wished to place under his charge the affairs
of the Church in Great Britain. A memoir on this subject was drawn up
for Bellings by Lord Chancellor Clarendon, and copied by Clarendon's
son. It is dated October 25, 1662. Each leaf is authenticated by the
royal signature. A minute of the instructions given by Charles to his
ambassador is preserved at Rome. It can only have been drawn up by Sir
Richard himself:
"1. His majesty solicits this promotion for the advantage of his
kingdom, and in order to give the Catholic party an authorized
chief, intimately united with the sovereign by the ties of blood,
and upon whom he can depend securely under all circumstances. The
king, to quote his own words, sees in the elevation of the Abbé
d'Aubigny to the cardinalship an essential condition to the good
understanding which ought to exist between {580} the Pope and his
majesty; he deems this a measure of the last importance for the
welfare of his Roman Catholic subjects throughout his dominions.'
"2. The cardinal once appointed, his majesty engages to support him
in the style which his dignity and his relationship to the sovereign
demand."
The Holy Father summoned a secret congregation of cardinals to
consider the matter, and also appointed a council of theologians, who
were instructed to draw up their opinion in a careful report. In this
document we find a careful resume of the "Benefits which the Catholics
of England have received from his Britannic majesty."' They approved
of the proposed appointment; but unfortunately the Abbé d'Aubigny was
given to the errors of the Port Royalists, and the Pope felt compelled
to refuse Charles's request. He refused, however, with so much
delicacy, and gave such good reasons for the refusal, that the king,
instead of breaking off intercourse with the Holy See, as he had
threatened to do, ordered Bellings to proceed to the second object of
his mission. This was nothing less than the conversion of the king and
the reconciliation of his realms to the Roman Church.
IV.
Sir Richard was instructed to treat directly with the Holy Father, and
the number of counsellors whom the Pope might call to his assistance
was to be strictly limited. On the side of the English there is every
reason to believe that nobody was in the secret except the king, the
two queens, the envoy, and the person--whoever he may have been--who
drew up the document which we shall presently have occasion to quote.
Clarendon certainly knew nothing about it; he was ready to assist in
the promotion of d'Aubigny; but he was a stern enemy of the Catholics,
and even before Sir Richard's return we find him opposing in
parliament a proposal of his sovereign's for granting liberty of
conscience to dissenters.
There is no doubt that Charles II. himself made known to the Holy
Father his intention of becoming a Catholic and re-establishing
Catholicism as an authorized form of worship in his kingdom. There is,
moreover, no doubt that Pope Alexander VII. replied to him. This is
all that we can now affirm with certainty; and we should not have
known even this if the king had not mentioned it incidentally in one
of his letters to Father Paul Oliva.
The absence of these two letters is much to be regretted; but we have
fortunately at hand a document of still greater value. This is the
profession of faith presented in the name of the English monarch as
the basis of a concordat:
"Proposition on the part of Charles II., king of Great Britain, for
the much-to-be-desired reunion of his three kingdoms of England,
Scotland, and Ireland with the apostolic and Roman see.
"His majesty, the king, and all who aspire to the unity of the
Catholic Church, will accept the profession of faith drawn up by
Pope Pius IV. after the decisions of the Council of Trent, and with
it all the other decrees respecting faith or discipline enacted
either by the aforesaid council or by any other general council, as
well as the decisions of the last two pontiffs in the affair of
Jansenius; reserving to himself, however, as is done in France and
some other places, certain special rights and certain customs which
usage has sanctioned in our own particular Church. These various
decrees are to be understood with the restrictions which other
oecumenical councils have, prudently no doubt and after mature
consideration, imposed upon them, as the aforesaid profession of
faith proves. Whence it follows that, except within these limits,
nothing may henceforth be imposed upon or prescribed to either the
king or any of his Catholic subjects; and {581} that it shall not be
imputed to them as a crime or a favoring of heresy should they have
occasion to declare their mind upon matters of this sort. Under
these conditions his majesty is ready to break at once with all
Protestant societies and all sects separated from the Roman Church,
and to withdraw from their communion. He declares his detestation in
particular of the schism and deplorable heresies originated by
Luther, Zwingle, Calvin, Memnon, Socinus, Browin, and other equally
perverse sectaries. Better than any one else, he knows by sad
experience in his own kingdom what a deluge of calamities, what
revolutions, what a Babel-confusion this pretended Reformation
(which might better be called a _de_formation) has entailed in
politics as well as in religion; so much so that these three
kingdoms, and especially England, are, in both secular and sacred
affairs, nothing but a theatre of frightful disturbances, which hold
the entire world chained with attention and dismay."
This profession of faith is followed by twenty-four "notes" or
"declarations," in which the king indicates more in detail the course
which he proposes to follow in his difficult task of religious
restoration. The reconciliation with Rome once effected, he would
grant the Protestants complete toleration. The hierarchy should be
re-established as it was in the time of Henry VIII., before the
schism. Parishes should be established and seminaries founded. The
king also described in what manner he would arrange for the
introduction of the Roman liturgy, the preaching of the divine word,
the teaching of the catechism, the administration of the sacraments,
the celebration of provincial synods, and the admission of the
religious orders of both sexes into Great Britain; he spoke of the
festivals, beside Sunday, which it would be possible to make days of
obligation, and of the precautions which ought to be adopted in
bringing the people back to the veneration of the saints and their
relics.
It may be suggested that Charles was not sincere; but it is difficult
to understand what he could have hoped to gain by these
representations, made in strictest confidence to the Pope, if he did
not really intend to return to the bosom of the Church and hope to
bring his people with him. Lingard says that he used to feign an
inclination toward Catholicism, in view of the subsidies which he
received from the king of France; but we must remember that at this
time it was Louis who made all the overtures and evinced all the
eagerness for an alliance between the two countries, and that Charles
held back. Louis XIV. was ready to pay almost any price for his
neighbor's friendship, and Charles was under no necessity of periling
his crown and arousing all the fanaticism of his subjects in order to
obtain what Louis was so ready to give him.
Just about the time of the departure of Sir Richard Bellings for Italy
Charles made an attempt to obtain from parliament an act of indulgence
in favor of the Presbyterians, Independents, and Roman Catholics. He
met with the most violent resistance, even from his own ministers. Far
from carrying this equitable measure, he soon found himself compelled,
by the clamors of parliament, to issue a proclamation ordering all
Catholic priests to leave the country under penalty of death.
Disheartened by this ignominious defeat, he seems to have rushed more
madly than ever into debaucheries, and stifled the voice of conscience
until a providential incident, in 1668, aroused his better feelings.
V.
About the month of April, 1668, the king received a piece of news
which awakened in his heart at once remorse and hope. A natural son
whom he loved tenderly--a young man of great {582} intelligence and
acquirements--had abjured Protestantism and consecrated himself to
God's service in the Society of Jesus. This personage, who was
destined to play a part in Charles's conversion as important as it was
mysterious, is not unknown to our readers alone: no memoir of the time
makes any mention of him. We must go back a little way to find out who
he was.
The son of Lucy Walters, the intriguing and factious Duke of Monmouth,
born in 1649, is generally regarded as the first fruit of Charles's
illicit amours; but this is a mistake. It was not in the Netherlands,
nor in Paris, but in the isle of Jersey, that the heir to the English
crown began the career of licentiousness which ultimately proved so
disastrous to his reign. This little island, rich and populous, had
always remained faithful to the royal house; and it was probably with
the hope of obtaining succor for the royal cause that Charles, while
Prince of Wales, went there in 1647. But unfortunately he encountered,
under the roof of one of the most illustrious, families of Great
Britain, a temptation which extinguished all his warlike ardor. The
young soldier reposed in the gardens of Armida, and gave not a thought
to the terrible morrow which might follow his careless sleep.
[Footnote 88]
[Footnote 88: In the multiplicity of more important events, English
historians have lost site of this abortive Jersey expedition; but if
they do not confirm, they at least do not contradict our statement.
After the battle of Naseby, Prince Charles fled to the Scilly Isles
and afterward to Jersey. The next three years he passed chiefly at
the Hague. He does not reappear in history until 1648, when he made
a fruitless demonstration with a royalist fleet at the mouth of the
Thames. In the meanwhile he used to pay occasional visits to his
mother at Paris, and what more likely than at her instigation he
should have made a trip to Jersey in the hope of doing something for
his father?]
The child born of this connection, who afterward was called James
Stuart, was taken, in infancy, we know not by what name, to the
continent. He was educated by the best masters in France and Holland,
and as he grew up manifested great quickness of intellect, together
with the most estimable qualities of the heart. Charles was proud of
him and loved him; but when he came to the throne he durst not
publicly recognize him. He was afraid of his parliament and afraid of
the factions which encompassed him. Beside, the child's mother was
still living, and no doubt had obtained from the monarch a promise not
to compromise the honor of her noble family by acknowledging the son
until there should no longer be any danger of her being suspected as
the mother. So, when the young man, then about eighteen years of age,
was summoned to London in 1665, he was commanded to present himself
under the name of Jacques de la Cloche du Bourg de Jersey; and though
he received from his father the most unequivocal marks of affection,
he soon grew tired of his false position, and begged permission to
return to the continent and resume his studies. Charles reluctantly
consented. He gave his son at parting a document written in French
with his own hand and impressed with the royal seal, which is still
preserved at the Gesù in Rome. It runs thus:
"Charles, par la grâce de Dieu Roy d'Angleterre, de France, d'Ecosse
et d'Hibernie, confessons et tenons pour nostre fils naturel le
sieur Jacques Stuart qui, par nostre ordre et commandement a vescu
en France et auttres pays jusques à mil six cent soixante cinq où
nous avons daigné prendre soin de Luy. Depuis, la même année,
s'étant treuvé à Londres de nostre volonté expresse et pour raison.
Luy avons commandé de vivre sous auttre nom encore, sçavoir, de la
Cloche du Bourg de Jarzais. [Footnote 89] Auquel, pour raisons
importantes qui regardent la paix du Royaume que nous avons toujours
recherchée, deffendons de parler qu' après nostre mort [_i.e._, of
the secret of his birth]. En ce temps, Luy soit lors permis de
présenter au parlement cette nostre {583} déclaration que, de plein
gré et avec équité, nous Luy donnons à sa requeste, et en sa langue,
pour lui oster occasion de la monstrer à qui que ce soit pour en
avoir l'interpretation.--A Wthall, le 27 de septembre 1665. Escry et
signé de nostre main, et cacheté du cachet ordinaire de nos lettres
sans auttre façon.
L. S. CHARLES."
[Footnote 89: Charles wrote indifferently Jarzais, Jersais, or
Jersé]
(TRANSLATION.)
We Charles, by the grace of God king of England, France, Scotland,
and Ireland, acknowledge and hold as our natural son Sir James
Stuart, who by our order and commandment has lived up to the year
1665 in France and other countries, where we have seen fit to take
care of him. Thence after, on the same year, he resided in London by
our express will and for good reasons, we having commanded him to
live under a new name, to wit, La Cloche du Bourg de Jarzais. Whom,
however, for important reasons touching the peace of the realm,
whereof we are ever regardful, we forbid to speak _concerning the
secret of does birth_ until after our death. At that time be it then
permitted him to present to parliament this our declaration, which
of our own free will and in justice we grant him at his request and
in his language, in order to remove all occasion of his exhibiting
it to any one whatsoever for its better interpretation. At
Whitehall, the 27th of September, 1665. Written and signed by our
hand and sealed with the ordinary seal of our letters, without other
fashion.
