“Pax C.ti.
“Most dear and respected Father,
“I have received your letters of the —— last, wherein you show your fatherly care and undeserved love unto me, as were sufficient to bind unto you any grateful heart, although he were not tied with former obligations. But I am so much and so many ways bound unto you before by favours of the highest kind, that these do only tie me unto you with new knots, though I was before so wholly yours and so firmly tied that sincerely I had rather not to be than be untied. I beseech you, sir, that you will be pleased to present my humble duty unto Father General, in whose favour though your good word do procure me that place which I can no ways deserve, yet this I hope you may promise for me, that I will now begin to do my best endeavours, that I may be framed in all things as is fit for a child of that most holy family whereof he hath the care, that both by my voice and hands he may acknowledge me for his child, the better to deserve the blessing of so great and good a father. I would now acknowledge my duty by letters, but that I am ashamed of my Latin, and loath to trouble with so rude lines, unless there were further occasion or that you thought it needful. But I hope to come and do my duty in person so soon that it will not be necessary to signify it by letters. I will stay as you appoint until I have your letters for my coming forward, and in the meantime will not be solicitous one whit, having no desire in the world whereof I would not most willingly leave the whole care unto you, and indeed desiring to have no other desires but yours so far as I may be able to discern them, after that I have expressed my reasons as I know you would have me to do, and after that you know me better and my many great wants, which, that they may be more exactly known unto you, makes me so desirous to be with you for some time, howsoever it may please you to dispose of me afterwards. And if the chief cause why you think it best for me to stay awhile in these parts be for that you would have me secret as yet, and especially not to be seen with you there whilst the appellants are negotiating their uncharitable accusations of their brethren, then I suppose you will think I may be fully as secret there as here, if I be first wary in my coming into the town and then be your prisoner for some time (which I most desire), and then go to St. Andrew's, without visiting any holy places and being seen in the town until you think it convenient. And because, in my second and third letters, I expressed my earnest desire of this private course at my first coming, I suppose I shall hear from you in your next letter or the next but one, that you think best I come forward, unless you wish my stay for some other reasons than the desire of my being secret. I grant I might perform my desire of some time of recollection either in Louvain or in the new House if it go forwards, under Father Talbot; but I have many reasons why I desire first to be with you for some time, which I think you would allow of if you knew them. And I would be glad also if it might be to begin in St. Andrew's, to draw there some lively water out of the chiefest fountain, and this rather in the winter than to come the next spring, because I much fear my health if I be there in the heats. But [pg cclx] after I have been there for some time, for so long time as you shall think it convenient that I stay in that school, I shall be glad to be Father Talbot's Minister here, or to have some office of action under him, if my health do require any exercise of body. I hear there is one prepared for Minister that is very fit, but I could have care of the Church, and then perhaps should get some stuff to furnish it from some friends of mine in England; or I could have care of the garden, for I am excellent at that (if you will permit me to praise myself), for that was much of my recreation in England, and I hope my brother will witness with me that he hath seen a good many plants of my setting and tasted the fruit of some of them. But indeed, dear Father, if it may stand with your liking, I would be very glad to see you and be with you for some days before I settle anywhere, how private soever my abode there be, either at the first or for the whole time of my stay, as yourself shall see it best. As for the settling of any with my friends, I have done it before my departure, leaving my old companion and dear friend, Father Percy, in the place where I was, who is so much esteemed and desired by them as none can be likely to be more profitable. Most of my other special friends I commended partly to Father Antony [Hoskins], and partly to him, both which are most grateful to all my friends and acquaintance, and indeed I know not any two there that, in my simple opinion, better deserve it. As concerning Father Roger Lee's going into England, if you please that I write justly that I think, there be divers reasons for which I think it, at this time, very inconvenient. First, in that he is so profitable where he is, that it will not be easy to find another will do so much good in that place; and, in one word to express my opinion, for ought I see, the most good of the House, both for external discipline and for progress in spirit, dependeth upon his care and effectual industry, wherein I should think it more needful to provide him more helpers of like desires and practical endeavours (who would conspire with him and have talents to effect both with the good Rector and with the scholars, that which they should together find to be most expedient). The Fathers which be there do very well, but all are not of like apprehensions and proceedings, and I suppose if yourself did see all particulars, you would think Father Roger to be a strong helper to the good of that House, and that it would nourish much if it had some others of his like. I know not where to name one upon the sudden, unless it be Father Henry Flud [Floyd], whose zeal and practical proceedings I think would be very profitable for that House, if he may be spared, and truly in my opinion upon the good of that House dependeth much the good and quiet of the other Colleges, besides much edification to many, both friends and enemies, unto whom this is a continual spectacle.
