UNDER THE STUARTS
With the exception of the English mission, which I have reserved for
continuous treatment in this chapter, we have now surveyed the whole
life of the Society of Jesus during the first century of its history.
The most important conclusion that one can draw from this extensive and
varied body of experiences is that every attempt to impose a uniform
character on the early Jesuits must fail. The uniformity in virtue and
heroism which is ascribed to the Society in the florid pages of the
_Imago Primi Sæculi_ is as far removed from the truth as the uniformly
dark features which are imposed on the Jesuits by some writers of
the opposing school. The candid historian must follow the example of
Macaulay, and give contrasted pictures of the light and the darkness,
the heroic devotion and the demoralising casuistry, which one equally
discovers in that first century of Jesuit history; and his effort to
do justice will miscarry, as that of Macaulay did, because Catholic
writers will ingenuously detach the earlier and more flattering half of
his verdict and represent it as his full conclusion.
This extreme variety of types is in itself an indication that the
discipline of the Society had failed. Ignatius had laid stress on two
rules: the novices were to be chosen with a care which the older orders
had ceased to maintain, and the men were to be controlled by a system
of surveillance and abject submission to authority which should have
secured a large measure of uniformity. We have seen that these rules
were very largely disregarded. The complaint is constant and well
founded that the Jesuits looked less to character and devotion than to
ability and social position in examining the candidates for admission.
It is, perhaps, singular that this did not at least give the Society
a more imposing intellectual status. Crétineau-Joly has industriously
collected the names of the chief writers and scholars who adorned the
annals of the Society during the first two centuries. One need only
say that, apart from theologians, there are very few names in the list
that will be found in any impartial calendar of those who contributed
to the development of modern culture. This vast society of leisured
and comfortable bachelors offers us a singularly meagre statement of
results. Its prominent names are generally the names of politicians
and pamphleteers. This comparative poverty, apart from theology, is
not surprising when we reflect that the purpose of the Society was to
combat heresy; it is merely necessary to note the fact because the
contrary is so frequently stated. In proportion to their numbers, their
resources, and their exceptional opportunities (through their schools)
of attracting eligible youths, the Jesuits are not, and never were, a
learned body.
This general mediocrity of intellect is accompanied by a general
mediocrity of character. Just as their vaunted system of education is
singularly unsuccessful in developing higher ability, so their equally
lauded spiritual exercises leave the great body at a very common
level of character. When we have justly admired the apostles who here
and there exhibit heroic self-sacrifice on the foreign missions, the
communities which here and there brave the horrors and dangers of a
plague-stricken town, the few whose integrity of life wins the respect
of people unattached to the Society, we find ourselves confronting
a general body of men of no moral or spiritual distinction. During
generation after generation the largest provinces of the Society
persist in comfortable idleness, and the efforts of superiors to assert
the despotic power they are supposed to possess are met with resentment
and intrigue, and are nearly always foiled. The theoretical corpse-like
passivity of the Jesuit is a sheer mockery of the facts of their
history.
They stand out from the other religious congregations of the Roman
world only in the attainment of greater power and wealth, and the
means by which they attain them. Here alone is there a distinctive
strand in the story of the Jesuits, perceptible from the foundation
of the Society. Unquestionably they did far more for their Church
in the first century after the Reformation than any other religious
body; and they did this specifically by seeking wealth and power. They
strained every nerve to secure the ear of popes, princes, and wealthy
people. That was the plain direction of their founder. But we may be
confident that Ignatius would not have sanctioned the fraud, hypocrisy,
slander, intrigue, and approval of violence which this eagerness for
power brought into the Society. In India and China, in England and
Sweden, they assumed a right to lie in the service of God; and in the
same high cause they counselled or connived at murder, slandered their
fellow-priests, violated their sacred obligations, fostered wars,
and accommodated the Christian ethic to the passions of wealthy or
influential sinners. It was never necessary for a Jesuit theologian
to declare that "the end justifies the means."[22] If the phrase is
regarded, not as a citation from a written book of rules, but as an
interpretation of the conduct of the Jesuits, it expresses the most
distinctive feature of the character of the Society during its first
hundred years.
We have now to see how this characteristic will be maintained during a
second century, and will at length bring a terrible catastrophe upon
the Society. For half a century the Jesuits will continue to enjoy and
augment their wealth and power, but the hatred which they have provoked
in the minds of their co-religionists gathers thicker and darker about
their splendid prosperity and at length extinguishes it. They die
by the hand of Catholics, suffering the just penalty of their grave
abuse of power. It will now be more convenient to follow their history
continuously in each province, and we may begin with England.
