A Candid History of the Jesuits

by Joseph McCabe

Parsons was now recalled from Spain and political intrigue to deal with this new menace. He had spent several years in Spain, founding new English colleges (at Valladolid, Seville, and Madrid) under his own control and working out his learned theory that the crown of England belonged of strict right to Spain. He failed to induce Philip to send a second Armada, and now devoted himself to proving that the Infanta was the heir to the crown of England. That is the idea of the book, A Conference on the Succession, which he published, anonymously, in 1594: a year after the fifth General Congregation of his Society had once more sternly decreed that no Jesuit must meddle with politics.

In 1597 he reached Rome and quickly pacified the students of the college. Some of them, it seems, thought that he ought to be made a cardinal for his great services, and he hastened, with tearful eyes, to ask the Pope to spare him that dignity; and we will trust that he was relieved when the Pope coldly observed that he had not had the least idea of imposing it on him. They then turned to the great question of Wisbeach, and the settlement of it doubly interests us; partly because a Jesuit supremacy in Wisbeach might be a good precedent for the time when a Catholic monarch succeeded Elizabeth, and partly because it throws a very singular light on Jesuit procedure.

The Jesuits submitted that the clerical prisoners in England desired some kind of canonical leader. Clement VIII., who had, like his great predecessor Sixtus V., had some alarming experience of the state of the Jesuits (as we shall see later), required proof of this. They brought before him certain English priests, friendly to themselves, who assured the Pope that there was no discord in their ranks in England; the largeness of their "mental reservation" may be judged from the fact that a later inquiry showed that 343 out of the 400 priests in England were against the Jesuit proposal. The Pope was deceived, and he yielded to Parsons's suggestion to make George Blackwell, a former student under the Jesuits, "Archpriest" of the English clergy. Blackwell went to England to exercise this newly invented authority, and Parsons returned to his plots. He had then several secretaries to conduct his enormous correspondence, and he was so sure of a Catholic succession to the throne that he marked out various houses in London for use as Jesuit colleges.

After a time there came to Rome some of the English clergy, saying that they had received the Archpriest with amazement, and begging the Pope to withdraw him. The Pope was not in Rome, and Parsons took care that they should not reach him. He induced the papal authorities to arrest them, as rebels, and lodge them in the college controlled by the Jesuits; and when they persisted in appealing to a Roman tribunal, he secured the dismissal of the appeal. Later, a fresh batch of appellants came to Rome, and Parsons knew that their evidence would be very damning. Not only had the Jesuits, who controlled the moneys gathered for the support of the imprisoned priests, attempted to use this power to subdue them, but when the Pope had ordered that no more pamphlets should be written on the subject, Blackwell had refrained from publishing the decree until Parsons had time to issue one; and this one mendaciously purported to have been written by some "priests united in due subordination to the Archpriest." The secular priests had appealed to Elizabeth, and she had actually heard and set four of them at liberty, in order that they might plead their cause at Rome. They now had the support of the French embassy, and, in spite of all the libels which Parsons circulated concerning them and the English clergy generally, they won a partial victory. Blackwell was to remain Archpriest, but he was not to consult the Jesuits.

From this domestic but instructive feud we return to the action of the Jesuits in England. Under ten different names Garnet had continued, amid a hundred adventures, to elude his pursuers, and his colleagues were only a little less active. We cannot, however, do more here than attempt to trace their share in the political scheming which culminated in the Gunpowder Plot. The Jesuits in England carried out the suggestion of Parsons that, instead of putting their faith in the eventual accession and conversion of James of Scotland, they should teach the Catholics to look to Philip. In December 1601 we find Garnet meeting Catesby, Tresham, and Winter in the house of Anne Vaux at Enfield Chase, and discussing the question of a mission to Spain. The issue of it was that Winter and Father Greenway went to Madrid, and obtained a large sum of money from Philip III. It was intended for the relief of the poor Catholics, Garnet afterwards said: in which case we do not very well understand why he "misliked" the expedition, as he says.

