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Rh increased, and over every Catholic lowered the shadow of high treason. But what was a stone about the neck of the layman became a knife at the throat of the priest; upon him fell the real weight of the persecution, for him the main work of martyrdom was reserved. Against Jesuits, as supposed tools of the Papacy to sow treason in England, popular hatred was even more intense; they were "tracked by pursuivants and spies, dragged from their hiding-places, and sent in batches to the Tower." Then from dungeon to scaffold was but a little way. And all this was done, of course, in the name of justice, on purely political grounds! "To modern eyes," as Green very aptly remarks, "there is something even more revolting than open persecution in a policy which branded every Catholic priest as a traitor, and all Catholic worship as disloyalty."

But had not Ignatius Loyola besought for his followers this legacy of persecution? And never a prayer so promptly answered! Seventy priests had already gone into banishment, not to mention those who had suffered death, when, on 8 May, 1586, two more intrepid missionaries set out for the island. One of them was Father Garnett, subsequently head of the English Jesuits; the other, Robert Southwell. In spite of spies, who somehow ascertained their coming, the priests succeeded in landing in July, and in reaching the house of Lord Vaux of Harrowden, whither they were later joined by others of the Society. There was plenty of work for them to do; there was also plenty of danger. Father Southwell, who passed in secular society by the name of Cotton and who is described as a man of middle height and auburn hair, seems to have been watched rather narrowly from the beginning. It was worse than a dog's life for them all, and the necessary precautions