We left the Jesuits struggling in disguise and penury in England at
the death of General Acquaviva (1615). After the wave of anger which
the Gunpowder Plot had raised had partly subsided, dozens of Jesuits
stole bravely into their native land and ministered stealthily to the
persecuted Catholics. There were sixty-eight of them in England in
1615; by 1619 the number had increased to nearly two hundred, and the
Roman officials raised the mission to the status of a vice-province;
in 1623, when there were 284 members, they were formed into a Province
of the Society, with Father Blount as Provincial. The indisposition of
James I. to persecute emboldened them to act with greater vigour. The
fantastic picture of their activity in Crétineau-Joly is, of course,
wholly inaccurate. We read of a Father Arrowsmith "issuing from his
retreat" to challenge and defeat the Bishop of Chester in a debate, and
expose himself to the prelate's vindictiveness. It was not in 1628, but
some years before, that Edmund Arrowsmith argued with the Bishop of
Chester; he was then not a Jesuit at all, and he did not issue from any
retreat to challenge the prelate or suffer any vindictive punishment.
He was arrested as a priest, happened to find the bishop eating meat on
a Friday and argued the point in passing, and was released.[23]
The truth is that from 1607 to 1618 there were only sixteen persons
executed on the ground of religion in England, and none of them was a
Jesuit. The prisons, indeed, contained several hundred priests, and
several thousand Catholic laymen, but James was disinclined to take
extreme measures, and the priests had much liberty even in jail. Father
Percy, a Durham man, converted 150 men and women of rank, including the
Countess of Buckingham, mother of the famous minister, during his three
years in the New Prison on the Thames. James himself condescended to
debate with him, and Father Percy ended a long and adventurous career
in bed. In 1622, in fact, when James began to negotiate with Spain for
a Catholic princess for his son, four thousand Catholics were released
from jail, and the execution of the penal laws was greatly relaxed.
Catholics generally looked forward with eagerness to the marriage,
but the Jesuits opposed it at the Vatican. It is suggested that they
dreaded the coming of a bishop in the train of the princess, but it
is not improbable that they preferred an alliance with France. When
the Spanish negotiations failed--and they would have failed without
any assistance from the Jesuits--the laws were enforced once more with
some rigour. Still it was only accident or imprudence that brought
punishment on the Jesuits. In 1623 one of them, Father Drury, was
preaching on a Sunday afternoon to some two or three hundred Catholics
in the house of the French Ambassador at Blackfriars, when the floor
gave way, and the preacher and a hundred others were killed. The common
folk of London made ghastly merriment over "the doleful even-song."
Five years later several Jesuits were caught in a house belonging to
the Earl of Shrewsbury at Clerkenwell. We find that they had there a
regular novitiate and the residence of their Provincial. An imposing
ceremony was to take place, and the large intake of provisions aroused
the suspicion of the priest-hunters. Only one Jesuit was executed. In
1622 forty of the fathers had attended a provincial congregation of
their Society in London, and they had decided to found colleges in
Wales and Staffordshire.
There is, however, another aspect of the activity of the Jesuits in
England which the French historian discreetly ignores. We saw in an
earlier chapter how Father Parsons had intrigued to get control of
the continental colleges and to prevent the sending of a bishop to
England. His successors continued to exasperate the secular clergy by
pursuing this selfish policy. Of the twenty-seven French and Flemish
seminaries which supplied the large body of priests in England, the
Jesuits controlled five, besides their colleges in Spain, and they
made every effort to obtain an ascendency over the priests. When the
Archpriest died in 1621, the secular clergy again appealed to the Pope
for a bishop, and the Jesuits again opposed the appeal. When, after a
long struggle, the Pope inclined to make the appointment, the Jesuits
induced Tobie Matthews (a Catholic son of the Archbishop of York) to
have James informed. The King sent word to the Pope, through Spain,
that he would not suffer the appointment, but he was later convinced
that he had been misled and the secular priests obtained a "Bishop of
Chalcedon." He died in the following year, and his successor seems
to have been imprudent, as the Benedictine monks joined the Jesuits
against him. The inner history of this domestic squabble is told us by
Panzani, who was the Vatican agent in England a few years afterwards.
He tells us that the Jesuits made an improper charge to the King
against the Bishop, and he was driven to the Continent.
Since one of the chief problems of Jesuit history is to account for
the bitter hostility to them of priests who were no less devoted than
they in the service of Catholicism, it is necessary to notice this
unpleasant wrangling and intrigue in the very heart of an heretical
land. I may, however, refer to Father Taunton's _History of the Jesuits
in England_ for a longer account of this domestic struggle and return
to the larger historical question.
