THE EARLY JESUITS IN ENGLAND
The first attempts of the Jesuits to carry their war against
Protestantism into the British Isles have been noticed, at their
various dates, in previous chapters. We remember the brave and futile
journey of Brouet and Salmeron in 1541; the labours of David Woulfe, of
unhappy memory, in Ireland in 1560; the fruitless adventures of Gouda
among the Scottish Calvinists in 1562; and the obscure apostolate of
Father King in England in 1564. Three years after the last date, Father
Edmund Hay had made an equally unprofitable expedition to Scotland. He
and Thomas Darbyshire, a nephew of Bishop Bonner, had been directed to
accompany a Nuncio on a fresh attempt to advise and confirm Queen Mary.
The Nuncio had prudently remained in Paris, and sent Father Hay, an
adventurous young Scot who loved disguises and the inspiring chances
of politics, to explore the kingdom. He spent two months in hiding at
Edinburgh in the early part of 1567, and returned to say that there
was no hope of success. At last, in 1580, a very able and remarkable
English Jesuit, Father Robert Parsons, opened that stirring chapter of
Jesuit history which closes with the Gunpowder Plot.
Since the beginning of the Reformation in England a number of Catholic
students had gone abroad, and many of them had entered the Jesuit
novitiate in Belgium, Germany, and Italy. Father More has preserved
in his _Historia missionis Anglicanæ_ (1660) the names of about thirty
Englishmen who figure in the chronicles of one or other province down
to the year 1580. Of these the most important were Robert Parsons and
Edmund Campion, who opened the mission of 1580. Parson, a Somersetshire
man of the yeoman class, had been a fellow of Balliol, where he had
attracted some attention by his ability, his religious vacillations,
and his disagreeable temper. He was compelled to resign and go abroad
in 1573. Some (Camden and others) say that he was expelled for
dishonest conduct, others that he was a martyr to religious conviction;
but Father Taunton concludes, in his excellent study of Parsons, that
he left "on account of perpetual disagreements with his fellows."[15]
At Louvain he met Father William Good, who induced him to go through
the exercises, and he entered the Society at Rome in 1575. He was
ordained priest, and made English confessor at St. Peter's in 1578.
Edmund Campion, who was the son of a London bookseller and a brilliant
Fellow of St. John's (Oxford), had meantime joined the Society and was
at Prague. He had known Parsons at Oxford, and they corresponded when
they both became Jesuits.
The peculiar circumstances which led to their mission, and had a most
important bearing on its history, must next be told. A wealthy English
priest, Dr. (afterwards Cardinal) Allen, had founded a college at Douai
for supplying England with clergy to support the old faith. It was
transferred to Rheims in 1578; and, as the free lodging and education
which it offered to young refugees soon caused it to be overcrowded, a
second college was opened at Rome and generously supported by the Pope.
The Jesuit fathers lectured at this college. The rector, Dr. Clenock,
was an injudicious Welshman, and the national prejudices of the English
and Welsh students, who were a very turbulent lot, led to prolonged
and most violent quarrels, which ended in the whole body of the young
apostles marching out of the college. They demanded that the management
of the college should be given to the Jesuits, and it is quite clear
that the Jesuits encouraged their revolt. After a few months they
found that the Jesuits also were unsuitable masters, and the trouble
broke out afresh. It was then that Robert Parsons began his famous
diplomatic career. He suggested that the Jesuits should co-operate
with the secular priests on the English mission. General Mercurian
and his counsellors demurred at first; there was no bishop in England
to control the clergy, and they foresaw quarrels. The difficulty was
removed by making the aged Bishop of St. Asaph ordinary for the whole
of England, and inducing him to join the mission; and in April 1580,
Parsons and Campion (who was summoned from Prague) set out on foot,
with nine secular priests and a Jesuit lay-brother, Ralph Emerson, for
Rheims.
It is disputed at what precise stage Parsons began to be a politician,
but he was little known to the Papacy in 1580, and was certainly not
admitted to its secret counsels. He learned at Rheims, however, that
a mission of by no means a pacific character had at the same time been
sent to Ireland, and we know that a third mission, also of a political
nature, was sent to Scotland, to prepare the way for a French invasion.
The English authorities would naturally conclude that the mission to
England was a part of this political conspiracy against Elizabeth. They
had spies all over Europe, and long before the apostles reached Rheims
a pen-portrait of each of them was being studied and distributed to the
pursuivants at Westminster. There had as yet been little enforcement
of the penal laws, in spite of the Pope's unhappy interference with
the loyalty of English Catholics. It was well known that mass was said
in more than one house in London, and that many a quiet manor-house
sheltered nuns and priests, but there was little disposition to
persecute on account of belief, and as yet little inclination of the
Catholics to active disloyalty. To admit Jesuits was a different
matter. What did even the Catholics of France and Spain say of them?
