Elizabethan Acts of Supremacy, of Uniformity, Constructive Treason, and the Spanish Armada, all put together — led finally to England’s being “bereft” of what to a Roman Catholic is “the one true faith.”

In regard to James’s Oath of Allegiance (1609), it is to be recollected that while strict Roman Catholics, whether “Jesuitized” or not, refused to take the oath, some Catholics thought they might lawfully take it. Among such was the Arch-priest, Blackwell, who, however, was deposed from his office, as, in general terms, Rome condemned the oath. “The sting” of this famous oath was “in its tail;” inasmuch as it not only contained a disclaimer of the deposing power of the Pope, but declared that the doctrine of the deposing power was “impious, heretical, and damnable.” It is remarkable that all the Roman Catholic peers took the Oath of Allegiance, except Lord Teynham, a collateral descendant of William Roper, the husband of Margaret More.

“An apostate” Jesuit, named Sir Christopher Perkins, aided in framing this searching test, so the Government knew exactly how to get the unhappy papist recusants tightly within their grip. (Perkins, like Sir Edwin Sandys, a philosophic friend of Sir Toby Matthews, was an incipient rationalist. Shakespeare may have known Sir Toby Matthews.)

For valuable information (derived from an unpublished manuscript) as to the working of this Oath of Allegiance, see the late Richard Simpson’s Article, entitled, “A Glimpse of the Working of the Penal Laws,” in “The Rambler,” vol. vi., p. 401 (1856). If this Article has not been printed separately, it ought to be. In it occur the names Middleton, Gascoigne, Ingleby, Whitham, Cholmeley, Vavasour, Dolman, Mennell (or Meynell), and Catterick, of Yorkshire; Preston and Towneley, of Lancashire; Tichbourne, of Hampshire; Wiseman, of Essex; Gage, of Sussex; Vaux, of Northamptonshire; Throckmorton, of Warwickshire; Tregean, of Cornwall; Plowden, of Shropshire; Morgan, of Monmouthshire; Edwards, of Flintshire; together with other English and Welsh names, which can be only described as synonymous with honour, high-mindedness, heroism, and all goodness.

[139] — James Usher[A] (1581-1656), Protestant Archbishop of Armagh, was an Anglo-Irishman, who was “learned to a miracle,” so the great English

Jurist, Seldon, said. — See “Usher,” “National Dictionary of Biography.” — Usher was, through his mother, who became a Roman Catholic, a grandson of James Stanihurst (Recorder of Dublin, and Speaker of the Irish House of Commons), whose family were the patrons of Edmund Campion, when in Ireland. The great orator wrote his history of that country after leaving Oxford, and before going to Douay. Usher crossed over to England in 1602. He held in the University of Dublin, in 1607, a divinity professorship, worth £8 a year, which was founded by Mr. James Cotterell, who died in York. Now, I find from the Register of St. Michael-le-Belfrey, York, that there is a record of the burial of a “Mr. James Cotterell — in the mynster — the 29th day of August, 1595.” This, I have no doubt, was the self-same gentleman as the “Mr. Cotterell,” from whose house, on the 29th day of May, 1579, Thomas Warde made M’gery Slater “his true and honourable wife;” and the same Mr. James Cotterell as founded the Dublin divinity professorship. Dr. Usher knew personally Lord Mordaunt, the son of the Lord Mordaunt who died in the Tower in 1608; and also, according to the “National Dictionary of Biography,” Father Oswald Tesimond. If so, it is possible that Usher knew personally Lord Mounteagle and Thomas Warde, and it may be it was from them that he gathered hints upon which he founded his oracular statement. (I desire here to express my sense of obligation to the Rev. E. S. Carter, M.A., the Vicar of St. Michael-le-Belfrey, York, who most kindly and generously gifted me with a copy of his singularly valuable “Parish Register” Part I., edited by Dr. Francis Collins, from which I have obtained that item of domestic information so valuable as a leading clue for the purposes of this Inquiry, namely, the marriage of Thomas Warde, of Mulwaith.)

[A] “The Life of Archbishop Usher” by Barnard (1656), however, does not bear out the statement of the Author of the Article on “Usher” in the “National Dictionary of Biography.” For Barnard says that the Jesuit who debated at Drayton, in Northamptonshire, with Archbishop Usher, was called “Beaumond,” but that his real name was Rookwood, and that he was a brother of Ambrose Rookwood, the Gunpowder plotter. The debate was arranged by Lord Mordaunt (afterwards the Earl of Peterborough), to the end that his wife, the Lady Mordaunt, a daughter of the Earl of Nottingham, might become convinced of the soundness of the exacting claims of the Church of Rome. The upshot was that not only was the Lady Mordaunt not convinced, but that the Lord Mordaunt himself became a Protestant! The topics for discussion were: — Transubstantiation, Invocation of Saints, Images, and the Visibility of the Church. According to Barnard, Beaumond at the third day of meeting sent to excuse himself, saying, “That all the arguments he had framed within his own head, and thought he had them as perfect as his ‘Pater noster,’ he had forgotten and could not recover them again; that he believed it was the just judgment of God upon him thus to desert him in the defence of His cause for the undertaking of himself to dispute with a man of that eminency and learning without the licence of his superior.”

If it were a Rookwood, probably it was Robert (S.J.)

[140] — The “Oliver Cromwell,” by John Morley (Macmillan, 1900), contains a picture of Usher, taken from the original portrait by Sir Peter Lely, in the National Portrait Gallery. The face is one of great keenness and power.

[141] — “Style” in handwriting is its genius, its ethos, its air, its aroma, its active, its essential principle. “Style is the man.”