III.
Two years after his restoration to the throne, and under the influence, probably, of the queen-mother and the queen-consort, he resolved to open with the Holy See a negotiation which he hoped might lead to the restoration of the English people to religious unity. It was necessary to proceed with the greatest caution. He chose for his envoy Sir Richard Bellings—the same to whom he afterward intrusted the most secret and delicate of his missions to the court of Louis XIV. Sir Richard set out for Italy under pretext of attending to affairs of his own; and as soon as he could do so safely, he quietly went to Rome. His first business was to ask for a cardinal's hat for Louis Stuart, duke of Richmond and Lennox, better known under the name of the Abbé d'Aubigny. He was a near relative of the king's, and had been summoned from Paris to fulfil the functions of grand almoner to Queen Catharine. Charles wished to place under his charge the affairs of the Church in Great Britain. A memoir on this subject was drawn up for Bellings by Lord Chancellor Clarendon, and copied by Clarendon's son. It is dated October 25, 1662. Each leaf is authenticated by the royal signature. A minute of the instructions given by Charles to his ambassador is preserved at Rome. It can only have been drawn up by Sir Richard himself:
"1. His majesty solicits this promotion for the advantage of his kingdom, and in order to give the Catholic party an authorized chief, intimately united with the sovereign by the ties of blood, and upon whom he can depend securely under all circumstances. The king, to quote his own words, sees in the elevation of the Abbé d'Aubigny to the cardinalship an essential condition to the good understanding which ought to exist between [{580}] the Pope and his majesty; he deems this a measure of the last importance for the welfare of his Roman Catholic subjects throughout his dominions.'
"2. The cardinal once appointed, his majesty engages to support him in the style which his dignity and his relationship to the sovereign demand."
The Holy Father summoned a secret congregation of cardinals to consider the matter, and also appointed a council of theologians, who were instructed to draw up their opinion in a careful report. In this document we find a careful resume of the "Benefits which the Catholics of England have received from his Britannic majesty."' They approved of the proposed appointment; but unfortunately the Abbé d'Aubigny was given to the errors of the Port Royalists, and the Pope felt compelled to refuse Charles's request. He refused, however, with so much delicacy, and gave such good reasons for the refusal, that the king, instead of breaking off intercourse with the Holy See, as he had threatened to do, ordered Bellings to proceed to the second object of his mission. This was nothing less than the conversion of the king and the reconciliation of his realms to the Roman Church.
IV.
Sir Richard was instructed to treat directly with the Holy Father, and the number of counsellors whom the Pope might call to his assistance was to be strictly limited. On the side of the English there is every reason to believe that nobody was in the secret except the king, the two queens, the envoy, and the person—whoever he may have been—who drew up the document which we shall presently have occasion to quote. Clarendon certainly knew nothing about it; he was ready to assist in the promotion of d'Aubigny; but he was a stern enemy of the Catholics, and even before Sir Richard's return we find him opposing in parliament a proposal of his sovereign's for granting liberty of conscience to dissenters.
There is no doubt that Charles II. himself made known to the Holy Father his intention of becoming a Catholic and re-establishing Catholicism as an authorized form of worship in his kingdom. There is, moreover, no doubt that Pope Alexander VII. replied to him. This is all that we can now affirm with certainty; and we should not have known even this if the king had not mentioned it incidentally in one of his letters to Father Paul Oliva.
The absence of these two letters is much to be regretted; but we have fortunately at hand a document of still greater value. This is the profession of faith presented in the name of the English monarch as the basis of a concordat:
"Proposition on the part of Charles II., king of Great Britain, for the much-to-be-desired reunion of his three kingdoms of England, Scotland, and Ireland with the apostolic and Roman see.
"His majesty, the king, and all who aspire to the unity of the Catholic Church, will accept the profession of faith drawn up by Pope Pius IV. after the decisions of the Council of Trent, and with it all the other decrees respecting faith or discipline enacted either by the aforesaid council or by any other general council, as well as the decisions of the last two pontiffs in the affair of Jansenius; reserving to himself, however, as is done in France and some other places, certain special rights and certain customs which usage has sanctioned in our own particular Church. These various decrees are to be understood with the restrictions which other oecumenical councils have, prudently no doubt and after mature consideration, imposed upon them, as the aforesaid profession of faith proves. Whence it follows that, except within these limits, nothing may henceforth be imposed upon or prescribed to either the king or any of his Catholic subjects; and [{581}] that it shall not be imputed to them as a crime or a favoring of heresy should they have occasion to declare their mind upon matters of this sort. Under these conditions his majesty is ready to break at once with all Protestant societies and all sects separated from the Roman Church, and to withdraw from their communion. He declares his detestation in particular of the schism and deplorable heresies originated by Luther, Zwingle, Calvin, Memnon, Socinus, Browin, and other equally perverse sectaries. Better than any one else, he knows by sad experience in his own kingdom what a deluge of calamities, what revolutions, what a Babel-confusion this pretended Reformation (which might better be called a deformation) has entailed in politics as well as in religion; so much so that these three kingdoms, and especially England, are, in both secular and sacred affairs, nothing but a theatre of frightful disturbances, which hold the entire world chained with attention and dismay."