The Life Of Fr John Gerard S.J. (A Hunted Priest) Part 46.

GHENT AND ROME. Part 1

1623 to 1637.

DURING his residence at Liege, amongst Father Gerard's correspondents were two Venerable Servants of God, Robert Cardinal Bellarmine, and Father Luis de la Puente, better known by the Latinized form of his name, de Ponte. As by a man's friends we can obtain an insight into his character, we have thought it desirable to give the few letters to Father Gerard from these two holy men that have come down to us. Cardinal Bellarmine's autograph 1 is preserved at Stonyhurst. We translate the letter from the original Latin.

"Very Reverend and beloved Father in Christ,—I have received your Reverence's letter dated from Li6ge the 23rd of November with the little presents inclosed in it, an English knife, a little case (either bone or ivory, I do not know which), and three small toothpicks. I do not know whether these were sent me for use, or as having some special meaning. Whichever it be, they are welcome as a proof of friendship and brotherhood.

"The memory of that excellent Mr. Oliver [Sir Oliver Manners, whom he had ordained seven years before], has brought me no little sadness or rather grief, not on his account who is translated from this world to the joys of Paradise, but for the sake of many whom without doubt he would have converted to a good life if Divine Providence had permitted him to live a while longer. But the good pleasure of God must ever be fulfilled, and the self-same, in order that it may be fulfilled, must ever be pleasing to us under all circumstances.

" I was pleased to read what your Reverence relates in your letter of your journeys, of your office of Master of Novices, of the building which you have bought at Liege, of the visitation of his Serene Highness Ferdinand, the Prince Bishop of Liege, and of the promise that the Priory [of Watten], on its next vacancy, shall be applied to the College. If my assistance in carrying this out can be of any use to you with the Pope, it shall not be wanting.

"Of Dr. Singleton I have heard much, and have defended him to the best of my power as long as I could, but the party opposed to him has prevailed. Nor do I see how I can help him at so great a distance, and especially as I should be suspected because I am a Jesuit. The devil is envious of the harmony between the English at Douay and the Fathers of the Society, for which the good Cardinal Allen cared so much; but all means must be tried to re-establish a true and sincere friendship and agreement in teaching; otherwise a kingdom divided against itself shall be brought to desolation. For many reasons I say freely that nothing can be done by me in his behalf; first, as I was just saying, because I should be under suspicion, being a Jesuit. Then, because I am an old man of seven-and-seventy years of age, and I daily expect the dissolution of my tabernacle. Thirdly, because I cannot think of any way by which I could help him. The common manner of helping men of this sort is to give them ecclesiastical benefices; but here in Rome the multitude of those who aspire to and seek after such benefits is so great that their number is almost infinite. Nor are they only Italians, but Spaniards also, Frenchmen, Germans, who look for nothing but benefices at Rome. I myself, who was thought to have some influence with the Pope, have laboured for more than ten years for a Spaniard, an excellent man and a great friend of mine, to obtain for him a good benefice falling vacant in his own country. I could say the same of Flemish and German friends of mine. What then would be the case with English people, in whose country there are no ecclesiastical benefices for Catholics ? But, since these temporal things are nothing when compared to eternal benefices, our friend Dr. Singleton must not be cast down if our Lord treats him now, as of old He treated His Apostles, who He willed should enter into the Kingdom of Heaven through many tribulations. But I must not be too lengthy, for I know that both he and your Reverence stand in no need of my exhortations. I know that your Reverence will have hard work to read my bad writing, but Father Coffin 2 would have it that I should write to you with my own hand.

" With this I bid your Reverence farewell. Commend me to the prayers of Dr. Singleton, and of all your College; but your Reverence's self especially, for our old friendship and brotherhood, must diligently commend me to the Lord our God. From Rome on Christmas-day, December 25 1618. 3

"Your Reverence's brother and servant in Christ,
" Robert Card. Bellarmine.

"To the Very Reverend Father John Tomson, S.J.,
" Rector of the College of the English Novices at Liege."'

The two letters which have come down to us, addressed to Father Gerard by the Venerable Father Luis de la Puente, were written as his residence at Liege was drawing to a close. We translate from Father Christopher Grene's transcript 4 from the originals.

"I.H.S.

 "P.C. 

" When I received your Reverence's letters I was unable to answer them at once for I was suffering from extreme weakness, which usually afflicts me every year all through the winter. Blessed be our great God, from Whose Providence come health and sickness, life and death, and whatever prosperity and adversity there is in the world. The height of felicity in this life is to be superior to all these things, seeking only God's good pleasure in all things, for life in His will, and health, honour, happiness, spiritual progress, and all sanctity consist in the fulfilment of the will of God: and so every day I would that at every breath I could say, Fiat in me, de me, et per me, et circa me, sanctissima et dulcissima voluntas Tua, in omnibus et per omnia, nunc et semper ac in ӕternum. Amen. 'May Thy most holy and most sweet will be done in me, concerning me, and by me and around me, in all things and by all things, now and always and for even Amen.' God always pours His spirit of prayer into those who so submit their will to .His; wherefore the Psalmist says, 'Be subject unto the Lord, and pray to Him/ for when any one with prompt obedience and entire resignation humbly submits himself to God, God Himself, Who does the will of those that fear Him, in a certain way is made subject to him, so that He does whatever He is asked, God becoming subject to the voice of a man—not of any man soever, but of the man who obeys God. A wonderful power of prayer and of obedience! Let us pray, dear Father, that we may be perfectly obedient, and let us obey, that we may be able to pray, and to speak worthily with God.

" It will wonderfully help both one and the other to meditate profoundly on these two things; to wit, Who God is in Himself and what He is towards us, and then what we are of ourselves and what towards God. For whilst I think of God, His Trinity and Unity, most beautiful, most wise, most holy, most full of love for me, immense and everywhere present, the fountain of all good things that are in me and beyond me, from Whom I myself depend, and all that is mine, and everything that I use and enjoy, how can I do otherwise than love Him with all my strength ? How shall I not praise Him and thank Him constantly ? How shall I not give my whole self to His service? And these affections become the more ardent as I ponder that I have nothing of myself, that I am nothing, and that I and all that is mine would be reduced to nothing unless I were preserved by Him. Now whilst, within this immensity of God, I consider what I have been and what I am towards Him, I am horrified and tremble as I ponder on my malice, my ingratitude, my slothfulness. Hence arise feelings of hatred of self, of humiliation and self-denial, and various acts and exercises of penance, which not only nourish humility by which a man through a truthful knowledge of himself becomes vile to himself, but they also arouse a most ardent charity by which he loves his Supreme Benefactor, Who has conferred and still confers so many and such great benefits on one who is ungrateful and unworthy. Thus the mind is elevated to perfect contemplation and union with God Himself, and, as it were forgetful of itself, is immersed in Him, or rather God hides it in the concealment of His countenance from all disturbance of men.

"Here is a short epitome of my mystical theology, which I have put out at rather greater length in my book; but why should I teach these things to a doctor of others and my own master? Surely I have become foolish, but your letters compelled me. Would that you would help me by your prayers, that what I write in my letters I may perform in deed. Forgive my humble and poor style, for I know not any more elegant; but I am sure that you do not care for words, but for the sense that is in the words. I value very highly the cross which you have sent me, and I will always bear it with me. I hope, by the intercession of the Blessed Virgin, who appeared in that tree, 5 and who confers such benefits on those who are there and those who visit her, that I may be a partaker of those benefits, for though I am absent in the body I am present in spirit. I humbly commend myself to the holy sacrifices of your Reverence.

" Your Reverence's unworthy servant in Christ,

" + LUDOVICUS DE PONTE. +

"Valladolid, March 23, 1621."

Postscript. —"By God's help I have finished a great work. Its title is Expositio Moralis in Canticum Canticorum, and it contains exhortations on all the mysteries and virtues of the Christian religion. It is divided into two volumes, and each volume into five books. The arrangement is new and singular, but not without foundation in the Sacred Text. The matter is grave in itself, and very copious, taken out of Holy Scripture and the holy Fathers. The style is humble, but clear and chaste, and not out of harmony with matter that is spiritual and sacred, and therefore elevated. It is printed at Paris, and will soon reach Germany and Belgium. Would that it may be to the glory of God, the edification of the Church, and of use to one's neighbour."

The other letter from the same Father was written in reply to one from Father Gerard announcing that he was about to leave Belgium.

" LH.S. 

" P.C.

" May the Almighty and most pitiful Lord accompany you in the journey that you are beginning, for with such a Guide and Companion you will be everywhere safe and cheerful, and making true progress. Let Him ever dwell in your memory, understanding, and will, for His most sweet providence especially protects those who make their journeys in obedience to Superiors, as Jacob did, who at his father's bidding journeyed through tl\p desert of Mesopotamia, where he heard the voice of the Lord which said to him, ' I will be thy Keeper, whithersoever thou goest' Trusting to this hope, and protected by this guardianship, you will happily fulfil what you are beginning.

" I commend myself to your Reverence's sacrifices and prayers, for my weakness oppresses me much; but may the Will of God be done in me and about me in all things, to Whom concerning all things be glory for ever. Amen.

" + LUDOVICUS DE LA PUENTE +

"Valladolid, Feb. 2, 1622."

With such saintly suggestions from his friend Father Gerard left Liege, and it is probable that he saw Father de la Puente soon after he received this letter, for he was sent to Spain first, and then to Rome, which place he reached on the 15th of January, 1623. 6 His stay in Rome was not long, and we may assume that his explanations respecting the aid given by him to the English Virgins was satisfactory to his Superiors for he was sent back to Belgium. The charge now entrusted to him was similar to that which he had fulfilled for the past eight years. In accordance with the Institute of St Ignatius, the Society is accustomed to send its young priests, after the conclusion of their studies and before taking their last vows, to pass a year in retirement with the religious exercises and duties of the Noviceship. This year is called the Third Probation, the Tertianship, or the third year. As this is the close of the long course of probation to which the members of the Society are subjected, as those who enter it are all priests, as they have been in the Society at least ten years and often sixteen or seventeen, it will be understood that the choice of a Father for the responsible position of Superior and Instructor of the Fathers who pass through their Tertianship, is a mark of the highest esteem and confidence. This is one of the few offices in the Society to which none but a Professed Father can be appointed ; and it is laid down in the Constitutions that it is desirable that the Father chosen should have been a Superior, as for instance a Provincial whose term of office is concluded. From the appointment of Father John Gerard to be Instructor of the Fathers in their Third Probation in the English House at Ghent, we may draw our own conclusion as to the position held by him amongst the English Jesuits of his time. This office he held for four years, that is to say from 1623 to 1627.

