Читать книгу The Life of a Conspirator - Thomas Longueville - Страница 7

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A change of religion causes, to most of those who make it, a very forcible wrench. It may be, probably it usually is, accompanied by great happiness and a sensation of intense relief; no regrets whatever may be felt that the former faith, with its ministers, ceremonies, and churches have been renounced for ever; on the contrary, the convert may be delighted to be rid of them, and in turning his back upon the religion of his childhood, he may feel that he is dismissing a false teacher who has deceived him, rather than that he is bidding farewell to a guide who has conducted him, however unintentionally, unwittingly, or unwillingly, to the gate of safety. Yet granting, and most emphatically granting, all this, we should not forget that there is another view of his position. Let his rejoicing be ever so great at entering that portal and leaving the land of darkness for the regions of light, be the welcome he receives from his future co-religionists as warm as it may, and be his confidence as great as is conceivable, the convert is none the less forsaking a well-known country for one that is new to him, he is leaving old friends to enter among strangers, and he is exchanging long-formed habits for practices which it will take him some time to understand, to acquire, and to familiarize.

A convert, again, is not invariably free from dangers. Let us take the case of Sir Everard Digby. A man with his position, popularity, wealth, intellect, and influence, was a convert of considerable importance from a human point of view, and he must have known it. If he lost money and friends by his conversion, much and many remained to him, and among the comparatively small number of Catholics he might become a more leading man than as a unit in the vast crowd professing his former faith; and although, on the whole, the step which he had taken was calculated to be much against his advancement in life, there are certain attractions in being the principal or one of the principal men of influence in a considerable minority. I am not for a moment questioning Digby’s motives in becoming a Catholic; I believe they were quite unexceptionable; all that I am at the moment aiming at is to induce the reader to keep before his mind that the position of an influential English convert, at the beginning of the seventeenth century, like most other positions, had its own special temptations and dangers, and my reasons for this aim will soon become obvious.

In comparing the situation of a convert to Catholicism in the latter days of Elizabeth or the early days of James I., with one in the reign of Victoria, we are met on the threshold with the fact that terrible bodily pains, and even death itself, threatened the former, while the latter is exposed to no danger of either for his religion. In the matter of legal fines and forfeitures, again, the persecution of the first was enormous, whereas the second suffers none. But of these pains and penalties I shall treat presently. Just in passing I may remark that many a convert now living has reason for doubting whether any of his forerunners in the times of Elizabeth or James I. suffered more pecuniary loss than he. One parent or uncle, by altering a will, can cause a Romish recusant more loss than a whole army of pursuivants.

Looking at the positions of converts at the two periods from a social point of view, we find very different conditions. Instead of being regarded, as he is now, in the light of a fool who, in an age of light, reason, and emancipation from error, has wilfully retrograded into the grossest of all forms of superstition, the convert, in the reigns of Elizabeth and James, was known to be returning to the faith professed by his fathers, one, two, or, at most, three generations before him. It was not then considered a case of “turning Roman Catholic,”but of returning to the old religion, and even by people who cared little, if at all, about such matters, he was rather respected than otherwise.

Now it is different. During the two last generations, so many conversions have apparently been the result of what is known as the Oxford Movement, or of Ritualism, that converts are much associated in men’s minds with ex-clergymen, or with clerical families; and to tell the truth, at least a considerable minority of Anglicans of good position, while they tolerate, invite to dinner, and patronise their parsons, in their inmost hearts look down upon and rather dislike the clergy and the clergy-begotten.

At present, again, a prejudice is felt in England against an old Catholic, prima facie, on the ground that he is probably either an Irishman, of Irish extraction, or of an ancient Catholic English family rendered effete by idleness, owing to religious disabilities, or by a long succession of intermarriages. It would be easy to prove that these prejudices, if not altogether without foundation in fact, are immensely and unwarrantably exaggerated, but my object, at present, is merely to state that they exist. Three hundred years ago, whatever may have been the prejudices against Catholics, old or new, they cannot have arisen on such grounds as these, and if Protestants attributed the tenacity of the former and the determined return of the latter to their ancient faith rather to pride than to piety, there is no doubt which motive would be most respected in the fashionable world.

