It was in this school of statesmanship that Sir Robert Cecil—as he was in Elizabeth’s reign—had been brought up, and it was hardly likely that he would be willing to act otherwise than his father had done. It was, indeed, hard to see how the quarrel was to be lifted out of the groove into which it had sunk. How could statesmen be assured that, if the priests and Jesuits were allowed to extend their religious influence freely, the result would not be the destruction of the existing political system? That Cecil would have solved the problem is in any case most unlikely. It was, perhaps, too difficult to be as yet solved by any one, and Cecil was no man of genius to lead his age. Yet there were two things which made for improvement. In the first place, the English Government was immensely stronger at Elizabeth’s death than it had been at her accession, and those who sat at the helm could therefore regard, with some amount of equanimity, dangers that had appalled their predecessors forty-five years before. The other cause for hope lay in the accession of a new sovereign; James had never been the subject of Papal excommunication as Elizabeth had been, and was consequently not personally committed to extreme views.
James’s character and actions lend themselves so easily to the caricaturist, and so much that he did was the result either of egotistic vanity or of a culpable reluctance to take trouble, that it is difficult to give him credit for the good qualities that he really possessed. Yet hazy as his opinions in many respects were, it is easy to trace through his whole career a tolerably consistent principle. He would have been pleased to put an end, not indeed to the religious dispute, but to the political antagonism between those who were divided in religion, and would gladly have laid aside the weapon of persecution for that of argument. The two chief actions of his reign in England were the attempt to secure religious peace for his own dominions by an understanding with the Pope, and the attempt to secure a cessation of religious wars in Europe by an understanding with the King of Spain. In both cases is revealed a desire to obtain the co-operation of the leader of the party opposed to himself. Of course it is possible, perhaps even right, to say that this line of action was hopeless from the beginning, as involving too sanguine an estimate of the conciliatory feelings of those for whose co-operation he was looking. All that we are here concerned with is to point out that James brought with him ideas on the subject of the relations between an English—and, for the matter of that, a Scottish—king and the papacy, which were very different from those in which Cecil had been trained.
On the other hand, James’s ideas, even when they had the element of greatness in them, never lifted him into greatness. He looked upon large principles in a small way, usually regarding them through the medium of his own interests. The doctrine that the national government ought to be supreme, took in his mind the shape of a belief that his personal government ought to be supreme. When in Scotland he sought an understanding with the Pope, his own succession to the English Crown occupied the foreground, and the advantage of having the English Catholics on his side made him eager to strike a bargain. On the other hand, he refused to strike that bargain unless his own independent position were fully recognised. When, in 1599, he despatched Edward Drummond to Italy, he instructed him to do everything in his power to procure the elevation of a Scottish Bishop of Vaison to the Cardinalate, in order that he might advocate his interests at Rome. Yet he refused to write directly to the Pope himself, merely because he objected to address him as ‘Holy Father.’[218] It was hardly the precise objection that would have been taken by a man of greater practical ability.
Nor was it only on niceties of this sort that James’s desire to come to some sort of understanding with the Pope was likely to be wrecked. His correspondence with Cecil during the last years of Elizabeth, shows how little he had grasped the special difficulties of the situation, whilst on the other hand it throws light on the shades of difference between himself and his future minister. In a letter written to Cecil in the spring of 1602, James objects to the immediate conclusion of a peace with Spain on three grounds, the last being that the ‘Jesuits, seminary priests, and that rabble, wherewith England is already too much infected, would then resort there in such swarms as the caterpillars or flies did in Egypt, no man any more abhorring them, since the Spanish practices was the greatest crime that ever they were attainted of, which now by this peace will utterly be forgotten.’
“And now,” he proceeds, “since I am upon this subject, let the proofs ye have had of my loving confidence in you plead for an excuse to my plainness, if I freely show you that I greatly wonder from whence it can proceed that not only so great a flock of Jesuits and priests dare both resort and remain in England, but so proudly do use their functions through all the parts of England without any controlment or punishment these divers years past: it is true that for remedy thereof there is a proclamation lately set forth, but blame me not for longing to hear of the exemplary execution thereof, ne sit lex mortua. I know it may be justly thought that I have the like beam in my own eye, but alas, it is a far more barbarous and stiffnecked people that I rule over. St. George surely rides upon a towardly riding horse, where I am daily bursting in daunting a wild unruly colt, and I protest in God’s presence the daily increase that I hear of popery in England, and the proud vauntery that the papists makes daily there of their power, their increase, and their combined faction, that none shall enter to be King there but by their permission; this their bragging, I say, is the cause that moves me, in the zeal of my religion, and in that natural love I owe to England, to break forth in this digression, and to forewarn you of these apparent evils.”
