Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 43.djvu/418

 disgrace, had the bells of the parish church rung, as they said, to ring him out, and Parsons at once fled with his brother Richard to London. (For the narrative of Richard Parsons, see Records, vi. 679, with which must be compared Robert's own account in his Briefe Apoloie, ff. 193-8; Hist. Prov. Angl, S. J. pp. 39-40, and  Answer, published with  Briefe Notes; also the recollections of Archbishop Abbott in  Athenæ, ed. Bliss, ii. 66.)

In London Parsons found a friend an protector in Lord Buckhurst [see, first ]. He now sold to James Clarke, a former schoolfellow, a piece of land in Somerset which had been given to him by Sir J. Baker, the father of one of his pupils. With the proceeds, he left England in May or June 1574 with the intention of studying medicine at Padua. To Clarke, from whom he had asked an introduction to Sir [q. v.], he declared that the rumour of his being a catholic was a calumny of his enemies, and he protested that 'he neither then was nor never meant to be any papist' (Petyt MSS. vol. xlvii. f. 44). By the persuasion, however, of his travelling companions on his road towards Italy he stopped at Louvain, and there made the spiritual exercises under Father William Good, who probably at the same time received him into the Roman church. This determined his vocation; for although he began his medical studies at Padua, where he arrived in September, he was restless and dissatisfied there, and after a few months set out on foot to Rome, where he offered himself to the Society of Jesus, and entered upon his noviciate on 24 July 1675.

After his ordination as a priest in 1578 Parsons was appointed English penitentiary at the Vatican (, vii. 1386), and for some time had charge of the novices of the second year. Meanwhile dissensions were springing up in the newly founded English College at Rome. The students were complaining that their Jesuit superiors were making use of the college to attract promising young men to their own order, and to divert their energies from the English mission. Dr. Allen, who, at the invitation of Parsons, had come to Rome to reconcile the conflicting interests, urged upon the general of the society that he should send some of the Jesuits into England as auxiliaries of the secular clergy. On this proposal there was much debate, and fears were expressed on the part of the society that the English government would suspect the Jesuit missionaries of a political purpose. It was finally resolved that Parsons, with [q. v.], who had joined the society in 1573, and who was then in Prague, should be at once sent into England. The pope granted them special faculties, and they carried strict injunctions from their general on no account to deal, either directly or indirectly, with affairs of state, or to even discuss political questions. Several secular priests accompanied the two Jesuits, who left Rome in April 1580 and entered England by different routes and in different disguises, Parsons landing at Dover on 12 June as a soldier, 'in a suit of buff laid with gold lace, with hat and feathers suited to the same.'

The enterprise was a perilous one. The government, naturally suspecting, as the Jesuits anticipated, a political design and a treasonable connection with the recent landing of Dr. [q. v.] and papal troops in Ireland, was on the alert. The missionaries were, however, received in safety by the catholic association, headed by George Gilbert, a rich young man who had been converted by Parsons at Rome. Before leaving the neighbourhood of London for an extended circuit in the country the two Jesuits convened a synod in Southwark, where they met certain old priests and others to settle questions of church discipline. Here they solemnly exhibited their instructions, and made oath in all sincerity that they came with no knowledge of, or concern with, affairs of state. Parsons then visited Gloucester, Hereford, Worcester, and Derbyshire, making many converts among the gentry—notably, Lord Compton, Thomas Tresham, William Catesby, and Robert Dymoke, the champion of England. In October he returned to London, and again met Campion in conference at Uxbridge. They now wrote to the general for other assistants. Parsons despatched William Watts, a secular priest, into Scotland, and in response to a request from the Queen of Scots for a suitable person to convert the young king, suggested Father Holt. Meanwhile, a succession of proclamations had been issued against the harbourers of priests; and spies and pursuivants were especially alert in pursuit of the Jesuits. In November Parsons took refuge for a while in the house of Mendoza, the Spanish ambassador, discussed with him the situation, and received that bias towards political intrigue which marked every step of his subsequent career. In December several priests were captured and put to the torture, and the prisons were filled with catholic recusants.

Parsons, with characteristic energy and ingenuity, now set up a secret printing-press in the very midst of his enemies, at a hired lodging in East Ham in Essex, and issued a series of tracts, which were found distributed,