L. S. CHARLES
With this acknowledgment of parentage, the young man returned to the
Netherlands; but he soon reflected that in the event of his father's
death the document was not likely to be of much service to him, for it
mentioned no provision for his support. The English Parliament would
be very apt, on one pretext or another, to refuse him any sum
whatever. So he prevailed upon Charles to give him another paper,
assigning to him £500 a year, "subject to the good pleasure of the
next successor to the crown and of the Parliament." Coupled with this
legacy were the conditions that James should live in London and remain
faithful to the Anglican Church. This document, dated Feb. 7, 1667, is
also preserved at the Gesù:
"Charles, by the grace of God king of England, France, Scotland, and
Ireland. The Sieur James Stuart, whom we have heretofore recognized
as our natural son, living under the name of La Cloche--having
represented to us that, should he survive our death, he would be
without means of support, if not recognized by parliament, beside
other difficulties which might occur in this affair; for this
reason, bending to his entreaties, we have seen good to assign him
and to leave him from our domain, if such be the good pleasure of
our successor to the crown and of our parliament, the sum of £500
sterling per annum. Which legacy it will not be lawful for him to
enjoy, except in so far as he shall reside in London, living
according to the religion of his fathers and the Anglican liturgy.
At Whitehall, the 7th Feb. 1667. Written and sealed by our proper
hand.
L. S. CHARLES"
When the king imposed the second condition he little imagined that his
son was already on the point of abandoning the Established Church; but
so it was; and on the 29th of the next July he was received into the
Catholic communion at Hamburg. Very soon afterward he determined to
enter the Society of Jesus; but there was one great obstacle in the
way. He could not be received without telling the secret of his birth,
for illegitimacy was an impediment from which it was necessary to
obtain a dispensation. And if he told it, with no other {584} proof to
show than the two papers just cited, which it would be impossible for
an Italian Jesuit to verify, who would believe him? In this perplexity
he had recourse to the ex-queen Christina of Sweden, who was then at
Hamburg. There was a dash of romance in the story which pleased the
eccentric princess; she was well acquainted personally with Charles
II., and having obtained from him a confirmation of all that James
Stuart had told her, she gave the young man a letter which secured a
ready belief for the account that he gave of himself at Rome. This
letter, written in Latin, is also among the documents lately
discovered at the Gesù:
"James Stuart, who was born in the isle of Jersey, and of his own
free will assumed the name of La Cloche du Bourg, is the natural son
of Charles II., king of England, and so much has been secretly
confirmed to us by his Britannic majesty. Renouncing the sect of
Calvin, to which his birth and education had up to this time
attached him, he joined the Holy Roman Church at Hamburg July 29,
1667. In faith of which, contrary to our custom, we have written by
our own hand this declaration, to the end that James Stuart can, in
an extraordinary circumstance, open his conscience entirely to his
confessor and receive from him the necessary counsels for the
salvation of his soul.
L. S. CHRISTINA ALEXANDRA."
James Stuart was accordingly received into the Society in April, 1668,
under the name of Jacques de la Cloche. The inventory of his personal
effects, to which the novice, according to custom, affixed his
signature on entering, gives us a curious idea of the wardrobe of a
king's son. Here it is: "One hat; one ecclesiastical habit and mantle;
one pair of breeches and a waistcoat of black cloth; one vest trimmed
with yellow fur; a sword-belt of green leather; white silk stockings;
two shirts and one undershirt; one pair of linen drawers," etc.
VI.
It was on the 11th day of April, 1668, that James Stuart commenced his
religious life. On the 23d of April, 1668, the Marquis de Ravigny, the
French ambassador at London, sent to the court of St. Germain an
account of a conversation he had just had with Charles II. The King of
England had said to him: "I am very desirous of effecting a strong
union with France, but I must have help; for there are many people
about me who are not of that way of thinking. As to myself, I have
always been so disposed, as you know better than anybody..." Charles,
after having repeated these words several times, had added more than
once--"Leave it to me. I will speak with you about it before many
days." M. de Ravigny, whose efforts toward the political unity of the
two cabinets had, up to this time, been without result, received the
overture with apparent coldness. Louis XIV. was equally incredulous,
and M. de Lionne replied to the representative of France in England in
these terms: "The king is of the opinion that your response was
exceedingly judicious, when the King of Great Britain signified his
desire of making a strong alliance with him, and hinted to you to make
advances. His majesty has already made so many, and has been so poorly
responded to, when requested to enter into the matter, that the
prudence and dignity of his majesty forbid his committing himself
further. . . ."
Charles waited to receive the propositions of the court of St.
Germain; but the court of St. Germain was dumb. Driven to declare
himself, therefore, he renewed the assurances he had already given,
and the letter of the French ambassador, bearing date of May 21, 1668,
describes the interview, and closes with these significant words: "It
looks as though this will {585} come to something; for this reason I
most humbly beg your majesty to send further instructions."
Thus, only a few days after the humble novice of the Quirinal had
assumed the robes of his order, Charles and Louis were busily engaged
in cementing that family pact which broke the Triple Alliance, and
delayed, for many years, the formation of that formidable coalition
under which France finally succumbed. Are we too bold in suspecting
something more than a simple coincidence in the simultaneousness of
these two events?
Hume, in his "History of the House of Stuart," attributes the action
of the English monarch to his admiration for the gaiety, wit, and
elegance of the French court. Let those who will, accept this
frivolous explanation! The curious conjuncture of dates, together with
a vast assemblage of other facts looking in the same direction, have
convinced us that the true motive of this sudden change was the
religions convictions of the king. The conscience of Charles had long
been troubled. Even before assuming the crown, he had resolved to
introduce larger religious liberty into the realm. Baffled in all his
attempts, completely, disconcerted, he learns one day that his eldest
son--a mind thoroughly serious and earnest--had separated himself
utterly from the errors of Protestantism, and had deliberately devoted
himself to a life of prayer, of silence, and of mortification. Then
Charles took heart, and convinced that he could not attain his object
without the help of France, he resolutely set aside all the obstacles
of national sentiment, and entered at once upon the completion of the
compact. While this was pending, the British sovereign was employed,
for the three months which followed the entrance of his son upon the
novitiate of the Jesuits, in strengthening himself against the
insurrections and the civil war to which his conversion was certain to
give rise. It is not, however, by political precautions alone that
heresy is made to yield to the true faith. There must also be the
discreet theologian, the wise master, the spiritual guide--assistance
difficult to avail one's self of when Anglican intolerance watches
menacingly at the gates of all the royal palaces! Such a guide, such
an instrument of the divine pity, the prince felt that he possessed
to-day in the novice of St. André. Resuming the dress of a gentleman,
James Stuart, known by nobody at court, might readily obtain access to
the king without exciting suspicion. To him Charles would joyfully
become a disciple, joyfully become a penitent; from him he could
receive the necessary religious instruction and absolution for his
sins. In concert with the two queens, he therefore decided to write to
the father-general of the Jesuits and request the immediate return of
the novice to England. The prince wrote to Rome five autograph
letters, all in French; four to P. Oliva, one to his son. The
different envelopes have perfectly preserved the stamp of the royal
seal. It is for the reader now to determine whether the author of
these pages--so truthful, so ingenuous--was, as has been a thousand
times asserted, only an accomplished cheat. It is for the reader to
declare whether the brother of James II. merits those odious epithets
of deist and atheist with which Protestantism has so freely
bespattered him, doubtless in recompense for the scorn and aversion
which Charles always felt in his deepest heart for the Establishment
of Henry VIII.
Scarcely five months had elapsed since James Stuart began to practise
the rules of St. Ignatius, when a stranger placed in the hands of Paul
Oliva, father-general of the order, the following letter:
TO THE REVEREND FATHER-GENERAL OF THE JESUIT FATHERS:
REVEREND FATHER,--We write this to your reverence as to a person
whom we believe to be most prudent and judicious, inasmuch as the
{586} principal charge which you have of an institute so famous will
not permit us to think otherwise. We address you in French, a
language common to all persons of quality, wherewith we believe that
your reverence is not unacquainted, preferring this language to bad
Latin, in which we could with difficulty write so as to be
understood; it being our principal aim in this that no Englishman
may intrude himself as a translator--a thing which would otherwise
be exceedingly prejudicial to us, for the reason that we wish this
letter to be a secret between you and us.
And to commence, your reverence ought to know that for a long time,
amid the embarrassments of the crown, we had prayed God to grant us
the opportunity of finding at least one person in our realm in whom
we could confide touching the affair of our salvation without giving
our court grounds for suspecting that we are Catholic. And although
there have been here a multitude of priests, both in the service of
the queen (a portion of whom have dwelt in our palace of St. James
and at Somerset House) and also scattered throughout our whole city
of London; nevertheless we could not avail ourselves of any because
of the suspicion we should give to our court by conversation with
such people, who, whatever disguises of clothing they may assume,
are always known for what they are. Yet despite so many
difficulties, it seems as if the providence of God had provided for
and seconded our desires, by causing to be born to us in the
Catholic religion a son to whom alone we could confide ourselves in
an affair so delicate. And although many persons, perhaps better
versed than himself in the mysteries of the Catholic religion, might
be found for our service in this exigency; nevertheless we could not
make use of others as well as of him, who would be always capable of
administering to us in secret the sacraments of the confession and
of the communion which we desire to receive as soon as possible.
This our son is a young gentleman whom we know you have received
with you at Rome under the name of the Sieur La Cloche de Jersay,
for whom we have always had a peculiar tenderness, as much because
he was born to us when we were scarcely sixteen or seventeen years
old, of a young lady of the highest rank in our realm (rather from
the frailty of our early youth than from a bad heart), as also
because of the excellent nature we have ever remarked in him and of
that eminence in learning wherein he has advanced through our means.
For this makes us all the more esteem his conversion to the Catholic
religion, since we know that he has been led to it through judgment,
reason, and knowledge. Many important reasons touching the peace of
our realm have prevented us, up to the present time, from publicly
recognizing him as our son; but this will be for a brief time only,
because we presently design to make a kind of public recognition of
him ere many years, having, however, provided him, in 1665, with the
necessary assurances, in case we should come to die, so that he may
make use of them in due time and place. And as he is not known here
in anywise, saving by the queens--this affair having been managed
with great secresy--we could in all safety converse with him, and
exercise in secret the mysteries of the Catholic religion, without
exciting in any one of our court the suspicion that we are Catholic,
which we could not do with any other missionary; in addition to the
confidence that we should have in opening to him our conscience in
all freedom and sincerity as to a part of ourselves. Thus we see
that, although he was born in our tender youth against the
ordinances of God, the same God has seen fit to preserve him for our
salvation, since it pertains to himself alone to know how to bring
good out of evil.
We believe that the need we have {587} of him has been sufficiently
explained to your reverence, and if your reverence write us, you
will intrust your letters to our son alone, when he comes to us. For
although we do not doubt but that you would find secret ways enough to
do it, nevertheless you would disoblige us excessively by intrusting
your letters to anybody but to this our son, for many considerable
reasons whereof your reverence can conjecture apart, but especially
from the mischief which it would bring upon us, as we were subjected
to great hazard on account of our receiving a letter which we had from
Rome in reply to one we had written to the deceased Pope; and although
it was presented to us with all necessary circumspection and by a
Catholic person, nevertheless it could not be managed with
sufficient prudence to prevent the suspicion of our most
keen-sighted courtiers. But having found means to stifle the
suspicion which was abroad respecting our being Catholic, we were
obliged, through fear of renewing it in men's minds, to consent on
several occasions to many things that turned to the disadvantage of
numerous Catholics in our kingdom of Ireland. This is the reason
why--although we had written with all possible secresy to His
Holiness respecting our conversion to the Catholic Church at the
same time that we besought His Holiness to make our very dear
cousin, my Lord d'Aubigny, a cardinal, whereof we were refused for
good reasons--we have not been able to pursue our point.