To this Cecil replied as follows:—
“For the matter of priests, I will also clearly deliver your Majesty my mind. I condemn their doctrine, I detest their conversation, and I foresee the peril which the exercise of their function may bring to this island, only I confess that I shrink to see them die by dozens, when (at the last gasp) they come so near loyalty, only because I remember that mine own voice, amongst others, to the law (for their death) in Parliament, was led by no other principle than that they were absolute seducers of the people from temporal obedience, and consequent persuaders to rebellion, and which is more, because that law had a retrospective to all priests made twenty years before. But contrary-wise for that generation of vipers (the Jesuits) who make no more ordinary merchandise of anything than of the blood and crowns of princes, I am so far from any compassion, as I rather look to receive commandment from you to abstain than prosecute.”
This plain language drove James to reconsider his position.
“The fear,” he replied, “I have to be mistaken by you in that part of my last letter wherein I discover the desire I have to see the last edict against Jesuits and priests put in execution; the fear, I say, of your misconstruing my meaning hereon (as appears by your answer), enforceth me in the very throng of my greatest affairs to pen by post an answer and clear resolution of my intention. I did ever hate alike both extremities in any case, only allowing the midst for virtue, as by my book now lately published doth plainly appear. The like course do I hold in this particular. I will never allow in my conscience that the blood of any man shall be shed for diversity of opinions in religion, but I would be sorry that Catholics should so multiply as they might be able to practise their old principles upon us. I will never agree that any should die for error in faith against the first table, but I think they should not be permitted to commit works of rebellion against the second table. I would be sorry by the sword to diminish their number, but I would also be loth that, by so great connivance and oversight given unto them, their numbers should so increase in that land as by continual multiplication they might at least become masters, having already such a settled monarchy amongst them, as their archpriest with his twelve apostles keeping their terms in London, and judging all questions as well civil as spiritual amongst all Catholics. It is for preventing of their multiplying, and new set up empire, that I long to see the execution of the last edict against them, not that thereby I wish to have their heads divided from their bodies, but that I would be glad to have both their heads and bodies separated from this whole island and safely transported beyond seas, where they may freely glut themselves upon their imaginated gods. No! I am so far from any intention of persecution, as I protest to God I reverence their Church as our Mother Church, although clogged with many infirmities and corruptions, besides that I did ever hold persecution as one of the infallible notes of a false church. I only wish that such order might be taken as the land might be purged of such great flocks of them that daily diverts the souls of many from the sincerity of the Gospel, and withal, that some means might be found for debarring their entry again, at least in so great swarms. And as for the distinction of their ranks, I mean between the Jesuits and the secular priests, although I deny not that the Jesuits, like venomed wasps and firebrands of sedition, are far more intolerable than the other sort that seem to profess loyalty, yet is their so plausible profession the more to be distrusted that like married women or minors, whose vows are ever subject to the controlment of their husbands and tutors,[219] their consciences must ever be commanded and overruled by their Romish god as it pleases him to allow or revoke their conclusions.”[220]
The agreement and disagreement between the two writers is easily traced in these words. Both are averse to persecute for religion. Both are afraid lest the extension of the firmly organised Roman Church should be dangerous to the State as well as to religion. On the other hand, whilst Cecil is content to plod on in the old ways, James vaguely adumbrates some scheme by which the priests, being banished, might be kept from returning, and thus the chance of a dangerous growth of their religion being averted, it would be possible to protect the existing forms of government without having recourse to the old persecuting laws. We feel, in reading James’s words, that we are reading the phrases of a pedant who has not imagination enough to see how his scheme would work out in real life; but at all events we have before us, as we so often have in James’s writings, a glimpse of new possibilities, and a desire to escape from old entanglements.