The house of the Society in Ghent in which the English Fathers received their final preparation for the labours and perils of the English Mission was the foundation of Father John Gerard's old benefactress Anne, Countess of Arundel: yet her biographer says that her good deed in making that foundation was so secretly done that Father Gerard himself did not know who the foundress was for whom his prayers were said.

After describing the bountifulness to others of this admirable lady, the widow of the martyred Philip, Earl of Arundel, the author of her life 7 who was himself her chaplain and a Jesuit, thus records her bounty to the Society. "Besides her keeping ever some one of them in her house for the space of more than forty years, and the relieving in sundry occasions divers other particular persons of them, she gave every year a very large alms to their community here in England, and continued it to her dying day. And to the end they might not want that or a better means of support after her decease, she sent at several times 2,500/. beyond seas, there to be put in bank and increased till her death, and then the profit employed for their use and maintenance here. And, notwithstanding all that money came after [a] few years by casuality to be lost, yet was she not discouraged thereat, but afterwards buying a house in the city of Gant in Flanders, where those of them who had ended their studies might make their third probation and better prepare themselves to labour in God's vineyard according to their Institute, she furnished it with all things necessary for their use, maintained it during her life, and left competent means for the perpetual maintenance thereof, with order that whenever it shall please God to convert England again to the Catholic Faith, that house should be transported and placed in the city of Carlisle; to the end that not only those of that city and her tenants thereabouts but all the whole country adjoining might receive spiritual assistance by the preaching, teaching, and other pious labours and endeavours of those Religious persons whom she intended should be maintained therein."

The charity and devotion of Lady Arundel was imitated by her household, and her biographer says 1 that Mr. Robert Spiller, her steward for many years, "was noted to be very forward even both in relieving the poor, and farthering many deeds of charity, especially in helping the Society on all occasions. To the which he not only gave a yearly considerable alms, but both in his life and at his death was very liberal towards them, leaving a good part of his wealth for the increase and advancement of the means of that house which was erected by the Countess at Gant."

1 Stonyhurst MSS., Angl. A. vol. iii. n. 107.

2 Father Edward Coffin was Confessor of the English College for nearly twenty years, in which office he was succeeded by Father Gerard.

3 Dr. Oliver has misread this date 1611, which was before Father Gerard went to Liege and at which time Sir Oliver Manners was in Italy. Cardinal Bellarmine was born October 4, 1542, so that he was in his seventy-seventh year in 1618-9.

4 Stonyhurst MSS., Father' Grene's Collectan. P. voL ii. p. 532. 

5 An allusion, no doubt, to one of the Belgian sanctuaries of our Blessed Lady, perhaps that at Montaigu. Or it may refer to the wood of the tree in which was found the image of our Lady of Foy, a village in the Province of Namur. Father Gerard sent from Rome an attestation dated July 16, 1633, to testify that he had had three images made of this wood, that he left one at Liege, took one to Ghent, which he gave to the English Benedictinesses there, and gave the third to Anne Countess of Arundel, who, it seems, gave it to the Novitiate at Watten. This paper is in the Archives de l'Etat at Brussels.

6 Stonyhurst MSS., Father Grene's Miscell. de Coll. Angl. p. 19, quoting "Baines his diary."

7 The Lives of Philip Howard, Earl of Arundel, and of Anne Dacres, his wife, pp. 218—220.

The Life Of Fr John Gerard S.J. (A Hunted Priest) Part 45.

Old Liege

LOUVAIN AND LIEGE. PART 2

1609 to 1622.

That house, which Father Gerard called " the excellent seat far beyond Louvain," was like that of Louvain in this respect, that it was situated close to the ramparts on high ground commanding a fine view of the city. It was situated 1 on Mont S. Martin, close to the Citadel, and it had ten acres of ground attached to it, which were laid out in terraces up to the city walls. St. John's was only a rented house, but that at Liege was purchased. Its price was less than " 200/. in present money and the rent of 30/. with which the house and grounds are already charged, which then we may redeem by little and little, as we get friends to buy it out.' 2 As the rentcharge could be redeemed at fifteen years purchase, the whole price was thus under 650/.

Here Father Gerard was Rector and Master of Novices for eight years.3 His Socius or " Compagnion," as he calls him, was Father Henry More, subsequently the Historian of the Province, who thus fulfilled under Father Gerard those duties in the Noviceship that Father Gerard had performed at Louvain under Father Talbot. When discussing, before, his appointment, those fathers who were fitted for that office, after mentioning others, Father Gerard says, 4 " Father Nicholson is far short of either of them for my turn, for he is no good Latinist,. I think little better than myself, though he be much better scholar; neither hath he any other language but Spanish, of which I shall have small use. Father Henry More hath French well, Dutch prettily, and Italian sufficiently, besides Spanish very well, and Latin as I could wish him."

As to his first Novices, there were twelve, which made what he styled "a pretty beginning;" but his Community soon increased in numbers, for in 1617 Father More 5 says there were 45 in the College at Liege, of whom 30 were Novices. Of the first twelve he said 6 that they were "the two that expect at Liege, the two that are come from Rome, and four out of Spain, with Mr. Lewkner and Mr. Whitmore, besides Grafton, when he comes, and a tailor now servant in this house, who by all judgments here is as fit to be received, as Brother Silvester, the young tailor now in the Noviceship, is fit to be dismissed."

Of the "two that expect at Liege," a previous letter 7 had said, " Here be Mr. Mansel and Mr. Owen Shelley, by the names of Mr. Griffin and Mr. Tichborne; both expect, the first with some lothness to stay long, the second is wholly resigned. The first is a pious man, and to those that know his fashion will be profitable for some uses in the Society, but the second will be practical and fit for any thing, and in truth I think he will do very well." This Father Owen Shelley was afterwards Rector of the College of Liege, and his career justified Father Gerard's judgment of his character.

Amongst the "four which are come out of Spain" were two that must have constantly served to remind their Rector at Liege of the Gunpowder Plot, as the remonstrances of King James' Agent had managed to do at Louvain. "One of them," he says, 8 "is akin to Father Garnet, and of his name, though we call him Gilford, as he was called at St. Omers. [The other is] William Ellis, 9 but we call him John Williams, for he was page to Sir Edward Digby, and taken with him, though he might have escaped, for his master offered him horse and money to shift for himself, but the youth said he would live and die with him; and so, being taken, was condemned at Stafford, and should have been executed. He was offered to have his life if he would go to their church, which he refused. In the end they saved him and some others. He never [yielded] in the least point. He hath good friends near Sir Everard Digby's whom I know, and he is heir to 80/. a year, if his father do him right. ,,

At the close of this short notice of Father Gerard's Rectorship it will be but right to record an unfavourable judgment passed upon him, as it will help us to form a true appreciation of his character. It is the only instance that has come down to us of blame on the part of one of his own brothers in Religion. " I see a general fear in all ours, those of best judgment, of the success of Father Nelson's government, and unless he hath a companion that may moderate him, his zeal will, I fear, carry him too far; and I fear it so much the more because I see him loth to have anybody with him who is likely to propose anything to him contrary to his own zealous desires. ,, This is in a confidential letter 10 from Father Silisdon to Father Owen, dated October 31, 1614, so that as it was written before the transfer to Liege, it was a misgiving lest he should be indiscreet as a Rector, rather than a judgment on his actual conduct as a Superior. As he was left in office for eight years, and as, after that, he was placed in another position of great responsibility for four years more, we may be sure that the misgiving was not verified by the event.

Father Gerard's eight years of Rectorship at Liege were between 1614 and 1622. At the end of that time he was removed from Liege to Rome because his Superiors wished him no longer to give an active support to a new Institute of Religious women in the rise of which he had taken much interest. Their foundress was Mary Ward, a very remarkable person, whose life is now in process of publication, 11 so that in this place it will be enough to refer to the forthcoming work for the interesting details of her biography and for the vicissitudes of the Institute founded by her. The Convent of her nuns at Liege was opened in 1616, while Father Gerard was Rector of the English Jesuit College, and the first house occupied by them must have been very close to the College on Mont S. Martin. In 1618 they removed to a good house on the height of Pierreuse, like their former house not far from the Citadel, in the possession of which, in 1642, they were succeeded by the English Canonesses of the Holy Sepulchre. 12

One letter remains in existence which was written by Mary Ward to "Rev. Father Tomson alias John Caret [John Gerard]." It is dated in the year 1619, and relates to a time when she was making a retreat under Father Gerard's direction. It is an interesting letter, but as it will appear in Mary Ward's life, with the narrative of the circumstances that called it forth, it is omitted here.

It has been said that it was to withdraw Father Gerard entirely from all connection with Mary Ward and her Institute that he was called to Rome. By the help of a money transaction in which he was concerned with them and the mention in the same affair of his successor as Rector, we are able to approximate to the date of his departure from Liege. Among the St. Omers' papers at Brussels there is one which says that there was a mortgage of 3,000 florins on some houses belonging to the Society at Liege made by Father John Gerard, as security for money raised by Mary Ward. Father Blount, the Vice Provincial, at once transferred the houses to Thomas Sackville, who was jointly responsible with the Nuns for the debt, and this deed is dated April 26, 1621 ; and four days afterwards Father Gerard declared the houses to be their property. By a deed dated March 10, 1622, Thomas Sackville conveyed the houses to Dame Barbara Babthorpe the Superioress, and as this deed mentions Father Henry Silisdon as then Rector, we see that by that date 13 Father Gerard had ceased to be Rector, and probably had already left Liege for Rome.