And when this coming of the Jesuits coincided with a political activity
of Guise and the Papacy against the English throne, it was inevitable
that the authorities should decide to be vigilant and stringent. The
missionaries were not deterred; they left their aged bishop behind,
and made their way, in separate parties, to the coast. At St. Omer's
Parsons and Campion learned that their names and descriptions were
known in London, and officers were on the watch for them, but the
spirit of romance and devotion urged them on, and they planned their
campaign.
It is an amusing and characteristic picture which Parsons draws of his
journey to London. He was a big, burly man of thirty-four, and wore the
uniform of an officer returning from the wars in the Low Countries.
The befeathered hat and gold-laced coat and military swagger fitted him
so nicely that the officers not only passed him, but got a horse for
"the captain" and promised to pay every attention to his friend the
jewel-merchant (Campion), who was to follow him in a few days. By the
end of June they were together in the house that had been taken for
them in Chancery Lane. At Rome, Parsons had met an enthusiastic and
wealthy young Englishman named George Gilbert, and, instead of making a
Jesuit of him, had sent him on in advance to prepare the way for them.
He had boldly taken rooms for them under the nose of the chief official
charged to arrest them--who was probably searching for them in the
warrens by the river or the villages beyond the gates--and had formed
a secret association of Catholics throughout the country to help them
in their travels. The news soon spread through the Catholic world that
two Jesuits were in England, and the secular priests, whom they met and
endeavoured to conciliate, urged them to return to the Continent. It
is difficult to look back and not see that they would best have served
the cause of Catholicism in England by quitting it at once; the few
thousand converts they made, or waverers whom they strengthened, were a
small service in comparison with the fierce hostility they brought on
the faithful, the political conspiracies in which they involved them,
and the bitter dissensions they caused amongst the clergy. But for the
coming of the Jesuits and the plots of foreign Catholics, Catholicism
might have lived on in England as a considerable sect, overlooked by
the authorities, until the Pope's blunder was forgotten and the penal
spirit abandoned.
Yet we must respect the two Jesuits--to omit the humbler services of
Emerson--for refusing to save their lives by an immediate flight,
and no historian, whatever his religious views, can read that first
chapter of their story in England without sympathy and admiration. Each
was provided by Gilbert with two horses and two suits and a servant,
and they bade farewell to each other and set out to make their way,
separately, through the legions of spies and officers. When they
entered a county, the secret members of the association would send
warning to the scattered Catholics along the route, and it would be
given out that an acquaintance was expected. Toward evening the Jesuit,
in some strange disguise, would ride into the courtyard and receive,
under the eyes of the servants, the common civilities which one owed to
a passing acquaintance; but when the inner chamber was reached, and the
door closed, master and mistress would fall on their knees and kiss the
hand of the traveller, and the broad-brimmed hat would be removed to
disclose the face of the priest invoking a blessing on the persecuted
faithful. Then Catholic neighbours might come, and confessions be
heard, and the evening would be spent in sober discussion of the awful
catastrophe that had befallen their Church. In the early morning a
chalice and an altar-stone and vestments would be found among the
luggage of the supposed soldier or merchant, and the little group
would gather in a guarded chamber for mass. Possibly in the midst of
the ceremony the sentinel would whisper that the pursuivants were
upon them, and some stolid Catholic servant would hold the men at the
door until priests and vestments were safely lodged in the pit which
had been dug beneath the floor or the secret chamber cut out of the
solid wall. When mass was over, the disguised Jesuit would, as a rule,
give a last blessing and take to the road again, dining at inns where
he might see on the wall a description of himself and an intimation
that the Government wanted to hang, draw, and quarter him. Parsons
carried his bluff so far as to tear down one of these bills, and ask
the landlord what he meant by confronting an honest traveller with
reminders of that villainous Jesuit.
The two met again at Uxbridge in October, when Elizabeth had issued
a third proclamation against them, and the search was being pressed
vigorously. Campion returned to the provinces, and Parsons decided to
remain in or near London. He had a bold design of setting up a press
and stealthily issuing Catholic books, but it is reasonable to believe
that he was now becoming convinced that only a large political action
could save the faith in England. He saw much of the Spanish ambassador,
Mendoza, even living in the embassy as a servant for a time; and from
his conversations with Mendoza we may confidently date that idea of
a Spanish invasion of England which was to dominate the remainder of
his unfortunate life and cause incalculable mischief. Not only the
general rule of his Society, but a most explicit command laid on him
by Mercurian when he left Rome, forbade him to meddle with politics,
yet he gradually became wholly absorbed in a political and treacherous
project, and we may safely date its birth about this time.