“But besides this reason (which alone I take to be sufficient) I wish Father Roger's stay for the good he may hereafter do in England, which I do hope will be great, and therefore great pity it should now be lost before the fruit of so likely a tree can come to ripeness. For, sir, yourself can better judge that none can be much profitable in England until he have gotten acquaintance there, and until his acquaintance by their trial of him have gotten a great opinion and estimation of him, which then they will spread from one to another, and every one will bring his friend, who upon hearing will be desirous to try, but after trial will say unto the friend that brought him, ‘Jam non propter sermonem tuum credimus sed ipsi,’ &c. By this means one shall have, after some continuance, more acquaintances and devoted friends than he can satisfy, and more business in that kind than he can turn his hands unto; but this is [pg cclxi] supposing he may at the first go up and down to get this acquaintance, and to be so known unto many; and until he have means so to do, if he have never so good talents, yet he shall not do so much good as a meaner person that is better acquainted. Now in this time I do verily think, if the laws be put in execution, there will be no means at all to get acquaintance, but the best acquainted shall have difficulty to help his known friends, and to be helped by them with safe places of abode as [I have declared at] large in my last letters, and they must lie much still and private and do [good part of] their [work by means of le]tters. Therefore, although I know Father Roger would be as much esteemed of my special friends as any that could be sent (unless my brother [probably Sir Oliver Manners] “had served his apprenticeship and were made a journeyman, for of his skill and workmanship in framing the best wedding garment there is great and general hope conceived) yet, things staying as they do in England, and Father Roger so well acquainted now with the place where he is, and thereby also more profitable there than a stranger could be, although as fit for the place as himself (which truly I think will be hard to find) my friends also being already furnished in England: these reasons move me to think it neither needful nor best that Father Roger go thither as yet: which yet in a more quiet time I shall be bold to beg for, if I see the College where he is so furnished that without great loss it might want him. I find Father Roger desirous of England if it were thought best, but wholly desirous to do that which yourself do think most convenient, but when I urge him to speak his very thoughts whether he do not think the College would be at want, he cannot deny but that the College hath need rather of more than less help, and surely I think if it were another's case of whom he might with humility acknowledge how profitable he is, I do think he would absolutely do his best to hinder it as I do.”
“For the answer to your questions, though in my last long letters I did in part answer to most of them before I received yours, yet now I will briefly again set down my opinion to the several points, Father Baldwin having written of them in his last, I being at St. Omers; but now I am come to him, being advised by the physician there to go to the Spa for the drying up of my rheum, which here I shall take further counsel of, how far it is needful, and whether the great rains have not made the waters of less force. I am here private, and more private than I could be at St. Omers whilst the banished Priests are passing by. I think I shall hear within two or three posts your further pleasure; if not, I will return and then begin to talk with the youths there, or do any service I can as you appointed in your last. In the meantime, with many humble thanks for your many undeserved favours, I rest this 15th of July.
“Your Rev. son and servant wholly to command,
“Fr. Harrison.”
Address—“Al molto Rev. in Christo Padre, il Padre Roberto Parsonio, Rettore del Collegio delli Inglesi, Roma.”
To these we must add an extract from a letter of Father Persons dated December 29, 1606, and evidently written while Father Gerard was at Tivoli (Stonyhurst MSS., P., vol. ii., f. 447). “The man you name, to wit, Ger[ard] passed this way some months gone, but made little or no abode, lest offence might be taken thereat, only I can say that during the few days which he remained he gave great edification for his behaviour and sundry great testimonies [pg cclxii] of his rare virtue, but most of all of his innocency concerning that crime whereof he was imputed in the proclamation, about which himself procured that his General should judicially examine in presence of divers witnesses, commanding him in virtute sanctæ obedientiæ to utter the truth therein to his Superior, whereupon he swore and protested that he was wholly innocent therein, which the rest of his behaviour doth easily make probable. I shall cause him to be advertised by the first commodity of the note you write about his friends.”
P. [ccviii.]—As Father Gerard certainly left Belgium in 1622, and therefore could not have been in the Tertianship at Ghent in 1624, there must be a mistake in the name of the Father who reconciled to the Church James, Lord Maltravers, in the July of that year, as related in the Life of Anne Countess of Arundel (p. 232). It is there said that “before his death he was so fortunate as to be visited by Father John Gerard, a Priest of the Society, who, together with others, lived there” [at Ghent] “in the house which his grandmother a little before had erected.... By that Father he was in fine reconciled to the Holy Church.”