But Father Gerard carried his sympathy for Mary Ward and her Institute with him, as some letters 14 of his witness which are preserved in the Convent of the "English Ladies" of the Institute of the Blessed Virgin Mary at Nymphenburg in Bavaria. One of them is addressed to a nephew of his old friend Father Roger Lee, Henry Lee, who was a secular priest, acting as Chaplain to Mary Ward and her " Company " at Munich. In it he says with St. Raphael that God particularly tries those whom He especially loves; and then adds, " This I have always seen to be their case, and though I have kept silence to them, as it was needful I should, and must still continue to do so, yet I have pleaded their cause where only I can avail them, that is with Him Who is best able to help them, and Who will not despise the humble and earnest prayers, though of His unworthy servants. To Him I have, and do, and will continue to offer my poor and instant petitions many times every day, and no day but they have a chief part in my masses, and many times the whole when I have not other obligations. Other helps I cannot afford, either in spiritual or corporal assistance, my hands being tied. Thus much for my opinion of their patience and my good wishes to their persons, not to be altered but by their altering from God's service, which I am confident never will be." This letter is dated from Ghent, or " Gant" as the English called it then, where he wrote it on the 8th of March 1627. Father Gerard when he wrote this letter was looking forward to the confirmation of their Institute, though not " in this Pope's time;" and he tells them to be "very wary not to speak of any great differences which have been between them and our English Fathers, for besides that charity requires it, with most hath been but mistakings, and such things as we read to have happened among the saints." This was written in the absence of the Superior but by his leave ; and there are details respecting Father Gerard's position at Ghent which will be useful to us in our next chapter.

There is another letter from him written after he had again returned to Rome, dated the 13th of August 1628, and addressed "To the Reverend Mother Mrs. Winifred Campion, Vice-rectrice of their College in Monachium, at Monachium " [Munich], In this letter he speaks of Mary Ward as at Rome; for after asking some questions of the number of their novices and scholars, he says, "These things if you mention in any letter to Mother Superior here, it will be as much as I can wish, and with less trouble to yourself. I hope those grand crosses which God did permit to be raised against you by those complaining letters which were written against you, will by God's providence be allayed, Who will be sure to turn all such things to the good of His servants, dans nivem sicut lanam, and make it keep warm the roots of corn and to bring forth a greater harvest in due season." Father Gerard mentions among those " who be of my acquaintance my very good daughter Mrs. Francis 15 Brooksbie and Mrs. Bedingfeld, which two are indeed very dear to me in our Lord Jesus, and I hope they will be very profitable in your company. ,, And he bids his correspondent " remember my service to the Reverend Mr. Dr. Ansloe," their chaplain, whom he had mentioned in the former letter also.

Besides these, in the Convent at Nymphenburg there is a very long letter which exists in German only, without a signature, dated the 6th of October 1629, written in like terms of warm friendship. This letter has no passages of historical interest. It is endorsed in German, " We have the strongest reasons to believe that this letter was written in the English language by Father John Tomson (Gerard). It has been translated into German—is to be kept in secret and not shown to many."

1 The English College may be distinguished, in the accompanying view of  ancient Liege, as the large building, the tower of which (surmounted by a short spire and a ball), comes out of a quadrangle, at the right hand corner of which, and below the front, are long flights of steps. The city wall, descending from the citadel, will be seen to be not far behind the building. Three sides of the square of buildings still exist, and are used for military stores, but it is said that they are doomed to speedy destruction.

2 Stonyhurst MSS., Angl. A, vol. iv. n. 23.

3 Father Nathaniel Southwell, Catalogus primorum pat rum, p. 32.

4 Stonyhurst MSS., Angl A. vol. iv. n. 20.

5 Hist. Prov. p. 424.

6 Stonyhurst MSS., Angl. A. vol. iv. n. 29.

7 Ibid. n. 23.

8 Ibid. n. 29.

9 Examination of William Ellis, servant to Sir Everard Digby, taken November 21, 1605. P.R.O., Gunpowder Plot Book, n. 108.

10 Stonyhurst MSS., Angl. A. vol. iv. n. 31.

11 In the Month Mary Ward's Iife is being Published under the title of A Yorksfore Lady. It is announced that these chapters will be republished in a separate form.

12 This Convent was transferred in 1665 to the house called the Maison des Coquins or Hopital de St. Christophe in the faubourg d'Avroy. At the French Revolution the Canonesses of the Holy Sepulchre were obliged to leave Liege, and they settled at New Hall, near Chelmsford, in Essex, in 1799,

13 This accords with the Florus Anglo-Bavaricus, p. n, and corrects Dr. Oliver's statement that Father Silisdon succeeded Father Gerard as Rector and Master of Novices in 1620 and transferred the Novitiate to Watten in 1622. The error arose from a misunderstanding of Father More, Hist Prav. p. 416. The transfer to Watten took place in 1624. Vide supr. p. 486.

14 These letters have been copied by the kind permission of Madame Mary Paur, the General Superioress of the Institute.

15 The feminine form Frances is modern.

The Life Of Fr John Gerard S.J. (A Hunted Priest) Part 44.

LOUVAIN AND LIEGE. PART 1

1609 to 1622.

Old Louvain

St. John's at Louvain, the first Novitiate of the English Province, was the foundation of Dona Luisa de Carvajal, the devout Spanish lady, whose life was devoted, in virtue of a remarkable vocation, to the encouragement of the suffering Catholics in England. By her will, dated the 22nd of December 1604, she left 12,000 ducats for the establishment of an English Jesuit Novitiate, and though she did not die till ten years later,—that is, on the 2nd of January 1614,—and though the money she gave was all she had in the world, 1 she would have the good work begin at once without waiting for her death. The will, 2 of which she was thus herself the executrix, is an admirable specimen of true Spanish devotion and humility. After commending her soul to God by the intercession of our Blessed Lady, she proceeds—" For the love of God I humbly pray the Superiors of the Society of Jesus and the Propositus of the Professed House [at Valladolid], as a favour, to grant me some little place in their church where my body may be buried, in consideration of the devotion I have ever entertained for their holy Religious Order; to which Order, in the manner that I have thought would be most to the glory of God, I offer with the greatest affection a gift which, though but small, is all that I have. And if a burial place be refused me in that church, my executors will obtain for me a resting place in some other church of the Society ; 3 and if they are unable to obtain this, let me be buried in some monastery in which, for the love of God, they may be willing to give burial to a poor person like myself, and let my funeral be conducted in accordance with this my poverty. As executors I name Father Richard Walpole, the Vice-Prefect of the English Mission, and the Confessor of the English College in this city, or their successors. After them (and I have named them first from respect to their priestly dignity) I name the Countess de la Miranda, Dona Maria de Zuniga, Dona Maria Gasca, Don Francis de Contreras, Senor Melchior de Molina, and Don Luis de Carrillo y Toledo, Count of Caracena. First of all I declare that many years ago when I was with my uncle, I made a vow to God to dedicate all my property to the glory and greatest service of God. Then His Divine Majesty gave me large desires and a vehement attraction to devote myself above all things to the preservation and advancement of the English Fathers of the Society of Jesus, who sustain that kingdom like strong columns, defend it from an otherwise inevitable ruin, and supply efficacious means of salvation for thousands and thousands of souls. Wherefore I offer all my goods to the most holy Virgin our Lady. I place them under her protection, and I name and leave her universal heir of all my property. And I give possession of it henceforward to that most glorious Virgin, and in her name and place to Father Robert Persons, or failing him, to the Father who shall succeed him as Superior of the Mission, but with this condition and obligation, that such goods shall be applied to the founding of a Novitiate of English religious of the Society of Jesus, in whatever kingdom or part of the world shall seem to Father Persons to be to the greater glory of God ; but in case that England shall be brought back to the faith and obedience of the Roman Church, my will is that the said revenue be transferred into that kingdom, for the foundation of a Novitiate there, unless it should seem better to Father Persons, for reasons concerning the Catholic religion, to leave the Novitiate outside that kingdom.

" If the foundation of the Novitiate is delayed on account of the insufficiency of the sum in question, it is to be put out to interest, which said interest will be allowed to accumulate until it suffices for the purpose in view. If in the mean time, however, some pressing need in connection with the mission and conversion of England should occur, part of that interest may be employed for that end, provided that the ultimate object is never lost sight of. All the poor furniture of my house, its images and its books, I leave to the English Novitiate. I wish the holy crucifix I have, which belonged to my uncle, to be placed in the said Novitiate with particular veneration, as well as the particle of the wood of the true Cross which I carry about me, and for that purpose it will be put into a cross or little reliquary of gold, the same that the Emperor Henry III. carried about with him, which was given to me by the Marquis of Almagan, Don Francis Hurtado de Mendoza."

Dona Luisa then makes a provision for her friend Sister Ines of the Assumption, and begs her brother to understand that " if she does not remember him in the disposal of her fortune, it is from no want of love for him, but from a strict obligation of conscience which leaves her no option on the subject, and that if he acquiesces and takes pleasure in the fact that our Lord has chosen her to be only His, he will share in the reward, and find that spiritual blessings are not to be less esteemed than temporal ones." And lastly, she "asks her heirs, with the permission of the Superior whom she humbly and earnestly asks to grant it, that an image of our Lady with her Divine Son in her arms may be placed above the principal altar in the future Novitiate, and a devout mass with music celebrated there on each of her feasts."

Time was not lost in carrying out the intentions of this pious benefactress. 4 In 1606 Father Persons rented a large house in Louvain, and in it established the first Novitiate of the English Province of the Society of Jesus. The house belonged to the Commandery of St. Nicholas of the Knights of Malta, and was obtained by them in the middle of the fourteenth century from the Duke of Brabant, in exchange for Kisselstein, a fortress to which the Knights Hospitallers had succeeded on the suppression of the Templars. The Commandery took possession about the year 1330 of the house and chapel which were built in 1140. The Church was built in 1457, an d fr° m the Patron Saint of the Order of Malta it was called St. John's, though it was dedicated to St. Gregory the Apostle of England and other saints.