Somewhere out of London--at East Ham, Simpson conjectures--he set up
his press, and infuriated the Council by disseminating books which
their advisers pronounced to have been printed in England. Hundreds of
arrests were made, the rack was busy at the Tower, and the laws were
made more drastic; yet the "howling wolf" (Parsons) and the "wandering
vagrant" (Campion), as they were described in a debate in Parliament,
continued to evade the zealous officers. Two other Jesuits, Cottam and
Bosgrave, who attempted to join them, were arrested at once and put in
the Tower; while the Irish Jesuit, O'Donnell, was hanged, drawn, and
quartered at Cork.
In the early part of 1581 Fathers Holt and Heywood penetrated the
Protestant defences and joined Parsons. He sent Holt on to Scotland,
to further the political scheme he now cherished, and later had Father
Crichton sent on direct to Edinburgh from Rouen. A genial page of Mr.
Andrew Lang's _History of Scotland_ (ii. 282) tells how these Jesuits
"let the pigs run through the job" in Scotland. The romance of hiding
in Holyrood and assisting the great enterprise of the invasion of
England seems to have exalted them, and they gave Mary, whom they would
rescue, a very poor opinion of their qualities as diplomatists. They
made airy promises of armies, to be provided by some foreign power,
until at last even Mendoza begged them to confine themselves to the
saving of souls and leave State affairs to statesmen. Father Hay,
another Scottish Jesuit who joined them, advocated the assassination of
the leading Protestant nobles. These Jesuits returned in the course of
time to the Continent; Father Ogilvie, in 1615, was the only Catholic
who was executed on the ground of religion in Scotland after a formal
trial.
To return to England, Parsons found in the early spring of 1581 that
his lodging in East Ham was suspected, and he moved the press to Dame
Stonor's park near Henley, where Campion came to control the printing
of his _Ten Reasons_: a Latin work, not hampered by modesty, which
greatly stirred the Protestant divines of the time. Gilbert, who was
now under surveillance and had lost most of his property in the cause,
was sent to Rome to report that 20,000 Catholics had been added to the
list of the faithful in a year--a quite incredible number, as only
50,000 recusants were known to the Council in the whole of England.
On 11th July the two comrades parted, for the last time; Campion
was caught at Lyford in Berkshire about a week afterwards. He had
imprudently returned to a house at which he had ministered, and the
officers closed round it. For a day and a night Campion lay hidden in
the "priest's hole," but the officers at last discovered him, and sent
him to London, conspicuously labelled "Campion the seditious Jesuit."
We will not linger over the racking, the thrusting of spikes between
his fingers and nails, and the other horrible devices by which the
Council sought to extract a betrayal of others; though we might remind
those who, like Crétineau-Joly, speak of these things as the hideous
inventions of Protestant hatred, that these appalling instruments were,
on the contrary, already stained with Protestant blood. Campion's great
courage wavered under the long and terrible strain, and he supplied a
few names of Catholic houses, to the great scandal of the faithful at
the time; but he expiated his momentary weakness, on 1st December, by
meeting with great bravery the ghastly death of a "traitor" at Tyburn.
One of the two secular priests who were condemned to die with him,
Father Briant, was admitted by him to the Society the night before
the execution, and died a Jesuit. Father Cottam was executed in the
following May (1582).
Parsons left Henley, where his press was discovered a month later,
and went into Sussex. The secular clergy were now so eager to get the
Jesuits out of England that some of them threatened to betray him, and
he went to France in March. Probably the feeling that he could promote
his political scheme more effectively on the Continent had more to do
with his flight than the fear of death or the pressure of the secular
clergy. He remained at Rouen, smuggling English books from there into
England and doing all that he could to press the Scottish enterprise.
It was from Rouen that he sent Crichton into Scotland, and he was in
constant correspondence with Mendoza and the Duke of Guise, who would
help in the enterprise. Crichton presently returned to tell of the
large and imprudent offers of help he had made to Lennox in Scotland,
and they decided to make an effort to get armies for the rescue of Mary
Stuart. Crichton was sent to Rome, and Parsons went to Madrid.
