walls and partitions were struck with mallets to find out hollow places; and drawn rapiers were thrust into the chinks of the wainscots. The terror occasioned by these nocturnal visitations is not to be described. Father Greenway mentions that a Mrs. Vavasour, a lady in Yorkshire, was so terrified by a sudden alarm of this kind at midnight, that she became hopelessly deranged in her intellect *. For the performance of mass and other social rites of the Roman Catholic religion, various contrivances were adopted. The more wealthy Catholics fitted up a part of their houses as chapelst: the plan generally adopted by the Jesuits in the neighbourhood of London, was to take two or three large houses, to which alternately the priests and communicants resorted at stated periods understood among themselves, for the purpose of renewing their vows to their superiors, and also for religious worship. Thus, at the time of the Gunpowder Plot, it appeared that they had taken the manor-house at Erith on the Thames, and a large house called White Webbs, on the borders of Enfield Chase, to be used by them for religious purposes. During the performance of divine service, one of the family, or a confidential servant, was

* Greenway's MS.

The biographer of Lady Montacute describes with rapture a chapel built by her in her house at Battle Abbey in Sussex, in which she had placed "a fair marble altar with steps of ascent to it, and chancels all round it: that nothing might be wanting, she also raised a choir for singing-men, and made a pulpit (suggestum) for the priests (a thing which is perhaps not to be found in all the rest of England). Here public service was performed almost every week, and the communion in all its solemn rites was celebrated with singing and musical instruments, and sometimes even with the assistance of a Dean and Sub-Dean. And such was the concourse of Catholics on these occasions, that oftentimes 120 persons were present, and 60 persons together received the holy sacrament." Smith's Life of Lady Montacute, chap. xi,

always employed to watch the approaches to the house, in order that the priests might have timely notice of any intended surprise, and save themselves by flight, or by retiring into some of the hiding-places provided for them.

Such was the state of insecurity and alarm in which the English Catholics were placed during great part of the reign of Queen Elizabeth. As her life declined, it was natural that a party so oppressed should direct their attention with much anxiety to her probable successor. Having abandoned all expectation of an avowed Catholic heir to the crown, they were led by many circumstances to look forward with hope to the succession of James. They remembered that he was born of Catholic parents, and that he had been baptized by a Catholic archbishop; they relied upon the feelings of dislike with which they supposed that he must regard the party who had caused the execution of his mother; they knew that several of the ordinances of the Roman Church were approved by him, and they had heard and believed that he had, on more than one occasion, expressed a willingness to be reconciled to the apostolic see*. But besides these general presumptions of a disposition favourable to their party, the leading Catholics were attached to the cause of James, by the express assurances of a toleration for their religion, which were generally reported to them from various quarters, and in particular by

In a conversation with Monsieur de Beaumont, the French Ambassador, soon after his arrival in London, James told him, "Qu'il n'étoit point heretique, c'est à dire refusant à reconnoistre la verité; qu'il n'étoit non plus puritain, ni moins separé d'Eglise ; qu'il y estimait la hierarchie necessaire; par conséquent qu'il avoueroit toujours le Pape pour le premier Evêque, en icelle President et Moderateur au Concile, mais non chef ni superieur." De Beaumont to Henri IV., 23 July, 1603. See Dépêches de Mons. de Beaumont, in the MSS. of the King's Library in the British Museum.

