The two met again at Uxbridge in October, when Elizabeth had issued a third proclamation against them, and the search was being pressed vigorously. Campion returned to the provinces, and Parsons decided to remain in or near London. He had a bold design of setting up a press and stealthily issuing Catholic books, but it is reasonable to believe that he was now becoming convinced that only a large political action could save the faith in England. He saw much of the Spanish ambassador, Mendoza, even living in the embassy as a servant for a time; and from his conversations with Mendoza we may confidently date that idea of a Spanish invasion of England which was to dominate the remainder of his unfortunate life and cause incalculable mischief. Not only the general rule of his Society, but a most explicit command laid on him by Mercurian when he left Rome, forbade him to meddle with politics, yet he gradually became wholly absorbed in a political and treacherous project, and we may safely date its birth about this time.
Somewhere out of London—at East Ham, Simpson conjectures—he set up his press, and infuriated the Council by disseminating books which their advisers pronounced to have been printed in England. Hundreds of arrests were made, the rack was busy at the Tower, and the laws were made more drastic; yet the "howling wolf" (Parsons) and the "wandering vagrant" (Campion), as they were described in a debate in Parliament, continued to evade the zealous officers. Two other Jesuits, Cottam and Bosgrave, who attempted to join them, were arrested at once and put in the Tower; while the Irish Jesuit, O'Donnell, was hanged, drawn, and quartered at Cork.
In the early part of 1581 Fathers Holt and Heywood penetrated the Protestant defences and joined Parsons. He sent Holt on to Scotland, to further the political scheme he now cherished, and later had Father Crichton sent on direct to Edinburgh from Rouen. A genial page of Mr. Andrew Lang's History of Scotland (ii. 282) tells how these Jesuits "let the pigs run through the job" in Scotland. The romance of hiding in Holyrood and assisting the great enterprise of the invasion of England seems to have exalted them, and they gave Mary, whom they would rescue, a very poor opinion of their qualities as diplomatists. They made airy promises of armies, to be provided by some foreign power, until at last even Mendoza begged them to confine themselves to the saving of souls and leave State affairs to statesmen. Father Hay, another Scottish Jesuit who joined them, advocated the assassination of the leading Protestant nobles. These Jesuits returned in the course of time to the Continent; Father Ogilvie, in 1615, was the only Catholic who was executed on the ground of religion in Scotland after a formal trial.
To return to England, Parsons found in the early spring of 1581 that his lodging in East Ham was suspected, and he moved the press to Dame Stonor's park near Henley, where Campion came to control the printing of his Ten Reasons: a Latin work, not hampered by modesty, which greatly stirred the Protestant divines of the time. Gilbert, who was now under surveillance and had lost most of his property in the cause, was sent to Rome to report that 20,000 Catholics had been added to the list of the faithful in a year—a quite incredible number, as only 50,000 recusants were known to the Council in the whole of England. On 11th July the two comrades parted, for the last time; Campion was caught at Lyford in Berkshire about a week afterwards. He had imprudently returned to a house at which he had ministered, and the officers closed round it. For a day and a night Campion lay hidden in the "priest's hole," but the officers at last discovered him, and sent him to London, conspicuously labelled "Campion the seditious Jesuit." We will not linger over the racking, the thrusting of spikes between his fingers and nails, and the other horrible devices by which the Council sought to extract a betrayal of others; though we might remind those who, like Crétineau-Joly, speak of these things as the hideous inventions of Protestant hatred, that these appalling instruments were, on the contrary, already stained with Protestant blood. Campion's great courage wavered under the long and terrible strain, and he supplied a few names of Catholic houses, to the great scandal of the faithful at the time; but he expiated his momentary weakness, on 1st December, by meeting with great bravery the ghastly death of a "traitor" at Tyburn. One of the two secular priests who were condemned to die with him, Father Briant, was admitted by him to the Society the night before the execution, and died a Jesuit. Father Cottam was executed in the following May (1582).
Parsons left Henley, where his press was discovered a month later, and went into Sussex. The secular clergy were now so eager to get the Jesuits out of England that some of them threatened to betray him, and he went to France in March. Probably the feeling that he could promote his political scheme more effectively on the Continent had more to do with his flight than the fear of death or the pressure of the secular clergy. He remained at Rouen, smuggling English books from there into England and doing all that he could to press the Scottish enterprise. It was from Rouen that he sent Crichton into Scotland, and he was in constant correspondence with Mendoza and the Duke of Guise, who would help in the enterprise. Crichton presently returned to tell of the large and imprudent offers of help he had made to Lennox in Scotland, and they decided to make an effort to get armies for the rescue of Mary Stuart. Crichton was sent to Rome, and Parsons went to Madrid.