St. John's at Louvain was in a magnificent position on Mont Cesar. Some portion of the house still remains, though the Church was entirely swept away in 1799. The hill on which it stood, took its name from the neighbouring Chateau Cesar, 5 the Castle which, dating from the beginning of the eleventh century, when it was built by Lambert I., Count of Louvain, took its imperial title from Charles V., who restored it in 1511. In it Edward III. of England and his Queen Philippa of Hainault spent the winter of 1338, and Albert and Isabella the Archdukes visited it in 1617 on their return from their annual pilgrimage to Our Lady of Montaigu. Charles V. came to live there first in 1504, when Adrien Flourens of Utrecht, then professor of Theology in the University of Louvain, afterwards Pope Adrian VI., was his tutor.

The Church of the Knights of St. John on Mont Cesar was a large one, and is the most prominent object in the foreground of the print of Louvain engraved by Juste Lipse in 1605.6 It had a large nave, lighted by eight windows, and over the western door was a lofty tower, surmounted by a wooden spire. It was almost at the northernmost point within the walls of the town, on the left hand after entering the Porte de Malines, and this tower was visible half a league from Malines, as that of St. Rombaut can be seen half a league from Louvain. In the Church there was a wooden statue of St John the Evangelist weeping at the foot of the Cross, called St Jean le pleureur or St. Jan de Gryzer, which was held in great veneration, and to it women brought crying children on pilgrimage. A trace of the forgotten dedication to St. Gregory was to be found in a children's fair which on the feast of that Saint was held on the grass before the Church doors. The house was close to the ramparts, and Father More who lived there with Father Gerard, could hardly help noting that from the high ground where it stood there was a grand view of the whole city. Below was a walled garden, and on the slope of the hill there were pleasant walks among the vines which were ranged in terraces; and the whole, though within the protection of the walls of a town, was as quiet and calm as befitted a house of prayer.

The Novitiate commenced at St. John's in February 1607 witn six priests, two scholastics and five lay-brothers as Novices under Father Thomas Talbot as their Novice Master. The first Novice of the new house was Father Thomas Garnet, the nephew of the martyred Provincial, who was himself martyred at Tyburn on the 23rd of June, 1608. He had been consequently but a few months in the midst of the exercises of the Noviceship, but he had been admitted into the Society by his uncle on the 29th of September, 1604, 7 and his virtue had been exercised amid the severer trials of the Tower of London. His vows were made at Louvain on the 2nd of July, 1607, and he was again in prison in England before the year was out. A miraculous cure granted at his intercession is related by Father John Gerard in the letter, written from Louvain on the 17th of August, 1612, a long extract from which concerning Mrs. Vaux has already been given. 8

In 1614, St. John's, in addition to its novices, received Jesuit scholastics who were students in philosophy and theology. A house in the garden was then fitted up for the Novitiate, and Father Henry Bedingfeld, better known by the name of Silisdon, was installed at St. John's as Rector of the new house of studies. This arrangement did not last long, for at the end of this year the Novitiate was transferred t,o Liege and Father Gerard was made Rector and Master of Novices. In 1622 the Novitiate was once more transferred, and it then settled down at Watten where it remained up to the time of the expulsion of the Society from France in October, 1762, and for the short time that remained before the suppression, the Novitiate with the school of little boys which had been opened at Watten, was known as the Petit Coltige at Bruges. When the Novitiate was removed from Liege to Watten, the former house, of which Father Gerard may be regarded as the founder, became the Theologate; and St. John's at Louvain which had done the English Fathers of the Society such friendly service, was let by the Knights of Malta to the Irish Dominicans from 1626 to 1650. The College of Liege continued to be the house of studies of the English Province from the year 1622 to the suppression of the Society. In accordance with the terms of the Brief of suppression the fathers were permitted by the Prince Bishop of Liege to continue to live there together, a secular priest being in the first instance appointed their Superior: and thither the ancient College of St. Omers, which had been for nine years known as the Grand College at Bruges, was transferred. Finally Liege was left for Stonyhurst in consequence of the perils of the French Revolution, in 1792, and in both places, before the restoration of the Society, the College was known as "the Academy" and its community as "the gentlemen of the Academy." The Scholasticate, which as we have seen began at St. John's Louvain under Father Henry Silisdon in 1614, and was removed to Liege in 1622, was reestablished at the Seminary, under the wing of Stonyhurst College in 1830, and in 1848 the theological studies found their present home in St. Beuno's College near St. Asaph. The Novitiate, Luisa de Carvajal's especial care, began on the re-commencement of the Society in England in 1803, at Hodder Place near Stonyhurst, whence it was removed in 1854 to Beaumont Lodge near Windsor, and again, in 1861 to Manresa House, Roehampton. Hodder Place became a school for little boys in preparation for Stonyhurst College, as Watten was to St. Omers, and the Petit College to the Grand College at Bruges. Those who are interested in the existing houses cannot fail to be interested also in the men and places that gave them their beginning.

The establishment of the house at Lidge, from which men of the last generation came to England, was the work of Father John Gerard. " He built it from the foundations in a beautiful form by alms collected from all quarters," says Father Nathaniel Southwell. 9 No less than thirty letters have come down to us written by Father Gerard in the year 1614, addressed to the Prefect of the English Mission, Father Thomas Owen, Rector of the English College at Rome. They treat chiefly of the purchase of the new house at Liege and of the transfer of the Novitiate to that city. Some extracts relating to Father Gerard himself will be found interesting. Of these letters some are signed John Nelson, and others John Tomson. In the later years of his life he seems to have been known chiefly by the name of Tomson, though the last name by which he was disguised was Thomas Roberts. At various times in his life he was called by the names of Starkie, Standish, Tanfield, Staunton, Lee, Brooke, Harrison, Nelson, Tomson, and Roberts.

The choice of Liege as a residence seems to have been mainly owing to the disquiet caused to the Catholics in the Low Countries by the remonstrances of the English Government. We have some specimens of it in the following extracts, in which we find Father Gerard true to the natural fearlessness of his character. " Concerning 10 my wariness in avoiding the eyes of spies, I have been all this year [1614] more sparing in that kind than divers friends here did think needful, although some one or two did think it dangerous to go any journey, as doubting I might be killed by the way; but this was but according to their accustomed fears with which I have been long acquainted. But indeed, Father, I am so far from desire to go many journeys, that it is a pain to me to think of going any whither: and the reason why I never went to any of those places your Reverence mentioneth in this year past (but only the last Lent to Mechlin for Mr. Rouse) was not that I thought it dangerous (being known so well to live here public that it cannot be unknown to any spies), nor for that I wanted leave, for I had the other Provincial's particular and willing grant, without my own asking, to go to any place of these countries; but it was because I had rather be at home, and in the town of Lou vain itself I go not abroad half so much as I think were needful for the contentment of others. I was not at the Teresians, where the Mother of the house (to whom I gave the Exercise four years ago) and Father Scott's 11 sister do much desire my often coming, any more than once since the last Lent. At the Monastery of St. Monica's, my cousin Shirley hath requested my coming thither for these three or four months, to bestow one afternoon upon her and some younger nuns whom she hath charge of, that they may all together ask me what spiritual questions they may like best, and I have never yet found a fit time for it. The gentlemen in the town 12 I doubt I visit not once in a quarter of a year, and I have some reason to think that either they think me careless of them, or afraid to be seen abroad, as though my case were very dangerous, which would also make them or any other that should come to town more fearful to come into my company, and consequently hinder the little good that I might do with them. But I hope I shall be as wary as your Reverence wisheth, and if this course go forwards of being Rector without the name of Rector, there will be less inconvenience, whosoever see me seeing me still as a private man." In this he alludes to a plan of his own, that Father Blackfan should have the title of Rector, although he was himself appointed to the Rectorship of the Novitiate.

The next letter 13 is dated April 6, 1614. "I have yours of the 15 th of March,, and see in that, as in all of yours, your fatherly care of me, which by the grace of God I will labour to deserve. I am well satisfied with Father General's order, and shall endeavour to get this building finished for the Novitiate [in the garden at St. Johns] as soon as I can, and then will settle to my book as much as my health and letters will permit. . . . Having writ thus far, I was called to go to Brussels with Father Rector (by Father Blacfan's and Father Percy his advice) to speak with the Duke's 14 Secretary, who telling Father Percy the last week that the Agent [of King James] did solicit against me, and that he could not well answer him unless he delivered him some reasons in writing for my innocency, this writing was promised him by Father Percy; but I being loth to have any such writing sent, as thinking it the likeliest means to raise a new persecution against me, though for the Secretary's satisfaction we drew and delivered him a brief note of four or five effectual proofs, yet both to the Secretary first, and afterwards to the Nuncio, I told this day that if any such writing were sent, it would do me great harm, for Canterbury [Archbishop Abbot], having such a writing, would doubtless show it at the Council table, and then those lords who do know me to be innocent and wish me well, will be as it were forced to speak against me, lest they should seem to favour me, and so the King should be more incensed. The Nuncio did promise Father Rector and me that he would deal seriously both with the Secretary and the Prince himself in the cause."

Writing 15 under the date of April 18, 1614, he shows that he thinks that too much importance had been given to the Agent's interference. "I think your Reverence was made to believe by letters sent about Easter, that there was some new troubles against me here, out of England, and consequently that there was need of such information to the Nuncio and Father Provincial as had been given. But when I heard of it, I said it was nothing but Trumbol his own device, in hope to work upon the weakness of the Prince; and so now it proves, for on my going to the Secretary himself with our Father Rector, as I wrote from Brussels, and giving him a paper of some few points for my innocency, with the request he would not deliver it but show it if he would to the Agent, the Secretary answered he would advertise me if it were needful; but since the note was showed unto Trumbol, and he showed to be satisfied with it, and afterwards meeting the Secretary told him that he took it to be only matter of religion, but that being now made matter of State, he, being a servant employed in matter of State, could not but seek to concur with them that employed him,—as it were granting that himself was satisfied, and yielding a reason why he had moved the matter. And this being understood both by the Prince and the Nuncio, they were very glad of it. ... I write this from Mechlin, whither Sir William [Stanley] was desirous to have me come for his comfort now and after the death and funeral of his lady."

