Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 3.djvu/47

1606.] had written to the north to his servants to tell them to take care that Percy did not carry off his money; thus, it was argued, showing more regard for his money than his king, On such miserable grounds, totally unsupported by fact, he was sentenced to pay a fine of thirty thousand pounds, to be deprived of all his offices, held incapable of ever holding them again, and to be detained in the Tower during life. The public was greatly astonished at the severity of this punishment, which nothing but private motives could explain.

The earl passed his time in his captivity in literary and scientific pursuits, and in the society of the most distinguished men of the age. His liberality to men of genius and learning was extraordinary. The number of mathematicians who were his associates and entertained at his table, gave him the title of Henry the Wizard. Hill, Allen, Hariot, Dee, Torperly, and Warner, "the Atlantes of the mathematical world," were nearly all in receipt of annuities from him. Yet the spiteful Cecil could not leave him unmolested in this pleasant and honourable society. In 1611 he employed the spleen of a dismissed servant against him, but again failed in his charge. In 1617 the king's favourite. Hay, afterwards earl of Carlisle, married his daughter Lucy, much against his will, and obtained an order for his liberation after thirteen years' imprisonment.

Besides these noblemen, an attempt was made by every effort to secure the persons of Owen and Baldwin, two Jesuits, who had been confederates of Fawkes in Flanders; but the king of Spain and the archduke refused to surrender them.

No further prosecutions appearing feasible, a parliament, was summoned for the double purpose of raising money and of extending additional punishment over the catholics generally. The whole country was in that state of alarm and hostility to them, that James found it necessary to restrain rather than encourage the mania. Such was the public excitement, that even he was not exempt from blame on account of this lenity. He had chosen this inauspicious moment to make overtures to Spain for the Infanta as a wife for prince Henry, and the puritans at once ascribed his moderation to this cause, and declared that he was little better than a secret papist himself. James was alarmed and obliged to give way. It was in vain that Henry IV. of France remonstrated against a bigotry which had already driven some of the catholics to such desperate lengths. Broderic, his ambassador, represented that the king his master had learned from experience that persecution only stimulated zealots to a temper in which they gloried in suffering, and that far more could be effected by kindness than by severity; that James should, if he loved peace, make himself their protector instead of their persecutor. But parliament soon showed how useless at the moment was such advice. Both houses appeared to be carried beyond all reason by their fears and their resentment. On the 3rd of February every member of the and propound such measures as appeared to him most desirable. The most extravagant propositions appeared the most acceptable, and after impetuous debates upon them, they were communicated by conferences to the other house, and in both lords and commons motions of the severest description were made and carried by triumphant majorities. Catholic recusants were now forbidden to appear at court, to dwell within its boundaries, or within ten miles of the boundaries; of London; or to remove on any occasion more than five miles from their homes, under particular penalties, unless in the latter case they had a license from four neighbouring magistrates. They were rendered incapable of practising in surgery, physic, or common or civil law; of acting as judges, clerks, officers, in any court or corporation, of presenting to church livings, schools, or hospitals in their gift; or of exercising the functions of executors or guardians; where persons were married by catholic priests, the husband, if a catholic, could not claim the property of the wife, nor the wife, if a catholic, that of the husband; and if a child born was not baptised by a protestant minister within a month, the penalty was one hundred and fifty pounds; and so every corpse not buried in a protestant cemetery, the penalty was twenty pounds. All the existing penalties for absence from church were retained, with the addition that whoever received catholic visitors, or kept catholic servants, must pay for each such individual ten pounds per lunar month. Every recusant was declared to be excommunicated; his house might be broken open and searched at any time, his books and any articles belonging to "his idolatrous worship" might be burnt, and his arms and horses seized by the order of a single magistrate.

A new oath of allegiance was framed recognising absolute renunciation of the right of the pope to interfere in the temporal affairs of the kingdom. The catholics who submitted to take this oath were to be liable only to the penalties now enumerated; but they who refused were to be imprisoned for life, and to suffer forfeiture of their personal property and the rents of their lands.

The publication of these terrible enactments carried astonishment and dismay through the nation; many protestants as well as catholics condemned them. The French minister Villeroy declared that they were characteristic of barbarians rather than of Christians. Many catholics made haste to quit their native country, and the rest prepared to sacrifice both property and personal liberty. The pope Paul V. despatched a secret emissary to James, imploring him to relax the rigour of the new laws, but without success; and the pontiff, resenting the repulse, then published a breve, denouncing the oath of allegiance as unlawful, "because contrary to faith and salvation." The publication of this imprudent breve only made matters worse. The catholic clergy were before its arrival divided in their opinions as to the lawfulness of taking ; the archpriest Blackwall himself, with many of his brethren, were prepared to take it. The authority of the pope extinguished theirs, and decided the majority; yet Blackwell took the oath himself, and advised the catholics, by a circular letter, to take it.

But no submission on the part of a portion of the catholics could mitigate the wrath of James at the conduct of the pope. He ordered the bishops in their several dioceses to tender the oath, and to enforce the penalties on all recusants. Three missionaries lying under sentence of death for the commons was ordered to stand up in his place exercise of their priestly functions, were called upon to take it; they refused. Two of them were saved by the earnest intercession of the prince de Joinville and the French ambassador. The third, named Drury, was hanged, drawn, and quartered. Blackwall, the archpriest, himself was thrown into prison, though he had both taken the oath and advised the rest of the catholics to take it; and though James greatly pitied him, he could do nothing more in his behalf