The conduct of the Digbys, immediately after their conversion, was most exemplary. They threw themselves heart and soul into their religion, and Father Gerard, who had received them into the Church, writes[42] of Sir Everard in the highest terms, saying:—“He was so studious a follower of virtue, after he became a Catholic, that he gave great comfort to those that had the guiding of his soul (as I have heard them seriously affirm more than once or twice), he used his prayers daily both mental and vocal, and daily and diligent examination of his conscience: the sacraments he frequented devoutly every week, &c.”“Briefly I have heard it reported of this knight, by those that knew him well and that were often in his company, that they did note in him a special care of avoiding all occasions of sin and of furthering acts of virtue in what he could.”

He read a good deal in order to be able to enter into controversy with Protestants, and he was the means of bringing several into the Church—“some of great account and place.”As to his conversation, “not only in this highest kind, wherein he took very great joy and comfort, but also in ordinary talk, when he had observed that the speech did tend to any evil, as detraction or other kind of evil words which sometimes will happen in company, his custom was presently to take some occasion to alter the talk, and cunningly to bring in some other good matter or profitable subject to talk of. And this, when the matter was not very grossly evil, or spoken to the dishonour of God or disgrace of his servants; for then, his zeal and courage were such that he could not bear it, but would publicly and stoutly contradict it, whereof I could give divers instances worth relating, but am loth to hold the reader longer.”Finally, in speaking of those “that knew him”and those “that loved him,”Father Gerard says, “truly it was hard to do the one and not the other.”

Like most Catholics living in the country, and inhabiting houses of any size, the Digbys made a chapel in their home, “a chapel with a sacristy,” says Father Gerard,[43] “furnishing it with costly and beautiful vestments;”and they “obtained a Priest of the Society”(of Jesus) “for their chaplain, who remained with them to Sir Everard’s death.”Of this priest, Gerard says[44] that he was a man “who for virtue and learning hath not many his betters in England.”This was probably Father Strange,[45] who usually passed under the alias of Hungerford. He was the owner of a property, some of which, in Gloucestershire, he sold,[46] and “£2000 thereof is in the Jesuites’ bank”said a witness against him. He was imprisoned, after Sir Everard Digby’s death, for five or six years.[47] In an underground dungeon in the Tower[48] “he was so severely tortured upon the rack that he dragged on the rest of his life for thirty-three years in the extremest debility, with severe pains in the loins and head. Once when he was in agony upon the rack, a Protestant minister began to argue with him about religion; whereupon, turning to the rack-master, Father Strange[49] “asked him to hoist the minister upon a similar rack, and in like fetters and tortures, otherwise, said he, we shall be fighting upon unequal terms; for the custom everywhere prevails amongst scholars that the condition of the disputants be equal.”

Another Jesuit Father, at one time private chaplain to Sir Everard Digby, was Father John Percy,[50] who afterwards, under the alias of Fisher, held the famous controversy with Archbishop Laud in the presence of the king and the Countess of Buckingham, to whom he acted as chaplain for ten years. He also had been fearfully tortured in prison, in the reign of Elizabeth; and if he recounted his experiences on the rack to Sir Everard Digby, the hot blood of the latter would be stirred up against the Protestant Governments that could perpetrate or tolerate such iniquities.

In trying to picture to himself the “chapel with a sacristy”made by the Digbys at Gothurst, a romantic reader may imagine an ecclesiastical gem, in the form of a richly-decorated chamber filled with sacred pictures, figures of saints, crucifixes, candles, and miniature shrines. Before taking the trouble of raising any such representation before the mind, it would be well to remember that, in the times of which we are treating, that was the most perfect and the best arranged chapel in which the altar, cross, chalice, vestments, &c., could be concealed at the shortest possible notice, and the chamber itself most quickly made to look like an ordinary room. The altar was on such occasions a small slab of stone, a few inches in length and breadth, and considerably less than an inch in thickness. It was generally laid upon the projecting shelf of a piece of furniture, which, when closed, had the appearance of a cabinet. Some few remains of altars and other pieces of “massing stuff,” as Protestants called it, of that date still remain, as also do many simple specimens used in France during the Revolution of last century, which have much in common with them. To demonstrate the small space in which the ecclesiastical contents of a private chapel could be hidden away in times of persecution, I may say that, even now, for priests who have the privilege of saying mass elsewhere than in churches or regular chapels—for instance, in private rooms, on board ship,[51] or in the ward of a hospital—altar, chalice, paten, cruets, altar-cloths, lavabo, alb, amice, girdle, candlesticks, crucifix, wafer-boxes, wine-flask, Missal, Missal-stand, bell, holy-oil stocks, pyx, and a set of red and white vestments (reversible)—in fact, everything necessary for saying mass, as well as for administering extreme unction to the sick, can be carried in a case 18 inches in length, 12 inches in width, and 8 inches in depth. Occasionally, as we are told of the Digbys, rich people may have had some handsome vestments; but a private chapel early in the sixteenth century must have been a very different thing from what we associate with the term in our own times, and however well furnished it may have been as a room, it must have been almost devoid of “ecclesiastical luxury.”

