Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 01.djvu/329

Allen observes: ‘We know that through life Allen's convictions would prevent his taking the oath of supremacy; he was the object of the bitterest enmity and of the most unscrupulous attacks in his own day, but that he ever sided with the protestants is nowhere imputed to him, and yet the opposite party were not inattentive to the college life of those inimical to them, as Parsons experienced; to admit, therefore, such a charge, we must require positive evidence, and not a conjecture made two centuries after the supposed occurrence’ (Defence of Sir W. Stanley, introd. p. lxv.). At Queen Mary's accession Allen resolved to dedicate himself to the ecclesiastical state (, Church Hist. ii. 44), and, after seven years spent in literary and philosophical studies, proceeded M.A., 16 July 1554. In 1556 he was chosen principal of St. Mary's Hall, Oxford, and in that and the following year he served as one of the proctors of the university. It was the intention of Sir Thomas Pope, the founder of Trinity College, to appoint Allen one of the fellows of his new society, partly on the recommendation of Cardinal Pole, but the design did not take effect. Wood tells us that Allen was made a canon of York in or about 1558, but it is certain that he was not a clerk in holy orders at this period, for he himself states distinctly that he received all the orders, priesthood included, at Mechlin. ‘Machliniæ omnes ordines ipsumque sacrum presbyteratum accepimus; ubi et aliquamdiu habitavimus’ (Records of the English Catholics, ii. 317).

We are not sufficiently informed of Allen's career at Oxford, and if it is a matter of surprise that in 1550 he could retain a fellowship at Oriel, the circumstance that he remained at the university after Queen Elizabeth's accession until 1561 is still more remarkable. It is true that he resigned the office of principal of St. Mary's Hall in or about 1560, but he found it possible to continue his residence at Oxford for some time afterwards. At length his zeal for the catholic faith gave such offence to the civil authorities that he was obliged to leave his native land. He crossed over to Flanders in 1561 and took up his abode at the university of Louvain, where he found many English exiles who had refused to comply with the change of religion under Elizabeth. At Louvain his talents and zeal recommended him to his countrymen, who looked up to him as their superior, while they were charmed with his personal appearance and easy address, chastened by a dignified gravity of manner. In order to supply his wants he became tutor to a young gentleman of distinction, Christopher Blount, who was afterwards knighted, and who died in 1600 on the scaffold for his share in the conspiracy of the Earl of Essex. He also began to write in support of the cause for which he had left his country, his earliest work, subsequently printed at Antwerp, being a treatise on purgatory in English. Attendance on his pupil during a dangerous illness, and constant application to study having injured his health, his physicians recommended him to try his native air as the only means of saving his life. Allen acted on this advice. At great personal risk he came to England in disguise, and arrived in Lancashire some time in the year 1562.

Nicholas Fitzherbert thus describes the motives and occurrences of Allen's secret visit, which was a most important event in the history of Lancashire: ‘In those days a certain noble English youth (Blount), who had been trusted to Allen's care at Louvain, had an atrophy, his body gradually growing thinner. As Allen, assiduous in doing his duty, remained with his pupil, he also was in a short time entirely infected with the same wasting away, unnoticed at the commencement, for he was a person of vigour and of the best habit of body, and yet the disease was not slight, as presently appeared.’ He endangered his life, and received the advice from his physicians already mentioned. He therefore returned into England, and ‘lay hid amongst his own family, undiscovered, indeed, but not idle, until’ his health improved. ‘Moreover, such a pernicious opinion had crept into the minds of certain catholics. . . by which they persuaded themselves, in their extreme terror and in their imminent danger of losing goods and life, it was permitted them to attend the heretical churches and meetings without committing any great crime, or separating themselves from the catholic church. But Allen, on the contrary,. . . went, even vehemently, to exhort at various meetings, and to enforce with many arguments that so great was the atrocity of this crime, that whosoever was contaminated by it could on no account remain in the Roman catholic communion; wherefore, by the great number thus prevented in Lancashire and its confines from assembling with the heretics and from adopting this fatal error of occasional conformity, so much did Allen there incur the hatred of the bad, that he was compelled, presently, to migrate to a distant province. Nor did he therefore abandon his undertaking, for he both kept to their duty the family in which he resided, and often visited Oxford, which was near, and there soon converted not a few.’ The importance of Allen's visit is shown, first in the anxiety which Lancashire