Gregory XIII. hoped great things from Allen’s seminary, and furnished funds for its support. In 1579 Allen went to Rome, and enlisted the support of Mercurian, General of the Jesuits. Two English Jesuits, Robert Parsons and Edward Campion, ex-fellows of Balliol and St. John’s, were selected as missionaries. Campion was eight years younger than Allen. He had had a brilliant career at Oxford, being especially distinguished for his eloquence. He was at that time personally known to both Cecil and the Queen, and enjoyed their favour. He took deacon’s orders in 1568, but not long afterwards joined Allen at Douai, and formally abjured the Anglican Church. He had been six years a Jesuit when he was despatched on his dangerous mission to England.
Tired of waiting for the initiative of Philip, Gregory XIII. and the Jesuits had planned a threefold attack on Elizabeth in England, Scotland, and Ireland. In England a revivalist movement was to be carried on among the Catholics by the missionaries. Catholic writers have been at great pains to argue that this was a purely religious movement, prosecuted with the single object of saving souls. The Jesuits have always known their men and employed them with discrimination. Saving of souls was very likely the simple object of a man of Campion’s saintly and exalted nature. He himself declared that he had been strictly forbidden to meddle with worldly concerns or affairs of State, and nothing inconsistent with this declaration was proved against him at his trial. But without laying any stress on statements extracted from prisoners under torture, we cannot doubt that his employers aimed at re-establishing Catholicism in England by rebellion and foreign invasion. This was thoroughly understood by every missionary who crossed the sea; and if Campion never alluded to it even in his most familiar conversations he must have had an extraordinary control over his tongue.
The evidence that the assassination of the Queen was a recognised part of the Jesuit plan, determined by the master spirits and accepted by all the subordinate agents, is perhaps not quite conclusive. If proved, it would only show that they were not more scrupulous than most statesmen and politicians of the time. Lax as sixteenth century notions were about political murder, there were always some consciences more tender than others. It is likely enough that Campion personally disapproved of such projects, and that they were not thrust upon his attention. But he can hardly have avoided being aware that they were contemplated by the less squeamish of his brethren.
Campion and Parsons came to England in disguise in the summer of 1580. Their mission was not a success. It only served to show how much more securely Elizabeth was seated on her throne than in the earlier years of her reign. In his letters to Rome, Campion boasts of the welcome he met with everywhere, the crowds that attended his preaching, the ardour of the Catholics, and the disrepute into which Protestantism was falling. He had evidently worked himself up to such a state of ecstasy that he was living in a world of his own imagination, and was no competent witness of facts. He crept about England in various disguises, and when he was in districts where the nobles and gentry favoured the old religion, he preached with a publicity which seems extraordinary to us in these days when the laws are executed with prompt uniformity by means of railways, telegraphs, and a well-organised police. In the sixteenth century England had nothing that can be called an organised machinery for the prevention and detection of crime. If an outbreak occurred the Government collected militia, and trampled it out with an energy that took no account of law and feared no consequences. But in ordinary times it had to depend on the local justices of the peace and parish constables, and if they were remiss the laws were a dead letter. There were no newspapers. The high-roads were few and bad. One parish did not know what was going on in the next. Campion could be passed on from one gentleman’s house to another on horses quite as good as any officer of the Government rode, and could travel all over England without ever using a high-road or showing his face in a town. If he preached to a hundred people in some Lancashire village, Lord Derby did not want to know it, and before the news reached Burghley or Walsingham he would be in another county, or perhaps back in London—then, as now, the safest of all hiding-places. Thus, though a warrant was issued for his arrest as soon as he arrived in England, it was not till July in the next year (1581) that he was taken, after an unusually public and protracted appearance in the neighbourhood of Oxford.
He had little or nothing to show for his twelve months’ tour, and this although the Government had, as Allen hoped, allowed itself to be provoked into an increase of severity which seems to have been quite unnecessary. The large majority of Catholic laymen would evidently have preferred that both Seminarists and Jesuits should keep away. They did not want civil war. They did not want to be persecuted. They were against a foreign invasion, without which they knew very well that Elizabeth could not be deposed. They were even loyal to her. They were content to wait till she should disappear in the course of nature and make room for the Queen of Scots. Mendoza writes to Philip that “they place themselves in the hands of God, and are willing to sacrifice life and all in the service, but scarcely with that burning zeal which they ought to show.”
By the bull of Pius V., Englishmen were forbidden to acknowledge Elizabeth as their Queen; in other words, they were ordered to expose themselves to the penalties of treason. If the Pope would be satisfied with nothing less than this, it was quite certain that he would alienate most of his followers in England. Gregory XIII. therefore had authorised the Jesuits to explain that although the Protestants, by willingly acknowledging the Queen, were incurring the damnation pronounced by the bull, Catholics would be excused for unwillingly acknowledging her until some opportunity arrived for dethroning her. Protestant writers have exclaimed against this distinction as treacherous. It was perfectly reasonable. It represents, for instance, the attitude of every Alsatian who accords an unwilling recognition to the German Emperor. But the English Government intolerantly and unwisely made it the occasion for harassing the consciences of men who were most of them guiltless of any intention to rebel.
