CHAPTER XIII.

Intrigues of the Jesuits under James E. and Charles F.

THE Sceptre now passed from the house of Tudor to the house of Stuart. But there came no pause in the machinations of the Jesuits. Under the Stuart they continued to ply, as assiduously as ever, their arts for embroiling the kingdom, and accomplishing the ruin of the Reformation in Great Britain, which, as matters then stood, would have been its destruction all over Christendom. England still continued to be the chief seat of their operations. It is true they now began to hatch seditions and treasons in Scotland, as for a long while before they had done in Ireland; but the centre of the web they were so busily engaged in weaving was England. There the leading conspirators burrowed in the great cities. The Jesuits of that day thought to carry the three kingdoms at a stroke. They had not then learned that they were aiming at too much at once, that their true policy was to be content meanwhile with one of the kingdoms, and having secured that one, they would be sure of the other two. In a word, they did not yet understand that the road to the throne and government of England lay through Ireland.

Proceeding on this idea, that is, of carrying England by a coup de main, they strove by devices of one kind or another to prevent James ascending the throne of England. Failing in

to assassinate Elizabeth, which disturbed the whole of that Queen's reign, and the Gunpowder Plot, in the beginning of the reign of her successor, James I., the author has related in his "History of Protestantism," and does not here repeat.

this, they next attempted to destroy him; and not the King only; with the monarch were doomed to perish the two Houses of Parliament. When this project—the gigantic wickedness of which astounded all men-fell through, other snares, less violent but not less deadly, were spread around King James. He was now inveigled into negotiations for the marriage of his son with the Infanta of Spain. No king of England in our day would be greatly lifted-up by the prospect of such an alliance. It was different then. James was dazzled by it, and he sacrificed for it the interests of his daughter and son-in-law in the Palatinate; an act of egregious folly which drew after it the temporary overthrow of liberty and the Reformed religion in Germany. The proposed match ultimately came to nothing, but not till concessions had been obtained from King James, which opened the door for a vast influx of priests and Jesuits into the kingdom, and a very considerable accession of influence to the Church of Rome in England.

The prospect of a French match, as is well known, followed hard upon the breaking off of the Spanish one. This negotiation prospered, that is, as the king judged of it; but as history has since seen cause to view it, its success was one of the greatest calamities that ever befel the three kingdoms, inaugurating, as it did, a series of evils which ended in the all but total ruin of Great Britain. Before the hand of Henrietta of France could be put into that of the son of James VI., the English Monarch had to renew all the concessions to the Church of Rome which he had been willing to make in prospect of the Spanish marriage. The negotiations were concluded, and the marriage arranged, when James VI. suddenly died. It does not surprise us that the unexpected demise of one who was not much past the prime of life, and who, till then, had enjoyed good health, occurring at a moment when it was so handy for the Jesuits, brought on the Fathers a suspicion that they had

hastened the King's demise in order that his more Popishlyinclined son might come the sooner to the throne.

Charles I. now held the sceptre. By his side sat a daughter of France. The strong intellect of the wife ruled the weaker mind of the husband. Henrietta knew how to make the councils of Charles take the shape she wished, and was careful to guide them into a channel conformable with the interests of that Church to which her house had been so long and so ardently devoted. The nation was troubled. All could see that confusion and darkness were at no great distance. The noon of Elizabeth was fast fading into twilight; and in that twilight, the Jesuits, like birds of night, began to come forth, and make their presence audible by the congratulations which they exchanged with one another at the prospect of being able, by their arts, to divide and conquer. About the time that the first Parliament of Charles I. met, a Jesuit club was arrested in a house in Clerkenwell, and among their papers was found the following letter addressed to their Superior at Brussels. The letter is given at large in Rushworth's "Collections," and exhibits a spirit elate with joy at what filled other men with grief and sorrow. It is as follows:

"We hope as much in this Parliament as ever we feared any in Queen Elizabeth's days. We have planted the sovereign drug Arminianism" (it is a favourite cultivation of the Fathers, who have taught the plant to flourish in most of the climates and countries of Christendom), "which we hope will purge the Protestants from their heresy. I cannot choose but laugh to see how some of our own coat have accounted themselves. You would scarce know them if you saw them; and it is admirable to see how in speech and gesture they act the Puritan. I am at this time transported with joy to see how happily all instruments and means, as well great as less, co-operate to our purpose."

England had become, in that age, the main rallying-ground of the Jesuits. According as their schemes should prosper

here, so would triumph or failure attend them elsewhere. The centre of the plot in England was the Pope's Legate. He had the utmost confidence of being able to carry over Charles I. to the Roman Communion. The letter which Charles, when Prince of Wales, had addressed to Pope Gregory XV. fully justified the hope which the Legate entertained. The Prince, in that letter, avowed himself of the same religion with his then prospective father-in-law, the King of Spain, and said that as he had never "encouraged novelties against the Catholic Apostolic Roman religion," he would "for the time to come employ himself to have but one religion and one faith." And with something approaching the solemnity of an oath, he promised "to spare nothing that I have in the world, and to suffer all manner of discomodities, even to the hazarding of my estate and life for a thing so pleasing unto God." With this protestation, which pointed so unmistakably to the restoration of the Papacy in England, whenever the writer should ascend the throne, no wonder that the Papal Legate, and the Jesuit troop round him, looked on Charles I. as already won, and England as virtually their own. They had but to ply their arts vigorously to realise this great victory.

Assurance of success inspired them with energy. Their scheme of working is laid bare in the letter of Sir William Boswell, the agent of Charles I. at the Hague, addressed to Archbishop Laud, and found among his papers after his death. Sir William's letter was received, as marked in the Primate's own hand, on September 10th, 1640, and was afterwards published in Rushworth, and Prynne's "Masterpiece of Popery." The plot ramified into four branches, and correspondingly four sets of Jesuits were employed to carry it on. There was first an ecclesiastical troop. These were to take the Church in charge, and see to the sowing of that inviting field with Popish seed. They looked for a first and abundant crop of dissensions,

and a final harvest of Romanism. There was, second, a political party. They undertook to manage the Court and the Parliament. If it should be found that the King and the two Houses were willing to travel amicably along the same road, that even which led to Rome, everything would be done to smooth their way; but if it should be found that one or both were obdurate, and refused to set their faces toward the Seven Hills, a quarrel was to be got up between them, to the end that they might weaken and destroy the one the other.

The third was a "secular party. To them was given the superintendence of civil affairs; they were to insinuate themselves into high offices, watch sales and bargains, and let slip no opportunity of securing for the Order estates and houses, and so create a landed foothold for the Church of Rome in England. The fourth order was that of intelligencers or spies. As servants in noblemen's houses, or in those of ordinary citizens, this class were to lay themselves out for corrupting families, and ferreting out the secrets and affairs of their masters. The programme was a tolerably complete one.

The generalissimo of this army, now attacking England by sap and mine, was, as we have hinted, the Pope's Legate. An hundred spies brought him their secrets week by week. This intelligence he digested and arranged, and sent in a weekly packet to Rome. In his dispatches the Legate made use of a three-fold cypher; the first he employed in writing to the nuncios at the various courts, the second in corresponding with Cardinal Barbarino only, the third when secrets of greater consequence were to be transmitted. The packet was addressed to Monsieur Stravio, Archdeacon of Cambray. Safe across

the Channel, the despatch was sent on by the Archdeacon to Rome.

The conspirators assembled almost daily in the house of a Captain Reid, a secular Jesuit, who lived in Longacre, and