But such a man as Father Gerard was not likely to be left in peace in those intriguing times. In the August following, Father Silisdon writes thus to Father Owen. 16 " Even now I have advice that his Majesty of England hath made two complaints to the Prince, and that the first is against Father Gerard's being in his dominions." The consequence was that a transfer to another territory became desirable, and Father Gerard set his heart on migrating with his novices into the capital of the Prince Bishop of Liege. His reasons for the preference he details in a letter 17 from that city, written under the signature of John Nelson, September 19, 1614. "There be many causes to be alleged why here, rather than in any place; as, the commodity of dealing with our English in the summer, the opportunity of keeping our Novices unknown, the excellent seat, far beyond Louvain, and that bestowed upon us, the present helps sent for this beginning, with great likelihood of much more, the great favour which is to be expected from this Prince and his family, and is to be strengthened by my two cousins Sir William and Mr. Morton, and Sir William hath written to him that he doth much joy in his cousin who is there to be Rector."

The two cousins of whom Father Gerard here speaks were two very powerful friends. The one was Sir William Stanley, who showed himself a kind friend to Father Gerard and his charge by negotiating the purchase money —at least that portion of it which had to be paid down —probably (as Father Gerard speaks of the " seat being bestowed upon us ") regarding it as a gift. Whatever else was requisite for the purchase was provided by Brother William Browne, 18 who though grandson, brother and uncle of Viscounts Montague,—his grandfather was Queen Mary's Ambassador to the Holy See—was himself content to spend his life in the humble duties of a Jesuit lay-brother.

The "Mr. Morton" was Sir George Talbot of Grafton, afterwards ninth Earl of Shrewsbury. He was a scholar of some repute, 19 and an intimate friend of Maximilian, Duke of Bavaria. As Ferdinand, the Prince-bishop of Liege, was Maximilian's brother, it was no little help to Father Gerard to be on cousinly terms with George Talbot. Duke Maximilian became a generous benefactor to the new house at Liege. -In 1618 he sent Father Gerard, through Sir George Talbot, 5,000 florins for the novice-ship. 20 In a letter dated the 25th of January, 1620, the Duke writes to Father Gerard, who had promised to pray that he might have a son,—"1 bound myself once by vow to your blessed Ignatius, that if he would obtain this favour for me, I would give my son the name of Ignatius, and would build and endow a College of the Society wherever Father General might judge it most useful. What if God should purpose thus to provide for you?" 21 In July of the same year he wrote, "We have sent you a contribution of 1,300 German florins by Father Mayer for a tabernacle for the Blessed Sacrament, and for a niche for an image of the Blessed Virgin/' Even after Father Gerard's departure from the house, Duke Maximilian's liberality to it did not fail. Father Henry Bedingfeld alias Silisdon, Father Gerard's successor as Master of Novices, removed the Novitiate from Liege to Watten 22 in 1624, and not long after, the Duke settled a permanent endowment upon the English College of Liege, 23 when the scholastics were brought from St. John's at Louvain to the house that Father Gerard had established ten years before.

1 The Life of Luisa de Carvajal, by Lady Georgiana Fullerton, London, l873' P. 137.

2 Father More, Hist. Prov. lib. vii. cap. 3, p. 291.

3 When this saintly noble lady died, " the Fathers of the Society of Jesus at Louvain declared that her remains belonged by right to the Novitiate she had founded, and wrote very soon and very pressingly to the Spanish Ambassador on the subject," but by the King's command she was buried in the Convent of the Incarnation at Madrid. Life, p. 285.

4 Father More, Hist. Prov. lib. viii. n. 8, p. 355.

5 For our information respecting Louvain we have drawn largely on the fine work Louvain Monumental, by M. Van Even, archivist of the town.

6 Lovanium, Antverpia? ex officina Plantiniana, 1610, 4°. ed. 2a. It has not been thought necessary to give a list of names corresponding with the numbers and letters on the print. It will be enough to say that 11 is the Porte de Malines, 12 the Chateau CeW, and 13 St. John's. The buildings adjoining the church on the reader's left, with two arches extending across the road, are still in existence.

7 Records, vol ii. p. 479.

8 Supra, p. 447.

9 Stonyhurst MSS., Catalogus primorum pairum, p. 32.

10 Stonyhurst MSS., Angl. A, vol. iv. n. 5.
FF

11 This is Father Thomas Laithwaite. More, Hist. Prov. lib. ix n. 1 p. 391 ; supra, p. 386.

12 In 1617 Sir Thomas Leeds was Prefect and Sir Ralph Babthorpe Secretary of the Congregation of the Blessed Virgin at Louvain. Stonyhurst MSS., Angl. A. vol. iv. n. 47. A considerable number of Catholic families had settled in Louvain, and in 1614 they were disturbed by a summons to appear in England under pain of losing their possessions. On a remonstrance being made by the Spanish Ambassador, King James disclaimed the summons, on which the magistrates of Louvain expelled the pursuivant from the town. More, Hist. Prov. lib. ix. n. io, p. 406.

13 Stonyhurst MSS., Angl A. vol. iv. n. 6.

14 The Archduke Albert, Governor of Flanders.

15 Stonyhurst MSS., Angl. A. vol. iv. n. 7.
16 Stonyhurst MSS., Angl. A. vol. iv. n. 17.

17 Ibid. n. 22.

18 F. More, Hist. Prov. lib. ix. n.ii, p. 406.

19 " Sir Basil Brooke telleth that our German friend is very well at his house and in protection of the King, that Canterbury has used him very kindly, and entreated him, as one whose scholarship is famous, to make use of his library [as] it shall please him." Father Silisdon to Father Owen, August 25 1614. Endorsed by Father Owen, " Sir George Talbot well entertained by K. and Cant." Stonyhurst MSS., Angl. A. vol iv. n. 17.

20 Father More, Hist, Prov. lib. ix. n. 15, p. 414.

21 Ibid. pp. 415, 424. Maximilian had two sons by his second wife, Mary Anne of Austria, when he was over 60 years of age, and the eldest he named Ignatius.

22 The Priory of Watten, with its revenue of 3,000 florins of Brabant, was transferred to the Society in 1611 by James Blase, O.S.F., Bishop of St. Omers. The proposal had been approved by the King of Spain in 1604 and by Pope Paul V. in 1607, but the jealousy of the English felt by the Archduke Albert delayed the establishment of an English Novitiate there till after his death in 1622. More, Hist. Prov. lib. vii. nn. 5— 7; pp. 294—298, 416.

23 A note to a manuscript Catalogue of 1625 tells us that the College had funds for the support of 44 inmates. 

The Life Of Fr John Gerard S.J. (A Hunted Priest) Part 43.

ACROSS THE CHANNEL.

1606 to 1609.

Father Gerard has told us that he crossed the Channel on the 3rd of May, 1606, the very day on which Father Garnet was martyred in St. Paul's Churchyard. The " certain high personages" in whose suite he says he passed over, were the Ambassadors of Spain and Flanders. 1 Who they were, and what was said on Father Gerard's arrival in Belgium we learn from a letter 2 from Father Baldwin then at Brussels to Father Persons at Rome, dated May 20, 1606. The deciphering is in a contemporary hand. " Since my last, five days ago, arrived at —5 (St. Omers) 469 (Father Gerard), where also is one [Richard Fulwood] whom 456 (H. Garnet) was wont to use in all his chief business of passage, receiving and retaining all things. I take it he be 229 (Jesuit) also. They are yet 267 (secret), and so it is requisite for a time, especially in that the 194 225 (Marquis Ambassador) brought them, and by his dexterous and courteous manner had great care of them. The Marquis of St. Germain came hither two days ago, and both he and Don Blasco de Arragon came as well informed of our English matters as I could wish. They have made relation accordingly to the Nuncio, and this morning to me, who have been with them for a long while. They praise the courage and constancy of Catholics marvellously, and have an apprehension of the daily increase of them; also that the better sort in England are inclined Catholicly and such in profession. They speak much of the zeal of the Lady of Shrewsbury and of the indignation of the King, who hearing of the manner of Father Old-corned death and requesting all Catholics to pray for him and say De profundis, there were found so many to say that aloud as they were esteemed a great part of the number, and so many by signs and voices to have given show of Catholic profession as all were amazed. Thus they report; and also that Father Garnet was to be executed the day which they came away, in Paul's Churchyard, although another writing from St. Omers says that it was deferred the day following, for that the day first appointed was May Day, and Father Garnet, being advertised of his death, should answer, ' What then, will you make a May-game of me ?' Howsoever, it is held for certain that he is dead, and that Marquis told the Nuncio that therefore he departed the sooner, as unwilling to be present at such a tragedy. ... I think Father Gerard may live in these countries after that Mr. Owen is delivered (of whom the Archduke mindeth to have great care), yet he who is said to have had correspondence with him, one Philips [Phelippes] 3 the decipherer, is now committed to the Tower. And it were very necessary one of ours remain in Paris, for which place Father Keynes may serve for a time, at least in that he is a man not noted, and hath the French tongue, as having lived there. Father Schondonch [Rector of St. Omers] is of my opinion, and Father Gerard will do well in his place [at St. Omers] after some month or two, if things alter not much; for he can hardly be in any other place in regard of his indisposition, if it be as I have heard. I shall soon know more thereof. Father Lee were good in England in my opinion, for the consolation of many of ours, and Father Gerard's friends, all which I remit to your consideration."

Father Gerard must have remained six weeks at St Omers, recovering from the illness caused by all he had passed through. On the 3rd of July, 1606, Father Baldwin wrote 4 again from Brussels to Father Persons. " I have not as yet received from England from any of our Fathers ; only John Powell, the interpreter of the Spanish .Ambassador, relateth what passed at the execution of Father Garnet, upon the 13th May stylo novo and the 3rd stylo vetere. He hath given exceeding satisfaction to all sorts, and much confounded our enemies of the one sort and other. He was drawn according to the usual manner to Paul's Churchyard upon a hurdle and straw; his arms were not bound, neither when he was executed. Such concourse of people as hath not been seen. . . . The Spanish Ambassador would not remain in London that day; he hath got his shirt, and some of his blood is sent to Spain, which I have seen here, also his apparel is gotten, as I hear. Here now is Richard Fulwood, who telleth me that Father Gerard is very sick at St. Omers ; that said you would have him come to Rome. I fear me that journey will kill him."