individuals despatched to Edinburgh for the purpose of ascertaining his intentions upon that subject. Thomas Percy, one of the conspirators in the Gunpowder Plot, had been sent on a mission of this kind; and the Earl of Northumberland states, as the result of that mission, that "when Percy came out of Scotland from the King (his Lordship having written to the King, where his advice was to give good hopes to the Catholics, that he might the more easily without impediment come to the crown), he said that the King's pleasure was, that his LordIship should give the Catholics hopes that they should be well dealt withal, or to that effect*." James afterwards strenuously denied that he had ever authorized Percy to convey such a message to the Earl of Northumberland, or had ever given encouragement to the Catholics to expect from him a relaxation of the penal laws passed against them; but the simple denial of James will not obtain much credit with those who are familiar with his personal history. On the other hand, it was natural and probable that he should be desirous to secure the favour of so important a body as the Catholics then were, by such promises and concessions; and that he actually made them is proved, not only by the above assertion of the Earl of Northumberland, but by a letter of Mons. de Beaumont, the French Ambassador, to Henry IV., dated the 28th March, 1603, when Queen Elizabeth was dying, in which he declares that he had been confidentially informed by the Earl of Northumberland that James had written to him with his own hand, that the Catholic religion should be tolerated †.

The fact of James's encouragement of the hopes of the Catholic party is further confirmed by the conduct

* Examination of the Earl of Northumberland, 23d November, 1605-State-Paper Office.

† Dépêches de Beaumont.

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of the King himself, and the circumstances which took place shortly after his accession. The King arrived at London about the beginning of April, 1603; in July immediately following, many recusants of quality and distinction, and amongst them Sir Thomas Tresham, were sent for from various parts of the country to Hampton Court by order of the King, and were assured by the Lords of the Privy Council, with expressions of courtesy and respect, that "it was his Majesty's intention to exonerate the English Catholics from the pecuniary fine of 20l. a month for recusancy imposed by the statute of Elizabeth;" and that they should enjoy this grace and favour so long as they kept themselves upright and civil in all true carriage towards the King and state without contempt." To this the Catholic gentlemen answered, "that recusancy alone might be held for an act of contempt." But the Lords replied, that his Majesty would not account recusancy for a contempt;" and desired that the King's gracious intentions in this respect might be signified generally to the whole body of Catholics*. In confirmation of this official assurance, the fines for recusancy were actually remitted for the first two years of James's reign. It appears from some notes † of Sir Julius Cæsar, who was Chancellor of the Exchequer in 1607, that in the last year of Queen Elizabeth's reign, the sum paid into the receipt of the Exchequer at Westminster, by and for recusants' fines and forfeitures, was 10,3331. 9s. 7d. In the next year little more than 300l. was paid at the Exchequer on this account. In the following year, being the second of James's reign, the sum barely exceeded 2007.; but in 1605, the year of the Gunpowder Plot, the amount of recusants' fines

* Petition Apologetical of the Lay Catholics of England.-Letter from Sir E. Digby to Lord Salisbury, in the State-Paper Office. Lansdowne MSS. No. 153, p. 206.

rises suddenly to more than 6,000l. It cannot be denied that these facts tend strongly to confirm the assertions of the Catholics respecting the promises of the King; for they demonstrate that for some time one of the heaviest oppressions under which they laboured was actually removed by him. At all events, the Catholics of England were fully justified, under these circumstances, in entertaining a confident expectation that upon James's accession some considerable mitigation of the penal laws from which they had so long suffered, would be effected; and that they should in future be allowed the exercise of their religion, if not with perfect freedom, at least under such reasonable and moderate restrictions as would render their condition much more tolerable than it had been during the preceding reign. This persuasion, and the advice of De Beaumont, the French Ambassador, induced the Catholic nobility and gentry to become warm partisans of James's title; and though upon the death of Elizabeth, the Protestants in various parts of the country hesitated, the Catholics, at that critical moment, in general adopted the most active measures to secure his succession to the throne*. Thus Sir Thomas Tresham, with considerable personal danger, and against much resistance on the part of the local magistrates and the populace, immediately proclaimed him at Northampton; while his two sons, Francis and Lewis, with his son-in-law, the Lord Mounteagle, supported the Earl of Southampton in holding the Tower of London for his use†.

But the fond hopes and expectations of the Catholics were dissipated and destroyed before six months of James's government had passed away. * Dépêches de Beaumont, 8 April, 1603.

Petition Apologetical of the Lay Catholics of England. Rushton Papers.