Here and there were exceptions, in which Catholics were very bold, but they always got into trouble. For instance, when Luisa de Carvajal came to England, she was received at a country house—possibly Scotney Castle, on the borders of Kent and Sussex—the chapel of which[52] “was adorned with pictures and images, and enriched with many relics. Several masses were said in it every day, and accompanied by beautiful vocal and instrumental music.”It was “adorned not only with all the requisites, but all the luxuries, so to speak, of Catholic worship;”and Luisa could walk “on a spring morning in a pleached alley, saying her beads, within hearing of the harmonious sounds of holy music floating in the balmy air.”What was the consequence? “The beautiful dream was rudely dispelled. One night, after she had been at this place about a month, a secret warning was given to the master of this hospitable mansion, that he had been denounced as a harbourer of priests, and that the pursuivants would invade his house on the morrow. On the receipt of this information, measures were immediately taken to hide all traces of Catholic worship, and a general dispersion took place.”I only give this as a typical case to show how necessary it then was to make chapels and Catholic worship as secret as possible.

Sir Everard Digby was anxious that others, as well as himself, should join the body which he believed to be the one, true, and only Church of God, and of this I have nothing to say except in praise. An anecdote of his efforts in this direction, however, is interesting as showing, not only the necessities of the times, but also something of the character and disposition of the man. In studying a man’s life, there may be a danger of building too much upon his actions, as if they proved his inclinations, when they were in reality only the result of exceptional circumstances, and I have no wish to force the inferences, which I myself draw from the following facts, upon the opinions of other people; I merely submit them for what they are worth.

Father Gerard says[53] that Sir Everard “had a friend for whom he felt a peculiar affection,”namely, Oliver Manners, the fourth son of John, fourth Earl of Rutland, and said by Father J. Morris[54] to have been knighted by King James I. “on his coming from Scotland,”on April 22nd, 1603, but by Burke,[55] “at Belvoir Castle, 23rd April 1608.”He was very anxious that this friend should be converted to the Catholic faith, and that, to this end, he should make the acquaintance of Father Gerard; “but because he held an office in the Court, requiring his daily attendance about the King’s person, so that he could not be absent for long together,”this “desire was long delayed.”At last Sir Everard met Manners in London at a time when he knew that Father Gerard was there also, “and he took an opportunity of asking him to come at a certain time to play at cards, for these are the books gentlemen in London study both night and day.”Instead of inviting a card-party, Digby invited no one except Father Gerard, and when Manners arrived, he found Gerard and Digby “sitting and conversing very seriously.”The latter asked him “to sit down a little until the rest should arrive.”After a short silence Sir Everard said:—

“We two were engaged in a very serious conversation, in fact, concerning religion. You know that I am friendly to Catholics and to the Catholic faith; I was, nevertheless, disputing with this gentleman, who is a friend of mine, against the Catholic faith, in order to see what defence he could make, for he is an earnest Catholic, as I do not hesitate to tell you.”At this he turned to Father Gerard and begged him not to be angry with him for betraying the fact of his being a Romish recusant to a stranger; then he said to Manners, “And I must say he so well defended the Catholic faith that I could not answer him, and I am glad you have come to help me.”

Manners “was young and confident, and trusting his own great abilities, expected to carry everything before him, so good was his cause and so lightly did he esteem”his opponent, “as he afterwards confessed.” After an hour’s sharp argument and retort on either side, Father Gerard began to explain the Catholic faith more fully, and to confirm it with texts of Scripture, and passages from the Fathers.

Manners listened in silence, and “before he left he was fully resolved to become a Catholic, and took with him a book to assist him in preparing for a good confession, which he made before a week had passed.” He became an excellent and exemplary Christian, and his life would make an interesting and edifying volume.