And although the Queen of Sweden is very wise and discreet,
nevertheless it is enough that she is a woman to lead us to fear
that she cannot keep a secret, and, as she believes that she alone
knows the origin of our well-beloved son, we have written her again
and have confirmed her in that opinion. This is done in order that
your reverence shall manifest to her, upon occasion, that you have
no knowledge of his birth, if she should inquire of you. As also, we
pray your reverence not to make known to her or to anybody else, be
it whom it may, the design we have of becoming Catholic, or that we
send for our son for this object. If the Queen of Sweden asks where
he is gone, your reverence will find some pretext, either that he is
gone on a mission to our island of Jersey or to some other part of
our realm, or still another pretext, until we make our desires and
wishes in this matter again known to you.
We pray you, then, to send to us as soon as possible our very dear
and well-beloved son--that is to say, at the first time that this
season or the next permit. We believe that your reverence is too
zealous for the salvation of souls, and has too much respect for
crowned heads, not to accord to us a request so just. We had had
some thought of writing to His Holiness and disclosing to him what
we have in soul, and by the same means to pray him to send our son
to us. But we have believed that it would be sufficient for us this
time to make a declaration to your reverence, reserving for another
occasion--which we shall bring to pass as soon as possible--the
writing and declaring ourselves to the Pope by a very secret courier
sent post by us.
If our dear and well-beloved son, is not a priest, and if he cannot
become one without making publicly known his true name and origin,
or from other circumstances (which we say because we do not know
your mode of acting in these matters), in that case let him rather
not be made a priest at Rome than that he communicate aught of what
he is to the bishops or priests; but let him pass through Paris and
present himself to our very dear cousin the King of France, or, if
he prefer, to our very honored sister the Duchess d'Orleans, to whom
he can make manifest on our part our good desire in all safety. They
know well enough what is the wish of our soul, and will readily
recognize our very dear and well-beloved son by the tokens which we
gave to him in London in 1665, and, perceiving that he is Catholic,
they would endeavor {588} and would be able to make him a priest
without any one's knowing what he is, and with all possible secresy
as we believe. If, however, without so many crooks and turns, he
prefer to come to us without being a priest--which is, perhaps, the
better course--then we would do the same thing by means of the queen
our very honored mother, or of the queen-consort, who would have at
their service bishops, missionaries, or others to perform the
ceremony without any one's perceiving or knowing anything about it.
We say this in the event of his encountering difficulties in
effecting this at Rome.
And although we wish our very dear son to come to us, it is,
nevertheless, not our design to draw him away from your society. On
the contrary, we should rejoice if he remain in it all his life if
God inspire him to that vocation, and, after having put our
conscience in order by his means, we shall not prevent him from
returning to Rome, to live according to the society to which he has
attached himself; and even during the time that he shall be at our
service we shall not prevent him, if he so will, from pursuing, with
those of your body that are in our realm, the life commenced in
conformity with the religious vocation which he has embraced,
provided that it be not in London, but in some city or village not
far off from our city of London, to the end that when we need him he
can come with the greatest promptitude and facility. And the reason
why we do not wish him to reside in London among your people is
because of the danger of his being suspected as a Jesuit, from his
being seen to enter those places which are the residences of your
people, already too well known by many--a thing that would turn to
our prejudice. Now we are well content, after being absolved by him
of heresy, and after we are reconciled to God and to the Church,
that he return to Rome to lead the religious life which he has
begun, awaiting further orders from us--a scheme which seems to us
quite to the point, and we believe that your reverence will be of
our opinion and counsel in this last particular. Thus doing, when he
shall have been here some weeks or months, we will send him back to
Rome under the government of your reverence, to the end that, under
your care, he may the better fit himself for our service. And during
the short time that he shall be at London, when he speak to any one
of yours let him guard himself well in discoursing upon the object
of his coming. He can say that it is for some affair of importance
in our court, of which only your reverence and himself should have
cognizance.
In the meanwhile, though we cannot openly manifest to your
illustrious society the affection and the good-will we have toward
it, this does not prevent your reverence from making known to us, by
our very dear and well-beloved son, if there be any way in which we
can aid it, which we should do all the more willingly because we
know that everything which we can contribute will be employed in the
service of God for the remission of our offenses. For the rest, we
recommend to your prayers our realm and ourselves.
CHARLES, King of England.
At Whitehall, the 3d of August, 1668.
Enclosed in the communication addressed to the father-general was a
second letter of the king's, which reads as follows:
TO OUR VERY HONORED SON
THE PRINCE STUART,
RESIDENT WITH THE JESUIT FATHERS UNDER
THE NAME OF SIEUR DE LA CLOCHE, AT ROME:
MONSIEUR,--We have written very fully to your reverend
father-general; he will tell you our pleasure. The Queen of Sweden
has asked of us, as a loan, the sum of money that we had taken care
to provide for your maintenance, which was sufficient for {589} many
years. We have ordered what was necessary in the matter; and this is
a reason why you need not put yourself to the trouble either of
writing to her about it, or of speaking more thereof.
If the autumn season be too disagreeable to get out on your journey
to us, and if you cannot venture upon it without putting yourself in
imminent danger of falling ill, wait till the commencement of next
spring, having especial care for the preservation of your health,
and keeping yourself in all quiet, writing us nothing, for we are
not a little suspected of being Catholic.
The queens are very eager to see you, as we have communicated to
them privately the news of your conversion to the Roman religion.
They have counselled us to tell you that we do not forbid your
living in the institute to which you have attached yourself, and we
should be rejoiced if you remain in it all your life; but desire you
to measure well your powers and your constitution, which has
appeared to us very feeble and delicate. One can be a good Catholic
without being a religious, and you ought to consider that we design,
before many years, to publicly recognize you as our son. But as
neither parliament nor the state of affairs has permitted it up to
the present moment, we have always been constrained to defer it. You
ought, moreover, to consider that you can aspire to the same titles
from us as the Duke of Monmouth, and perhaps to more ample ones.
Beside, we are without children by the queen and those of the Duke
of York are very feeble; while, for every reason and because of the
rank of your mother, you can lay claim on ourselves and on
parliament to be preferred to the Duke of Monmouth. In that case,
being young, as you are, if liberty of conscience and if the
Catholic religion be restored to this realm, you would have some
hope of the crown. For we can assure you that if God permit that we
and our very honored brother the Duke of York die without children,
the crown will belong to yourself and parliament cannot legitimately
oppose it, unless that the fact of your being a Catholic exclude
you; as liberty of conscience is not yet established, and since, at
present, only Protestant kings are eligible. This, then, we are
advised by the queens to tell you. If, in the meantime, all things
considered, you prefer to serve God in the Society of Jesus, we do
not wish to offer any resistance to the will of God, whom we have
already grieved too much by our offences. We do not, therefore,
forbid your pursuing that vocation, if God inspire you to it; but we
desire only that you think well of it.
We do not wish to write to the Pope until we have spoken to you by
our own mouth. We had written to the late Pope, to the end that he
should make our very dear and well-beloved cousin, my Lord
d'Aubigny, a cardinal; whereof we have not had the satisfaction that
we demanded. However, we are not offended in this. His Holiness
having made known to us manifold reasons why he could not
conscientiously create a cardinal in our realm, the affairs of
religion and other things being as they are.
Not long since we wrote to the Queen of Sweden, and advised her not
to write to you, and to treat you henceforth as simply a gentleman,
without manifesting that she has any knowledge of your birth. This
is a reason why you should not take it amiss if her majesty treat
you after that manner. It is a no light burden to us to see you
always constrained to live unknown, but have patience yet a little,
for before many years we shall try to so conduct affairs and
parliament that all the world will know who you are. You will no
longer live in these hindrances and restraints, and it will depend
only on yourself to live in the liberty and the pleasure of a person
of your birth, unless that God strongly inspire you and that you
should wish to continue absolutely the {590} religious life which
you have commenced.
Although we cannot, and ought not, to openly show the good-will that
we have for the Society of Jesus, who have received you, yet in the
meanwhile if we cannot publicly favor them with our royal
munificence, there may still be some place, room, or occasion
wherein they might need our aid, and where we could contribute
somewhat. We would do it all the more because we know that all will
be employed for the service of God and the remission of our
offences, and because, also, we could desire that no one of your
lineage should remain with them without founding something as a
memorial suitable to one of your extraction. We will talk about this
matter in London, if you persist in your design of living with them.
In the meanwhile, believe that we have always had you in our
peculiar affection, not only because you were born to us in our
tenderest youth, when we were scarcely sixteen or seventeen, but
particularly because of the excellent nature that we have always
remarked in you, because of that eminence of knowledge in which you
have been advanced through our means, because you have always borne
yourself as a virtuous man, and because you have been especially
obedient to our commands: the which, joined to the paternal love
that we have felt toward you, strongly governs our desires in
wishing all kinds of benefits for you, beside the pity that moves us
in seeing you so unknown and disregarded--a thing which shall
continue as brief a space as possible.
It is not easy for us to send privately to Rome a sum of money
adequate for a person of your birth and sufficient to put you in the
condition and estate of appearing before us, being, as we are, neither
willing nor able to noise it abroad that we have any one at Rome with
whom we have communication. It is not possible that you are not
everywise modest enough to come to us, if not in the condition of
one of your rank, at least as a simple gentleman when you put foot
in England. Finally, pray God for ourselves, the queen, and our
realm.
I am your affectionate father,
CHARLES
King of Eng., Fr., Scot, and Ire.
At Whitehall, 4th of Aug., 1668.
Charles II., in the letters we have just given, left his son at
liberty to set out at the end of autumn or even at the winter season.
Twenty-five days have not elapsed when his resolution changes. He
wishes the novice at Rome to make haste to precipitate his departure.
What was the cause of this serious disquietude? It was this: Queen
Christina, repenting of her abdication and hating the north, resolved
to seek an asylum for her remaining days in the shadow of the Vatican.
Charles was informed of her intention, and at once took alarm.
Christina would then witness the departure of James Stuart; entangling
the inexperienced novice in a network of cunning questions, what
secret could escape her? Everything would be discovered. Little by
little the rumor would spread from Italy to England. Charles already
saw his kingdom in revolution and himself reduced to the most grievous
extremity. Such was the object of the second letter to the
father-general:
TO THE REVEREND FATHER-GENERAL
OF THE JESUIT FATHERS AT ROME:
REVEREND FATHER,--We send, with the greatest diligence and with the
greatest secresy, an express to Rome charge with two letters, one to
your reverence to the end that our well-beloved son set out as soon as
possible; the other to the Queen of Sweden--having commanded the
messenger to await the arrival of her majesty in any Italian town
through which she may pass, not wishing even that the aforesaid
express should appear at your house, through fear of {591} being
recognized by some of your order who are English. As he is a person
of rank, we have in like manner forbidden his delaying more than one
day at Rome, fearing lest he should be recognized by certain
Englishmen who are at Rome.