Father Gerard rallied quickly from his sickness at St. Omers, for in less than a fortnight after this he wrote from Brussels to Father Persons, under the pseudonym of Francis Harrison. The letter is so characteristic of the man that, though long, we give it in full from the original at Stonyhurst. 5

"July 15, 1606.

 "Jesus . Maria.

" My dear and respected Father,—I have received your letters of the — last, wherein you show your fatherly care and undeserved love unto me, as were sufficient to bind unto you any grateful heart, although he were not tied with former obligations. But I am so much and so many ways bound unto you before by favours of the highest kind, that these do only tie me unto you with new knots, though I was before so wholly yours and so firmly tied, that sincerely I had rather not to be than to be untied. I beseech you, sir, that you will be pleased to present my humble duty unto Father General, in whose favour through your good word do procure me that place which I can no ways deserve, yet this I hope you may promise for me, that I will now begin to do my best endeavours, that I may be framed in all things as is fit for a child of that most holy family whereof he hath the care, that both by my voice and hands he may acknowledge me for his child, the better to deserve the blessing of so great and good a Father. I would now acknowledge my duty by letters, but that I am ashamed of my Latin, and loth to trouble with so rude lines, unless there were further occasion or that you thought it needful. But I hope to come and do my duty in person so soon that it will not be necessary to signify it by letters. I will stay as you appoint until I have your letters for coming forward, and in the meantime will not be solicitous one whit, having no desire in the world whereof I would not most willingly leave the whole care unto you, and indeed desiring to have no other desires but yours so far as I may be able to discern them, after that I have expressed my reasons as I know you would have me to do, and after that you know me better and my many great wants, which, that they may be more exactly known unto you, makes me so desirous to be with you for some time, howsoever it may please you to dispose of me afterwards.

" And if the chief cause why you think it best for me to stay a while in these parts be for that you would have me secret as yet, and especially not to be seen with you there [in Rome] whilst the appellants are negotiating their uncharitable accusations of their brethren, then I suppose you will think I may be fully as secret there as here, if I be first wary in my coming into the town, and then be your prisoner for some time (which I most desire), and then go to St. Andrew's [the Noviciate of the Society on the Quirinal], without visiting any holy places and being seen in the town until you think it convenient. And because, in my second and third letters, I expressed my earnest desire of this private course at my first coming, I suppose I shall hear from you in your next letter or the next but one, that you think best I come forward, unless you wish my stay for some other reasons than the desire of my being secret.

" I grant I might perform my desire of some time of recollection either in Louvain or in the new house [the proposed English Noviciate] if it go forwards, under Father Talbot [the Master of Novices]; but I have many reasons why I desire to be with you for some time, which I think you would allow of if you know them. And I would be glad also if it might be to begin in St. Andrew's, to draw there some lively water out of the chiefest fountain, and this rather in the winter than to come the next spring, because I much fear my health if I be there in the heats. But after I have been there for some time, for so long a time as you shall think it convenient that I stay in that school, I shall be Father Talbot's Minister here, or to have some office of action under him, if my health do require any exercise of body. I hear there is one prepared for Minister that is very fit, but I could have care of the Church, and then perhaps shall get some stuff to furnish it from some friends of mine in England ; or I could have care of the garden, for I am excellent at that (if you will permit me to praise myself) for that was much of my recreation in England, and I hope my brother [probably Sir Oliver Manners] will witness with me that he hath seen a good many plants of my setting, and tasted the fruit of some of them. But indeed, dear Father, if it may stand with your liking, I would be very glad to see you and be with you for some days before I settle anywhere, how private soever my abode there be, either at the first or for the whole time of my stay, as yourself shall see it best.

"As for the settling of any with my friends, I have done it before my departure, leaving my old companion and dear friend Father Percy in the place where I was, who is so much esteemed and desired by them, as none can be likely to be more profitable. Most of my other special friends I commended partly to Father Anthony [Hoskins] and partly to him, both which are most grateful [pleasing] to all my friends and acquaintance, and indeed I know not any two there that, in my simple opinion, better deserve it. As concerning Father Roger Lee's going into England, if you please that I write justly that I think, there be divers reasons for which I think it, at this time, very inconvenient First, in that he is so profitable where he is [Minister at St. Omers], that it will not be easy to find another [who] will do so much good in that place; and, in one word to express my opinion, for aught I see, the most good of the house, both for external discipline and for progress in spirit, dependeth upon his care and effectual industry, wherein I should think it more needful to provide him more helpers of like desires and practical endeavours, who would conspire with him and have talents to effect, both with the good Rector [Father Schondonch] and with the scholars, that which they should together find to be most expedient The Fathers which be there do very well, but are not of like apprehensions and proceedings, and I suppose if yourself did see all particulars, you would think Father Roger to be a strong helper to the good of that house, and that it would flourish much if it had some others of his like. I know not where to name one upon the sudden, unless it be Father Henry Flud [Floyd], whose zeal and practical proceedings I think would be very profitable for that house, if he may be spared; and truly in my opinion, upon the good of that house dependeth much the good and quiet of the other Colleges, besides much edification to many, both friends and enemies, unto whom this is a continual spectacle.

"But besides this reason (which alone I take to be sufficient) I wish Father Roger's stay for the good he may hereafter do in England, which I do hope will be great, and therefore great pity it should now be lost before the fruit of so likely a tree can come to ripeness. For, sir, yourself can better judge that none can be much profitable in England until he have gotten acquaintance there, and until his acquaintance by their trial of him have gotten a great opinion and estimation of him, which then they will spread from one to another, and every one will bring his friend, who upon hearing will be desirous to try, but after trial will say unto the friend that brought him, Jam non propter sermonem tuum credimus sed ipsi, &c. By this means one shall have, after some continuance, more acquaintances and devoted friends than he can satisfy, and more business in that kind than he can turn his hands unto ; but this is supposing he may at the first go up and down to get this acquaintance, and to be so known unto many; and until he have means so to do, if he have never so good talents, yet he shall not do so much good as a meaner person that is better acquainted. Now in this time I do verily think, if the laws be put in execution, there will be no means at all to get acquaintance, but the best acquainted shall have difficulty to help his known friends, and to be helped by them with safe places of abode as [I have declared at] large in my last letters, and they must lie much still and private and do [good part of] their [work by means of le]tters. Therefore, although I know Father Roger would be much esteemed of my special friends as any that could be sent (unless my brother 6 had served his apprenticeship and were made a journeyman, for of his skill and workmanship in framing the best wedding garment there is great and general hope conceived) yet, things staying as they do in England, and Father Roger so well acquainted now with the place as himself (which truly I think would be hard to find) my friends also being already furnished in England : these reasons move me to think it neither needful nor best that Father Roger go thither as yet; which yet in a more quiet time I shall be bold to beg for, if I see the College where he is so furnished that without great loss it might want him. I find Father Roger desirous of England if it were thought best, but wholly desirous to do that which you yourself do think most convenient; but when I urge him to speak his very thoughts whether he do think the College would be at want, he cannot deny but that the College hath need rather of more than less help, and surely I think if it were another's case of whom he might with humility acknowledge how profitable he is, I do think he would absolutely do his best to hinder it, as I do.

" For the answer to your questions, though in my last long letters I did in part answer to most of them before I received yours, yet now I will briefly again set down my opinion to the several points, Father Baldwin having written of them in his last, I being at St. Omers ; but now I am come to him, being advised by the physician there to go to the Spa for the drying up of my rheum, which here I shall take further counsel of, how far it is needful, and whether the great rains have not made the waters of less force. I am here private, and more private than I could be at St. Omers whilst the banished priests 7 are passing by. I think I shall hear within two or three posts your further pleasure; if not, I will return [to St. Omers] and then begin to talk with the youths there, or do any service I can as you appointed in your last. In the meantime, with many humble thanks for your many undeserved favours, I rest this 15th of July [1606].

" Your Reverence's son and servant wholly to command,

"Fr. Harrison."

Addressed— AI molto Rev. in Chris to Padre, il Padre Roberto Parsonio, Rettore del Collegio delli Inglesi, Roma.

It was probably very soon indeed after this that Father Gerard received directions from Father Persons to go to Rome, for the order must have come so soon that in his autobiography he puts it that " he went straight to Rome." We learn from Father More 8 that he was sent thence to Tivoli for a while, for rest of mind and body. Father Persons was staying there for his health, as we learn from a letter 9 of his dated the 8th of October, 1606 ; and, as a further pleasure for Father Gerard, Brother John Lilly, who had twice risked everything to set him free, was at Tivoli with Father Persons.

We have a letter, 10 dated "this Simon and Jude's day, 1606," from Father Andrew Whyte, afterwards the Apostle of Maryland, addressed "To his especial good friend Mr. Garret give these at Rome." This Father Whyte was one of the banished priests, and he would therefore know for certain that at the time he wrote his letter at the end of October Father Gerard had gone towards Rome. He wrote to ask him to speak to Father Persons to get Richard Green received into the Society, who had been sent to College by Father Gerard, and had been imprisoned "about the time of this late commotion." Green "was received very kindly by Father Walley [Garnet] and provided for very charitably in a manner as one of the Society, with a promise that the year following he should be received without fail;" but now, as " few or none of Father Walley's writings or determinations were found, and Richard Fulwood gone which should have given particular testimony," Father Whyte begs that "he may either be sent to the Novitiates of other countries with the licence of the General, or else may have a promise to be the next that is received at Louvain."