The chief interest of the work of the English Jesuits remains with the indefatigable Parsons on the Continent during the next five years, and a few words will suffice to tell the story of his colleagues in England. Besides two secular priests, Metham and Pound, who were admitted to the Society in prison, and Emerson, who was in prison (and remained there for twenty years), Heywood was now the only Jesuit in England; Holt had been captured in Scotland, and sent back to the Continent. Heywood caused a great deal of irritation by his masterful ways, and the secular priests indignantly describe him as driving in a luxurious coach, like a baron, and living so comfortably that he contracted gout. He was recalled to the Continent, but was captured and kept in the Clink until 1585, when he was banished. His place as Vice-Prefect of the mission—Parsons was Prefect—was taken by Father Weston, a new arrival, whose powers in expelling demons were so singular and spectacular that he used to take possessed persons about with him in his stealthy visits to the Catholic gentry, and give most amazing displays—until it was discovered that the "mediums" were frauds. It had paid them, apparently, to swallow nauseous drugs and allow themselves to be mauled by Father Weston. He was captured and lodged in Wisbeach Castle in 1587, but Fathers Garnet and Southwell had then arrived, as we shall see presently. We must follow the feverish political activity of Parsons, which culminates in the sending of the Armada.
From Paris Parsons had made a swift journey, on horseback, to Madrid, where he greatly impressed Philip II. By this time, at least, Parsons deliberately advocated the transfer of the English crown to Philip, and was therefore a traitor to his country and to the rules of his Society. He obtained from Philip a large sum of money for James of Scotland, a pension for the seminary at Rheims, and a promise that Spanish influence would support his claim of a red hat for Allen: he was anxious to remove Allen from the colleges he had founded, so that the Jesuits could control the supply of priests to England. A severe illness kept him for some months in Spain, but he was back at Paris in May 1583. During the summer he was in close correspondence with Guise and d'Alencon, who were now advocating and plotting the assassination of Elizabeth as the simplest solution of the situation. In August Parsons went to Rome, to excuse his activity, which scandalised the Parisian Jesuits, and to induce the Pope to subsidise the Scottish expedition and remove Allen to a loftier sphere. He returned in the autumn, having secured a bishopric for Allen and another pension for the college at Rheims. In spite of the protests of the French Jesuits he continued to pursue his plots. The French dukes withdrew from the enterprise, and the Spanish King was now quite willing to move, if the Pope would be generous with funds. Gregory died in the spring of 1585, and Parsons and Allen went to Rome to win the new Pope, Sixtus V.
There is at this date, and during the next few years, no room for doubt about the aim of Parsons. We have it repeatedly in his own words that he worked to seat Philip on the throne of England, and he shrewdly advised Philip to conceal his intention, from the English Catholics, Scotland, France, and the Papacy, until his expedition was successful. The death of Mary Stuart did not disturb him, and he gradually discarded the idea of attacking through Scotland. Philip was to make a direct attack, and the English Catholics were to be instructed to look to Philip, not as a future king, but as restorer of the faith. All the world knows the result. The great Armada (with several Jesuits on board) sank to the bottom of the Channel, and Parsons had the mortification of learning that even Catholics had loyally taken arms to repel the Spaniard. There ended the second phase of his remarkable career, and we may return to England.
In July 1586 Henry Garnet and R. Southwell landed on the Norfolk coast, as Dr. Jessopp so finely tells, and resumed the work which I have previously described. Garnet was, if somewhat less boisterous and masterful, the new Parsons; Southwell, a retiring and amiable man, the new Campion. As Weston was arrested in 1587, Garnet became Vice-Prefect. In the following year John Gerard and Edward Oldcorne joined them, and the story of adventurous ministration went on. On one occasion the four Jesuits were nearly caught in a batch, saying mass in a Catholic house; and in 1594 Garnet was caught and imprisoned for three years. He escaped from the Tower, with outside assistance, in 1597, and returned to work. Southwell was betrayed by a Catholic lady in 1592, and, after three years in the Tower, was executed at Tyburn in 1595. In the same year Henry Walpole was arrested on arrival, and executed at York. Father Greenway was the only other Jesuit to enter the country before 1600, and we must leave these fathers pursuing their adventurous work and consider the growing quarrel of the Jesuits and the secular clergy.
That long and interesting story must be told very briefly here. Wisbeach Castle had been chosen as a prison for captured priests, and when Weston arrived there in 1587, he very plainly tried to assume a leadership. As his various suggestions were rejected, he made a party among the priest-prisoners, got himself appointed director of it, and initiated a bitter and prolonged feud which spread far beyond the walls of Wisbeach. To the secular priests' charges of arrogance and ambition, the Jesuit writers retort that even in jail the English priests were so prone to drunkenness, gambling, and immorality that Father Weston was forced to live apart with the more virtuous. A profane historian must not attempt to judge between them. It is enough that, especially in the years 1595-1597, reports of violent quarrels reached Rome; and these coincided with complaints from Belgium of the behaviour of Father Holt (who had been sent as agent of Philip II. to Brussels and was denounced to the authorities for his violent political partisanship), and another rebellion of the students of the Roman college. Not only did these complain of their Jesuit masters, but they occasionally fell into the hands of the papal police in wine-shops and other improper places, and were found to be a very poor and undisciplined body of youths. Mr. Law insists that the Jesuits kept the English priests at a low level of culture in order to control or overshadow them the more easily.