We say, then, to your reverence that, since the first letter that we
wrote you, we have received trustworthy news that the Queen of Sweden
returns to Rome, contrary to the anticipations which we had
formed--the which has not a little embarrassed us in the matter of
our salvation. This is the reason that, upon this new accident,
having taken counsel with the queens, we have determined to write in
haste to the Queen of Sweden, feigning to her and persuading her
that our very dear and well-beloved son has represented to us that
he wishes assigned to him something fixed for life, to the end that
in case he should not pursue the religious calling he has commenced,
being now a Catholic, he may have something to fall back upon; and
that even if he should pursue it, he prays us to settle a sum of
money upon him which he may dispose of according to his devotion,
which petition we have granted him; but since this cannot be
effected at Rome, we have ordered him to go to Paris to find certain
correspondents of ours, and after that to proceed to Jersey or to
Hanton, [Footnote 90] where he will receive from us forty or fifty
thousand crowns in total, which may be deposited in some bank; and
that we have instructed him not to tell his superior of his birth;
but that he shall simply feign to your reverence that he is the son
of a rich preacher, who, being deceased some time since, his mother,
moved with a desire of becoming a Catholic and to give him the goods
which belong to him, has written to him, and that your reverence,
desirous of the salvation of this person, and of making her a
Catholic, and perceiving also that he can come by his estate, has
readily permitted him to go. This we have arranged in order that she
shall thus believe that she alone has the secret, and will therefore
not break the matter to your reverence from the friendship she bears
him. Thus we counteract any suspicion she might have of your letting
him come to us and of our being Catholic. But above all it is
necessary that our very dear son do not wait, but that he set out as
soon as possible; for, as she needs money (and so needs it that she
demanded at the last Swedish diet 35,000 crowns in advance), she
would embarrass him in such a way that the drama which we wish to
play would come off but illy. This we have arranged touching the
Queen of Sweden.
[Footnote 90: Now Southhampton.--Ed. C. W.]
Your reverence will not be astonished then if this fear has led us
to dread the evils by which we are besieged; a fear all the more
lively in us, because these evils are greater and bear in their
train consequences more dangerous. Now it is a truth received
without dispute among our wisest statesmen, that of all the temporal
evils which can befal us, the proof that we are Catholic is the
greatest, since it would infallibly cause our death, and at the same
time many convulsions in our realm. Your reverence ought not,
therefore, to be astonished if we take so many precautions and if we
have judged proper to write him this second letter also, as well in
the matter of the Queen of Sweden as to supply omissions which we
made in the first, and at the same time to retract some things
contained therein--that our very dear and honored son do not present
himself to our very dear cousin the King of France, nor to our very
honored sister the Duchess of Orleans, as we advised before; but
only that he come to us, be it through France or through Paris or by
other ways, as it shall please your reverence to determine. He will
abstain during the journey from writing to the Queen of Sweden, lest
she see that those things are not carried out which, as we have
heretofore said, have been pretended to her. This we have decided
upon with the aid of the queens, fearing a discovery or some
accident.
{592}
Moreover, we pray your reverence (who are secretly acquainted, as
are her most christian majesty the queen, and our very dear sister,
Madame the Duchess of Orleans, with the warm disposition for
becoming a Catholic which we have for a long time shown),--we pray
you, nevertheless, to abstain from writing to them in any fashion
touching these matters, but to keep everything quite secret until
the providence of God has otherwise disposed of affairs.
Now as we desire, with all requisite prudence in an affair of so
great consequence to ourselves and the peace of our realm, that our
very dear and well-beloved son find everything which is necessary in
the business of our salvation made easy for him, and to avoid the
inconveniences which might spring upon this side, we have taken
counsel with the queen to this effect, that when he shall arrive
alone in London--for such is our good will and pleasure--he take
time to clothe himself, and dress himself as quickly as possible, if
he be not sufficiently well-dressed--not having been willing to do
so for fear of soiling his garments by the bad weather and muddy
roads, which soil a carriage and also all who are in it; and having
put himself in order and rendered himself presentable, let him take
occasion to address himself to the reigning queen, either when she
is dining at our palace of St. James or when her majesty shall go to
visit the queen, our very dear and honored mother. To whom, without
causing any suspicion, he will present a sealed letter in the form
of a supplication, in which he will say in a few words who he is.
Her majesty has directions from us to manage everything which is
necessary for an introduction to ourselves, with all possible
prudence, and we are assured that there shall arise no disorder nor
suspicion. He has nothing else to do but to let himself be directed
according to what shall be advised him, and we command him to
observe punctually everything we have written to him, especially
what we have put within the envelope.
In the meanwhile, we renew to your reverence the prayer which we
made to you from the first, which is, not to write us, nor to make
any response saving by the hands of our very dear and well-beloved
son, whom we order to set out from Rome as soon as possible, not
wishing that the Queen of Sweden speak to him for the aforesaid
reasons. Having departed from Rome, he will take his ease in coming
to us. We pray, however, your reverence, if this be necessary, to
move him to come as soon as possible, representing to him the need
we have of him. For we know that he has no little repugnance to
England, which we attribute to the fact of his not having been
educated there, and also of his finding himself compelled to live
there alone, so that we have never been able to induce him to live
there more than a year. And even before that year was finished, he
presented us so many reasons that we were constrained to let him go
to Holland, where he bore himself with great praise and to our great
satisfaction in the belles lettres and other studies, in which he
made admirable progress.
We believe he has too much judgment to wish to disobey us, and not
come as we desire. As soon as he comes we shall endeavor, by means
of the queens, to have him made a priest in all secresy. And if
there be anything that the bishop ordinary cannot do without
permission of His Holiness, let him not fail to provide for it, but
very secretly, so that no one shall know who he is: which will be
done if possible before he set out from Rome. Meanwhile we beseech
you, reverend father, to pray God for the queens, our realm, and
ourselves, who are
CHARLES, King of England.
At Whitehall, the 29th Aug., 1668.
Yet even these numerous and urgent recommendations did not quite
pacify the timid monarch. One feature in the rule of St. Ignatius, of
{593} which his queen's had just advised him, suddenly upset all his
ideas. He snatches up the pen. He countermands the orders he has just
given. He traces a new plan of campaign in which the clearness of
exposition, the ability of conception, the facility of execution, are
about on a level. This third letter, we must confess, does little
credit to the geographical knowledge and above all to the courage of
Charles II. In another point of view, however, it merits the attention
of the reader. Precisely because of the trouble which reigns in his
thoughts, we detect more than once the cry of the soul. More than at
any time hitherto, the unhappy prince lets us discover the cruel
anguishes which torture his conscience, and the incontestable
sincerity of his desires.
TO THE REVEREND FATHER-GENERAL
OF THE JESUIT FATHERS AT ROME:
REVEREND FATHER,--We have never felt so many embarrassments, though
we have had enough of them in our life, as at present, when we wish
to think seriously of our salvation. We have but just sealed this
other letter, which we pray you to read before the one which is
open, that you may better learn our intention and the order in which
we hold to the writing. The queens have advised us and counselled us
not to press his [our son's] coming, because they wish to arrange
and bring about certain very necessary and notable precautions, to
render the arrival of our very dear and well-beloved son to England
very prudent and secret.
For this end their majesties, having found means of learning
accurately and with judgment the ways of your society regarding
those who have but recently joined them, inform us that they have
ascertained from a good source that the novices of your holy
society, not less than with others, are never sent off without some
member of the fraternity accompanying them, as much to be advised of
their actions and deportment as to render an account to the
superior--the which we admire as a very holy prudence and which can
only spring from the divine spirit with which so holy a society is
animated. But nevertheless in this matter we beseech your reverence
to dispense with this companionship in the case of our very dear
son; because we command him absolutely, in virtue of the power which
God has given us over him, to come to us by himself, partly because
this will properly accord with the letter which we have sent to the
Queen of Sweden, who should believe that he has gone alone--that is
to say, unaccompanied by any member of the fraternity; but
principally because of the dangerous inconveniences whereof we
should be constantly in fear if he came in the company of any of the
fraternity. We have already, with great secresy, pretended to some
very safe persons in a great number of the English ports, and by
ways entirely concealed, that a foreign prince, of such a carriage,
such a mien, alone by himself, is flying to us, and much more indeed
which we could not explain to your reverence without going too far
into detail. We do this, partly that if we come to be anywise
suspected of being too familiar with him (Father James Stuart) we
may have something to say to remove the suspicion.
Your reverence can see by this that if he should bring an Italian
with him who was recognizable as an Italian, be it by his accent or
otherwise, this might be the occasion of overthrowing all our
designs and of interrupting the scheme which we wish to work out in
order to come most surely to our just desires. Even in case he can
have some one other than an Italian with him, we should forbid his
bringing any one into England, of whatever nation he might be, for
many very considerable reasons, which it would take too long to
recount.
Your reverence ought not to be surprised if we are so cautious,
because we learned in the time of Cromwell {594} what misery is,
and what are the things of this world, what it is to be prudent and
to hide one's self in order to succeed in our undertaking. We doubt
not that, as our very dear and well-beloved son is young, he is far
from eager for company and conversation, and that he does not
desire to have intercourse with any one by letter or by discourse;
for we know that he does not love the court any too well. But he
must needs have patience, inasmuch as it is not reasonable that for
a pleasure so brief and of so little consequence, he should put
himself in danger of ruining all our designs. Beside, he ought to
know that when he shall put foot in our palace, he is not to
converse with any one saving with ourselves and the queen, who will
give the necessary orders in the matter. Nor will he write any
letters saving to you, reverend father, and these letters that he
shall write to you we shall despatch by an express in great secresy
to Rome, to the end that your reverence relieve us in the
necessities which may arise touching our soul.
We have made inquiries respecting the seaports nearest to Rome.
Among many which have been named to us, we recall Civita Vecchia and
Gênes. We command him, then, to go to Gênes. We have ascertained,
with all necessary prudence, that your society has at that place a
house of your order. Being then at Gênes, we wish him to seek out
some ship or English shallop, but in such wise that we do not wish
any of the fraternity to recommend him to the master nor to those
who manage the ship, not showing their acquaintanceship with him,
for very considerable reasons; but especially because these
seafaring men will repeat it all as soon as they come to port.
Moreover, we desire that he put off and lay aside his religious
robes in the house of his friends and brother Jesuits of Gênes. He
will assume them again in the same place on his return to Rome, when
we send him back to pursue there the religious life he has
commenced.
He will land then in our realm solitary and in disguise. He will
call himself everywhere he may go Henry de Rohan, which is the name
of the family of a certain French prince, a Calvinist, and very well
known and intimate with us. We are in such fear lest some accident
occur, that in these different ports we at present take cognisance,
both very secretly and with the requisite prudence, of ships which
have arrived or are due, and even so far as we can of persons, under
pretence of a zeal for the well-being of our realm, and under
pretence of maintaining the Protestant religion, to which we pretend
to be attached more than ever, although, before God, who knows the
heart, we abhor it as very false and pernicious.
Moreover, we forbid our very dear and honored son to pass through
France and by the other passages and ports which lie in that part,
for he could not bring about our intentions with sufficient secresy
sailing from that coast, and therefore we have found no place more
proper than Gênes for his embarkation. And, in the meanwhile,
awaiting his return to Rome, your reverence shall noise it abroad
that he has gone to Jersey or Hanton to see his pretended mother,
who desires to become a Catholic, as we have suggested and feigned
in that other letter, and that, to make the greater haste, he went
by sea.
This then we command him to observe, point by point, through the
authority that God has given us over him, and we promise him, on the
faith of a king, that we seek nothing else in his coming but the
salvation of our souls, his good, and that of the society to which
he has attached himself, which, sooner or later, we shall find means
to notably favor with our royal magnificence. And so far from
forbidding his pursuing his calling, both for the Catholic religion
and your society, we and the queens will urge it upon him better
than any _director_ he {595} can have. It is very true that when the
season and affairs permit us to write and make known to His Holiness
the veneration we hold him in as the vicegerent of God, we hope that
he will be too well disposed toward us to refuse him the cardinal's
hat, inasmuch as the conditions which could forbid his having this
dignity for the honor of our person and of our realm are not
fulfilled in his case, viz., residence in England, since we can send
him to dwell at Rome, as we promise, and with the royal magnificence
requisite for his birth. Nevertheless, if in time he prefer to live
according to the religious life he has commenced, we would readily
abandon what would be to the honor of our crown and of our person,
rather than to urge and procure such dignities against his will.