The chief interest of the work of the English Jesuits remains with the
indefatigable Parsons on the Continent during the next five years,
and a few words will suffice to tell the story of his colleagues in
England. Besides two secular priests, Metham and Pound, who were
admitted to the Society in prison, and Emerson, who was in prison (and
remained there for twenty years), Heywood was now the only Jesuit in
England; Holt had been captured in Scotland, and sent back to the
Continent. Heywood caused a great deal of irritation by his masterful
ways, and the secular priests indignantly describe him as driving in
a luxurious coach, like a baron, and living so comfortably that he
contracted gout. He was recalled to the Continent, but was captured
and kept in the Clink until 1585, when he was banished. His place
as Vice-Prefect of the mission--Parsons was Prefect--was taken by
Father Weston, a new arrival, whose powers in expelling demons were
so singular and spectacular that he used to take possessed persons
about with him in his stealthy visits to the Catholic gentry, and give
most amazing displays--until it was discovered that the "mediums" were
frauds. It had paid them, apparently, to swallow nauseous drugs and
allow themselves to be mauled by Father Weston. He was captured and
lodged in Wisbeach Castle in 1587, but Fathers Garnet and Southwell had
then arrived, as we shall see presently. We must follow the feverish
political activity of Parsons, which culminates in the sending of the
Armada.
From Paris Parsons had made a swift journey, on horseback, to Madrid,
where he greatly impressed Philip II. By this time, at least, Parsons
deliberately advocated the transfer of the English crown to Philip,
and was therefore a traitor to his country and to the rules of his
Society. He obtained from Philip a large sum of money for James of
Scotland, a pension for the seminary at Rheims, and a promise that
Spanish influence would support his claim of a red hat for Allen: he
was anxious to remove Allen from the colleges he had founded, so that
the Jesuits could control the supply of priests to England. A severe
illness kept him for some months in Spain, but he was back at Paris in
May 1583. During the summer he was in close correspondence with Guise
and d'Alencon, who were now advocating and plotting the assassination
of Elizabeth as the simplest solution of the situation. In August
Parsons went to Rome, to excuse his activity, which scandalised the
Parisian Jesuits, and to induce the Pope to subsidise the Scottish
expedition and remove Allen to a loftier sphere. He returned in the
autumn, having secured a bishopric for Allen and another pension for
the college at Rheims. In spite of the protests of the French Jesuits
he continued to pursue his plots. The French dukes withdrew from the
enterprise, and the Spanish King was now quite willing to move, if the
Pope would be generous with funds. Gregory died in the spring of 1585,
and Parsons and Allen went to Rome to win the new Pope, Sixtus V.
There is at this date, and during the next few years, no room for doubt
about the aim of Parsons. We have it repeatedly in his own words that
he worked to seat Philip on the throne of England, and he shrewdly
advised Philip to conceal his intention, from the English Catholics,
Scotland, France, and the Papacy, until his expedition was successful.
The death of Mary Stuart did not disturb him, and he gradually
discarded the idea of attacking through Scotland. Philip was to make
a direct attack, and the English Catholics were to be instructed to
look to Philip, not as a future king, but as restorer of the faith.
All the world knows the result. The great Armada (with several Jesuits
on board) sank to the bottom of the Channel, and Parsons had the
mortification of learning that even Catholics had loyally taken arms
to repel the Spaniard. There ended the second phase of his remarkable
career, and we may return to England.
In July 1586 Henry Garnet and R. Southwell landed on the Norfolk
coast, as Dr. Jessopp so finely tells, and resumed the work which I
have previously described. Garnet was, if somewhat less boisterous
and masterful, the new Parsons; Southwell, a retiring and amiable
man, the new Campion. As Weston was arrested in 1587, Garnet became
Vice-Prefect. In the following year John Gerard and Edward Oldcorne
joined them, and the story of adventurous ministration went on. On one
occasion the four Jesuits were nearly caught in a batch, saying mass
in a Catholic house; and in 1594 Garnet was caught and imprisoned for
three years. He escaped from the Tower, with outside assistance, in
1597, and returned to work. Southwell was betrayed by a Catholic lady
in 1592, and, after three years in the Tower, was executed at Tyburn
in 1595. In the same year Henry Walpole was arrested on arrival, and
executed at York. Father Greenway was the only other Jesuit to enter
the country before 1600, and we must leave these fathers pursuing their
adventurous work and consider the growing quarrel of the Jesuits and
the secular clergy.
That long and interesting story must be told very briefly here.