The early years of the reign of Charles I. were not marred by any
enforcement of the more drastic penal laws. The fining of lay
Catholics--of whom about eleven thousand were known--still provided the
King with a handsome addition to the privy purse, and indeed it was
necessary to disarm the sullen suspicion with which the more zealous
Protestants watched the foreign queen and her spiritual court. No
serious effort was made, however, to enforce the laws against the
Jesuits, and they increased in numbers and resources. In 1628 they
opened a second novitiate in London. In 1634 one of the secular clergy
estimated that there were 360 Jesuits in England, and that they had 550
students in their colleges. This is evidently an exaggeration, as the
_Annual Letters_ report a total of 335 members of the Province in the
year 1645, and disclose the interesting fact that they had a collective
income of 17,405 _scudi_ (about £35,000 in the value of modern money).
It is stated by their clerical opponents that part of their income was
derived from commerce. A certain soap was genially known in London as
"the papist soap," and it is said that the Jesuits had, through their
lay friends, shares in the factory which produced it. They were in a
strong and comfortable position, and, had they been disposed to lay
aside their corporate selfishness and co-operate generously with the
other clergy, the story of religion in England might have entered upon
a singular development.
In the reign of Charles what we now know as the "High Church" held a
strong position, under Archbishop Laud, in the Church of England, and
there were indications of a disposition to return to the allegiance
of Rome. The head of the English Benedictine monks, Dom Jones, was
sent by the Vatican in 1634 to examine and direct the situation, and
he and his successor, Panzani, did much to reconcile the secular and
the regular clergy. The Jesuits, however, would not be reconciled, and
Panzani's reports to the Vatican are full of bitter charges against
them. In the Catholic England which they foresaw they were determined
to have a dominant position. It was said that they induced wealthy
and influential penitents to make a special vow of obedience to
themselves, and they were even charged by the clergy with impeding the
general restoration of Catholicism lest the new authorities should
expel them from the kingdom. They retorted with a bitter attack on the
papal agent. Virulent pamphlets were discharged from camp to camp, and
the Jesuits represented Panzani as a secret agent of Richelieu, seeking
to unite England and France in opposition to Spain. In spite of this
intestine discord the Church of Rome continued to make progress until
the shadow of the Civil War fell upon the land and the success of the
Puritans once more stifled the hopes of the Catholics.
The relation of the Jesuits to the Puritans has never been fully
elucidated--perhaps can never be fully elucidated--but there is
sufficient evidence that they again proved their remarkable power of
adaptation to varying circumstances. We will not suppose that they
themselves offered the rebels the use of their theological doctrine
of the right to depose and execute kings, or put into their hands
Father Parsons's convenient _Book of the Succession_, part of which
was published by the Parliament. But there is evidence that, under
the Commonwealth, they were in indirect relations with Cromwell, and
used their international connections to provide him with information
about France. In Ireland they opposed the papal Nuncio, Pinuccini
(as he bitterly complains), and were on good terms with Cromwell. A
piquant picture is offered us of the Irish Jesuit, Father Netterville,
dining and playing chess with the great leader of the Puritans. These
manoeuvres are lightly covered by their apologists with the pretext
that Jesuits knew no politics.
There is, however, another side to the story of the Jesuits during the
Civil War and under the Commonwealth. While Father Taunton seems to
see nothing but their intrigues with Cromwell, their French apologist
sees nothing but a long series of bloody executions at the hands of the
Puritans. Certainly, whatever the personal inclination of Cromwell was,
and whatever use he may have made of the Jesuits, they suffered heavily
in the Puritan reaction. Father Netterville himself, as well as Father
Boyton, Father Corbie, and other Irish Jesuits, were executed. Father
Holland had been executed in 1642, Father Corbie suffered the horrible
death of a traitor at Tyburn in 1644, and Father Morse followed him
in 1645. Morse was permitted to spend the night before his execution
in prayer with the Portuguese ambassador, and representatives of the
French, Spanish, and German ambassadors, and the French and Portuguese
ambassadors accompanied him devoutly to the scaffold. Father Harrison
was executed at Lancaster in 1650, and several other Jesuits perished
in consequence of their rigorous treatment in prison. It will be
noticed that these executions took place in the early fury of the
Puritans, and it must be remembered that the Catholic laity were, in
proportion to their numbers, the most generous and ardent supporters of
the King. It is a fact that the executions cease when Cromwell becomes
Protector (1653), and it is not impossible that, as we are told, he
used the Jesuits to give a secret assurance to the Vatican in regard to
religious persecution.