On the feast of St. Thomas of Canterbury in the same year, December 29, 1606, Father Gerard had not yet returned from Tivoli to Rome, for on that day Father Persons wrote 11 from Rome to "Customer," that is the archpriest, in the words already quoted respecting his innocence of the Gunpowder Plot. " The man you name, to wit Ger., passed this way some months gone, but made little or no abode lest offence might be taken thereat. Only I can say that during the few days which he remained, he gave great edification for his behaviour and sundry great testimonies of his rare virtue, but most of all of his innocency concerning that crime whereof he was imputed in the proclamation, about which himself procured that his General should officially examine, in presence of divers witnesses, commanding him in virtute sanctӕ obedientiӕ to utter the truth therein to his Superior, whereupon he swore and protested that he was wholly innocent therein, which the rest of his behaviour doth easily make probable. I shall cause him to be advertised by the first commodity of the note you write about his friend."

Early probably in 1607 Father Gerard left Tivoli for Rome, where he was appointed English Penitentiary 12 at St. Peter's. The confessionals of that Basilica, like those of the Holy House at Loretto, were served by a College of Jesuit Fathers, and both Churches required confessors of every nationality. There was thus an English Father employed at each of these sanctuaries ; but unfortunately our records are very fragmentary, and of the Penitentiaries we have little information beyond that which has been left us by Father Christopher Grene, who at the distance of nearly a century succeeded Father Gerard as English Penitentiary at St. Peter's. How long Father Gerard was there we are left to gather from other sources, and there is little to rely upon except the date that we attribute to his autobiography and the signs of its having been written in Belgium. Of the latter there cannot be any doubt when we notice that towards its conclusion the writer says, " I went straight to Rome, and being sent back thence to these parts, was fixed at Louvain." At Louvain therefore it was written, and the time, as we have seen, was later than John Lilly's departure to England in June 1609, and of course later than his own solemn Profession of the four vows, which was on the 3rd of May 1609.

His Profession, nearly twenty-one years after his admission into the Society, may have been at Rome just before leaving or at Louvain just after arriving. We are in possession of the confidential report which was made to Father General respecting him, previous to his Profession. By a singular chance the paper in which it is contained is the only one of similar reports that has come to our hands. The Latin original, from which we translate, is amongst the Stonyhurst manuscripts. 13 Father Gerard's name is the ninth on the paper. " Father John Gerard, English, forty-five years old, nineteen in the Society [that is, reckoning from the time when he took his scholastic vows, at the end of his two years' novice-ship], twenty-one on the English mission. He studied at Rome in the English College controversy and cases of conscience for four years [including, it is to be supposed, his period of study at Rheims]. He was admitted [to his scholastic vows] in England, where he made his novice-ship. He is a very spiritual man ; he is endowed with an admirable power of gaining souls ; he has also more than a middling talent for preaching ; and he is held to be not unfit for government. If these talents can supply the defect of learning, taking also into account all that he has suffered for the Catholic faith, then he is proposed for the four vows. It would be a consolation both to himself and to the many Catholics of note by whom he is held in high esteem. But if not, then he is proposed for profession of the three vows."

Both Father Bartoli and Father More remark that Father Gerard was admitted to the solemn vows of a Professed Father by a special favour, as his learning, owing to the short course of study through which he had passed, fell short of that which the Society requires as a condition of Profession. Father Bartoli says 14 that this " most rare but most just privilege" was conferred on him, " as virtue, in which he exceeded the standard, supplied for the studies in which he fell short of it."

His first employment as a Professed Father of the Society was to be Socins or Companion of Father Thomas Talbot, who was Rector and Master of Novices in the English Novitiate house at Louvain. It was of this house that he spoke in his letter to Father Persons on his arrival in Belgium in July 1606, expressing his "desire of some time of recollection," which he said he granted he could do "in the new house, if it go forwards, under Father Talbot," though he acknowledged his preference for the old novitiate at St. Andrew's on the Quirinal, which he calls "the chiefest fountain." In the same letter he says that he should " be glad to be Father Talbot's minister here," after he had spent some time at St. Andrew's; and it is probable that he was appointed to the very office he thus named when he was made Socius to the Master of Novices at Louvain, after two years of residence at Rome in the College of the Penitentiaries of St. Peter's

1 Bartoli, Inghilterra, p. 586.

2 Stonyhurst MSS., Angl. A. vol. vi.

3 This Phelippes is the man by whom Mary Queen of Scots was done to death. He could not have expected much favour on the accession of her son to the Crown of England, yet he had the effrontery in a petition to the King in 1622, after saying "that he had been forced, since his Majesty's coming to this Crown, to part with a pension had for deciphering, towards satisfaction of a debt owing to the last Queen, which she was in mind to have pardoned," to put in a claim to James' favour "for his feat of deciphering, by the which England was sometime preserved to him and sometime his Majesty to England when,he knew not of it." Cotton MSS., Julius, C. iii. f. 297. Phelippes' arrest in consequence of his correspondence with Hugh Owen is given in Poulet's Letter--books, p. 116.

4 Stonyhurst MSS., Angl. A. vol. vi.

5 Ibid.

6 Sir Oliver Manners was ordained in April 1611, as we have said (supra, P. 373), about five years from the date of this letter.

7 Bishop Challoner gives a list of 47 priests from different prisons who were sent this year, 1606, into perpetual banishment. Missionary Priests, vol. ii. p. 29.

8 Hist. Prov. lib. vii. n. 43, p. 339.

9 Stonyhurst MSS., Father Grene's Collectan. P. f. 437.

10 Ibid. Angl. A. vol. iii. n. 70.

11 Stonyhurst MSS., Father Grene's Collectan. P. f. 449, 477.

12 Stonyhurst MSS., Father Southwell's Catalogus primorum patrum, p. 32. Archives of the English College at Rome, Scritture, vol. xxx.; 1632.

13 Angl. A. vol. vi.

14 Inghilterra, p. 586.

The Life Of Fr John Gerard S.J. (A Hunted Priest) Part 41.

NOTE TO CHAPTER XXXI.

Before we close this subject, we think it desirable to answer in detail two particular accusations that have been brought against Father Gerard's veracity by a modern writer. Canon Tierney says: 1 "To show how very little reliance can be placed on the asseverations of Gerard when employed in his own vindication, it is only right to observe that, referring to this transaction" [the Communion of the conspirators after their oath of secrecy] " in his manuscript narrative, he first boldly and very properly asserts, on the authority of Winter's confession, that the priest who administered the Sacrament was not privy to the designs of the conspirators; and then ignorant of Fawkes' declaration which had not been published, and supposing that his name had not transpired, as that of the clergyman who had officiated upon the occasion, he returns at once to the artifice which I have elsewhere noticed, of substituting a third person as the narrator, and solemnly protests on his salvation that he knows not the priest from whom Catesby and his associates received the Communion !"

Dr. Lingard also says simply that the Communion was received by the conspirators "from the hand of the Jesuit missionary Father Gerard," 2 apparently unconscious that he had ever denied it.

We have little doubt that the house in which the oath of secrecy was taken and holy Communion received, was really Father Gerard's house. The "house in the fields behind St. Clement's Inn," as Fawkes calls it; " behind St. Clement's," as it appears in Winter's confession, seems to be the house described by Father Gerard as that which he occupied up to the time of the Powder Plot, " nearer the principal street in London, called the Strand," 3 in which street most of his friends lived. But he was not the only priest that lived in that house. At least two other priests 4 resided habitually with him. One was Father Strange, who was in the Tower when the Autobiography was written; the other, whose name he does not give, " was thrown into Bridewell, and was afterwards banished, together with other priests." Then there was also Thomas Laithwaite, 5 a priest, who afterwards became a Jesuit, who frequented the house if he did not live there. Father Gerard says, " There I should long have remained, free from all peril or even suspicion, if some friends of mine, while I was absent from London, had not availed themselves of the house rather rashly." What meaning can this have but that Catholics were allowed, in Father Gerard's absence, to come to the house to receive the Sacraments, so freely that it became widely known that it was his house ?

Immediately after binding themselves by oath to secrecy, the minds of the conspirators must have been preoccupied with the thoughts of the tremendous undertaking to which they had just pledged themselves; and it is very unlikely that mention should be made, in subsequent conversation among them, of the name of the priest, whom they had only seen at the altar, especially as he "was not acquainted with their purpose."6 The only two conspirators who mention Father Gerard's name are Fawkes and Thomas Winter. Fawkes was a stranger, who had "spent most of his time in the wars of Flanders, which is the cause that he was less known here in England. " 7 We have no trace of any personal intercourse between Thomas Winter and Father Gerard. What can have been more natural than that they should have been told to meet at Father Gerard's house, and that those who did not know him by sight should have concluded that it was Father Gerard's Mass that they heard ? It surely is more probable that they should have been mistaken in a name than that Father Gerard should have been guilty of perjury in contradicting, from a place of safety, that which was no accusation against him, but a harmless statement that, in ignorance of the oath taken, he had given Communion to certain Catholics.