Wisbeach Castle had been chosen as a prison for captured priests, and
when Weston arrived there in 1587, he very plainly tried to assume a
leadership. As his various suggestions were rejected, he made a party
among the priest-prisoners, got himself appointed director of it, and
initiated a bitter and prolonged feud which spread far beyond the walls
of Wisbeach. To the secular priests' charges of arrogance and ambition,
the Jesuit writers retort that even in jail the English priests were so
prone to drunkenness, gambling, and immorality that Father Weston was
forced to live apart with the more virtuous. A profane historian must
not attempt to judge between them. It is enough that, especially in the
years 1595-1597, reports of violent quarrels reached Rome; and these
coincided with complaints from Belgium of the behaviour of Father Holt
(who had been sent as agent of Philip II. to Brussels and was denounced
to the authorities for his violent political partisanship), and another
rebellion of the students of the Roman college. Not only did these
complain of their Jesuit masters, but they occasionally fell into the
hands of the papal police in wine-shops and other improper places, and
were found to be a very poor and undisciplined body of youths. Mr. Law
insists that the Jesuits kept the English priests at a low level of
culture in order to control or overshadow them the more easily.
Parsons was now recalled from Spain and political intrigue to deal with
this new menace. He had spent several years in Spain, founding new
English colleges (at Valladolid, Seville, and Madrid) under his own
control and working out his learned theory that the crown of England
belonged of strict right to Spain. He failed to induce Philip to send
a second Armada, and now devoted himself to proving that the Infanta
was the heir to the crown of England. That is the idea of the book,
_A Conference on the Succession_, which he published, anonymously, in
1594: a year after the fifth General Congregation of his Society had
once more sternly decreed that no Jesuit must meddle with politics.
In 1597 he reached Rome and quickly pacified the students of the
college. Some of them, it seems, thought that he ought to be made a
cardinal for his great services, and he hastened, with tearful eyes, to
ask the Pope to spare him that dignity; and we will trust that he was
relieved when the Pope coldly observed that he had not had the least
idea of imposing it on him. They then turned to the great question of
Wisbeach, and the settlement of it doubly interests us; partly because
a Jesuit supremacy in Wisbeach might be a good precedent for the time
when a Catholic monarch succeeded Elizabeth, and partly because it
throws a very singular light on Jesuit procedure.
The Jesuits submitted that the clerical prisoners in England desired
some kind of canonical leader. Clement VIII., who had, like his great
predecessor Sixtus V., had some alarming experience of the state of the
Jesuits (as we shall see later), required proof of this. They brought
before him certain English priests, friendly to themselves, who assured
the Pope that there was no discord in their ranks in England; the
largeness of their "mental reservation" may be judged from the fact
that a later inquiry showed that 343 out of the 400 priests in England
were against the Jesuit proposal. The Pope was deceived, and he yielded
to Parsons's suggestion to make George Blackwell, a former student
under the Jesuits, "Archpriest" of the English clergy. Blackwell went
to England to exercise this newly invented authority, and Parsons
returned to his plots. He had then several secretaries to conduct his
enormous correspondence, and he was so sure of a Catholic succession
to the throne that he marked out various houses in London for use as
Jesuit colleges.
After a time there came to Rome some of the English clergy, saying
that they had received the Archpriest with amazement, and begging the
Pope to withdraw him. The Pope was not in Rome, and Parsons took care
that they should not reach him. He induced the papal authorities to
arrest them, as rebels, and lodge them in the college controlled by
the Jesuits; and when they persisted in appealing to a Roman tribunal,
he secured the dismissal of the appeal. Later, a fresh batch of
appellants came to Rome, and Parsons knew that their evidence would
be very damning. Not only had the Jesuits, who controlled the moneys
gathered for the support of the imprisoned priests, attempted to use
this power to subdue them, but when the Pope had ordered that no more
pamphlets should be written on the subject, Blackwell had refrained
from publishing the decree until Parsons had time to issue one; and
this one mendaciously purported to have been written by some "priests
united in due subordination to the Archpriest." The secular priests
had appealed to Elizabeth, and she had actually heard and set four of
them at liberty, in order that they might plead their cause at Rome.
They now had the support of the French embassy, and, in spite of all
the libels which Parsons circulated concerning them and the English
clergy generally, they won a partial victory. Blackwell was to remain
Archpriest, but he was not to consult the Jesuits.
From this domestic but instructive feud we return to the action of the
Jesuits in England. Under ten different names Garnet had continued,
amid a hundred adventures, to elude his pursuers, and his colleagues
were only a little less active. We cannot, however, do more here
than attempt to trace their share in the political scheming which
culminated in the Gunpowder Plot. The Jesuits in England carried out
the suggestion of Parsons that, instead of putting their faith in the
eventual accession and conversion of James of Scotland, they should
teach the Catholics to look to Philip. In December 1601 we find Garnet
meeting Catesby, Tresham, and Winter in the house of Anne Vaux at
Enfield Chase, and discussing the question of a mission to Spain. The
issue of it was that Winter and Father Greenway went to Madrid, and
obtained a large sum of money from Philip III. It was intended for the
relief of the poor Catholics, Garnet afterwards said: in which case we
do not very well understand why he "misliked" the expedition, as he
says.