The less savage penal laws were, however, severely enforced, as one
would expect in that Puritan atmosphere, and the records of the Jesuits
become meagre and uninteresting. We know that in Ireland they were
reduced to eighteen fathers, who, living in the marshes or on the bleak
hillsides, ministered in great danger and privation to the oppressed
people. In England they were confined to an obscure and discreet
attempt to hold together the persecuted Catholics. The domestic quarrel
was silenced by the fresh catastrophe that had fallen on them.
In 1660 Charles II. entered upon his reign, and Catholics came out
into the sunlight once more. It is fairly established that during the
first twelve years of his reign Charles was disposed to see the country
return to its old faith. His personal inclination to Catholicism was so
little profound that he could lightly abandon it the moment political
events made it expedient to do so, but he was not insensible to the
great advantage which was enjoyed by the Catholic autocrats of France
and Spain. He therefore lent an indulgent ear when, at the beginning of
his reign, the Catholics petitioned for relief. The body of the nation
was still strenuously Protestant, and the cry was raised that at least
the Jesuits must be exempted from any measure of toleration. Many of
the Catholics pressed the Jesuits to sacrifice their province to the
general good of the Church, but we can hardly be surprised to learn
that they emphatically refused, and a long wrangle ensued. When it was
urged that their teaching that the Pope could depose kings unfitted
them to remain in the country, they promptly repudiated that doctrine.
They remained and prospered. After a few years, in fact, they were
brought into friendly relations with Charles in a singular and secret
way.
Their constitutions as well as stringent papal decrees forbade them
to receive men of irregular birth into the Society, but we have often
found them doing this, when the sin of the parent was redeemed by
the distinction of his position, and we can imagine their joy when
one of the illegitimate children of Charles II. presented himself at
their Roman novitiate in 1668. James de la Cloche, as the youth called
himself, was known by them to be in reality James Stuart, and it was
not unknown that Charles was attached to him and thought his accession
to the throne a not impossible dream. Genial letters passed, in secret,
between the English monarch and the General of the Jesuits; money was
sent to General Oliva from London, and after a time the young Jesuit
was stealthily conveyed to London and permitted to enjoy the embrace of
his father.
It is not surprising that the Society prospered. In 1669 there were 266
members of the English province. In the same year their Provincial,
Father Emmanuel Lobb, converted the Duke of York to the Roman faith,
and, although the secret was carefully guarded from Protestants for
a time, the news gave great joy and hope to the Catholics. A little
later Charles himself told some of the leading Catholic nobles that
he wished to embrace their creed, and would openly declare it if he
could be assured of defence against Protestant anger. In the following
year a secret treaty was signed at Dover with Louis XIV. Charles was
to declare his adoption of the Roman faith, and Louis was, in case
of need, to supply French troops for the subjection of the English
Protestants and, in any case, to provide large sums of money for the
unscrupulous King of England. Whether Charles and the Catholic nobles
really believed that Louis XIV. would consider the conversion of
England a sufficient reward of his generosity, it would be difficult to
say. The design was treasonable for all concerned.
The Jesuits were now at the summit of a wave of hope. The King was a
secret Catholic, and was married to a Catholic, Catherine of Braganza,
who was under their control. The marriage seemed to be sterile, but
the Duke of York, the next heir to the throne, was more devoted to
them than any other prince in Europe. The alliance with France was
controlled by them, as Louis XIV. was at that time entirely docile
to his famous Jesuit confessor. To the increasing horror of the
Protestants, Jesuit fathers now began to appear confidently in public.
Two of them ministered to the Queen; two guarded the conscience of
the Duke of York. At the same time war was declared with Holland,
and Charles issued his Declaration of Indulgence. It seemed that at
last the clouds were being swept from the heavens, and, whatever the
political development was, the Jesuits were on the way to attain power
over the throne. With English laws (or royal declarations) and French
troops they would soon make an end of Protestantism in England, and,
with the combined forces of England and France, return to the attack on
the northern Protestants.
Then there occurred the "Popish Plot," or the imaginary plot of Titus
Oates, and a furious storm whistled about their ears. Charles had soon
realised the futility of the French alliance, made peace with the
Dutch, and appeased his Protestant subjects by revoking the Declaration
of Indulgence. On the whole, it paid him better to remain a Protestant.
The natural and proper attitude for the Catholics was now to await
in silence the accession of the Duke of York, as Catherine remained
childless, but the Protestants were already looking to William of
Orange and not obscurely hinting that the Catholic Duke of York was
unfit to ascend the throne. Dutch agents distributed money among nobles
and parliamentarians; French and Catholic agents distributed _louis
d'or_ in the interest of York and Catholicism. Whatever we may say of
the Dutch, a secret and treasonable correspondence was maintained by
the Catholics with France. This correspondence was maintained on the
English side by a zealous secretary of the Duke of York, named Coleman,
a pupil and friend of the Jesuits. We shall see that Coleman was
afterwards arrested, and his papers seized, so that there is no dispute
about the fact that from 1675 to 1678 Coleman was in treasonable
correspondence with the French. French money and, in emergency, French
troops were to be employed for the destruction of the Established
Church. The letters were generally in cipher, and at times the secret
message was written in lemon-juice (which would become legible if held
before the fire) between the lines.