We have made discreet inquiries of our physician whether
sea-sickness cause any dangerous accidents to those of a feeble
constitution, who has answered us that sea-sickness never killed any
one, but on the contrary has been the means of greater health.
Nevertheless, if it be too painful for him to make one trip of it,
he shall contrive that the bark or shallop in which he sails rest
from time to time in some port. He might easily come at once to
London; but we do not wish it for good reasons. Let him land at some
other port of England, from whence he can come by land in a carriage
to London.
We once again entreat your reverence not to write to us nor to make
any reply, saving by the hand of our very dear and honored son, when
he comes to us. And, if there be a need for anything which he does
not possess in making the voyage to London, we beseech you, reverend
father, to have particular care in the matter, furnishing him with
whatever he requires, whereof he will keep account.
We firmly believe it is God who has inspired us to all these
above-mentioned ways for bringing us in secret our very honored son,
because of what he has said in his word--that when two or three are
gathered together in his name, he will be in the midst of them. For
it is exactly ourselves, and the queen, our very dear mother, and
the reigning queen, who decree all these things, not without having
invoked, first of all, the Holy Spirit. Beside that, the queens have
commanded their priests to celebrate many masses in accordance with
their intention, which is nothing other than that this affair
succeed as well as all our other projects above mentioned, which
tend not only to our good, but to that of the Roman Catholic Church
and of our realm. We are,
CHARLES, King of England.
These last two letters were a sad revelation to Father Oliva, and no
doubt very much diminished the hopes which he had before conceived.
However, the order was given to the novice to set out without delay.
If James Stuart could easily obey his father by departing from Rome
before the arrival of Queen Christina, it was certainly more difficult
for him to conform to the frequently contradictory injunctions
concerning the route to be taken and the precautions to be guarded
against which had been successively transmitted to him. Everything
which was rational and practicable the young man respected. He set
sail from Leghorn about the middle of October, a fact which we learn
from a brief letter of Father Oliva to the King of England. It is of
course unnecessary to explain to the reader why the father-general has
dated his note from a Tuscan port rather than from the city of the
Roman pontiffs at which he wrote:
SIRE,--The French gentleman who is charged with the delivery of this
letter will inform you of my utter carefulness in fulfilling the
commands of your three letters and my unlimited devotion to your
royal person. Your majesty will always see me execute with the same
promptness and the {596} same zeal everything which he shall deign
to impose on me. I shall endeavor to be such in reality as he deigns
to believe that I am; such as the confidence with which he honors me
obliges me to show myself.
I throw myself respectfully at the feet of your majesty.
Leghorn, Oct 14, 1668.
In one very important respect it was found necessary to abandon, or
rather to violate, the royal programme. Charles, a perfect stranger to
ecclesiastical laws, always supposed that, at his request, his son
could be made priest either at Rome or in London. But James Stuart was
only twenty-one years old, and was without theological studies. Even
if these serious objections had not existed, it would not have been
prudent to elevate to the sacred office a novice whose religious
experience extended scarcely over a space of six months. Thus, despite
the repugnance of the king, Henry de Rohan, as our young traveller
must now be called, took as his companion a priest of the society, a
Frenchman, as far as we can judge, who, disguised like himself, was
presented to their Britannic majesties in the quality of a friend of
the refugee prince. This wise measure, imposed by the timidity of
Charles, was attended by so little inconvenience, that we shall find
the monarch himself, on the occasion of his son's second voyage to
England, earnestly requesting of the father-general the return of this
same _religious_ whose talents and virtues he had come to appreciate.
VII.
This is not the place to describe the warmth with which Charles opened
his arms to his first-born, whom he had always peculiarly cherished,
nor the joy of the two pious princesses, nor the tender emotions of
the youth upon whom beamed, at length, the sympathy and affection he
had never known before. In the isolation of his earlier life, James
Stuart had sadly felt the void which the absence of that sweetest tie
on earth, the family, creates. This grief had eaten into him like a
cancer, till the day when he resolved to renounce the world. When the
victim has immolated himself, when he has said to flesh and blood, I
will know you nevermore! behold in a royal palace, by one of the first
thrones on earth, the humble novice finds again a home--venerable
queens are mothers to him. His father caresses him, and, emulating the
example of his brother, the Duke of York, who was also preparing to
embrace Catholicism, receives the child of St. Ignatius as an angel
from heaven.
But it was not for such pleasures that the young Jesuit had quitted
his solitude. Guided by the wise counsels of Father Oliva, and
assisted by his own studies and the able co-operation of his
companion, he engaged without delay in the religious instruction of
the king. Of these conferences, surrounded with so much mystery, two
fragments have come down to us. One word upon the nature and upon the
history of this double document.
It consists of two divisions, and is a resumé of a great theological
discussion which, at once, establishes the divine authority of the
Roman, and saps the foundation of the Anglican, Church. The original
piece is in the French language and in the handwriting of the king. He
was not, however, the author. The primitive text has disappeared,
probably through fear that a paper of this nature, if it should get
abroad, would furnish material proof that a sovereign of Great Britain
had held communication with a "papist" priest. These pages of
religious controversy Charles carefully concealed. While he lived
probably no one, save the Duke of York, had any knowledge of them.
After the death of Charles, James II. found these writings again, one
in the private chest, the other in the cabinet of the dead monarch,
and in spite of the {597} storm which they were certain to produce, he
did not fear to make them public. In 1700 he presented them solemnly,
as a proof of the faith which animated his brother, to the general
assembly of the clergy of France convened at St. Germain-en-Laye. Of
the many thousand copies which, during the reign of the last of the
crowned Stuarts, were circulated on both sides of the Channel, there
exists at the present day only one. The Jesuit College at Rome still
possess the edition of 1685, and in addition a manuscript copy of the
two papers, both bearing, as a guarantee of their perfect
authenticity, the autograph signature of King James. All the English
historians speak of these two celebrated writings; but only to declare
that the real convictions of Charles had nothing in common with these
fragments of a controversy transcribed by him they know not why.
James II. in his "Memoirs" gives us a short anecdote, which from its
connection with this subject we will reproduce. One day, finding
himself alone in his cabinet with the Archbishop of Canterbury, he
availed himself of the opportunity to place in his hands the two
papers.
"He, the archbishop, appeared surprised, and remained for a quarter of
an hour without making any reply. Then he said that he had not
supposed the deceased king was so learned in the matter of
controversy, but he nevertheless thought the arguments could be
refuted. Upon which the king begged him to make the trial, telling him
that if he accomplished it by means of reasons both solid and honestly
expressed, he would probably succeed in converting him to his church.
The archbishop replied that it would, perhaps, be evincing a want of
respect for the deceased king, should he seek to contradict him; but
his majesty relied by urging on him that the hope of converting
himself ought to override every other consideration. He besought him
then to occupy himself at once with a refutation of these papers, and
to employ his pen if he thought proper. Whatever the reason may have
been, neither this authorization nor the pressing instance of my Lord
Dartmouth could engage him to write, and there appeared no reply
during the four years that his majesty reigned in England." [Footnote
91]
[Footnote 91: "_Vie de Jacques II., roi d'Angleterre, d'apres les
Memoirs écrite de sa Main. T. iii., p. 12. Paris, 1819_."]
Here then are these dogmatic pages, almost as unknown in our century
as in the time when Charles concealed them in the most secret places
in his palace. We publish them exactly as they saw the light.
FIRST WRITING.
The conversation that we had the other day will have satisfied you,
as I hope, upon the principal point, which was that Jesus Christ can
have, here upon the earth, but one church only, and I believe that
it is as clear as it is that the Scripture is printed, that this
church does not exist unless it be what is called the Roman Catholic
Church.
I believe that there is no need of your troubling yourself with
entering upon a sea of particular disputes, since the principal, and
in truth the only and simple question, consists in ascertaining
where this church is which, in the two creeds, we profess to believe
in. We declare, in the two creeds, that we believe in only one
catholic and apostolic church, and it does not belong to each
individual member to believe everything that comes into his head
according to his fancy; but it belongs to the church to whom on
earth Jesus Christ has left the power of governing us in matters of
faith, and has made these creeds to serve us as a rule.
It would be a most unreasonable thing to make laws for a country,
and then to permit the inhabitants to be the interpreters and the
judges. For then, {598} each individual would be a judge in his own
cause, and consequently, there would be no standard whereby to
distinguish justice from injustice. Can we then suppose that God has
abandoned us to such uncertainties as to give us a rule for our
conduct, and then to permit each individual to be his own judge? I
demand of every honest man if this be not the same thing as
following our own imaginations, or of making use thereof in the
interpretation of Scripture?
I could wish that some one would show me in what passage the power
of deciding upon matters of faith is given to each individual. Jesus
Christ has left this power to his Church, even for the remission of
sins, and he has left his spirit there. This power has been
exercised since his resurrection, first by the apostles in their
creed, and many years after by the Council of Nice, where the creed
was made that bears its name.
By the power which has been received of Jesus Christ, the Holy
Scripture itself was judged many years, after the apostles, in
determining which were the canonical books and which were not. If we
had the power then, I would like to know how it has come to be lost,
and by what authority men can separate themselves from this Church.
The only pretence I have ever heard advanced is because the Church
has fallen into error, interpreting the Scripture after a forced
manner and contrary to its true sense, and that it has imposed on us
articles of faith which are not authorized by the word of God. I
would like to know who is to be the judge of all this, whether it is
the whole Church whose succession has continued up to to-day without
any interruption, or is it to be the individuals who have excited
schisms for their own interest?
This is the true copy of a paper which I have found in the private
chest of the deceased king, my brother, written by his own hand.
JAMES R.
SECOND WRITING.
It is a most sad thing to see the infinite number of heresies which
have spread themselves over this nation. Each one believes himself
as competent a judge of the Scripture as the apostles themselves.
And no wonder, for that part of the nation which has most
resemblance to a church does not dare employ the true arguments
against the other sects, through fear lest they should be turned
against themselves, and they should thus find themselves confounded
by their own proper arguments. Those of the Anglican Church, as it
is called, are willing enough to be regarded as judges in matters
spiritual. They dare not, however, positively assert that their
judgment is without appeal. For it would be necessary for them to
assert that they are infallible, which they dare not pretend, or to
avow that while they decide upon in matters of conscience ought not
to be followed further than as it accords with the judgment which
each one may make in his own mind.
If Jesus Christ has left a church here on earth, and if we were all
at one time in this church, how, and by what authority, are we
separated from it? If the power of interpreting Scripture resides in
the brain of each individual, what need have you of a church or of
churchmen? Why did Jesus Christ--having given to his apostles power
to bind and to unbind on earth and in heaven--_add that he would be
with them till the end of the world?_ These words were not spoken
figuratively nor in the manner of a parable. Jesus Christ was
ascending into glory, and he left his power to his church, until the
end of the world.
For one hundred years we have known the sad effects of this
doctrine, which takes away from the church the power of judging
without appeal in matters spiritual. What country could remain at
peace if there were not a supreme judge from whom there {599} could
be no appeal? Can any justice be done where the culprits are their
own judges and interpreters of the law, equally with those who are
set on high to render justice?
