The Life of a Conspirator. Thomas Longueville
warning unto Catholics to be in a readiness; by collection of money under divers pretences, to the value of a million;”“by affirming that none might yield to live under an heretic (as they continually termed his majesty);”“and by open speech that the king and all his royal issue must be cut off and put to death.”In making these bitter and, for the most part, untrue accusations against the Jesuits, he complained that he was “accounted for no better than an infidel, apostate, or atheist, by the jesuitical faction,”and that he was never likely “to receive any favour”from his majesty “so long as any Jesuit or Spaniard”remained “alive within this land.”
Undoubtedly, during the cruel persecutions of Elizabeth, Jesuits, as well as secular priests, and Catholic laymen too, for that matter, had hoped that her successor on the English throne might be of their own religion; they had good cause for doing so; the Pope himself had urged the enthronement of a Catholic monarch for their country, and in fairness, it must be admitted that not a few Englishmen, who considered themselves royalist above all others, had at one time refused to regard Elizabeth herself as the legitimate possessor of the British crown; but, when James had been established upon the throne, with the exception of a few discontents, such as the conspirators in the “Bye”plot and the diminutive Spanish party, the English Catholics, both lay and clerical, acknowledged him as their rightful king. Pope Clement VIII.[64] “commanded the missionaries”in England “to confine themselves to their spiritual duties, and to discourage, by all means in their power, every attempt to disturb the tranquillity of the realm;”he also ordered “the nuncio at Paris to assure James of the abhorrence with which he viewed all acts of disloyalty,”and he despatched “a secret messenger to the English Court with an offer to withdraw from the kingdom any missionary who might be an object of suspicion to the Council.”
Unfortunately, the discovery of the two conspiracies above mentioned, in which Catholics were implicated, weighed more with James than any assurances of goodwill from the Pope or his emissaries. Had not Watson given King’s evidence? Had not foreign invasion been implored by Catholics? Had they not intended “the Lady Arabella”as a substitute for his own Royal Majesty upon the throne? And had they not treasonably united with their extreme opposites, the Puritans, in a design to capture his precious person, with a view to squeezing concessions out of him, if not to putting him to death? To some extent he did indeed endeavour to conciliate the higher classes among his Catholic subjects, by inviting them to court, by conferring upon them the honour—such as it was—of knighthood, as in the case of Sir Everard Digby, and by promising to protect them from the penalties of recusancy, so long as by their loyalty and peaceable behaviour they should show themselves worthy of his favour and his confidence, but he absolutely and abruptly refused all requests for toleration of their religious worship, and more than once, he even committed to the Tower Catholics who had the presumption to ask for it.
The times were most trying to a recent convert like Sir Everard Digby. I will again quote Lingard[65] to show how faithless was James to the promises he had made of relief to his Catholic subjects:—“The oppressive and sanguinary code framed in the reign of Elizabeth was re-enacted to its full extent; it was even improved with additional severities.”
And then, after describing the severe penalties inflicted upon those who sent children “beyond the seas, to the intent that”they “should reside or be educated in a Catholic college or seminary,”as well as upon “the owners or masters of ships who”conveyed them, and adding that “every individual who had already resided or studied, or should hereafter reside or study in any such college or seminary, was rendered incapable of inheriting or purchasing or enjoying lands, annuities, chattels, debts, or sums of money within the realm, unless at his return to England, he should conform to the Established Church, he says:—“Moreover, as missionaries sometimes eluded detection under the disguise of tutors in gentlemen’s houses, it was provided that no man should teach even the rudiments of grammar without a license of the diocesan, under the penalty of forty shillings per day, to be levied on the tutor himself, and the same sum on his employer.”
And again, when James had been a year on the throne, the execution of the penal laws enabled the king “… to derive considerable profit,”says Lingard.[66] “The legal fine of £20 per lunar month was again demanded; and not only for the time to come, but for the whole period of the suspension; a demand which, by crowding thirteen separate payments into one of £260, exhausted the whole annual income of men in respectable but moderate circumstances. Nor was this all. By law, the least default in these payments subjected the recusant to the forfeiture of all his goods and chattels, and of two-thirds of his lands, tenements, hereditaments, farms, and leases. The execution of this severe punishment was intrusted to the judges at the assizes, the magistrates at the sessions, and the commissioners for causes ecclesiastical at their meetings. By them warrants of distress were issued to constables and pursuivants; all the cattle on the lands of the delinquent, his household furniture, and his wearing apparel, were seized and sold; and if, on some pretext or other, he was not thrown into prison, he found himself and family left without a change of apparel or a bed to lie upon, unless he had been enabled by the charity of his friends to redeem them after the sale, or to purchase with bribes the forbearance of the officers. Within six months the payment was again demanded, and the same pauperizing process repeated.”
It may be only fair to say, however, that Mr. Gardiner thinks Lingard was guilty of exaggeration on one point; for he says[67] “the £20 men were never called upon for arrears, and, as far as I have been able to trace the names, the forfeitures of goods and chattels were only demanded from those from whom no lands had been seized.”
A letter in Father Garnet’s handwriting to Father Persons on these topics should have a special interest for us, as it was pretty certainly written at Gothurst, where he seems to have been staying at the time it is dated, October 4 and 21, 1605. It says[68]:—“The courses taken are more severe than in Bess’s time. … If any recusant buy his goods again, they inquire diligently if the money be his own: otherwise they would have that too. In fine, if these courses hold, every man must be fain to redeem, once in six months, the very bed he lieth on: and hereof, of twice redeeming, besides other precedents, I find one here in Nicolas, his lodging,”i.e., in the house of Sir Everard Digby. “The judges now openly protest that the king will have blood, and hath taken blood in Yorkshire; and that the king hath hitherto stroked papists, but now will strike:—and this is without any desert of Catholics. The execution of two in the north is certain:”—three persons, Welbourn and Fulthering at York, and Brown at Ripon, had in fact been executed in Yorkshire that year for recusancy.[69] Father Garnet continues:—“and whereas it was done upon cold blood, that is, with so great stay after their condemnation, it argueth a deliberate resolution of what we may expect: so that you may see there is no hope that Paul,”i.e. Pope Paul V., “can do anything; and whatsoever men give out there, of easy proceedings with Catholics, is mere fabulous. And yet, notwithstanding, I am assured that the best sort of Catholics will bear all their losses with patience: but how these tyrannical proceedings of such base officers may drive particular men to desperate attempts, that I cannot answer for;—the king’s wisdom will foresee.”
Mr. Gardiner, in noticing the fines levied on recusants, mentions[70] one point in connection with them which would be peculiarly vexatious to a man of Sir Everard Digby’s temperament and position. “The Catholics must have been especially aggrieved by the knowledge that much of the money thus raised went into the pockets of courtiers. For instance, the profits of the lands of two recusants were granted to a foot-man, and this was by no means an isolated case.”
Sir Everard Digby’s great friend, Father Gerard, also testifies at great length to the persecutions under Elizabeth and James.