Fawkes' confession was extorted by torture. King James had given orders, " The gentler tortours are to be first usid unto him, et sic per gradus ad ima tenditur, and so God speede your goode work." 8 Fawkes was under none of the "gentler tortures " when in a tremulous hand he wrote " Guido" on that declaration. "The prisoner is supposed to have fainted before completing" 9 the signature. Before the words exculpating Father Gerard from all knowledge of the conspirators' purpose, the word Huciisque appears in the handwriting of Sir Edward Coke, who has underlined the sentence in red. The ideas of justice of this great lawyer permitted him to publish the mention there made of Father Gerard's name, and to suppress the statement of his innocence. There is also a red line drawn beneath the following words in Thomas Winter's examination : " But Gerard knew not of the provision of the powder, to his knowledge."10

The second accusation brought by the same writer, 11 is couched as follows: " Relying upon the fidelity of Gerard, who declares upon his conscience, that he has ' set down Father Garnet's words truly and sincerely as they lie in his letter.' Dr. Lingard has printed what is given by that writer, and from it has argued, with Greenway, that Garnet on the 4th of October, the date assigned to it both by Gerard and Greenway, was still ignorant of the nature of the Plot. The truth, however, is, that although the letter was written on the fourth, the postscript was not added until the twenty-first of October; that from this postscript the two Jesuit writers have selected a sentence, which they have transferred to the body of the letter; and then, concealing both the existence of the postscript and the date of the 21st, have represented the whole as written and dispatched on the 4th. The motive for this proceeding, especially on the part of Greenway, is obvious. That writer's argument is, that the Parliament had been summoned to meet on the 3rd of October, that Garnet had not heard of the intention to prorogue it to the following month (this, to say the least, is very improbable); that, for anything he could have known to the contrary, the great blow had already been struck, at the very time when he was writing ; and, consequently, that, had he been acquainted with the intention of Catesby and his confederates, he would never, at such a moment, have thought of proceeding, as he says he was about to proceed, towards London, and thus exposing himself to the almost inevitable danger of falling into the hands of his enemies. ^ . . Now the whole of this reasoning is founded on the assumption that the letter bore only the single date of the 4th. On the 21 st, the supposed danger of a journey to London no longer existed. At that period, too, Garnet, instead of proceeding towards the metropolis, had not only removed in the opposite direction, from Goathurst, in Buckinghamshire, to Harrowden, the seat of Lord Vaux, in Northamptonshire, but was also preparing to withdraw himself still further from the capital, and by the end of the month, was actually at Coughton, in the neighbourhood of Alcester. In fact, what was written on the 4th, he had practically contradicted on the 21st, and to have allowed any part of the letter, therefore, to carry this later date, would have been to supply the refutation of the very argument which it was intended to support. Hence the expedient to which this writer has had recourse. The postscript and its date are carefully suppressed; and we are told that, looking at the contents of the letter, Garnet, when he wrote it, could have known nothing of the designs of the conspirators: 'Quando scrisse questa lettera, che fu alii quattro d'Ottobre, non sapeva niente del disegno di questi gentilhuomini, altro che il sospetto che prima havea havuto." 12 Without stopping to notice the falsehood contained in the concluding words of this sentence, and without intending to offer an opinion here, as to the principal question of Garnet's conduct, I may still remark that even the friends of that Jesuit universally admit him to have received the details of the plot from Greenway about the 21st; and that this fact alone may be regarded as supplying another and a sufficient motive both to the latter and to Gerard, for the suppression of that date."

This note by Canon Tierney produced its effect on Dr. Lingard, and that historian, in the edition of his work published in 1849, remarks upon the matter as follows. 13 "The object for which this letter was made up in the shape which it thus assumes in Gerard's MS., is plain from the reasoning which both he and Greenway found upon it. They contend that, if Garnet had been privy to the conspiracy, he must have believed on the 4th that the explosion had already taken place on the 3rd, the day on which the Parliament had been summoned to meet; though no reason is assigned why he might not, as well as others, have been aware of the prorogation to the 5th of November, and they add that, under such belief, he would never have resolved to encounter the dangers of making, as he proposed to do, a journey to London, though in fact he made no such journey, but changed his route, and was actually, at the time in which he wrote, on his way to the meeting appointed at Dunchurch. Hence it became necessary to suppress the postscript, because it was irreconcileable with such statements. There was, moreover, this benefit in the suppression, that it kept the reader in ignorance (1) of the real date of the letter, the 21st of October, the very time when it is admitted that Greenway made to Garnet a full disclosure of the Plot; and (2) that Garnet took that opportunity of blotting out a most important passage in the letter written on the 4th, with a promise to forward the same passage later in an epistle apart; two facts which would furnish strong presumptions against the alleged innocence of the Provincial."

One word in passing, in reply to the " two facts which would furnish strong presumptions against" Father Garnet's innocence. 1. Dr. Lingard has forgotten that " the full disclosure of the Plot" was made in confession, and that Father Garnet could make no use of it in any way, until the conjuncture arose when the penitent gave him leave. 2. It is true that a passage, written to Father Persons on the 4th of October, was erased by Father Garnet on the 21st; but what presumption does this furnish? The "promise to forward the same passage later in an epistle apart," could not mean that he would write him word of the Powder Plot when it was safe to do so. Is it likely that a conspirator would have written to his friend, with all the chances of a letter being intercepted, that they were proposing to blow up the Houses of Parliament ? What would he have gained even had he but risked a phrase as oracular as that of the letter to Lord Mounteagle? Such a supposition assumes that Father Garnet was not only guilty of the Plot, but that he had lost all common sense and ordinary caution ; and that he was indebted to the accidental return of his letter to his hands, seventeen days after he had written it, for an opportunity of destroying proof under his own hand that he was guilty.

If this consideration is not conclusive, we have but to refer to the context, as given from the original by Mr. Tierney himself, 14 and our sense of the ridiculous must settle the question. Father Garnet must have been the most erratic of letter-writers, if he could insert a reference to the Gunpowder Treason, or to any other treason, between two such subjects as the choice of Lay-brothers and his own want of money. The letter ends as follows.

"'I pray you send word how many Coadjutors [Jesuit Lay-brothers] you will have. I have one, a citizen of London, of very good experience, which may benefit us, in buying and selling without taxes. But he is fifty years old : and I think it not amiss to have, at the first, some ancient men for such. Send your will herein. '

"A short but separate paragraph of three lines is here carefully obliterated,

" ' I. am in wonderful distress, for want of the ordinary allowance from Joseph [Creswell, the Superior in Spain]. I pray you write for all the arrearages, which, if it may all be gotten, I can spare you some. Thus, with humble remembrance to Claud [Aquaviva, the General], Fabio, Perez, Duras, and the rest, I cease, 4° Octobris.'"

But let us address ourselves to the grave accusation made against Fathers Gerard and Greenway. That Dr. Lingard should have made such a statement at all is owing, first, to the fact that at the time when he was preparing the new edition of his History, he had no longer access to the manuscript of Father Gerard, of which he had had the use 15 when originally compiling his work. The reader of Father Gerard's Narrative of the Gunpowder Plot, which appeared in print in 1871, can speedily convince himself of this fact. And, secondly, to a misunderstanding of Canon Tierney's note, for which that writer's expressions are to blame. If it had been true, as Dr. Lingard understood Mr. Tierney to say, that Gerard and Greenway drew the same argument from the date of Father Garnet's letter, their conduct would have been entirely indefensible, and they would have deserved the blame brought against them.

The truth however is, and in this lies an ample defence for both the Jesuit Fathers, that this is not so. Father Gerard quotes Father Garnet's letter only and solely to illustrate the state of the Catholics in England. For this purpose, the date of the letter he was quoting was entirely unimportant. Indeed, he originally quoted the letter without any date; and then he interlined the date of Oct. 4th, but laying no more stress upon it than he had laid on the dates of the other letters of July 24th and August 28th. For the same reason it would not occur to him to note that the passage respecting Ireland was taken from a postscript. It was enough for him that he gave Father Garnet's very words, as he declared " upon his conscience " that he did; and that he had Father Garnet's authority for the account that he was giving of the condition and state of feeling of Catholics. When he turned to the letter for a date, it was natural enough that he should take that which was endorsed upon it by Father Persons, who, having erased the date of the 21st which he had originally written upon it, had substituted the 4th, and " in another corner of the paper also, where it appears most likely to catch the eye, inscribed the same date thus, '4°8 bris .'" 16 As there is no ground for blaming Father Persons for thus endorsing a single date on a letter which continued to bear two, so neither is it reasonable to blame Father Gerard for quoting the letter under one date only. It is clear, therefore, that there is no accusation whatever against Father Gerard, and if Father Greenway had not drawn from the date of the letter the argument regarding Father Garnet, none would ever have been made. It is gravely to be regretted that Mr. Tierney should have said that there was "a sufficient motive both to the latter and to Gerard for the suppression of that date." This expression evidently misled Dr. Lingard, and led him erroneously to speak of "the reasoning which both he [Gerard] and Greenway found upon it." Had Dr. Lingard not trusted to Mr. Tierney, but referred to Gerard's Narrative, he would have said of the whole charge that which he has said 17 of the alterations of names in the first part of the letter. Of this his expression is, " Had his object been only to present the public with an account of the persecution to which the English Catholics were at that moment subjected, there would not have been great cause to complain." This was his only object, 18 and therefore there was, in Dr. Lingard's judgment, no great cause to complain.

Father Greenway derived his information of the letter from Father Gerard's Narrative, of which he was translator. Whether the argument he has founded on the date of the letter has any and what force is not here under discussion, but it is evident that he propounded it in good faith. The original letter was in existence to confute him. If he had seen it or noticed the postscript and its date, he would never have exposed himself to such a confutation. He was misled, innocently enough, but seriously, by the manner in which the letter appeared in Father Gerard's pages which he was translating.

In a word, the accusation is this. Gerard and Greenway found an argument on the fact that a letter of Garnet's was dated the 4th of October, when they knew that it was in his hands on the 21st. And the answer is this. Gerard may have known, but had no need to notice, the fact of the double date, as he founded no argument whatever upon it: Greenway, who did found an argument on it, had no reason for suspecting the existence of a later date on the letter.

1 Dodd's Church History, ed. Tierney, vol. iv. p. 44, note.

2 History of England, ed. 1849, vol. vii. p. 44.

3 Supra, p. 360.

4 Supra p. 382.

5 Supra p. 386.

6 Fawkes' confession, T.R.O., Gunpowder Plot Book, n. 54.

7 Condition of Catholics, " Narrative of the Gunpowder Plot," p. 59.

8 In the King's own hand. P.R.O., Gunpowder Plot Book, n. 17.

9 Calendar 0f State Papers, by M. E. Green. James I. 1603—10, p. 247.

10 P.R.O., Gunpowder Plot Book, n. 164.

11 Dodd's Church History, by Tierney, vol. iv. p. cii.

12 Greenway's MS., 51 B.

13 Vol. viii. p. 543.

14 Tierney's Dodd, vol. iv. p. cv. The original letter is now in the archives of the See of Westminster.

15 Vol. iii. p. 37, note.

16 Tierney's Dodd, vol. iv. p. cvi.

17 Vol. vii. p. 542.

18 See Condition of Catholics, " Narrative of the Gunpowder Plot," p. 79.