held counsel regarding the prosecution of the plot. On the day of the weekly dispatch, usually Friday, they assembled in greater numbers, and the better to throw the authorities off the scent, they came not all after one fashion. Some arrived in carriages, others on horseback, some came attended by a train of servants, and most of them in a lay habit.

On great occasions, the place of meeting was kept concealed from all but a few. The rest were bidden repair to certain inns in the city, and thither were dispatched selected messengers to conduct the members to the place of general rendezvous. Everything was done that could be thought of to prevent surprise.

The Papal Legate wormed himself into the confidence of the monarch. Amply replenished, as all such functionaries are, with the graces of blandness and glozing, the door of the royal closet stood open to the man who was clothed with the Pope's authority. Charles begged his good offices in behalf of his brother-in-law the Prince Palatine. It would so delight the Legate to serve the King in anything! Charles had no occasion to complain of lack of promises, it was only in the small matter of performance that the Legate came short. Despite these assurances in Whitehall, things held their course on the Rhine, and the Principality was sucked into the devouring vortex of the Thirty Years' War, and finally lost.

The Legate took care to be on good terms with Archbishop Laud, and made the Primate aware what great things he could do for him in the high places of the Church. He offered him a "red hat," and with it, of course, a seat among men who claim to be the equal of kings. The Primate deemed it not quite prudent, for the present at least, to exchange the lawn of an English bishop for the purple of a Roman cardinal. The hat was declined.

With certain others the Papal Legate had contracted an even

stricter alliance than with the two great personages we have named. The Countess of Arundel placed all her hours, and all her talents, and her many facilities of getting at the secrets of prince and noble at his service. She met the Legate commonly thrice a day, sometimes at Arundel House, sometimes at Court, or at other convenient places. She took care that her news should not be stale. The Legate had his spies in the King's bed-chamber. Master Porter, while serving the royal toilet with punctilious politeness, kept open, with lynxlike vigilance, his eyes and ears, and made report of all he saw and heard, using his wife as the go-between. What was whispered in the King's bed-chamber was told again at Rome.

There were others who took part in these transactions, and whose deeds done in darkness, history, unwilling that their memory should perish, has since brought into the light. One of the more notable of these actors was Secretary Windebank. He was a sincere Papist, but not an equally sincere servant of his King. Placing his duty to his Church before his duty to his sovereign, he betrayed all his master's secrets to the Pope's Legate. He met the Legate three times in the week under covert of night. He hired a house next to the Legate's, and had a door pierced in the garden wall, that he might continue, with the greater safety and ease, these nocturnal interviews. There was nothing at Court a week old till it was on its way to the Vatican.

Another notable actor in these scenes was Sir Toby Matthew. He was a Jesuit priest of the political order, and a general caterer of news in the interest of the Papal plot. He was a man who never knew what it was to blush. He seated himself at all tables, dispensing, with the utmost sang froid, with the ceremony of an invitation. He thrust himself into all companies, and took part in every conversation, and was thus able to report to his master how the current set, and how the

wind blew. Sir Toby did not eat the bread of idleness. Lest the soft seductions of a bed should induce him to prolong unduly his vigils, he threw himself into an arm-chair at night, sunk into an hour or two's sleep, and awoke before day to resume his indefatigable labours. His, he flattered himself, were the shoulders on which rested the success of the plot, and his employers, finding how zealously he laboured, did not seek to gainsay him.

There was no lack of money. Contributions were levied on the Papists all over England, and every one was obliged to give less or more. One widow is mentioned as having given four thousand pounds, a large sum in those days. Over and above the stipulated contribution, the treasury was swelled by donations and legacies from zealots who, if they should not live to see it, died in the hope of England's being once again a "Catholic" kingdom.*

It was a main part of the scheme to embroil all the three kingdoms, and array them one against the other. To these machinations was largely owing the war that now broke out between Scotland and England. The Jesuits egged on the King and Archbishop Laud to extreme measures, such as they knew would wound the honour of the Scots, overturning, as they did, both their religion and their liberty. On the other hand, they sent their emissaries into Scotland to inflame the passions of the Presbyterians. These agents disguised themselves as Covenanters, swore the National Covenant, and then shouted for war. Dispensations, permitting this infamous deceit, were intercepted coming from Rome into Scotland. These pernicious practices had been commenced as early as the times of James VI. Hence the clause introduced into the National Covenant of 1581 to the following effect :-" And seeing that many are

* "Foxes and Firebrands," pt. iii. pp. 120-140.

stirred up by Satan, and that Roman Anti-Christ, to promise, swear, subscribe, and for a time use the holy sacraments in the Kirk deceitfully, against their own conscience, minding hereby, first, under the external cloak of religion, to corrupt and subvert secretly God's true religion within the Kirk, and afterwards, when time may serve, to become open enemies and persecutors of the same, under vain hope of the Pope's dispensation, devised against the Word of God, to his greater confusion and their double damnation on the day of the Lord Jesus; we therefore &c."*

CHAPTER XIV.

The Jesuits under Cromwell, Charles H., and James E.-The Revolution.

THE cloud which had hung above England ever since the French marriage at last exploded in civil war. When hostilities broke out, and the nation was parted into two camps, the Jesuits in like manner marshalled themselves in two bands. One company espoused the King's side of the quarrel, the other placed themselves under the banners of the Parliament. Those who fought beneath the royal standard affected to be firm believers in the "Divine right," zealous maintainers of Episcopacy, and hearty haters of Puritanism. The others were all for Presbytery or Independency, and held bishops, and in particular the Bishop of Rome, in special abomination. It was edifying to hear with what virtuous indignation the one troop denounced the flagitiousness of the other. Sons of the Harlot of Babylon" was the taunt flung at the Jesuit Cavaliers by those who served on

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* See "Covenant," Stevenson's "Hist. of Ch. of Scot.," Introduction, Spotswood's "Hist.," &c.

the Independent or Covenanting side. The others returned the compliment by stigmatising those from whom it came as "Slaves of Calvin and the Devil." Not confining themselves to spoken invectives, they betook them to the writing of pamphlets.

The more acrimonious and violent of the brochures which appeared on both sides proceeded from the pens of Jesuits in Episcopalian or Presbyterian masks. The game was played with masterly dexterity. Its object, of course, was to embitter the quarrel, and render reconciliation betwixt the parties hopeless. The "red fields" that marked the progress of the strife, and the black scaffold, with the royal head rolling upon it, in which it ended, attest how complete was the success that crowned the stratagem of the Jesuits.

Whether Charles I. ever intended to carry over his kingdom wholly to Rome, it is now impossible with certainty to say. Plain it is that the Romanists expected this, and the frightful tempests which they raised around his throne were intended to force him to do so. When they saw that they could not effect their purpose, they destroyed him. Charles could not be other than conscious of the strength of the Protestant principle in his kingdom, and he might think that the right policy was that of conciliation. He would try how much of a Papist he could be without being wholly one, and how near he could bring the nation to Rome without actually compelling it to enter the Roman pale. In short, he hoped to find a half-way house, where the two parties might meet and coalesce, and permit him to enjoy his throne in peace. This was not a policy, but a delusion. Those with whom he was dealing were not men to do their work by halves, or to permit him to halt short of the goal they wished him to reach. This delusion cost him dear. First Strafford perished in the attempt to realise it; next Laud was brought to the block; and, last of all, the King himself