Elizabeth died on 24th March 1603, and James Stuart peacefully acceded
to the throne. We need not stop to consider the shifts by which Parsons
now sought the favour of James; he had, he boldly and untruthfully
said, abandoned the idea of a Spanish succession at the death of Philip
II. in 1598. James was not to be deceived, and, in his negotiations
with Rome, made a point of having the Jesuits excluded. The conflicting
counsels in regard to the Catholics ended, as is known, in a decision
to tolerate lay Catholics, but not priests, and the bitter agitation
began which led up to the famous plot. Catesby and Winter conceived
the horrible idea of blowing up the Parliament House when the King,
the Royal Family, and the Lords and Commons were assembled in it for
the opening of Parliament. Guy Fawkes, Thomas Percy, and J. Wright
were admitted to the secret, and in March 1604 they met and swore to
accomplish the plot. In an adjoining room a priest said mass for them,
and Fawkes and Winter afterwards said that this priest was Father
Gerard; Gerard, however, denied this, and the point is not important,
since it is not at all probable that Gerard was ever admitted to the
secret, and no priest knew of the plot until long afterwards. Gerard's
idea was that toleration could be bought, but he failed even to find
the money. For more than a year and a half the conspirators brooded
over their ghastly scheme, and made preparations for carrying it out;
and on 5th November 1605 Fawkes was arrested in the cellar beneath the
House beside a mass of powder.
It is agreed that no Jesuit inspired this plot; the point we have to
determine is whether the Jesuits were aware of the plot and acquiesced
in it by their silence. The whole subject has been fully and repeatedly
discussed, and I propose to rely almost entirely on the "Declarations"
which Father Garnet addressed to the authorities during his trial
and imprisonment.[16] The living Jesuit, Father Gerard, may express
an ingenuous doubt whether there ever was a Gunpowder Plot at all;
his predecessor of the seventeenth century, who ought to know, was
concerned only to extricate himself, by a series of confessions,
evasions, and untruths to which no parallel can be found in the history
of martyrs, from the very grave moral and legal charge of having known
that this horrible slaughter was contemplated and made no effort to
disclose or prevent it.
Garnet confesses that on 9th June 1605 Catesby came to his lodging,
at a costermonger's house in Thames Street, and, "finding me alone,"
asked if, "in case it were lawful to kill a person or persons, it were
necessary to regard the innocents who were present." The Jesuit replied
that the killing of innocent people in a lawful attack upon others
was not immoral; he pointed out that soldiers had often, in besieging
a town, to slay the civilian with the soldier. He professes in his
declaration that he had no idea that Catesby had in mind an actual
plot to be carried out in England. He had written to Parsons a few
weeks before that many of the Catholic laymen were "offended with the
Jesuits" on the ground that they "hindered forcible enterprises"; and
he would have us believe that when one of these laymen, whose character
he knew well, finding him alone, puts to him a singularly abstract
question of this nature, it does not even occur to him that he has
a "forcible enterprise" in mind. When Catesby was leaving, however,
he assured Garnet that he would under no circumstances betray that
he had consulted the Jesuit. Even then the innocent Jesuit failed to
understand, and it was only on reflection, he says, that he thought it
possible that Catesby was plotting. He therefore felt it to be his duty
to "admonish" Catesby, the next time he met him, that he "must first
look to the lawfulness of the act itself, and then he must not have
so little regard of innocence that he spare not friends and necessary
persons for a Commonwealth, and told him what charge we had of all
quietness, and to procure the like in others."
Even if we suppose that this "admonition" was really given to Catesby
as he describes it--one hesitates, because Garnet's conduct throughout
is a classical example of casuistic perversion of truth--we can
readily believe that Catesby took it very lightly, as Garnet says.
Even if we could bring ourselves to admit that Garnet at the secret
interview saw only an innocent and abstract moral issue, such as might
be discussed in an open drawing-room, in Catesby's question, and
therefore unwittingly sanctioned a bloody massacre, it is certain that
he perceived on reflection that some such massacre was contemplated;
yet he can only warn him to have regard for "friends and necessary
persons," and feebly remind him of their duty of "quietness." Indeed in
July, he confesses, he received "a very earnest letter" from General
Acquaviva, who said, on behalf of the Pope, that they were vaguely
conscious that something was contemplated by the English Catholics, and
that the Pope and Acquaviva himself rigorously forbade any recourse to
violence, as it would do more harm than good. He showed this letter to
Catesby, because, he says, "I doubted he had some device in his head."
