Matters connected with their own town and county it was their especial privilege, they thought, to discuss, but affairs in general, and the politics of the world, were also brought under consideration. Their oracle, or as we should at present term him, president, was one Master Michael Teazle, the clothier, who, in his wisdom and his care, sought in his various harangues to "dress the threadbare state of the commonwealth and turn it, and set a new nap upon it,"—generally concluding, like Cade, that the Queen's council were no good workmen, and that he himself, being a working-man, could best understand the management of the State.
This man was, in fact, a somewhat extraordinary individual, and in possession of considerable talent; one who, in our own times, would have most likely been either a popular sectarian preacher, or a violent demagogue. But in Elizabeth's day, there being no proper vent for the effusion of such a spirit, he was merely the oracle of his gossiping society of his own town. Too indolent for real and useful work, he neglected his own business to spy into the affairs of his neighbours, and too dissipated for any profitable employment; except that he was kept from utter ruin by an industrious wife, he would, with all his wise saws, have starved.
The piece of news which had in the present instance reached Stratford, had called forth from Master Teazle a considerable harangue upon the state of the country, and the imminent danger Her Majesty's government, her own life, and the safety of themselves individually, were exposed to from the intrigues of the Catholics; and in taking upon him to expound what had already been done, he took upon him also to say what should be done.
"I maintain, my masters all," said he, "that these Jesuits should be pistolled like mad dogs wherever one can light upon them; for look ye, are they not educated, and brought up, and fed, and nourished, in superstition and bigotry? Are they not infused with a bitter hatred against our Queen, whom they treat as an usurper, a schismatic, a heretic, a persecutor of the orthodox, and one excommunicated and made horrible by the ridiculous Pope." Here he stopped and looked around with great importance. "Nay," he resumed, "look but upon this affair of the Prince of Orange! Sedition, rebellion, and assassination are the expedients by which they effect their purposes."
"For mine own part," said Master Lambe, the glover, "I know not precisely in what consists a Jesuit."
"Why, then, lament therefore," said Teazle, "since not to know in what consists a Jesuit, is not to know the danger to be apprehended from a Jesuit."
"Expound unto us, neighbour," said goodman Hyde, the tanner, "what is your version of such a wild beast?"
"Wild beast is a bad term to apply to a Jesuit," said Teazle, "as you will see by the story. To propound what is a Jesuit, we must e'en go back to the order of Jesuits founded at Douay by Philip of Spain; and thus it is:—he erected a seminary for Catholics to send their children to, in order that they might be brought up, and educated with a view to the crown of martyrdom. Neither to be deterred by danger nor fatigue from maintaining their principles. And into the breasts of these pupils is instilled the most inveterate hatred against Protestant England in general, and Stratford town in particular; and to our blessed Queen nothing but poison, steel, and perdition. Ahem!"
"There art thou wrong, brother," said Master Cramboy. "The order of Jesuits was erected when the Pope perceived that his lazy monks and beggarly friars sufficed no longer to defend the Church, and that the unquiet spirit of the age required something more keen, active, and erudite to defend it."
"Well, neighbour, well," said Teazle, (who was generally somewhat in awe of the learning of the pedant), "I sit corrected. Be it, however, as it may, you will bear with me in holding that prevarication, and every stratagem which serves their ghostly purposes, are the especial privileges of the Order."