Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 5.djvu/512

ENGLAND was incorporated in "An Act for the better discovery and repression of Popish recusants" (a recusant Catholic was simply one who refused to be present at the new service of the Protestant religion in the parish church), and was directed against the deposing power. The Holy See disallowed it, but some Catholics took it, among them being Blackwell the Archpriest. Twenty-eight Catholics, of whom eight were laymen, suffered under James I, but that prince was more concerned to exact money from his Catholic subjects than to slay them. According to his own account he received a net income of £36,000 a year from the fines of Popish recusants (Hardwick Papers, I, 446).

With the accession of Charles I (1625) a somewhat brighter time began for English Catholics. He was unwilling to shed their innocent blood—indeed only two underwent capital punishment while he bore rule—and this reluctance was one of the causes of rupture between him and the Parliament. His policy, Hallam writes, "with some fluctuations, was to wink at the domestic exercise of the Catholic religion, and to admit its professors to pay compensations for clemency, which were not regularly enforced". The number of Catholic clergy in England received a considerable augmentation in his reign. Panzani reported to the Holy See that in 1634 there were on the English mission five hundred secular priests, some hundred and sixty Jesuits, a hundred Benedictines, twenty Franciscans, seven Dominicans, two Minims, five Carmelites, and one Carthusian lay brother, besides the clergy, nine in number, who served the queen's chapel. This large increase in the number of Jesuits was not regarded by all as an unmixed gain, unquestionable as was their zeal and devotion. It was considered by some as the cause of rivalries and dissensions, unpleasant to read of, among the small remnant who kept the faith. The Jesuits seem to have been, at times, open to the charge of aggressiveness, and certainly they did not succeed in dissipating the prejudice so universal against them. One of the burning questions among English Catholics was concerning the episcopal succession. The secular clergy desired a bishop, and Allen had proposed to Gregory XIII that one should be sent. Through Persons' influence at Rome, which was very great, instead of a bishop an archpriest was appointed (1598) in the person of George Blackwell, who has been already mentioned, a friend of his own, who was deprived by the Holy See ten years later for taking the oath of allegiance under James I. Birkhead succeeded him, and Harrison succeeded Birkhead, until, in 1623, Dr. William Bishop was appointed Vicar Apostolic of England. He died in 1624, and was succeeded by Dr. Richard Smith. Shortly afterwards there was an outbreak of persecution occasioned by the Puritan party in the House of Commons led by Sir John Elliot, and Bishop Smith withdrew to France at the end of 1628, never to return to England, which remained without a bishop till 1685.

When war broke out between Charles I and the Parliament, English Catholics, to a man, espoused the cause of the king. They could not do otherwise. Hatred of Catholicism was a dominant note of the Parliamentary party, who bitterly resented the quasi-toleration which the Catholics had for some years enjoyed; and between the meeting of the Long Parliament and the death of Cromwell twenty-four adherents of the Faith suffered martyrdom. The Catholics, as Hallam points out, were "the most strenuous of the King's adherents"; they were also the greatest sufferers for their loyalty. One hundred and seventy Catholic gentlemen lost their lives in the royal cause; and Catholics were especially oppressed under the Commonwealth.

At the Restoration of Charles II, in 1660, English Catholics expected, not unnaturally, to receive some recompense for their unswerving devotion to the royal cause, and this more especially as the new king's personal obligations to them were very great. After his total overthrow at the battle of Worcester, he owed his life to the Catholics of Staffordshire, the Huddlestones, the Giffards, the Whitegreaves, the Penderells. But "Let not virtue seek remuneration for the thing it was" is a lesson written on every page of the history of the Stuarts. Catholics asked, in a petition presented to the House of Lords by Lord Arundell of Wardour, that they might receive the benefit of the Declaration of Breda. Charles was inclined to give them "liberty of conscience", but Lord Chancellor Hyde, afterwards Earl of Clarendon, we read in Kenneth's "Register and Chronicle", "was so hot upon the point, that His Majesty was obliged to yield rather to his importunities than his reasons". The king, who, as he himself expressed it, was not minded to set out again on his travels, recognized that there was in the nation a strong anti-Catholic feeling, and bowed to it, though himself intellectually convinced of the truth of the Catholic religion. The laws against Papists remained on the statute book, and, from time to time, proclamations—they were, it is true, for the most part brutum fulmen—were issued requiring Jesuits and other priests to quit the kingdom under the statutory penalties. A singular instance of overmastering anti-Catholic prejudice prevailing in the nation is supplied by the monument erected by the Corporation of London to commemorate the Great Fire of 1666. It bore an inscription in which Catholics were accused of being the authors of that calamity, a monstrous assertion for which no shred of evidence was ever adduced.

Where London's column pointing to the skies,

Like a tall bully lifts its head and lies,

Pope had the courage to write. But not until the nineteenth century was well advanced was the calumny erased.

It is not possible here to follow, even in briefest outline, the course of Charles II's reign. We may, however, point out that two things are necessary to a right view of it: to understand the character and aims of Charles II, and to realize the dominant temper of the English nation. Idle, voluptuous, and good-humoredly cynical, Charles certainly was; but he possessed deep knowledge of human nature, great political tact, and remarkable tenacity of purpose. That he preferred the Catholic religion to any other, is certain; and he was glad to embrace it on his deathbed. But he recognized the strong Protestant feeling of the people over whom he ruled, and was not prepared to imperil his crown by defying it. He was, however, really desirous to do what he could, without risk to himself, for the relief of Catholics; and this was the motive of his Declaration of Indulgence in 1672, by which he ordered "that all manner of penal laws on matters ecclesiastical against whatever sort of Non-conformist or recusants" should be suspended, and gave liberty of public worship to all dissentients, except Catholics, who were allowed to celebrate the rites of religion in private houses only. This declaration was sovereignly displeasing to all parties in the House of Commons, who answered it by a resolution "that penal statutes in matters ecclesiastical cannot be suspended except by consent of Parliament", and refused supplies until the declaration was recalled. That was a convincing argument to Charles. He recalled the declaration forthwith. Parliament then proceeded to pass a bill—it went through both Houses without opposition, and Charles dared not refuse his royal assent to it—which required every one in the civil and military employment of the Crown to take the oaths of allegiance and supremacy, to subscribe a declaration against Transubstantiation, and to receive the Eucharist according to the rites of the Church of England. One effect of this Act (25 Car. II, c. 2) was to deprive James, Duke of York, who had become a Catholic, of his office of Lord High Admiral.