Elizabeth died on 24th March 1603, and James Stuart peacefully acceded to the throne. We need not stop to consider the shifts by which Parsons now sought the favour of James; he had, he boldly and untruthfully said, abandoned the idea of a Spanish succession at the death of Philip II. in 1598. James was not to be deceived, and, in his negotiations with Rome, made a point of having the Jesuits excluded. The conflicting counsels in regard to the Catholics ended, as is known, in a decision to tolerate lay Catholics, but not priests, and the bitter agitation began which led up to the famous plot. Catesby and Winter conceived the horrible idea of blowing up the Parliament House when the King, the Royal Family, and the Lords and Commons were assembled in it for the opening of Parliament. Guy Fawkes, Thomas Percy, and J. Wright were admitted to the secret, and in March 1604 they met and swore to accomplish the plot. In an adjoining room a priest said mass for them, and Fawkes and Winter afterwards said that this priest was Father Gerard; Gerard, however, denied this, and the point is not important, since it is not at all probable that Gerard was ever admitted to the secret, and no priest knew of the plot until long afterwards. Gerard's idea was that toleration could be bought, but he failed even to find the money. For more than a year and a half the conspirators brooded over their ghastly scheme, and made preparations for carrying it out; and on 5th November 1605 Fawkes was arrested in the cellar beneath the House beside a mass of powder.

It is agreed that no Jesuit inspired this plot; the point we have to determine is whether the Jesuits were aware of the plot and acquiesced in it by their silence. The whole subject has been fully and repeatedly discussed, and I propose to rely almost entirely on the "Declarations" which Father Garnet addressed to the authorities during his trial and imprisonment. [16] The living Jesuit, Father Gerard, may express an ingenuous doubt whether there ever was a Gunpowder Plot at all; his predecessor of the seventeenth century, who ought to know, was concerned only to extricate himself, by a series of confessions, evasions, and untruths to which no parallel can be found in the history of martyrs, from the very grave moral and legal charge of having known that this horrible slaughter was contemplated and made no effort to disclose or prevent it.

Garnet confesses that on 9th June 1605 Catesby came to his lodging, at a costermonger's house in Thames Street, and, "finding me alone," asked if, "in case it were lawful to kill a person or persons, it were necessary to regard the innocents who were present." The Jesuit replied that the killing of innocent people in a lawful attack upon others was not immoral; he pointed out that soldiers had often, in besieging a town, to slay the civilian with the soldier. He professes in his declaration that he had no idea that Catesby had in mind an actual plot to be carried out in England. He had written to Parsons a few weeks before that many of the Catholic laymen were "offended with the Jesuits" on the ground that they "hindered forcible enterprises"; and he would have us believe that when one of these laymen, whose character he knew well, finding him alone, puts to him a singularly abstract question of this nature, it does not even occur to him that he has a "forcible enterprise" in mind. When Catesby was leaving, however, he assured Garnet that he would under no circumstances betray that he had consulted the Jesuit. Even then the innocent Jesuit failed to understand, and it was only on reflection, he says, that he thought it possible that Catesby was plotting. He therefore felt it to be his duty to "admonish" Catesby, the next time he met him, that he "must first look to the lawfulness of the act itself, and then he must not have so little regard of innocence that he spare not friends and necessary persons for a Commonwealth, and told him what charge we had of all quietness, and to procure the like in others."

Even if we suppose that this "admonition" was really given to Catesby as he describes it—one hesitates, because Garnet's conduct throughout is a classical example of casuistic perversion of truth—we can readily believe that Catesby took it very lightly, as Garnet says. Even if we could bring ourselves to admit that Garnet at the secret interview saw only an innocent and abstract moral issue, such as might be discussed in an open drawing-room, in Catesby's question, and therefore unwittingly sanctioned a bloody massacre, it is certain that he perceived on reflection that some such massacre was contemplated; yet he can only warn him to have regard for "friends and necessary persons," and feebly remind him of their duty of "quietness." Indeed in July, he confesses, he received "a very earnest letter" from General Acquaviva, who said, on behalf of the Pope, that they were vaguely conscious that something was contemplated by the English Catholics, and that the Pope and Acquaviva himself rigorously forbade any recourse to violence, as it would do more harm than good. He showed this letter to Catesby, because, he says, "I doubted he had some device in his head." Catesby admitted that he had, and offered to tell it to him. He refused to hear it, and merely stipulated that a layman should be sent to the Continent to learn if it were true that the Pope would not disapprove: a mission which, as Garnet knew, had no issue.