We are now asked to believe that this plot originated in the exalted
imagination of Coleman, and that the Jesuits were not privy to his
correspondence with Versailles. Jesuits in London were on such a
footing at St. James's Palace that they were allowed to hold their
secret meetings in its chambers, and on the French side the whole
correspondence was conducted by the famous Jesuit confessor of Louis
XIV., Père la Chaise; and the apologists would have us believe that
this correspondence, of such profound import to the future of the
Jesuit body in England, was carried on for several years without their
knowledge and connivance. We should have to believe, in fact, that even
the Duke of York was ignorant of it, since he concealed nothing from
the Jesuits, and that Père la Chaise did not give the least inkling
of it to his colleagues. One would need an extraordinary measure of
credulity to imagine the Jesuits frequenting St. James's Palace week
after week for years and being entirely ignorant that their friend
Coleman was receiving important messages all the time from their French
colleague.
Hence Mr. Pollock concludes, in his recent and able study of the
"Popish Plot,"[24] that we may adopt, or adapt, the familiar verdict of
Dryden on the plot:--
"Some truth there was, but dashed and brewed with lies." It is now
universally admitted that Titus Oates and his chief witnesses were
little more than reckless liars, playing upon the inflamed Protestant
feeling of the time, but it would be generally admitted that _a_ plot,
such as I have described, was really afoot. Since, however, Mr. Pollock
also concludes that the Jesuits probably instigated and procured the
murder of the London magistrate, it is necessary to reopen the question.
Titus Oates, a little full-bodied man with large purple face and a
complete lack of moral feeling, had joined the Catholic Church and
been admitted by the Jesuits to their college at Valladolid. He was
expelled, but it seems likely that he had gleaned some information
about their hopes and designs in England, and, when he returned to
London, he entered into communication with a fanatical anti-Papist
named Dr. Tonge, though he continued to move amongst the Catholics.
It says little for the discrimination of the Jesuits that they then
admitted the man to the college at St. Omer's, from which he was once
more expelled. Tonge and he then brewed the Popish Plot, and had the
King informed that the Jesuits sought his life. Charles smiled, and,
in September, the conspirators went before a well-known magistrate,
Sir Edmund Berry Godfrey--a Protestant, but a personal friend of
Coleman and well disposed toward the Catholics--and laid information
of a ghastly project of the Catholics to destroy the Protestants of
London. The situation--a Catholic heir to the throne awaiting the
death of a Protestant king, with a Dutch pretender gaining ground
in London--seemed so ripe for a plot that London was seized with
a dramatic terror, and the Privy Council was compelled to listen
seriously to a story which was palpably false in many details and
ridiculous in others. Father Whitbread, the Jesuit Provincial, and
two of his colleagues were arrested; and, when the letters of Coleman
were seized and found to have references to "the mighty work on our
hands," the story seemed to be confirmed. Then Sir Edmund Berry Godfrey
was found dead in a ditch at the foot of Primrose Hill, and the city
was shaken with frenzy. For months the trained bands were kept under
arms at nights, and citizens slept nervously with arms beside them,
ready to spring up at a cry that the firing of houses and massacre of
Protestants had begun.
In that period of rage and panic the character of the witnesses who
came forward to claim the offered reward was not examined, their
inconsistencies were ignored, and several men of low character became
passing rich by swearing away the lives of others. Three men, who were
probably innocent, were hanged for murdering Godfrey in Somerset House
(then the Queen's Palace), and three Jesuits--Father Le Fevre (the
Queen's confessor), Father Walsh, and Father Pritchard--were accused
of having hired the assassins. In the end seven Jesuit priests and a
lay-brother were executed, a large number of Jesuits, secular priests,
and laymen were imprisoned, and a reign of terror fell upon the
Catholic population. It seemed as if the great dream of the conversion
of England was once more ruthlessly dissipated.
The witness Bedloe, who accused the Jesuits, was so mean a character,
and so well rewarded for making a charge which people wanted, that
we must ignore his evidence. If we attach any importance to the
declarations of the Catholic witness Prance, as Sir J. Fitzjames
Stephen and others have done, it would seem that Bedloe had really
learned something about the murder, and it may or may not be true that
the Jesuits were involved in it. We certainly cannot admit this on the
evidence of Bedloe. On the other hand, few, except Roman Catholics,
who read the evidence will doubt that Godfrey had been murdered and
his body had been conveyed to the spot where it was found. There was
hardly any trace of blood at the spot, and Godfrey's sword had been
driven through his body in a way which precludes the idea of suicide.