All honour to Sir Everard Digby for having been the human medium of bringing about this most happy and blessed conversion! It might have been difficult to accomplish it by any other method. In those days of persecution, stratagem was absolutely necessary to Catholics for their safety sake, even in everyday life, and still more so in evangelism. As to the particular stratagem used by Digby in this instance, I do not go so far as to say that it was blame-worthy; I have often read of it without mentally criticising it; I have even regarded it with some degree of admiration; but, now that I am attempting a study of Sir Everard Digby’s character, and seeking for symptoms of it in every detail that I can discover of his words and actions, I ask myself whether, in all its innocence, his conduct on this occasion did not exhibit traces of a natural inclination to plot and intrigue. Could he have induced Manners to come to his rooms by no other attraction than a game of cards, which he had no intention of playing? Was it necessary on his arrival there to ask him to await that of guests who were not coming, and had never been invited? Was he obliged, in the presence of so intimate a friend, to pretend to be only well-disposed towards Catholics instead of owning himself to be one of them? Need he have put himself to the trouble of apologising to Father Gerard for revealing that he was a Catholic? In religious, as in all other matters, there are cases in which artifice may be harmless or desirable, or even a duty, but a thoroughly straightforward man will shrink from the “pious dodge”as much as the kind-hearted surgeon will shrink from the use of the knife or the cautery.

Necessary as they may have been, nay, necessary as they undoubtedly were, the planning, and disguising, and hiding, and intriguing used as means for bringing about the conversions of Lady Digby, Sir Everard Digby, and Oliver Manners, though innocent in themselves, placed those concerned in them in that atmosphere of romance, adventure, excitement, and even sentiment, which I have before described, and it is obvious that such an atmosphere is not without its peculiar perils.

It is certainly very comfortable to be able to preach undisturbed, to convert heretics openly, and to worship in the churches of the King and the Government; yet even in religion, to some slight degree, the words of a certain very wise man may occasionally be true, that[56] “stolen waters are sweeter, and hidden bread is more pleasant.”Nothing is more excellent than missionary work; but it is a fact that proselytism, when conducted under difficulties and dangers, whether it be under the standard of truth or under the standard of error, is not without some of the elements of sport; at any rate, if it be true, as enthusiasts have been heard to assert, that even the hunted fox is a partaker in the pleasures of the chase, the Jesuits had every opportunity of enjoying them during the reigns of Elizabeth and James I.

Besides a consideration of the personal characteristics of Sir Everard Digby, and the position of converts to Catholicism in his times, it will be necessary to take a wider view of the political, social, and religious events of his period. Otherwise we should be unable to form anything like a fair judgment either of his own conduct, or of the treatment which he received from others.

The oppression and persecution of Catholics by Queen Elizabeth and her ministers was extreme. It was made death to be a priest, death to receive absolution from a priest, death to harbour a priest, death even to give food or help of any sort to a priest, and death to persuade anyone to become a Catholic. Very many priests and many laymen were martyred, more were tortured, yet more suffered severe temporal losses. And, what was most cruel of all, while Statutes were passed with a view to making life unendurable for Catholics in England itself, English Catholics were forbidden to go, or to send their children, beyond the seas without special leave.

The actual date of the Digbys’ reception into the Catholic Church is a matter of some doubt. It probably took place before the death of Elizabeth. That was a time when English Catholics were considering their future with the greatest anxiety. Politics entered largely into the question, and where politics include, as they did then, at any rate, in many men’s minds, some doubts as to the succession to the crown, intrigue and conspiracy were pretty certain to be practised.

FOOTNOTES:

[42] A Narrative of the Gunpowder Plot, p. 89.

[43] Life of Father John Gerard, p. clv.

[44] A Narrative of the Gunpowder Plot, p. 89.

[45] Father H. Garnet and the Gunpowder Plot, by Father Pollen, p. 15.

[46] Records of the English Province. S.J. Series, ix. x. xi., p. 3.

[47] Ib., p. 5, and Stoneyhurst MSS.

[48] Ib., p. 3.

[49] Ib., p. 4.

[50] Records, S.J. Series, i., p. 527.

[51] In his Mores Catholici (Cincinnati, 1841, Vol. II. p. 364), Kenelm H. Digby says that "Portable altars were in use long before the eleventh century. St. Wulfran, Bishop of Sens, passing the sea in a ship, is said to have celebrated the sacred mysteries upon a portable altar."

[52] The Life of Luisa de Carvajal, by Lady G. Fullerton, p. 154, seq.

[53] Life of Father John Gerard, p. clxvi. seq.

[54] Ib., footnote to p. cciii.

[55] Peerage, 1886, p. 1173.

[56] Proverbs ix. 17.