The Popish Plot: A study in the history of the reign of Charles II

by John Pollock

CHAPTER II

THE NATURE OF THE DESIGNS

For contemporaries the Popish Plot provided a noble field of battle. Between its supporters and its assailants controversy raged hotly. Hosts of writers in England and abroad proved incontestably either its truth or its falsehood.[23] With which of the two the victory lay is hard to determine. Discredit presently fell on the Plot, but the balance was restored by the Revolution, when Oates’ release, pardon, and pension gave again the stamp of authority to his revelations. From this high estate its reputation quickly fell. Hume pronounced belief in it to be the touchstone for a hopelessly prejudiced Whig, Fox declared the evidence offered “impossible to be true,” and before the end of the eighteenth century Dalrymple accused Shaftesbury of having contrived and managed the whole affair. Since that time little serious criticism, with the notable exception of Ranke’s luminous account, has been attempted. Historians have generally contented themselves with relying on the informers’ certain mendacity to prove the entire falsehood of the plot which they denounced. The argument is patently unsound. As Charles II himself declared, the fact that Oates and his followers were liars of the first order does not warrant the conclusion that all they said was untrue and that the plot was wholly of the imagination.[24] The grounds upon which judgment must be based deserve to be more closely considered.

On November 8, 1675 a remarkable debate took place in the House of Commons. Mr. Russell and Sir Henry Goodrick informed the House of an outrage said to have been committed by a Jesuit upon a recent convert from Roman Catholicism. Amid keen excitement they related that one Luzancy, a Frenchman, who, having lately come over to the Church of England, had in the French chapel at the Savoy preached a hot sermon against the errors of Rome, had been compelled at peril of his life to retract all he had said and sign a recantation of his faith. The man guilty of this deed was Dr. Burnet, commonly known as Father St. Germain, a Jesuit belonging to the household of the Duchess of York.[25] The Commons were highly enraged. “This goes beyond all precedents,” cried Sir Charles Harbord, “to persuade not only with arguments but poignards!” He never heard the like way before. Assurance was given by Mr. Secretary Williamson that strict inquiry was being made. The king was busy with the matter. Luzancy had been examined on oath before the council, and a special meeting was now summoned. A warrant was out for St. Germain, but the Jesuit had fled. The House expressed its feeling by moving that the Lord Chief Justice be requested to issue a second warrant for St. Germain’s arrest, and yet another in general terms “to search for and apprehend all priests and Jesuits whatsoever.”[26] It was a strange story that Luzancy told. By Protestants he was said to have been a learned Jesuit, by Catholics a rascally bastard of a disreputable French actress.[27] The two accounts are perhaps not irreconcilable. At least he was a convert and had preached. Thereupon St. Germain, as he said, threatened him and forced a recantation. Before resorting to this extreme the Jesuit had tried persuasion. The Duke of York, he told Luzancy, was a confessed Roman Catholic. At heart the king himself belonged to the same faith and would approve of all he did. Schemes were afoot to procure an act for liberty of conscience for the Catholics. That granted, within two years most of the nation would acknowledge the Pope. It was sometimes good to force people to heaven; and there were in London many priests and Jesuits doing God very great service. Others besides Luzancy had been threatened with tales of Protestant blood flowing in the London streets; and these, being summoned to the council, attested that the fact was so. Lord Halifax rose and told the king that, if his Majesty would allow that course to Protestants for the conversion of Papists, he did not question but in a very short time it should be effected.[28] Two days later a proclamation was issued signifying that Luzancy was taken into the royal protection, and St. Germain, with a price of £200 on his head, fled to France, there to become one of the most active of Jesuit intriguers.[29] Though the brandished dagger was likely enough an embellishment of Luzancy’s invention, it is probable that his story was in substance true. In December St. Germain found himself in Paris and in close correspondence with Edward Coleman, the Duchess of York’s secretary. Such a man writing within a month from the catastrophe would certainly, had he been falsely charged, be loud in vindication of his innocence and denunciation of the villain who had worked his ruin. St. Germain merely wrote that his leaving London in this fashion troubled him much. He had done all that a man of honesty and honour could; an ambiguous phrase. It was absolutely necessary, more for his companions and the Catholics’ sake than for his own, that his conduct should be justified.[30] Evidently St. Germain was less troubled at the injustice of the charge against him than incensed at its results. What he wanted was not that his character might be cleared from a false accusation, but that the tables might be turned on his accuser.[31]

The conduct of St. Germain illustrates well the aims of the Roman Catholic party in England about the year 1675. Their policy, already undergoing modification, had root deep in the history of the times.

