POPULAR EXPECTATION.

155

honest men in the country." The boor accordingly sought, and found an honest man, who persuaded him that "there would be amendment this year (1580) of religion," and showed him in a book the cabalistic words, "E shall fall, and I shall stand instead; and I is not J, and shall not continue; and there shall be a musing Midsummer, a murdering Michaelmas, a bloody March. All after merry shall be."161 One instance is as good as twenty of the sort of sayings that were current among the people in reference to the immediate restoration of the old faith. It was needful to persuade them that it would be so; they were quite willing that it should be.

Such were the people to whom the Jesuits were sent, to bid them separate themselves from the communion of the heretics, and to forbear going to their churches, whatever the penal consequences might be. They came to separate what the queen wanted to unite, and accordingly she issued her proclamations, warning the people against them as enemies of herself, and of Church and State, who were to be diligently sought for as persons perilous to the public weal. Yet when they came, they were found to be men of peace, churchmen without weapons, teaching the old doctrine, fasting and praying, preaching confession and restitution, and offering to dispute about these points with the new ministers, whose lives were known to be far distant from any of these things. How they prospered with this people, I shall have to tell in the future chapters of this life.

CHAPTER VIII.

AFTER Hilary Term 1580 was over, Campion and Parsons found London emptied of friends and swarming with spies. Further stay there had become both useless and perilous, and they determined, with the other priests, to go forth on their appointed missions into the shires. Each Jesuit Father was furnished with two horses and a servant, two suits of apparel for travelling, sixty pounds in money, books, vestments, and every thing needful for the church or for the road, by George Gilbert, who also promised to supply whatever more might be necessary for him. Gilbert162 was the founder and the soul of the young men's club, the origin of which I described in my last chapter. Not only did their peculiar position force these young laymen into such an association, but the various difficulties of the missionary priests made the coöperation of some such body absolutely necessary. The penal laws were already very severe, and held out strong inducements to the layman to betray the missionaries. Prudence, therefore, forbade them to compromise themselves, or the person whom they visited, before they knew that their visits at his house would be safe to themselves and acceptable to him. It was for this reason that the Jesuits were ordered to be very careful whom they conversed with; to prefer the gentleman, because of his greater influence when converted, his greater power to protect them, as well as the greater unlikelihood of his betraying their secret. But the Jesuits were on no account to have any personal dealings with the Protestant till his Catholic friends had sounded his disposition, secured his impartiality, and ascertained that the priests might speak with him without fear of being betrayed.163 And all this required an extensive organisation among the Catholic gentry.

Further, as the safety of the priests required that they should know to whom they were going to trust themselves, and should be protected and conducted on their way from house to house, so did the safety of their host require that he should know whom he was receiving. Missionaries could not carry about with them the certificates of their priesthood,

still less the proofs of their honesty. Unknown strangers might be spies or false brothers, or fallen priests, as easily as honest men. It was necessary, then, that missionaries should be conducted by some well-known and trustworthy person, who could answer for their identity and their honesty at the houses where they were introduced. Hence this conductor had to be a gentleman well known and respected throughout the country.

The members of the association bound themselves to perform the two functions of preparing Protestants and conducting the priests, and besides to procure alms for the common fund, out of which the priests were supplied. Their promise entailed upon them great sacrifices; they determined "to imitate the lives of apostles, and devote themselves wholly to the salvation of souls and conversion of heretics." They promised "to content themselves with food and clothing and the bare necessaries of their state, and to bestow all the rest for the good of the Catholic cause." And their association was solemnly blessed by Gregory XIII., April 14, 1580.164 These men soon became known as 66 subseminaries;" "conductors, companions, and comforters of priests;" "lay brothers;" out of whom the Jesuits were accused of getting "either all or most part of their riches," before turning them into their officers and solicitors; "inferior agents," "lay assistants," to "straggle abroad and bring in game," whose business it was, "not to argue, but to pry in corners, to get men to entertain conference of the priest, or inveigle youths to fly over sea to the seminaries."165