Catesby admitted that he had, and offered to tell it to him. He refused
to hear it, and merely stipulated that a layman should be sent to the
Continent to learn if it were true that the Pope would not disapprove:
a mission which, as Garnet knew, had no issue.
This last interview with Catesby occurred in the latter half of July,
more than two months before the proposed opening of Parliament (3rd
October). By that time, therefore, Garnet was quite aware, without
the least reference to the seal of confession, that the Catholic
laity contemplated some deed which directly aimed at taking life on
so large a scale that the innocent would suffer with the guilty, and
it would need very little reflection to foresee that this deed was
directed at the court or the Parliament, or both. Further, in order
not to be obliged formally to condemn it, he refused, contrary to his
plainest duty, to learn the details of it. The clue to his frame of
mind seems to be given in his letter to Parsons in May. The laymen
were "offended with the Jesuits" because they would not consent to
"forcible enterprises"; he would therefore not interfere with their
plot. He could, without violation of any sacramental confidence,
because Catesby's admission to Father Greenway comes later, have
prevented the plot from going any further, but he allowed this vague
horror to proceed, and defied the emphatic command of the Pope and
his General, in order that the Jesuits might not lose favour with the
leading Catholic laymen. It is probable that he also trusted that the
outrage would be justified by the result. Whatever his motives, his
conduct was shifty, cowardly, and treacherous, and he fitly died the
death of a traitor. He admits later in his "Declaration" that he "might
have hindered all" by speaking to Catesby. He claims that he pressed
the Roman authorities, through Parsons, to send a stronger condemnation
of plots; but we have a letter of his to Parsons, dated 4th September,
in which he assures Rome that the English Catholics are now quiet and
submissive.
It is therefore unnecessary to decide whether he afterwards learned all
the details of the plot under the seal of confession, and whether it
was morally impossible for him to disclose such a communication. The
guilt of Henry Garnet is clear enough, however we decide the further
issue. Yet it is of interest, and the further development may be
briefly recounted.
A few days after he had seen Catesby, in the latter half of July,
Father Greenway came to consult him. He was troubled about a "devise"
that Catesby had submitted to him, and he proposed to submit it to his
superior "by way of confession." Garnet then learned the details of the
plot; he had forbidden Catesby to tell him, but was willing to learn
them without Catesby's knowledge. He pronounced the plot "horrible,"
and said that Greenway must return to Catesby and condemn it. The Pope,
he said, would send him to the galleys if such a plot came off. He
urged Greenway to dissuade Catesby, and adds: "so we parted, yet with
this compact, that if ever I should be called in question for being
accessory unto such a horrible action, either by the Pope, or by my
superiors beyond, or by the State here, I would have liberty to utter
all that passed in this conference." He expected to see Catesby in
October--he could undoubtedly have seen him before then--and says: "I
assuredly had [if they met] entered into the matter with Mr. Catesby,
and perhaps might have hindered all." He undoubtedly could have
"hindered all" at any moment by an explicit declaration that the plot
was a mortal sin, and by a threat of the Pope's penalties.
An attempt has been made to relieve Garnet of the heavy responsibility
which this declaration lays on him by pleading that the Church binds a
priest, under the gravest moral obligation, not to communicate anything
learned "by way of confession." In the first place, Garnet does not say
that Greenway learned the plot in confession. He says that he asked
Greenway this, and he does not give his reply. It is, in fact, quite
certain from Garnet's own words and conduct, that the communication was
not made under the seal of confession at all. If it were, Garnet had no
power whatever to speak to Catesby about it, as he says he intended
to do: Greenway had no power whatever to permit Garnet to "utter all
that passed in this conference" if he were brought to task: and Garnet
committed a mortal sin and cowardly sacrilege in eventually revealing
that he had heard of the plot from Greenway. There are obscure points
about the theological doctrine of the "seal," but these things are not
obscure or disputed. Catesby told Greenway in ordinary confidence, as
he offered to tell Garnet. Even if it had been otherwise, Garnet's
plain duty was to see that his colleague approached Catesby and made it
a matter of conscience to abstain from such a design.
It is, in the next place, even clearer that the communication made by
Greenway to Garnet did not come under the seal of confession. Garnet
plainly intimates that there was no confession at all, and merely hints
that it might be regarded as forming part of some future confession.
