The Life of a Conspirator. Thomas Longueville
before him. It was not then considered a case of “turning Roman Catholic,”but of returning to the old religion, and even by people who cared little, if at all, about such matters, he was rather respected than otherwise.
Now it is different. During the two last generations, so many conversions have apparently been the result of what is known as the Oxford Movement, or of Ritualism, that converts are much associated in men’s minds with ex-clergymen, or with clerical families; and to tell the truth, at least a considerable minority of Anglicans of good position, while they tolerate, invite to dinner, and patronise their parsons, in their inmost hearts look down upon and rather dislike the clergy and the clergy-begotten.
At present, again, a prejudice is felt in England against an old Catholic, prima facie, on the ground that he is probably either an Irishman, of Irish extraction, or of an ancient Catholic English family rendered effete by idleness, owing to religious disabilities, or by a long succession of intermarriages. It would be easy to prove that these prejudices, if not altogether without foundation in fact, are immensely and unwarrantably exaggerated, but my object, at present, is merely to state that they exist. Three hundred years ago, whatever may have been the prejudices against Catholics, old or new, they cannot have arisen on such grounds as these, and if Protestants attributed the tenacity of the former and the determined return of the latter to their ancient faith rather to pride than to piety, there is no doubt which motive would be most respected in the fashionable world.
The conduct of the Digbys, immediately after their conversion, was most exemplary. They threw themselves heart and soul into their religion, and Father Gerard, who had received them into the Church, writes[42] of Sir Everard in the highest terms, saying:—“He was so studious a follower of virtue, after he became a Catholic, that he gave great comfort to those that had the guiding of his soul (as I have heard them seriously affirm more than once or twice), he used his prayers daily both mental and vocal, and daily and diligent examination of his conscience: the sacraments he frequented devoutly every week, &c.”“Briefly I have heard it reported of this knight, by those that knew him well and that were often in his company, that they did note in him a special care of avoiding all occasions of sin and of furthering acts of virtue in what he could.”
He read a good deal in order to be able to enter into controversy with Protestants, and he was the means of bringing several into the Church—“some of great account and place.”As to his conversation, “not only in this highest kind, wherein he took very great joy and comfort, but also in ordinary talk, when he had observed that the speech did tend to any evil, as detraction or other kind of evil words which sometimes will happen in company, his custom was presently to take some occasion to alter the talk, and cunningly to bring in some other good matter or profitable subject to talk of. And this, when the matter was not very grossly evil, or spoken to the dishonour of God or disgrace of his servants; for then, his zeal and courage were such that he could not bear it, but would publicly and stoutly contradict it, whereof I could give divers instances worth relating, but am loth to hold the reader longer.”Finally, in speaking of those “that knew him”and those “that loved him,”Father Gerard says, “truly it was hard to do the one and not the other.”
Like most Catholics living in the country, and inhabiting houses of any size, the Digbys made a chapel in their home, “a chapel with a sacristy,” says Father Gerard,[43] “furnishing it with costly and beautiful vestments;”and they “obtained a Priest of the Society”(of Jesus) “for their chaplain, who remained with them to Sir Everard’s death.”Of this priest, Gerard says[44] that he was a man “who for virtue and learning hath not many his betters in England.”This was probably Father Strange,[45] who usually passed under the alias of Hungerford. He was the owner of a property, some of which, in Gloucestershire, he sold,[46] and “£2000 thereof is in the Jesuites’ bank”said a witness against him. He was imprisoned, after Sir Everard Digby’s death, for five or six years.[47] In an underground dungeon in the Tower[48] “he was so severely tortured upon the rack that he dragged on the rest of his life for thirty-three years in the extremest debility, with severe pains in the loins and head. Once when he was in agony upon the rack, a Protestant minister began to argue with him about religion; whereupon, turning to the rack-master, Father Strange[49] “asked him to hoist the minister upon a similar rack, and in like fetters and tortures, otherwise, said he, we shall be fighting upon unequal terms; for the custom everywhere prevails amongst scholars that the condition of the disputants be equal.”
Another Jesuit Father, at one time private chaplain to Sir Everard Digby, was Father John Percy,[50] who afterwards, under the alias of Fisher, held the famous controversy with Archbishop Laud in the presence of the king and the Countess of Buckingham, to whom he acted as chaplain for ten years. He also had been fearfully tortured in prison, in the reign of Elizabeth; and if he recounted his experiences on the rack to Sir Everard Digby, the hot blood of the latter would be stirred up against the Protestant Governments that could perpetrate or tolerate such iniquities.
In trying to picture to himself the “chapel with a sacristy”made by the Digbys at Gothurst, a romantic reader may imagine an ecclesiastical gem, in the form of a richly-decorated chamber filled with sacred pictures, figures of saints, crucifixes, candles, and miniature shrines. Before taking the trouble of raising any such representation before the mind, it would be well to remember that, in the times of which we are treating, that was the most perfect and the best arranged chapel in which the altar, cross, chalice, vestments, &c., could be concealed at the shortest possible notice, and the chamber itself most quickly made to look like an ordinary room. The altar was on such occasions a small slab of stone, a few inches in length and breadth, and considerably less than an inch in thickness. It was generally laid upon the projecting shelf of a piece of furniture, which, when closed, had the appearance of a cabinet. Some few remains of altars and other pieces of “massing stuff,” as Protestants called it, of that date still remain, as also do many simple specimens used in France during the Revolution of last century, which have much in common with them. To demonstrate the small space in which the ecclesiastical contents of a private chapel could be hidden away in times of persecution, I may say that, even now, for priests who have the privilege of saying mass elsewhere than in churches or regular chapels—for instance, in private rooms, on board ship,[51] or in the ward of a hospital—altar, chalice, paten, cruets, altar-cloths, lavabo, alb, amice, girdle, candlesticks, crucifix, wafer-boxes, wine-flask, Missal, Missal-stand, bell, holy-oil stocks, pyx, and a set of red and white vestments (reversible)—in fact, everything necessary for saying mass, as well as for administering extreme unction to the sick, can be carried in a case 18 inches in length, 12 inches in width, and 8 inches in depth. Occasionally, as we are told of the Digbys, rich people may have had some handsome vestments; but a private chapel early in the sixteenth century must have been a very different thing from what we associate with the term in our own times, and however well furnished it may have been as a room, it must have been almost devoid of “ecclesiastical luxury.”
Here and there were exceptions, in which Catholics were very bold, but they always got into trouble. For instance, when Luisa de Carvajal came to England, she was received at a country house—possibly Scotney Castle, on the borders of Kent and Sussex—the chapel of which[52] “was adorned with pictures and images, and enriched with many relics. Several masses were said in it every day, and accompanied by beautiful vocal and instrumental music.”It was “adorned not only with all the requisites, but all the luxuries, so to speak, of Catholic