The association, as we may imagine, consisted "of young gentlemen of great zeal and forwardness in religion;" men of birth and property, without wives or office, and thus free to devote themselves to the cause. They entered on their dangerous and difficult path with "extraordinary joy and alacrity, every man offering himself, his person, his ability, his friends, and whatever God had lent him besides." Gilbert was the first; others were, Henry Vaux, Campion's old pupil; and Vaux's brother-in-law, Brooks; Charles Arundel; Charles Basset, great-grandson of Sir Thomas More; Edward and Francis Throgmorton; William Brooksby; Richard and William Griffen; Arthur Creswell; Edward Fitton; Stephen Brinkly; Gervase and Henry Pierrepoint; Nicholas Roscarock; Anthony Babington; Chideock Titchbourne; Charles Tilney; Edward Abingdon; Thomas Salisbury; Jerome Bellamy; William Tresham; Thomas Fitzherbert; John Stonor; James Hall; Richard Stanihurst,

another of Campion's pupils; Godfrey Fuljambe, who afterwards did very little credit to the society, and many others whom Parsons will not name for fear of compromising them. Among them must have been, at one time, Lord Oxford, Lord Henry Howard, Mr. Southwell, Lord Paget, and Thomas Pounde. It will be seen by the above list that the young men not only belonged to the chief Catholic families of the land, but that the society also furnished the principals of many of the real or pretended plots of the last twenty years of Elizabeth and the first few years of James I. So difficult must it ever be to keep a secret organisation long faithful to a purely religious and ecclesiastical purpose.

Equipped by this society, Parsons and Campion rode forth; the first accompanied by George Gilbert, the second by Gervase Pierrepoint. They agreed to meet to take leave of each other at Hogsdon, at the house of a gentleman,-I think, Sir William Catesby,-whose wife, a Throgmorton, was a Catholic. He himself was not yet converted; and for this reason the true names of his guests were not told to him.

Just before the Jesuits left Hogsdon, there came to them in hot haste Thomas Pounde, who was a prisoner in the Marshalsea, but who had found means to blind the gaoler to his temporary absence. He told them that a meeting of the associates, prisoners and others, had been held at the gaol to discuss the means of counteracting the rumours which the council was encouraging.

It was believed that the Jesuits had come into England for political purposes. The story, said Pounde, would grow during their absence from London, and would gain fresh strength with every fresh report of the conversions which they were about to make in the shires; the council would be exasperated, and if either of the fathers ever fell into its hands, he would be guilefully put out of the way or openly slaughtered, and then books would be published to deface him, according to the usual fashion of the day; hereby well-meaning people would be deceived, and the Catholic cause not a little slandered. But much of this, he went on to declare, would be remedied if each of the fathers would write a brief declaration of the true causes of his coming, and would leave it, properly signed and sealed, with some sure friends until the day he might be taken or put to death. And then, if the enemy should falsely defame him, his friends might publish the declaration to justify his memory before God and man. Hence Pounde begged both of them to write their declarations, as if they were writing their last will.

The proposition seemed to proceed from zeal and mature

discretion, and it was accepted by both the fathers. Parsons's paper is still preserved among the Mss. at Stonyhurst. And V Campion, says Parsons, being a man of singular good-nature, and easy to be persuaded to whatever religion or piety inclined towards, rose from the company, took a pen, and seated himself at the end of the table, where in less than half an hour he wrote the declaration which was soon to be so famous. It was written without preparation, and in the hurry of a journey; yet it was so "pithy in substance and style" that it was a triumph to one party and poison to the other. It was addressed to the Lords of the Council, before whom he expected to be examined when he should be apprehended. It runs thus:

"RIGHT HONOURABLE,—Whereas I have, out of Germany and Boeme-land, being sent by my superiors, adventured myself into this noble realm, my dear country, for the glory of God and benefit of souls, I thought it like enough that, in this busy, watchful, and suspicious world, I should, either sooner or later, be interrupted and stopped of my course. Wherefore, providing for all events, and uncertain what may become of me when God shall haply deliver my body into durance, I supposed it needful to put this writing in a readiness, desiring your good lordships to give it the reading, and to know my cause. This doing, I trust I shall ease you of some labour, for that which otherwise you must have sought by practice of wit, I do now lay into your hands by plain confession. And to the intent this whole matter may be conceived in order, and so the better both understood and remembered, I make thereof these nine points or articles, directly, truly, and resolutely opening my full enterprise and purpose.

1. I confess that I am, albeit unworthy, a priest of the Catholic Church, and, through the great mercies of God, vowed now these eight years into the religion of the Society of Jesus; and thereby have taken upon me a special kind of warfare under the banner of obedience, and eke resigned all my interest and possibility of wealth, honour, pleasures, and other worldly felicities.

2. At the voice of our General Provost, which is to me a warrant from Heaven and an oracle of Christ, I took my voyage from Prague to Rome, where our said General Father is alway resident, and from Rome to England, as I might and would have done joy ously into any part of Christendom or Heathenesse, had I been thereto assigned.

3. My charge is, of free cost to preach the Gospel, to minister the sacraments, to instruct the simple, to reform sinners, to confute errors, and, in brief, to cry alarm spiritual against foul vice and proud ignorance, wherewith many my dear countrymen are abused.

4. I never had mind, and am straitly forbid by our fathers that sent me, to deal in any respects with matters of state or policy