It was still clearer that he had not been murdered for the purpose of
robbery. The circumstances point to a political assassination, and, as
there is ample evidence that Godfrey expected an attack on his life, it
is natural to suppose that he was removed lest he should betray some
secret of which he had become possessed.
The hypothesis of Mr. Pollock is that Coleman had told Godfrey of
the meeting of the Jesuits in St. James's Palace. Oates had declared
that the Jesuits met to concert their plot, at the White Horse Tavern
in the Strand, on the 24th April 1678. James II. admitted some years
afterwards that the Jesuits met on that date, but at St. James's
Palace, and the Jesuit Father Warner has left it on record that they
did hold their Provincial Congregation on that date in St. James's
Palace. If it were known at that time that forty Jesuits had held
a secret council in the Duke's Palace the consequences might have
been very serious, and there is therefore some plausibility in the
statement of a later witness, Dugdale, that the Protestant magistrate
was removed because he learned this fact from Coleman. We know
that Godfrey secretly consulted Coleman after he had received the
depositions of Oates and Tonge; we have good reason to believe that he
laid those depositions before Coleman; and it is not improbable that
Coleman refuted the testimony of Oates by disclosing that the Jesuit
meeting took place in James's Palace, not in the White Horse. It would
assuredly be a grave matter for the Jesuits if this were known, and it
would almost be enough to prevent the succession of James II.
This must remain a mere hypothesis. I may recall that, according to
the teaching of many Jesuit theologians, the assassination of a man
in order to prevent grave harm to the Church was not a crime, but a
laudable act. But many others, besides the Jesuits, would be interested
in taking drastic measures to ensure the position of the Duke of
York, nor is it more than a conjecture that Godfrey learned of the
meeting. It is possible that this meeting was by no means an innocent
"congregation" of Jesuits to discuss their affairs; and it is just as
possible that the real cause of the murder has never yet occurred to
us. It remains one of the numerous unsolved problems in the story of
the Jesuits.
The remaining years of the reign of Charles II. were years of suffering
for the Jesuits. They continued to enter the country in disguise
and minister to the fiercely persecuted Catholics. We learn that in
1682 the Province counted 295 members, and that in 1685 they had no
less than 102 priests working in England. In those harsh times they
endured the worst rigours of an apostolic life. Whether or no they were
innocent of murder, many Catholics felt that their presence in England
was inflammatory and their conduct indiscreet, and familiar houses were
closed against them. Several of them died from the privations which
they had to suffer. But an ardent and steady hope fired them to meet
their perils and sufferings, and in the first week of February 1685 the
news rang through the stricken and scattered ranks that Charles was
dead and a devoted Catholic about to ascend the throne of England.
The historian who realises that this was to be the last chance which
the fates would offer to the Catholic Church of obtaining power and
majority in England reads the story of those three years of triumph
and ineptitude with strange reflections. Never was a great opportunity
more tragically wasted. The overwhelming majority of the nation,
the officials, and the Parliament were not merely Protestant, but
feverishly vigilant and intensely suspicious of the Jesuits. It was a
time for infinite patience and restrained diplomacy, and, so far as
we can ascertain, the Vatican itself, and Cardinal Howard who advised
the Papacy at Rome, fully realised the need. But the Jesuits were in
command, and they gave the most flagrant exhibition in their annals
of the unwisdom and mischief of their distinctive methods. Although a
Protestant prince grimly smiled on their blunders in Holland, and his
agents in England eagerly magnified every indiscretion, they proceeded
with the most imprudent defiance of Protestant feeling. Within two
years they were spreading schools and churches over London, talking of
the speedy capture of the universities and the magistracy, and placing
one of their own number among the Privy Councillors. And in less than
four years James II. was flying ignominiously for France, with the
Jesuits in his train.
This romantic episode has inspired one of the finest chapters of
Macaulay's _History of England_, and, whatever blame be laid on the
shoulders of Sunderland, there is no question but that the Jesuits
were very largely responsible for the unhappy counsels of James II.
One of his first acts was to lodge Father Edward Petre in the princely
chambers of St. James's Palace, and put the Chapel Royal under his
charge; and in a short time he made Petre Clerk of the Closet. The
prisons were opened, the recusants now emerged boldly from their
secluded homes, and the Jesuits summoned their continental colleagues
to come and share the work of harvesting. New chapels were opened in
London; and in more than one case, when other priests proposed to
open chapels, royal influence cut short their design and secured the
buildings for the Jesuits. Free "undenominational" schools were opened,
and hundreds of Protestant, as well as Catholic, boys were attracted to
these insidious nurseries of the faith by the unwonted absence of fees.
