As might be expected, the conversations chiefly turned on the best mode of conducting their defence. In these conversations Garnet admitted that though he had denied it, he had still been at White Webbs, in Enfield Chase, with the conspirators, and would still maintain that he had not been there since Bartholomew-tide. On another occasion he let fall things which still further betrayed his knowledge of the plot. It is possible that he might even yet have escaped had he not, at his trial, avowed that he considered equivocation and mental reservation on any point that might incriminate him, perfectly justifiable. After that declaration popular sympathy was no longer in his favour. A verdict of guilty was pronounced against him, and he was hanged, drawn and quartered on the 3rd of May, 1606.
A Parliament was summoned for the double purpose of raising money and of extending additional punishment over the Catholics generally. The whole country was in that state of alarm and hostility to them, that James found it necessary to restrain rather than encourage the mania. Such was the public excitement, that even he was not exempt from blame on account of this lenity. He had chosen this inauspicious moment to make overtures to Spain for the Infanta as a wife for Prince Henry, and the Puritans at once ascribed his moderation to this cause, and declared that he was little better than a secret Papist himself. James was alarmed and obliged to give way. It was in vain that Henry IV. of France remonstrated against a bigotry which had already driven some of the Catholics to such desperate lengths. His ambassador represented that the king his master had learnt from experience that persecution only stimulated zealots to a temper in which they gloried in suffering, and that far more could be effected by kindness than by severity; that James should, if he loved peace, make himself their protector instead of their persecutor. But Parliament soon showed how useless at the moment was such advice. Both Houses appeared to be carried beyond all reason by their fears and their resentment. On the 3rd of February every member of the Commons was ordered to stand up in his place and propound such measures as appeared to him most desirable. The most extravagant propositions seemed the most acceptable, and after impetuous debates upon them, they were communicated by conferences to the other House, and in both Lords and Commons motions of the severest description were made and carried by triumphant majorities. Catholic recusants were now forbidden to appear at Court, to dwell within its boundaries, or within ten miles of the boundaries of London; or to remove on any occasion more than five miles from their homes, under particular penalties, unless in the latter case they had a licence from four neighbouring magistrates. They were rendered incapable of practising in surgery, physic, or common or civil law; of acting as judges, clerks, officers, in any court or corporation; of presenting to church livings, schools, or hospitals in their gift; or of exercising the functions of executors or guardians; where persons were married by Catholic priests, the husband, if a Catholic, could not claim the property of the wife, nor the wife, if a Catholic, that of the husband; and if a child born was not baptised by a Protestant minister within a month, the penalty was one hundred and fifty pounds; and for every corpse not buried in a Protestant cemetery, the penalty was twenty pounds. All existing penalties for absence from church were retained, with the addition that whoever received Catholic visitors, or kept Catholic servants, must pay for each such individual ten pounds per lunar month. Every recusant was declared to be excommunicated; his house might be broken open and searched at any time, his books and any articles belonging to "his idolatrous worship" might be burnt, and his arms and horses seized by the order of a single magistrate.
A new oath of allegiance was framed recognising absolute renunciation of the right of the Pope to interfere in the temporal affairs of the kingdom. The Catholics who submitted to take this oath were to be liable only to the penalties now enumerated; but they who refused were to be imprisoned for life, and to suffer forfeiture of their personal property and the rents of their lands.
The publication of these terrible enactments carried astonishment and dismay through the nation; many Protestants as well as Catholics condemned them. The French minister Villeroy declared that they were characteristic of barbarians rather than of Christians. Many Catholics made haste to quit their native country, and the rest prepared to sacrifice both property and personal liberty. The Pope Paul V. despatched a secret emissary to James, imploring him to relax the rigour of the new laws, but without success. And the Pontiff, resenting the repulse, then published a breve, denouncing the oath of allegiance as unlawful, "because contrary to faith and salvation." The publication of this imprudent breve only made matters worse. The Catholic clergy were before its arrival divided in their opinions as to the lawfulness of taking it; the archpriest Blackwall himself, with many of his brethren, were prepared to take it. The authority of the Pope extinguished theirs and decided the majority; yet Blackwall took the oath himself, and advised the Catholics, by a circular letter, to take it.
But no submission on the part of a portion of the Catholics could mitigate the wrath of James at the conduct of the Pope. He ordered the bishops in their several dioceses to tender the oath, and to enforce the penalties on all recusants. Three missionaries lying under sentence of death for the exercise of their priestly functions, were called upon to take it; they refused. Two of them were saved by the earnest intercession of the Prince de Joinville and the French ambassador. The third, named Drury, was hanged, drawn, and quartered. Blackwall the archpriest himself was thrown into prison, though he had both taken the oath and advised the rest of the Catholics to take it; and though James pitied him, he could do nothing more in his behalf than prevent him from being brought to trial and capitally condemned. The case of Blackwall was extremely hard, for, on the other hand, he had excited the resentment of the Pope by his concession. He was called on by letters from Cardinals Bellarmine and Arrigoni, and the Jesuits Parsons and Holtby to retract; but as he would not, he was superseded by Birket. He was then in his seventieth year, and remained in prison till his death, in 1613.
A second breve from the Pope roused the spirit of James; he determined to try whether he could not silence the clamour of the papal party by his pen. He abandoned even the pleasures of the chase, refused to listen to his ministers, and calling his favourite divines around him, he shut himself up with them, and produced a tract called "An Apologie for the Oath of Allegiance," which was immediately translated into French and Latin. But as the royal brochure did not convince the Catholics, six priests were condemned for refusing the oath, and three of them were executed, one at York and two at Tyburn. Moreau, Bellarmine, and Parsons, published replies to the royal treatise; and again James closeted himself with his divines, revised his publication, and prefaced it with a "Premonition to all Christian Princes." It was in vain that the kings of Denmark and France counselled him to desist from a contest so unworthy of a great monarch, in vain that the queen urged the same advice. He condescended to declare that the fittest answer to Parsons would be a rope; and as for Bellarmine, who had written under a feigned name, he dubbed him "a most obscure author, a very desperate fellow in beginning his apprentisage, not only to refute, but to rail at a king." The flatterers of the king applauded his "immortal labours," as they were pleased to call them; and James continued to toil at them, revise, and remodel his arguments till 1609. The Catholic peers, with the exception of Lord Teynham, all took the oath on different occasions in the Upper House.
POUND SOVEREIGN OF JAMES I.
UNIT OR LAUREL OF JAMES I. (GOLD).