The teaching of moral theologians is clear that a consultation for the
sake of direction does not, unless it be intended as "a preparation
for confession," come under the seal.[17] Greenway was not a penitent
at all, and even a sinner cannot put a confessor under the seal
when he chooses; he must confess his sins. In any case, the above
considerations apply here also. Garnet would have no right whatever to
approach Catesby if he learned the plot in confession; Greenway had no
right whatever to name Catesby in a confession; Garnet would have no
right to say, in confession, whether he would or would not listen to
this "penitent"; and Garnet would most decidedly have no right to claim
permission to break the seal if his neck were endangered. To introduce
"the seal of confession" is to make Garnet's conduct worse than ever.
It is plain that Garnet and Greenway feared to offend the laity by
thwarting them, and it is probable that they thought the slaughter
might help their cause. They locked the secret in their hearts, and
nervously went about their work. In August Garnet went to the north,
and in December, when the conspirators were slain and Greenway and
Gerard had fled to the Continent, he sought refuge at Hinlip Castle,
near Worcester, with Father Oldcorne. They were betrayed by a Catholic
and discovered, after a full week's search of the castle. An astute
jailer then tricked Garnet into a conversation with his colleague, and
learned that there was one man who could connect him with the plot.
In the presence of the rack he then declared that he was permitted
to speak in such an emergency, and he related the "conference"
with Greenway. He remained shifty and mendacious to the end, using
the doctrine of mental reservation with an appalling flippancy.
When charged with writing a letter to Greenway, he swore "on his
priesthood," and without reservation, that he had not written it; and
the Council then showed him the letter, which they had intercepted. He
was justly, if barbarously, executed on 3rd May, on the ground of the
general knowledge he had of the plot from Catesby himself. Equivocal
to the end, he declared to the authorities that he had sinned against
God and the king in not revealing the plot; while to the Catholic Anne
Vaux he pleaded that "it was not his part to disclose it." He did not
represent it as matter heard in confession.
As the innocent and estimable Oldcorne had been executed on 7th April,
the Jesuit mission was over for a time, and the hopes of Catholicism
blasted. Crétineau-Joly gives an inaccurate list of seven Jesuits who
"perished" under Elizabeth, and airily adds "a hundred others." The
truth is that from 1580 to 1606 there had only been a score of Jesuits
in England, even including the secular priests who were permitted to
take the vows in prison in order that their martyrdoms might illumine
the chronicle of the Society; that only seven of these, including
the seculars I have mentioned, were put to death; and that of the
five regularly admitted Jesuits who were put to death, two obtained a
remission of punishment by giving information. Yet their story is, on
the whole, a story of heroism thwarted by political intrigue.
Two other Jesuits, Hunt and Worthington, had arrived before the plot,
and in 1607 others began again to penetrate the defences of the
country. The houses of wealthy Catholics were no longer available as
they had been, and the life of the missionary was harder than ever; but
the colleges on the Continent continued to send their ardent apostles
into the field, and by 1615, when Acquaviva died, there are said to
have been sixty-eight Jesuits in England. The prestige of Parsons had
fallen low, but he remained, intriguing, on the Continent. For some
years students had been passing from the Jesuits to the Benedictines,
and in 1602, in spite of the opposition of Parsons, the Benedictines
obtained from the Pope the right to work in England. Clement VIII. had
received so many complaints that he threatened to expel Parsons from
Rome, and Parsons, at a hint given him by Acquaviva, went to Naples
for the advantage of his health, and remained there until the death
of Clement. He returned with the accession of Paul V. in 1605, and
continued to fight the secular clergy in regard to the archpriest. The
extraordinary course of deception and intrigue which he maintained
until his death in 1610 must be read in the spirited narrative of
Father Taunton. His death closes the chief interest of the English
mission under Acquaviva, and we will return to the struggling apostles
at a later stage.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 15: E.L. Taunton, _History of the Jesuits in England_
(1901): an admirable critical study of Parsons and of the quarrels
of the Jesuits with the secular clergy, though not quite a balanced
and comprehensive history. R. Simpson's _Edmund Campion_ (1867) is a
very fine biography of that high-minded Jesuit; and T. Law has written
a learned and exact _Historical Sketch of the Conflicts between the
Jesuits and Secular Priests_ (1889). More sympathetic and detailed
accounts of the religious work of the English Jesuits are given in
Dr. Jessopp's _One Generation of a Norfolk House_ (1879), and Father
Morris's _Life of Father Gerard_ (1881). A complete and impartial
history of the Jesuits in England, telling with equal candour their
heroism and their defects, is desirable. The writings of recent Jesuits
are not "history," but very Jesuitical polemic.]
[Footnote 16: They were published in the _English Historical Review_,
July 1888.]
[Footnote 17: So the chief Jesuit manual now in use, Lehmkuhl's
_Theologia Moralis_, i. 330; from which I was taught casuistry.]