For the first thirteen years of his reign Catholics looked for the advancement of their cause to the king. During the Civil War none had shown a more steadfast loyalty than they, and none hailed the Restoration with greater eagerness. Half a century earlier a considerable number of the squires of England had been Catholic. They were a class bound closely to the royal cause both by tradition and by personal inclination, and though the operation of the penal laws effectively prevented their ranks from swelling, they rendered conspicuous service to the crown in the day of trouble. With their strength further diminished by death and by confiscation of estates under the Commonwealth government, their hopes rose higher at the king’s return. There was much justification for their sanguine view. The promise of religious liberty contained in the declaration of Breda was known to be in accord with Charles’ own desires. He was the son of a Catholic mother and of a father suspected, however unjustly, of Catholic tendencies. He was himself not free from the same suspicion. He was under the deepest obligations to his Catholic subjects. They had risked their persons and squandered their fortunes for him. They had fought and intrigued for him, and succoured him in distress. He owed them life and liberty. They had done so much for him that it was not unreasonable to hope that, as it was not averse to his wishes, he would do something for them.

The disappointment of the Catholic expectations was not long delayed. Whatever promises Charles had made, and whatever hopes he had fostered, were dependent upon others, and not upon himself, for fulfilment. The Restoration was a national work, and it was not in the power of the king to act openly in opposition to the nation that had restored him. Since he was not a Catholic, he was impelled to run no great risk for the interest of those who were. And it became increasingly clear that by far the greater part of the nation was in no mind to tolerate any change which would make for freedom of life and opinion for the maintainers of a religion which was feared and fiercely hated by the governing classes and by the church which aspired to govern in England. Fear of Roman Catholicism was a legacy of the dreadful days of Queen Mary and of her sister’s Protestant triumph. That legacy was a possession not of one sect or of one party alone. Cavaliers and Roundheads, Puritans and high churchmen shared it alike. So long as the Church of Rome was of a warring disposition, it was vain to expect that the English people would see in it other than an enemy. The Protestant religion was too insecurely established in the land and the memory of sudden changes and violent assaults too recent for Englishmen to harbour a spirit of liberal charity towards those who disagreed from them in matters of faith. The Catholic, who cried for present relief from an odious tyranny, appeared in their eyes as one who, were relief granted, would seize any future chance to play the tyrant himself.

No less than twelve penal statutes, of tremendous force, existed to prevent Roman Catholics from exercising influence in the state.[32] Had they been strictly executed, the Catholic religion must have been crushed out of England; but they were generally allowed to remain dormant. Even so they were a constant menace and an occasional source of more or less annoyance, varying infinitely according to time and place and the will of the authorities from an insulting reminder of Catholic inferiority to cruel and deliberate persecution. The tenor of these laws was so stringent that among moderate Protestants there were many who believed that the more obnoxious and unjust might be removed without placing a weapon of serious strength in the hands of their opponents. In the House of Lords a party was formed in favour of the Catholic and Presbyterian claims and opposed to the arrogant pretensions of the Earl of Clarendon and his followers. Clarendon’s wish was for the supremacy of his own church, but there were already not a few who had begun to view his position with jealousy. In June 1661 a committee of prominent Catholics met at Arundel House to consider their position. They presented a petition to the Lords protesting against the penalties on the refusal of Catholics to take the oaths of allegiance and supremacy, but after several debates and the lapse of more than eighteen months it was resolved that “nothing had been offered to move their lordships to alter anything in the oaths.” Nevertheless Colonel Tuke of Cressing Temple was admitted to the bar and heard against the “sanguinary laws,” and papers on the subject were laid on the table of the House. The petitioners disclaimed the Pope’s temporal authority and offered to swear “to oppose with their lives and fortunes the pontiff himself, if he should ever attempt to execute that pretended power, and to obey their sovereign in opposition to all foreign and domestic power whatsoever, without restriction.” A committee was appointed to deal with the matter, and acting on its report the Lords resolved to abolish the writ de haeretico inquirendo and the statutes making it treason to take orders in the Roman Church, as well as those making it felony to harbour Catholic priests and præmunire to maintain the authority of the Bishop of Rome.

At this point, when all seemed going well, misfortune intervened and the hopes of success were dashed to the ground. It was suggested that on account of its known activity and powers of intrigue the Society of Jesus should be excepted from the scope of the proposed measure. A heated controversy was instantly aroused. While Protestants and many Catholics demanded that the Jesuits should accept the situation and retire gracefully to win advantages for their brothers in religion, members of the society retorted that a conspiracy was on foot to divide the body Catholic against itself, and that it was not for the general good to accept favours at the price of sacrificing the most able and flourishing order of the church. It soon became evident that the Jesuits were not to be moved. Their struggle in England had been hard. Their position among English Catholics was one of great importance. They would not now surrender it for the sake of a partial and problematical success from the enjoyment of which they were themselves to be excluded. The time when affairs were still unsettled was rather one at which they should be spurred to greater efforts.

Without the compliance of the Jesuits the moderate Catholics could do nothing. A feeling of disgust at the selfish policy of the society found free expression. It seemed that its members would never consider the interest of others before their own. Nevertheless there was no remedy; the committee at Arundel House was dissolved; at the request of the Catholic peers the progress of the bill of relief in the House of Lords was suspended, and it was never resumed.[33]