Both of his proper work, and his cattel.—S. Anselm.
A Dark Chapter In English History.[103]
One of the most gratifying features of the literature of the present, and one that in some measure compensates us for the evils produced by the many worthless books that are still allowed to issue from the press, is its tendency by close investigation and collation to vindicate the truth of modern history, and especially of that portion of it directly or indirectly relating to the XVIth century. Gradually, but most effectually, the inventions and gross calumnies of the post-Reformation writers are being dissipated, and the meretricious grandeur with which the characters and acts of the anti-Catholic sovereigns, statesmen, and generals of that eventful period were designedly clothed, has been stripped off, revealing to their descendants the deformity and impiety of the heroes of the Reformation. Whether we turn to England or Germany, Edinburgh or Geneva, we find the men and women who in our own school-boy days we were urged to regard as patterns of patriotism and morality, become under the scrutiny of living historiographers the veriest counterfeits—the prey of passion and the untiring enemies of every principle of government and religion which we are bound to respect. Yet this is what, logically, we might have anticipated. A bad cause needs to be sustained by vicious instruments; but so closely and consistently has the web of falsehood been woven around the true designs and actions of the reformers that it required the labor of many skilful and patient hands to undo the meshes and reduce the fabric, so dexterously spun, to its original elements. This is peculiarly difficult with the works of English historians and biographers of the past three centuries, whose unanimity in magnifying the virtues and screening the crimes of their public men is so remarkable as to utterly destroy the value of their works as authorities among people of other nations. The beastly vices of the eighth Henry were, of course, so glaring that they could neither be denied nor extenuated; but who would expect to find that his worthy daughter Elizabeth, the “virgin queen” and Gloriana, before whose benign altar even Shakespeare offered the incense of his flattery, should at this remote period be discovered to be: as a woman ugly, ill-tempered, and unchaste, and as a ruler fickle, cruel, cold-blooded, and thoroughly despotic. James I., the head of a long line of gallant princes, to whom his pliant prelates attributed “divine illumination,” and subsequent historians praised for his learning and wit, we at length know to have been a miser and a charlatan, as deformed in mind as he was uncouth in person. “His cowardice,” says his compatriot and co-religionist Macaulay, “his childishness, his pedantry, his ungainly person and manners, his provincial accent, made him an object of derision” to his English subjects. The unscrupulous Northampton and the subtle Cecil, the trusted ministers of [pg 177] both sovereigns, who had long been regarded as the unswerving champions of English independence and the bulwark of Protestant ascendency, are now proved to have been all along the paid tools of Catholic Spain, with whose ill-gotten gold their lofty palaces were built and their luxurious wants regularly supplied.[104] The chivalrous and romantic Raleigh of other days, examined by the inexorable scrutiny of the XIXth century, turns out a spy in the pay of a foreign and by no means friendly power; the philosophic Bacon, a common peculator; and Coke, the father of English common law, a falsifier of sworn evidence and a concocter of legal conspiracies against the liberties of his countrymen. Yet these were the leading personages, who, with many others equally corrupt, in their day and generation swayed the destinies of England, desolated the church of God, originated or abetted plots and schemes, at home and abroad, for the spoliation and extermination of the professors of the ancient faith.
This tardy measure of historical justice is partly due to the appearance in different parts of Europe of important public and private documents and correspondence, which have shamed British Protestant authors into something like truthfulness, but principally to the revival of Catholicity in England, which has been the means of drawing out a mass of original and reliable information, that had long been allowed to slumber in the dark closets of a few noble families or in inaccessible libraries during the gloomy era of persecution and proscription. Our readers are already familiar with the articles which formerly appeared in these columns on the long-unsettled and vexed question of the character of Mary, Queen of Scots, and the justice or injustice of her treatment by Elizabeth—contributions to current literature which in their collective form have found their way among the literati of all nations, and, from their admirable cogency of argument and conscientious appeals to contemporary authorities, have at length cleared away from the character of that ill-starred lady the foul aspersions and unexampled obloquy heaped on it by the minions of the English sovereign.
Some more recent publications have thrown additional light on the tragic incidents of her reign and of that of her successor James, which, as far as they relate to the Catholics of Great Britain, are full of freshness and interest. Chief among them is the Life of Father John Gerard, for many years a Jesuit missionary in England under both rulers, with his account of the celebrated Gunpowder Plot, written soon after the failure of that conspiracy. Many of the participants in the plot were personally known to him, and he himself was accused of having taken an active part in its formation; but, though his name has been frequently mentioned in connection with it and his manuscript narrative more or less correctly quoted, it remained for a member of his Order, the Rev. John Morris, the able editor of the book before us, to present to the world for the first time the only complete and accurate history of an event which has been the fruitful subject of misrepresentation and comment by every writer on English history for the last two hundred years.
Few incidents of modern times can be said to have provoked more hostility [pg 178] to the church and the Jesuit Order than the Gunpowder Plot, few have been so dexterously used by the enemies of Catholicity to poison the public mind against the priesthood, and none the details of which are so little understood even at the present day by friends and foes. The 5th of November, the anniversary of its discovery, has long been a gala-day with the more ignorant of the British populace; Protestant writers, divines, and politicians of the lower sort are not yet tired of alluding to the time when, as they are wont to allege, the Catholics by one fell swoop attempted to destroy king, lords, and commons; and even Lingard and Tiernay, with the very best intentions and after considerable examination of authorities, give a partial assent to the old popular conviction that, in some way or another, the Jesuits were at the bottom of the diabolical scheme, which in reality was the creation of a handful of desperate laymen. In fact, the former, with a penetration totally at variance with his general character, alludes to the taking of the oath of secrecy by Catesby and his companions in terms that would lead any superficial reader to adopt this absurd hypothesis. “All five,” he says, “having previously sworn each other to secrecy, received in confirmation of their oath the sacrament at the hands of the Jesuit missionary Father Gerard.”[105] It is true that in a subsequent edition of his History he endeavored to explain away, but in a very unsatisfactory manner, the implication of guilty knowledge on the part of Gerard; but, whether from an imperfect acquaintance with the writings of that priest, then unpublished, or from that spirit of timidity which too often characterized the conduct of the English Catholics of the last generation, his refutation is not of that full and hearty nature which might be expected from so clear and critical a scholar.
What Dr. Lingard was unwilling or unable to undertake may now, in view of more complete evidence, be accomplished by persons of lesser erudition, who, untrammelled by national partiality, are not alarmed at popular clamor or unwilling to disturb time-honored but unfounded historical fallacies. We design, therefore, in this article to prove:
1. That the Gunpowder Plot was formed and carried out to its disastrous end by not more than a dozen desperate men, the victims of unrelenting persecution for conscience' sake.
2. That the Catholic body in England, lay and clerical, till its discovery, neither were aware of its existence, approved of its aims, nor rendered any assistance to its projectors.