It is to this condition that we are reduced in England in spiritual
affairs. For the protestants are not of the Anglican Church because
it is the true church from which there can be no appeal; but because
the discipline of this church is conformable to their present
imaginations. And as soon as it shall run counter or swerve from it,
they will embrace almost the first congregation of those whose
discipline and religion accord at that time with their opinions.
Thus, accepting this doctrine, there is no other church nor any
other interpretation of Scripture than that which each extravagant
individual shall hit upon in his brain. I would then like
exceedingly to know of all those who have seriously reflected on
these things, if the great work of our salvation ought to rest on
such a sandy foundation as this? Has Jesus Christ ever said to
secular magistrates, still less to the people--_that he will be
with them till the end of the world?_--or has he given them power of
pardoning sins? St. Paul has said in Corinthians--_We are God's
husbandry, we are God's building, we are laborers in the house of
God together with God._ This shows us who they are who labor--which
is the field, which the edifice. In the whole of this and in one of
the preceding chapters, St. Paul takes great pains to establish the
doctrine that they (that is to say, the clergy) _have the spirit of
God, without which no one can penetrate the profound mysteries of
God;_ and he concludes the chapter with this verse, _"For who hath
known the mind of the Lord that he may instruct him? But we have the
mind of Christ."_ If then we consider merely in the light of
probability and human reason the power that Jesus Christ left to his
church in the gospel, and which St. Paul explains afterward so
distinctly, we cannot believe that our Saviour has said all these
things for nothing.
I entreat you to consider, on the other hand, that those who resist
the truth, and who do not wish to submit to his church, draw their
arguments from so-called contradictions and far-fetched
interpretations, while at the same time they deny verities expressed
in clear and positive words, a thing so contrary to good faith that
it is difficult to think that they believe what they say.
Is there any other foundation of the Protestant Church if it be not
this, that should the civil magistrate judge it fit, he can summon
together such persons of the clergy, according as he believes it to
be for his interest, for the time being; and can change the form of
the church to Presbyterianism or to Independency, and finally make
it just what he pleases? Such has been the method which they have
pursued here in our so-called English Reformation, and by the same
rule and by the same authority it can be still further diversified
and changed into as many forms and figures as there are different
imaginations in the heads of men.
This is a true copy of a paper written by the hand of the late king,
my brother, which I found in his cabinet.
JAMES R.
But why, it may be asked, do we arbitrarily date from the epoch of
Father James Stuart's, appearance in London these papers, otherwise
without date, and which were not publicly known till seventeen years
later, in 1685? Let us set forth, as briefly as possible, the
arguments by which we support our position.
In the first place, we agree with the English historians that these
two fragments of controversy are not from the pen of Charles II. A
comparison of the rugged and often inaccurate French of his majesty
with that of the present text, settles this question at once. To whom,
then, must we look for the authorship? {600} They proceed from an
ecclesiastic, from a theologian consulted by the King of England. The
very for which they assume argues the teaching of a master. But are
not these two papers the offspring of two authors, of two teachers? By
no means. There is a perfect resemblance between them, a perfect
consanguinity of thought and of argument. There is the same turn of
mind, the same style, often the same expressions. Still further. The
tenor of the two pieces, which present in an abridged and condensed
form many points of doctrine, presupposes in our opinion a whole
series of lessons given to the royal disciple. Observe that, at the
beginning of the first resumé, we have the phrase "the principal
point;" there were then secondary points. The peaceful and at the same
time simple, almost familiar tone of the master on entering upon the
subject, is exactly the tone of a man who is conversing neither for
the first nor for the last time. "The conversation" of which he speaks
had not been, you would say, the only conversation. Everything, in
fact, shows that these two fragments made part of a very considerable
series of religious conferences.
But could these conferences, which, as we have seen, Charles might
have held in all secresy at the end of the year 1668 and at the
commencement of the year 1669, have taken place at any other period of
his reign? By no means. For the first eight years, the king himself is
our witness, since we have only to study the terms in which he
complains to Father Oliva of his lamentable state of spiritual
destitution. After the departure of the two Jesuits and the conversion
of the Duke of York, the Anglican hatred and bitterness did not cease
to rage about the throne of the Catholic Stuarts. During this second
period, the only name which stands in our way is that of Father Claude
de la Colombière, who sojourned in England a little more than two
years, from 1676 to 1679. Now in this unhappy time, so great was the
terror which ruled Charles II. that, despite his sincere esteem for
the preacher of the Duchess of York, he dared not accord him, by the
very confession of Father de la Colombière, more than two or three
audiences, and not one of them secret. Whence it follows that these
two famous documents are very probably, we had almost said certainly,
the work of Father James Stuart and of his learned companion. Beside,
does not such an origin explain the almost religious care with which
these arid pages of theology were guarded for nearly twenty years by a
prince to whom history points as the perfect type of carelessness?
They called back to him the day when, in the presence of his mother,
who was no more, and who now prayed for him in heaven, under the
direction of a saint whose father he was, he had made his most
powerful effort to abjure odious errors; they remained in his hand as
a consolation for the past, a light in the future, a pledge of pardon
and of hope in the hour when, cited before him who judges kings, he
should at last render a severe account for the scandals of his life
and the deficiencies of his faith.
Had the difficulties which these two devout ecclesiastics were forced
to encounter been merely spiritual, had it been a question of logic,
history, and truth, their mission would have been a fruitful one. But
in actual life events are seldom simple, and history becomes a problem
of complex forces. The heart of Charles II. led him toward his God.
The pleasures of court life, and a natural unwillingness to sacrifice
his throne, made him hesitate, falter, invent subtleties. It happened,
at this time, that a wide-spread opinion prevailed in England, which
had not been without its influence on the king. A Catholic, it was
claimed, could procure a dispensation from Rome, could disguise his
faith without scruple, and conform himself externally, at least, to
the rites of the Anglican Church. Nor was the British monarch
destitute of a plausible {601} precedent. When sojourning at Paris, in
the days of the Protectorate, he had promised the venerable Father
Oiler to renounce Protestantism, and Alexander VII., at the urgent
instance of the crownless prince, had authorized him to conceal his
abjuration until his affairs took a more favorable turn. This
concession was made in no absolute sense. It stopped at the limits
which the divine law has fixed for kings as well as for the humblest
of Christians. Unquestionably, a convert whose abrupt publication of a
change of faith would subject him to grave perils ought to use
prudence. But in no respect would this permission extend so far as
that the disciple should be "ashamed of" his Master. In this latter
case dissimulation would be a crime.
Yet, in the delicate situation in which Charles was placed, what was
he to do? The French alliance remained at this moment a state secret,
and was thus far without result. Much was anticipated from the war
which Louis XIV. was about to wage with Holland. Amid the triumph of
the confederate arms, and the glory which would redound to his own
person, the English monarch hoped to discover some means of
strengthening the royal power and of breaking at last the Anglican
tyranny. Not one of these things, however, had reached the vantage
point of a _fait accompli_; not a domestic difficulty which did not
subsist in all its force. In his extremity, the unfortunate prince
naturally returned to his dreams of an accommodation with the Pope, of
a compromise with the law of God: and one might say that circumstances
invited it. Had he not now, in the general of the Jesuits, a powerful
advocate with the sovereign pontiff? His son, a novice of the
fraternity of Jesus, his son, called from the bosom of Italy and so
tenderly received--would he not serve in the Vatican as a guarantee
for the integrity of the father? Recourse to the Holy See, so far as
to ascertain the precautions which would be permitted to the King of
Great Britain in order to avoid exposing himself, his family, all the
Catholics of England, to the extremest dangers--such was, we think the
final determination of Charles II. This conjecture, authorized by the
well-known sentiments of the prince and the whole sequence of facts,
is specially based on a letter which Father James Stuart will shortly
bear to Rome, and which appears to us scarcely susceptible of any
other interpretation. Beside, one very authentic feature in the
conversion of the Duke of York, to which we shall presently allude,
falls in so perfectly with our theory, that it will be exceedingly
difficult, in our opinion, to find any other satisfactory explanation
for the ambiguous denouement which the end of this recital affords.
There are no historical indications to guide us in ascertaining the
attitude assumed by the two pious queens when the monarch arrived at
this resolution. Probably the princesses partook of the illusion of
the Duke of York and of most of the Catholics of the court: they
placed an exaggerated hope on the powerful intervention of the King of
France. Relying upon this, and on the probable complaisance of the
Pope, they supported in his unhappy course the son, the husband, whose
safety lay so closely to their heart.
It would do our two missionaries a cruel injustice to suppose that
they saw no deeper or clearer. In so elementary a question of
theology, these vigorous controversialists, whose learning and keen
reasonings we have appreciated, could have had but one opinion--that
of their confrère Father Symons, of whom we shall shortly speak. James
Stuart, we may fearlessly affirm, fulfilled respectfully but firmly
the duty of his ministry. He strove to convince his father that no
pontifical letter would authorize either king or emperor to reconcile
in his person what the Son of God by his divine lips had declared
eternally irreconcilable, to be ashamed of him before men, and yet to
find favor in his sight. Two things are certain. On {602} the one
hand, the holy novice failed to convince the king; on the other,
filial love, happily combined with apostolic prudence, preserved his
zeal from all bitterness.
Charles persisted in seeking, through the intervention of Father
Oliva, to draw from Clement IX. impossible concessions. Despite the
recent fatigues of his late voyage, the young enthusiast offered to be
himself the bearer of his father's despatches. The proposition was
accepted, and Charles wrote these lines, upon which we have already
commented, and which are unfortunately the only source from which the
historian can draw a correct judgment upon the results of the secret
mission completed in 1668 in the palace of the kings of England by
Father J. Stuart.
TO THE REVEREND FATHER-GENERAL OF THE JESUIT FATHERS AT ROME
(intrusted to the hand of Mons. de la Cloche, Jesuit at Rome):
REVEREND FATHER,--You are too necessary for us in the position where
your merit has raised you, not to be frequently troubled by us, in
that condition where the misfortune of our birth obliges us to be.
Our very dear and honored son will tell you, on our part, all our
proceedings, and as we were perplexed in deciding upon some one who
should be our messenger once again to your reverence touching our
affairs, he represented to us the urgent desire he had of returning
himself to Rome on a secret embassy from us to you, reverend
father--which desire we have granted him, under the condition that
he come back to London as soon as he shall have had an interview
with your reverence, and obtained those things which we entreat of
you, and which our aforesaid very dear and honored son will explain
from us personally, bringing us, on his return through France, the
reverend father whom he left there.
At the request of our very dear and honored son afore-mentioned, who
has represented to us that the place where he has been received into
your fellowship is burdened heavily with debts, and that there is
need of some buildings and other things, we have arranged that your
house, in which he has been received, shall obtain from us, as soon
as possible, a notable sum for the expiation of our offences.
Waiting, if it please you, till your reverence can advise us of the
measures which you will take for its reception, which shall be
within a year. If you write to us, it will be by our very dear and
honored son, who will tell your reverence all our intentions not
intrusted to this paper. We are
Charles, King of England.
At Whitehall, London, the 18th Nov., 1668.
If it happen that our very dear and honored son be in need of
anything, whatever it may be, we beseech you, reverend father, to
attend to it, and we will keep an account of all.
The sense of the fourth and last letter of Charles II. to Father Oliva
does not appear to us doubtful. If the royal disciple of Father Stuart
had shown himself unconditionally and generously disposed to every
sacrifice, what could have been this business with the Holy See which
he committed to the father-general? Had no difficulty existed, the
abjuration ought to have taken place without delay. For the rest, the
Duke of York helps us. His illusions, his doubts, avowed by himself in
his memoirs, and which very probably he shared with his brother,
confirm, point by point, our conjectures upon the nature of the
obstacles opposed to the self-sacrifice of the two apostles of
Whitehall.