In all this we may see only undue haste and indiscretion, but the
policy developed rapidly. When Parliament refused to carry out the
wishes of the monarch and his advisers, he proceeded by "dispensing
power," and tampered with the judges in order to have his power
ratified. Four Catholics were introduced into the Privy Council, and
the nobles and officials gradually realised that baptism was the
first qualification for higher office. When the Bishop of London
refused to suspend a priest for attacking Romanism, an ecclesiastical
commission was created to suspend the bishop and stifle the voices of
the Protestant clergy. On his own authority James suspended the penal
measures, issued a Declaration of Indulgence, interfered with the
rights of Protestants in Ireland, solemnly received a papal Nuncio at
Windsor, and sent the Earl of Castlemaine as ambassador to the Papacy.
The civil and military offices were rapidly transferred to Catholics,
and before the end of 1686 Oxford and Cambridge began to feel the
illegal pressure of the royal authority in favour of the Catholic creed.
As these things coincided with the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes
and persecution of the Protestants in France (from which James, like
his brother, received royal alms) the Protestants saw before them
a prospect of violence and persecution. Yet James multiplied his
indiscreet and, in many cases, illegal acts with blind fanaticism.
When the inevitable catastrophe came, the Jesuits deplored the
injudiciousness of their patron and cast all the blame on Sunderland.
While, however, Sunderland remained a Protestant until a few months
before the fall of James, the monarch was throughout the three years
surrounded by Jesuits and abjectly devoted to them. A letter written
by the Jesuits of Liège to the Jesuits of Freiburg, and intercepted by
the Dutch, informs us of the influence they had on James II.[25] He
is a devoted son of the Society; he is determined to convert England
by its means; he refuses to allow any Jesuit to kiss his hand. And
the public action corresponds to the secret letter. Father Warner,
the Provincial of the Society, is the King's confessor; Father Petre,
a vain and pompous mediocrity, is so much esteemed by him that he
besieges the Vatican with a demand of a red hat for Petre. Already
courtiers pleasantly address the conceited Jesuit as "Your Eminence."
But Innocent XI. is stern and will not countenance the blunders of the
English monarch. Castlemaine vainly seeks to impress the Pope with his
ambassadorial splendour, and is forced to return with a curt reminder
that Jesuits cannot receive dignities. So James makes the Jesuit a
Privy Councillor, and Father Petre takes the Oath of Allegiance (with
its supposed heresy) and sits in clerical garb in the supreme council
of the land. His Roman superiors have not a word to say, either when
Petre acquiesces in the demand for a red hat or when he becomes a Privy
Councillor. M. Crétineau-Joly is shocked; Father Taunton opines that
the whole policy is directed by the Jesuit authorities at Rome.
In later years, when the Jesuits and courtiers gathered about the
fallen monarch in his pleasant exile, the entire blame for the folly
was naturally laid upon the wicked Earl of Sunderland, and historians
have, perhaps, paid unnecessarily serious attention to this charge.
We need not stay to analyse the possible motives of Sunderland,
who assuredly had no sincere wish to see England return to its old
creed. Like Louis XIV., Pedro I., and Charles II., who then ruled in
France, Portugal, and Spain, James II. was surrounded by a junta of
Jesuits, and he was even more docile than his fellow-monarchs to their
suggestions. Those who find it possible may believe that these Jesuits
were so reluctant to interfere in politics that they silently permitted
an unscrupulous minister to blast the prospects of their Society and
Church. We have, on the contrary, sufficient documentary evidence that
they applauded, if they did not inspire, every rash step taken by the
King, and we recognise their familiar maxims in his whole policy. They
were, no doubt, well acquainted with the political principles advocated
by their colleague, Adam Contzen, a Jesuit professor at Munich. In a
work which he published in 1620 (_Politicorum libri decem_), Father
Contzen, incidentally, proposed some effective devices by which a
Catholic monarch might lead his heretical country back to the faith.
After very properly condemning "the impious doctrine of Machiavelli,"
Father Contzen enumerates a number of measures that should be taken,
and he expressly mentions England as a field of experiment. Violence is
recommended as an obvious course; the leaders of the heretics must be
expelled, and they must be forbidden to hold either public or private
meetings. But the distinctive suggestions of the learned Jesuit are,
that the prince must cover his initial efforts with a profession of
toleration, he must first choose for attack those heresiarchs who are
unpopular, he must ingeniously set the rival sects to rend each other
and "take care that they often dispute together," he must enact that no
marriage shall take place unless it be preceded by a profession of the
true faith, and he must transfer all the offices and dignities of the
State to Catholics.