Amongst other persecuting laws passed early in 1581, was one which raised the fine for non-attendance at church to twenty pounds a month. Such a measure was calculated to excite much more wide-spread disaffection than the hanging of a few priests. It was not intended to be a brutum fulmen. The names of all recusants in each parish were returned to the Council. They amounted to about 50,000, and the fines exacted became a not inconsiderable item in the royal revenue. That number certainly formed but a small portion of the Catholic population. But if all the rest had been in the habit of going to church, contrary to the Pope’s express injunction, rather than pay a small fine, the Government ought to have seen that they were not the stuff of which rebels are made.
Campion, after being compelled by torture to disclose the names of his hosts in different counties, was called on to maintain the Catholic doctrines in a three days’ discussion before a large audience against four Protestant divines, who do not seem to have been ashamed of themselves. He was offered pardon if he would attend once in church. As he steadfastly refused, he was racked again till his limbs were dislocated. When he had partially recovered he was put on his trial, along with several of his companions, not under any of the recent anti-catholic laws but under the ordinary statute of Edward III., for “compassing and imagining the Queen’s death”—such a horror had the Burghleys and Walsinghams of anything like religious persecution! Being unable to hold up his hand to plead Not Guilty, “two of his companions raised it for him, first kissing the broken joints.” According to Mendoza (whom on other occasions we are invited to accept as a witness of truth), his nails had been torn from his fingers. Apart from his religious belief nothing treasonable was proved against him in deed or word. He acknowledged Elizabeth for his rightful sovereign, as the new interpretation of the papal bull permitted him to do, but he declined to give any opinion about the Pope’s right to depose princes. This was enough for the judge and jury, and he was found guilty. At the place of execution he was again offered his pardon if he would deny the papal right of deposition, or even hear a Protestant sermon. He wished the Queen a long and quiet reign and all prosperity, but more he would not say. At the quartering “a drop of blood spirted on the clothes of a youth named Henry Walpole, to whom it came as a divine command. Walpole, converted on the spot, became a Jesuit, and soon after met the same fate on the same spot.”
Mr. Froude’s comment is that “if it be lawful in defence of national independence to kill open enemies in war, it is more lawful to execute the secret conspirator who is teaching doctrines in the name of God which are certain to be fatal to it.” It would perhaps be enough to remark that this reasoning amply justifies some of the worst atrocities of the French Revolution. Hallam and Macaulay have condemned it by anticipation in language which will commend itself to all who are not swayed by religious, or, what is more offensive, anti-religious bigotry.[4]
Cruel as the English criminal law was, and long remained, it never authorised the use of torture to extract confession. The rack in the Tower is said to have made its appearance, with other innovations of absolute government, in the reign of Edward IV. But it seems to have been little used before the reign of Elizabeth, under whom it became the ordinary preliminary to a political trial. For this the chief blame must rest personally on Burghley. Opinions may differ as to his rank as a statesman, but no one will contest his eminent talents as a minister of police. In the former capacity he had sufficient sense of shame to publish a Pecksniffian apology for his employment of the rack. “None,” he says, “of those who were at any time put to the rack were asked, during their torture, any question as to points of doctrine, but merely concerning their plots and conspiracies, and the persons with whom they had dealings, and what was their own opinion as to the Pope’s right to deprive the Queen of her crown.” What was this but a point of doctrine? The wretched victim who conscientiously believed it (as all Christendom once did), but wished to save himself by silence, was driven either to tell a lie or to consign himself to rope and knife. “The Queen’s servants, the warders, whose office and act it is to handle the rack, were ever, by those that attended the examinations, specially charged to use it in so charitable a manner as such a thing might be.” It may be hoped that there are not many who would dissent from Hallam’s remark that “such miserable excuses serve only to mingle contempt with our detestation.” He adds: “It is due to Elizabeth to observe that she ordered the torture to be disused.” I do not know what authority there is for this statement. Three years later the Protestant Archbishop of Dublin was puzzled how to torture the Catholic Archbishop of Cashel, because there was no “rack or other engine” in Dublin. Walsingham, on being consulted, suggested that his feet might be toasted against the fire, which was accordingly done. Some of the Anglican bishops, as might be expected from fanatics, were forward in recommending torture. But Cecil was no more of a fanatic than his mistress. What both of them cared for was not a particular religious belief—they had both of them conformed to Popery under Queen Mary—but the sovereign’s claim to prescribe religious belief, or rather religious profession, and they were provoked with the missionaries for thwarting them. Provoking it was, no doubt. But everything seems to show that it would have been better to pursue the earlier policy of the reign; to be content with enacting severe laws which practically were not put into execution.