In the closing months of the year 1668, the king renewed his
intercourse with his brother, toward whom he had been momentarily
estranged by the intrigues of Buckingham. The author of the Life of
James II. recalls this fact, and immediately after he adds:
{603}
"It was about this time (toward the commencement of the year 1669)
that his royal highness, convinced hitherto that the English was the
only true church, experienced lively compunctions of conscience and
began to reflect seriously upon his salvation. He therefore sent for
a Jesuit named Symons, who was reputed a very wise man, to the end
that he might converse with him upon this subject. When the Jesuit
made his appearance, the duke set forth his intention of becoming a
Catholic, and spoke with reference to his reconciliation with the
Church. After a long conversation, the father told him frankly that
he could not be received into the Catholic Church unless he entirely
abandoned the Anglican communion. The duke replied that, according
to the belief he had always held, this could be done by means of a
papal dispensation. He alleged the singularity of his position, and
the advantage which would inhere to the Catholic religion in
general, and especially to the Catholics of England, if by a
dispensation he could be permitted to follow externally the rites of
the Anglican Church, until an occasion offered for declaring himself
with greater safety both for his own person and for the Catholics.
But the good father insisted, saying that even the Pope himself had
no right to grant such a dispensation, seeing that it was the
unalterable doctrine of the Catholic Church never to do evil that
good might come. The duke having written upon this subject to the
Pope, received from the Holy Father confirmation of what the good
Jesuit had told him. Up to this time his royal highness had always
thought, following the opinion or at least the expressed words of
the Anglican theologians, that dispensations of this kind were
readily accorded by the Pope; but the remarks of Fr. Symons and the
letter of His Holiness caused the duke to conclude that it was high
time to make every effort to obtain liberty to declare himself, that
he might no longer live in the embarrassing and perilous situation
in which he then was." [Footnote 92]
[Footnote 92: "The Life of James the Second, etc., vol. i., p.
440-441. London, 1816. Quarto." (After several attempts to find
this work, the translator has been compelled to rely on the French
version.--ED. C.W.)]
What relation does this historical passage bear to the sojourn of
Father Stuart in London? Notice, in the first place, that the date,
"at the commencement of the year 1669," cannot be taken literally. We
shall find mention, a few lines further on, of a secret council held
Jan. 25, in reference to "a declaration of their Catholicism;" the
Duke of York being already converted, and the king almost decided to
take, like his brother, the last step. Now let us suppose that, on the
1st of Jan., the duke, hitherto a staunch Anglican, "experienced
lively compunctions of conscience." With his characteristic caution,
he studies into the matter, and finally comes at the truth. Then
occurs his interview with Fr. Symons; next he writes to the Pope. The
Pope sends his decision. The prince is startled, makes an irrevocable
resolution, and thus on the twenty-fifth day of the same month we find
him deliberating with Charles II. and three of his ministers upon the
political measures necessary to empower them both to practise freely
the religion of their choice! A promptness certainly very strange and
inexplicable even in this day of express trains and telegraph wires!
Evidently the supposition is impossible, and the expressions of the
writer must be interpreted very broadly. Glancing back, it will be
observed that these events followed closely upon the reconciliation of
the two brothers, which occurred, as the English historians inform us,
toward the end of 1668, during the autumn when Henrietta of France,
the queen-mother, came to England in order to bid her children a final
adieu.
If now we confront the whole series of Father Stuart's proceedings in
London with the circumstances attending the Duke of York's conversion,
these {604} two categories of facts, separate in appearance, unite and
coalesce so naturally that it will be almost impossible not to
recognize their intimate correlation, or, so to speak, their perfect
identity.
Setting out from Leghorn Oct 14, the son of Charles II. after a voyage
of twenty-fire or twenty-six days, arrives in the Thames about Nov. 1,
O.S. Henrietta of Bourbon, not less jealous for the salvation of her
second son than for that of the king, hastens to put the Duke of York
in communication with Father James Stuart and the eminent ecclesiastic
who accompanied him. Our two apostles divide their days between
Charles and his brother. It is in their school that the prince
received those strong lessons which in the short space of twenty days
overturned and created anew the entire structure of his belief. It was
from them that he heard with surprise that the pretended papal
permissions were only a ridiculous fable, and that the profession of
the Catholic faith obliged him to sacrifice everything, to suffer
everything, for the eternal life. Situated as James then was, this
declaration was of startling import. It affected his hopes of the
crown, his family, his entire future. At this juncture he consults
with Fr. Symons; and, still dissatisfied, he resolves to appeal to the
Pope. Our argument now takes form; it speaks to the eye. Suppose that
the courier of the Duke of York spent twenty-six days each way in his
journey to Rome, and remained only eight in that city; to have
returned to London six or seven days before the council of Jan. 25, he
would have had to quit England the 19th or 20th of Nov. And these are
the very dates for the departure of the novice of St. Andrew, upon the
close of the conferences, and for his return to the capital of Great
Britain after his journey to Italy!
Consider the subject in another light. According to every English
historian, the facts relative to the conversion of the Duke of York
have their extreme limits in Nov. 1, 1668, and Jan. 25, 1669. They
cannot be fixed earlier, nor later. But these are the precise points
at which the apostolic mission of Father Stuart at the court of
Whitehall commences and ends. Examine this in detail, measure the time
necessary to instruct and convert a heretic, to carry a message to
Rome, to confer with the Pope, to return to London--there is not a
feature which does not present a coincidence almost mathematical.
The novice of St. Andrew left behind him in France the priest whose
co-operation had been so useful, and on his return to Rome he made
known to the father-general the results of his apostolic labors at the
court of the Stuarts. What impression did the royal letter produce
upon Father Oliva? It would not be surprising if he thought that he
discovered, what many readers will perhaps have felt, in these brief
lines, a reserve, a constraint, in perfect contrast with the joy of a
soul that has found, after long and sad errors, the Way, the Truth,
and the Life.
Charles II. also wrote on a matter completely apart from the religious
question. In a former postscript, the king had engaged to recompense
the Roman fraternity for all the extraordinary expenses to which they
had been subjected on account of his son. Unfortunately, when the year
expired, the funds of the civil list were found empty. It was one of
those financial crises not unusual under a prince who never knew the
worth of money until it was gone. Charles was therefore forced to
subscribe to an obligation payable in six months for the sum of £800
sterling. This note will close the series of inedited pieces that
Father J. Stuart has left for two centuries in the hands of Father
Paul Oliva:
"We Charles, by the grace of God King of England, France, Scotland,
and Ireland, acknowledge ourselves debtors to the reverend
father-general {605} of the Jesuit Fathers to the amount of £800
sterling, viz., 800 pistoles for the maintenance and journeyings of
our very dear and honored son the Prince James Stuart, a Jesuit
living under the name of La Cloche, the which 800 pistoles the said
reverend father-general, Jean Paul Oliva, has furnished him with,
and which sum we acknowledge ourselves indebted for, and promise to
pay him at his pleasure after six months have passed from the day
and date, of the said obligation.
In witness whereof, we have given both our sign-manual and our
ordinary seal.
CHARLES, King of England,
L.S. France, Scotland, and Ireland.
Clement IX. was now, for the first time, informed of the secret
movement which was drawing into the bosom of the Church the posterity
of Mary Stuart. The pontiff received a letter from the Duke of York,
and it does not appear improbable that the young traveller had also
some words to communicate from the king himself: such at least was the
intention of Charles three months previous. But whatever was the
monarch's desire, there was only one course open to the Pope. The
Master had said to the highest ecclesiastic as to the humblest
disciple, "Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or tittle shall not
pass from the law, till all be fulfilled." There was then no response
to be made but a _non possumus_, tempered by all those considerations
of a charity the most tender which were fitting upon so important an
issue. And such, as we know from history, was the nature of the reply
of Clement IX. to the Duke of York.
The general of the Jesuits, in his turn, owed thanks for the royal
benefactions to the fraternity of Mont Quirinal. This letter, which
the commonest dictates of courtesy would have enjoined, is not,
however, to be found in the archives of the Jesuits at Rome. One loves
to think that it was written, that the son of Charles II. bore it to
Whitehall, but that the author, for weighty motives, destroyed it to
the last syllable. Fr. Oliva was a man of note. He was the chief of a
great apostolic order; he had grown old amid important services
rendered to the Church. Italy could justly pride itself for its
orators; but in Italy itself his rank for eloquence was high. He had
been official "_predicateur_" to four sovereign pontiffs, and the
sermons which he has left behind still attest the vigor, the fire, and
the opulence of his rhetoric. It was not in such a nature to leave so
significant an event as the conversion of a great monarch to the
unaided efforts of a novice. Through all the previous conduct of the
mission, he bore a vital part; and now when the supreme moment had
come, the king hesitating, the eternal life of a nation in the
balance, we cannot doubt that he was moved to write with all the
energy and persuasiveness of his being. He must have seen that
something more than an Anglican Church or a suspicious parliament
stood in the way of the monarch's conversion; that, in the scandalous
licentiousness of the English court, there was a stumbling-block
equally as great. If the father-general had the courage to mingle with
the language of gratitude a sincere but gentle reproof for these
delinquencies, it is easy to understand why not a trace of his message
remains to us.
Father Stuart was in haste to return to England, where at any moment
the great interests which Providence had intrusted to him might
unexpectedly be compromised. His stay at Rome was therefore brief. As
soon as he had received the verbal or written replies of Fr. Oliva,
and in addition (according to our opinion) those that the Pope sent to
the court at Whitehall, he set out at once on his return. He quitted
Rome never to return. Without doubt, in the course of the following
years, he communicated by letter with his superior, who {606} did not
die till 1681, four years before Charles II.; but the very nature of
this correspondence precluded its being deposited in the archives of
the society. From this moment, therefore, we must rely upon English
history for our details. Fr. Stuart drops into obscurity; but the work
for which he labored still gleams above the darkness.
It was on Jan. 18, 1669, if our previous calculation be accepted, that
the pretended Prince Henry de Rohan appears again at the court of
London, bringing with him his old companion in accordance with the
wish expressed by the king in his last letter to Fr. Oliva. The
pontifical letters, touching, energetic, full of the wisdom of God,
have then been remitted; the emphatic opinions of the general of the
society are known. James Stuart and the French Jesuit have had their
interview with Charles; they have aroused anew in his heart those
earnest and holy impressions which swayed him two months before; and
the venerable Henrietta de Bourbon is waiting anxiously and in tears
the moment when she may say, in the language of the gospel, "Now thou
dost dismiss thy servant, O Lord, according to thy word, in peace."
Such is the situation of affairs at Whitehall. Recurring to the "Life
of James II." we find that the historian, after speaking of the Duke
of York, his interview with Fr. Symons, and his letter to the Pope,
continues as follows:
"This is why his royal highness, knowing that the king was of the
same mind, and had already opened himself to Lord Arundel, to Lord
Arlington, and to Sir Thomas Clifford, seized an opportunity to
converse with his majesty on this subject. He found him fully
decided to become a Catholic, and penetrated with the danger and the
constraint of his position. The king added that he desired to have,
in the cabinet of the duke, a secret interview with the persons we
have just named, in order to consult with them upon the means which
it would be necessary to employ in order to extend the Catholic
religion in the state. This interview was fixed for Jan. 25, the day
on which the Church celebrates the conversion of St Paul:
"When they had come together, the king declared his sentiments upon
matters of religion; he repeated what he had said to the duke
regarding the embarrassments which he had experienced in being
prevented from the profession of the faith to which he was attached,
and told them that he had summoned them to consult upon the measures
necessary to be employed in the re-establishment of the Catholic
religion in his realm, and upon the most favorable measure for
declaring himself openly. He remarked that there was no time to
lose; that he expected to find great difficulties in the execution
of his project; and that for himself he preferred to enter upon it
while, like his brother, he was in the prime of life, and capable of
supporting the greatest fatigues, rather than put it off later, when
he would no longer have the energy to successfully manage so great a
design. His majesty spoke with much force; tears filled his eyes,
and he besought the gentlemen to do all that was fitting wise men
and good Catholics.