On these principles, or maxims, James II. was proceeding in his zealous
attempt to destroy the Church of England in five years. All the Lord
Lieutenants and most of the judges were already Catholic, the Jesuits
boasted, and in a short time all the magistrates in England would be
Catholic. Trinity College, Dublin, was already promised to the Jesuits,
and Oxford was not showing a very stern resistance to their advance.
Soon all education and civil and military government would be in
Catholic hands. The Queen had as yet given no heir to the throne, it
was true, but they had ground to believe that, if he died childless,
James would leave the English crown at the disposal of Louis XIV.
Then James, besides sending Judge Jeffreys to deal with insurgents in
the provinces, made a bolder attack upon the Church. He ordered the
bishops to direct the clergy to read from their pulpits his declaration
of liberty of conscience. It is well known how seven of the bishops
refused, were committed to the Tower, and acquitted by the jury, to
the frenzied delight of the city. Just at this time the Queen was
delivered of a son, and the announcement was greeted with derision.
Another trick of the Jesuits, people said; but, genuine or not
genuine, the child meant a continuance of the tyranny of the Catholic
minority, and the Prince of Orange was invited to come and seize the
crown. He set sail in four months; and before Christmas, William
entered London, and James and his Jesuits were in exile. Six of them
shared his luxurious retreat at St. Germains, and discussed with him
the naughtiness of Sunderland and the appalling wreck of their hasty
enterprise.
The English Province of the Society continued to exist, and had a large
number of members, until the suppression. Although the penal laws were
again enforced, and it was decreed that any Jesuit who was found in
the kingdom after 25th March 1700 would be imprisoned for life, the
fathers still exhibited the courage and devotion which do so much to
redeem their errors. In 1701 there were 340 members of the Province,
though most of these were in Belgium or with the Catholic colonists
in Maryland. In 1708 we find 158 members of the Society in England,
generally living in the houses of the Catholic nobility and gentry.
Their work was now almost confined to a ministration to the depressed
Catholics. They reported only 3000 conversions to the faith between
1700 and 1708, and many of these were soldiers quartered in Belgium.
In 1711 they had 12,000 Catholics under their spiritual charge. But
even in this restricted sphere they maintained the struggle against the
secular clergy, and published many pamphlets against them. "Jansenism"
was the latest heresy they had discovered, and they denounced the
secular clergy to Rome as tainted with it. At last, as the eighteenth
century wore on, they realised that all these old conflicts were
yielding to a mighty struggle. The Society is fighting for its life
against Catholic opponents. In 1759 it is suppressed, with great
ignominy, in Portugal; in 1762 it is suppressed in France; in 1767 even
Spain ruthlessly expels the body to which it had given birth.
The English Jesuits had already begun to suffer from this terrible
campaign. When Louis XV. ordered the expulsion of the Jesuits from his
kingdom, the Paris Parlement saw to the closing of their college at St.
Omer. A long procession of waggons, containing the teachers and pupils,
trailed drearily across the country, and deposited them, in great
misery and dejection, at Bruges. There, ten years later, they suffer
the supreme punishment of suppression by the Papacy, and the Privy
Council of Brussels carries out the sentence with the harshness which
in every country teaches them how deeply they are hated. The 90 members
of the English Province who are found in Belgium, and the 184 fathers
who are at work in England, sadly divest themselves of the familiar
costume and face the bleak future. This is the tragic culmination of
two centuries of heroic struggle and sacrifice; it is the price of the
blunders and crimes of their politicians and the casuistic excesses of
their theologians.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 22: It may be well to state that no theologian ever said, in
so many words: "The end justifies the means." The nearest approach is,
perhaps, the saying of the Jesuit Busenbaum--
"To him to whom the end is lawful, the means also is lawful."]
[Footnote 23: He joined the Society afterwards, in 1624, and was
arrested (on a Catholic denunciation) and executed in 1628. This
section of the French historian's work is particularly inaccurate and
fantastic. See Father Foley's _Records_, ii. p. 32, for Arrowsmith.]
[Footnote 24: J. Pollock, _The Popish Plot_, 1903. For a desperate
defence of the Catholic position, in opposition to Mr. Pollock, see A.
Marks, _Who Killed Sir Edmund Berry Godfrey?_ 1905.]
[Footnote 25: As the letter is inconvenient, Crétineau-Joly suggests
that it was forged. But it is admitted by the Jesuit Father Foley,
without demur, in his _Records_.]