And large provisions laid of winter fare.
This alludes to the numerous schools and religious establishments which the Jesuits prepared to establish throughout England.[274] The chapel which housed them is obviously the royal chapel, where the priests were privileged to exercise their functions even during the subsistence of the penal laws. The transient gleam of sunshine which invited the Swallows forth from their retirement, is the Declaration of Indulgence, in consequence of which the Catholics assumed the open and general exercise of their religion. The Irish Catholics, with the sanguine Talbot at their head, may be the first who hailed the imaginary return of spring: they are painted as
——Swifts, the giants of the Swallow kind,
Large limbed, stout hearted, but of stupid mind.
I cannot help thinking, that our author, still speaking in the character of the English church, describes himself as the "foolish Cuckow," whose premature annunciation of spring completed the Swallow's delusion. Perhaps he intended to mitigate the scornful description of Petre, by talking of himself also as a Protestant would have talked of him. The foreign priests and Catholic officers, whom hopes of promotion now brought into England, are pointed out by the "foreign fowl," who came in flocks,
To bless the founder, and partake the cheer.
The fable concludes in a prophetic strain, by indicating the calamities which were likely to overwhelm the Catholics, as soon as the death of James, or any similar event, should end their temporary prosperity. It is well known, how exactly the event corresponded to the prophecy; even the circumstance of the rabble rising upon the Catholic priests was most literally verified. In most of the sea-port towns, they watched the coasts to prevent their escape; and when King James was taken at Feversham, the fishermen, by whom he was seized, were employed in what they called by the cant phrase of "priest-codding," that is, lying in wait for the fugitive priests.
But most in Martin's character and fate,