"The consultation was protracted, and the ultimate decision was to
act in concert with France, and to demand the assistance of his very
christian majesty: the house of Austria being no longer in a
condition to co-operate."
The Duke of York at once abjured with great secresy; but did Charles
II. also abjure? Our opinion is that the two brothers separated from
the Anglican Church at the same time; and that on the same day, at the
foot of the same altar, in the hands of the same priest, they made the
same profession of faith. Only one remained unchangeable in his
fidelity. The other, sincere but feeble, made an honest effort to give
his country liberty of conscience, was defeated at every point by the
united mass of the {607} English factions, and finally fell back upon
dissimulations and hypocrisies. It was Fr. Stuart who presided at this
abjuration--a fact which the following considerations prove.
On the 5th of Jan., 1685, Fr. Huddleston, an English Benedictine, and
a chaplain to the queen, summoned, says Lingard, in the absence of a
foreign ecclesiastic in London, administered at evening the last
sacraments to the king without demanding from him that act which
should have preceded all others--abjuration. Charles throughout the
rest of the night had full consciousness, and it would be perfectly
absurd to suppose that neither Fr. Huddleston, a priest for
twenty-five or thirty years, nor any of the queen's almoners, nor the
Duke of York, as well as the other Catholics present, nor the sick man
himself, should have thought, for five hours, of satisfying this most
necessary of all conditions for admitting one among the children of
the true Church.
Clearly, then, Charles had made his abjuration before his last
illness. Studying the sequence of his reign, we remark that the year
1669 closes the period of calm which the brother of James II. enjoyed.
Immediately after the French alliance exasperated the nation; and the
rage and fury of Anglicanism were excited by the known conversion of
the Duke and the Duchess of York, by that of Sir Thomas Clifford, by
the second marriage of the Duke with the princess of Modena, by all
that movement of Catholic activity the signs of which multiplied
around the palace of the Stuarts. Presently persecution began anew,
and Charles, incapable of holding head against the storm, yielded in
everything; he signed the decrees of proscription, he permitted the
flow of innocent blood. What priest, in such a conjuncture, would have
consented to receive his abjuration? But in Jan., 1669, the presence
of Henrietta of Bourbon, the pious joy of all that royal family, the
hope which might reasonably be founded on the probable influence of
Fr. James Stuart, united in urging forward so desirable a
consummation. Charles, whose good faith we cannot justly suspect
without satisfactory proof,--Charles persuaded himself that, assisted
by the French monarch, and supported by his brother the duke, there
was no domestic coalition which could defeat him, and he brought over
the rest to his opinion by that seductive eloquence which, with him,
was almost irresistible. The priest doubtless had many fears; but the
priest, when there was the appearance of security, inclined toward
indulgence, and on the present occasion so many reiterated assurances,
so many moving supplications, so many marvellous advantages in
perspective, finally disarmed him. Nothing in the duke's account
prejudices this conclusion. His delicate sense of family honor, the
reproach which would have attached to Charles and ultimately to all
the Stuarts if the act were known, the reticence necessary to maintain
regarding the king's eldest son--each and all explain the silence of
that prince. Beside the offer to take the sword in hand, and to run
the chances of a long and perilous civil war, would indicate less a
future step than a step in the past. In our opinion, therefore, the
council of Jan. 25 followed the abjuration of Charles rather than
preceded it.
------
{608}
From The Argosy.
THE INFIORATA OF GENZANO.
If you are ever in Rome at Corpus Christi (a thing not likely to
happen, by the way, as it must fall in the months when northerners
shun the Campagna) do not let anything induce you to miss the
Infiorata of Genzano--the gem of village festivals. We were fortunate
enough to witness it last year, the first time it has been celebrated
since the troubles of 1848.
All Rome turned out to assist at it. Many days before every available
vehicle and beast had been bespoken, and _yet_ there was a demand.
Our mount, "Master Pietro," of half Italian, half English race, as his
name symbolizes, came to fetch us punctually at the unearthly hour of
seven--to get his work done ere the noontide heat. He had carried us
through many lovely scenes before, and his hardy qualities adapted him
well for the three days' excursion we intended to make of it, through
a land where hay is scarce and oats almost unattainable. But we knew
he had one idiosyncracy, of kicking violently at the approach of any
mule--a frequent customer in the neighborhood of Rome--and as the
crowded state of the road on that day would render it particularly
unsuited for such pranks, we elected to travel along the solitary
Appian Way. It was a brilliant morning of early June. A light trot
soon brought us to the grand old Arch of Drusus. We could not help
stopping to admire the play of light and shade on its time-worn
stones, and through the fairy tracery with which nature loves to deck
art. It could not have appeared more worthy of admiration the first
day that--oldest of triumphal arches--its noble proportions were
completed, and the imperial father saw immortalized in it the triumphs
of his son. The "stern round tower of other days" demanded another
pause. Often as we had passed it before, the romance with which "the
Childe's" speculations have invested it make it ever an object of
fresh interest. If it be the object of "huge tombs" to set all
posterity wondering about their tenants, the tomb of Caecilia Metella
certainly has fulfilled its mission. Who passes the massive structure
and does not long to know something about the lady to whom, nearly two
thousand years ago, this lasting memorial was raised? The ground-plan
is a square of seventy feet, and the walls are twenty-five feet thick.
In the small interior space thus formed, Caecilia's ashes reposed in a
white marble sarcophagus. The inscription is of the simplest
description--"Caeciliae Q. Cretici F. Metaelle Crassi;" in the
neighborhood even her name is untold, and the tower is only called the
"Capo di Bove," from the ornaments of the frieze.
We pushed on vigorously for a mile or two, and then came patches of
the old Roman pavement, to stop Master Pietro's cantering, and give
leisure to be again examining the tombs on either hand; little temples
erected to house ashes--their own ruins now the subject of fostering
care--and to set one wondering how mortal horses ever pranced, or ran,
or drew weights over those stony blocks. "Let us hope" they were not
left for an uncovered pavement, but that they served for the
foundation of a coating of tufa, or something equally grateful to
weary hoofs.
The lizards, bewildered with our clatter, shot madly across our path,
and "the merry brown hares came leaping" from their retreat, defying
{609} with their swiftness the vain attempts of our brave little
lupino to run them to ground. We were thankful they all escaped with
their lives, so blithe and gay among the tombs. Some ten miles of
this, and then a mile through a newly-mown field, the fragrant hay
most tantalizing to our probably breakfastless steeds. Some of our
party knew a cut through Duke Torlonia's ground which was to save us a
mile or two, but in anticipation of the festive crowd an iron chain
had been made to bar the passage. It was an easy leap for Master
Pietro, however, and for one or two of his companions; the others had
to go round. The rise is steep, and, though in places rocky, generally
good. We pass, on our rights the ancient town of Bovillae, and then on
our left comes the lovely lake of Albano, and Castel Grandolfo with
the Popes' modest summer palace. Another trot brings us to the
"Galeria di Sopra," a delicious, gently ascending path, soft as Rotten
Row, under the flickering shade of massive ilexes. It is just the
place for a canter, and Master Pietro evidently thinks so as he sniffs
the morning air. To our regret it comes to an end at last, and we wait
behind the sheltering gateway of the Chigi palace while some of our
party go in and secure beds at l'Ariccia. We have allowed little short
of three hours to the seventeen miles, but still we are nearly the
first to arrive, so we get the best rooms the _Locanda_ can afford,
and are well satisfied with them and with our collation of pastry and
wine. Our own hunger satisfied, we determine to leave Master Pietro
and his brethren to their oats (if they can get any), and we walk on
to Genzano. Three noble bits of viaduct save us the terrible up and
down hill through which our predecessors of a few years ago had to
toil.
During the few minutes we were in the hotel, "all the world" has
arrived, and we are soon in the midst of a vast train of people, all
following the same object, all talking earnestly, and of course very
loud. A gun sounds. There is a rush. We are just too late for the
start of the first race. It is _a' fantini_. Gaily dressed but
clownish jockeys bestride the contending chargers, without stirrups or
saddles, guiding them only by a red woollen rope. The next is _à
vuoto_. The rough but ready steeds career riderless along the way
lined out for them by the living hedge of spectators; and it is hard
to say whether they are first brought to a stand by the roar
which--suppressed by the very intensity of excitement during the
race--bursts into a deafening peal as they near the goal, or by the
black curtain suspended across their path, which forms the legitimate
"_ripresa dei barberi_." The horse who has won the contest by his own
_unridden_ impetuosity is decked with flowers and streamers, and
marched through the admiring crowds, giving a knowing and majestic nod
to the plumes which form his crest. A file of soldiers escorts him,
and the band agitates his triumphant "progress;" he has borne all his
other honors meekly, but this one chafes him. As soon as he is marched
off, the crowd, breaking up as Roman crowds do into couples, soon
manoeuvres itself into picturesque groups round the various stalls of
the village fair. How they enjoy themselves! How gladsome and light of
heart they seem!--and on what mild conditions. Does it not do one
good to see their easy contentment? What strange wares form the
attractions of dark, glancing eyes and generous purses! Staple
commodity of the fairs of all the Roman _paesi_ is the unfailing pork,
boned and rolled, and stuffed with rosemary: we did wrong not to taste
it, for the eager thousands find it "very good." The Genzano wine--and
the Cesarini and Jacobini cellars are open to-day--affords a more
congenial temptation. It is a luscious wine, with more body and more
delicate flavor than the generality of Roman wines, but lacks the
sparkle of the surpassing Orvieto.
The gay scene is full of attractive interest, but, finding a couple of
hours to spare, we trot back to l'Ariccia to {610} dine. Others have
adopted the same course, and the _Locanda_ is all astir. What to have
is always a difficult question for the most _un_fastidious anywhere in
the Papal States out of Rome. A provoking waiter, who thinks he can
speak French, and on all occasions comes out with his one broken
sentence, "_Aspetti oon petti momenti_," finds us impracticable, and
sends us the _chef de cuisine_. The _chef_, with a profusion of
_issimos_, assures us there is no _cuisine_ in the world like his, and
rings the changes on the well-known names we abominate. _Minestra_ we
refuse, it is always water bewitched; the _lesso_ is sure to be
tasteless and stringy; the _pasta_, the Roman rendering of maccaroni,
underdone and indigestible; the _arrosto_, hard and tough--we will
none of them. Well, a _fritto?_ If the oil is good, we have nothing to
say against that; we allow you excel there. If something else we must
have, we will take you on your own ground; bring us an _agro-dolce_,
that is a culinary curiosity with which, after the palate has been
once annealed to its compound of wine, vinegar, bacon, butter,
parsley, spices, sugar, oil, chocolate, and wild boar or porcupine,
you may be always glad to renew acquaintance. The wind-up of
_pasticcieria_ and _frutte_ we say nothing about; we know it is
useless to argue against the inevitable.