Chapter VI: Masters and Slaves (9)

Clement implored her to be calm, and she became so by degrees while he related what he had learned the night before from the Princess Catherine herself. At her arrival at Frankfort, she was informed by M. Waldheim, her banker, that young Dornthal was in the city, and she begged him to call on her. Clement complied, but not without emotion, with the wish of Count George’s mother, and found her fearfully prostrated with grief and illness. He had, however, a long conversation with her, the substance of which was that, leaving Florence as soon as she learned the fatal news, she travelled night and day till she reached Paris, where she fell ill. After four days, however, she resumed her journey, but when she arrived at Frankfort the physician declared her utterly incapable of continuing it, and especially of enduring the increasing severity of the weather in proportion as she approached St. Petersburg. Able to go no further, she resolved at least to keep on as far as Heidelberg, hoping the care of a young physician of that city, since and even then very celebrated, would speedily enable her to resume her sad journey.

“I shall make the effort,” said the princess, “for I wish to live. I wish to go to him, if possible. I long to behold him once more! I hope much from Dr. Ch——’s attendance, as well as your cousin Gabrielle’s. I depend on her, tell her so. Tell her,” added she, weeping, “that I long to see her again, and beg her to come to me as soon as I arrive at Heidelberg.”

“And she will be here to‐morrow?” said Fleurange, much affected.

“Yes, towards night. I am going to notify the physician, and have the best apartments in the city prepared for her. Though she did not say so, I am sure, Gabrielle, she expects to meet you at her arrival.”

Fleurange merely replied she would be there, but her heart beat with a joy she thought she could never feel again. To behold George’s mother once more, and at such a time! Was it not like catching a glimpse of him? She would be sure of constantly hearing his name—of constant and direct news respecting him—in a word, this was the realization of a secret wish she had not dared utter.

The next day, a long time before the appointed hour, Fleurange was in the room prepared for the princess, arranging the furniture in the way she knew would suit her, trying to give everything a cheerful aspect, to lessen the sadness of the poor traveller, who, towards the close of this long day, at length arrived exhausted with fatigue, and fell sobbing into the young girl’s arms.

The time when she feared no other danger for her son than Gabrielle’s presence was forgotten. The impressions of the moment always overruled all others, and her present troubles were, besides, well calculated to absorb every thought. Therefore, in meeting her young _protégée_ she only thought of the pleasure of seeing her again, of the comfort to be derived from her care and presence at a time when they were most needed, and everything except her first fancy for Fleurange seemed to be effaced from her memory.

XLIII.

A subdued light veiled every object. A bright fire sparkled in the small fireplace, only intended to be ornamental, as the room was otherwise heated by a stove. The princess was, as we have already seen her, reclining on a _canapé_ sheltered by a large screen. Her elbow rested on a small table loaded with the various objects she always carried with her; her feet were covered with a large shawl, and near her sat Fleurange on a stool in the old familiar attitude.

There was a great change, however. They no longer resorted to reading as they once did, or followed the lead of the princess’ thoughts, generally more or less frivolous. One subject alone absorbed every faculty—a subject which she who listened with such ardent interest was still less weary of than herself.

To this the afflicted mother continually came back, sometimes with agitation, sometimes with a dull despair, but always with profound grief, heart‐rending to her whose sorrow equalled her own.

It was the first time the Princess Catherine had ever been subdued by misfortune. Subdued, but not changed, she not only instinctively retained all her elegant habits, but her passionate nature was unchanged, and burst forth into recriminations against all whom she thought implicated in her son’s misfortunes. This enabled her to pity, without blaming, him. It was one of these occasions Fleurange heard her exclaim that “Fabiano Dini was his evil genius!” and she shuddered in recalling her presentiment, so soon and so fatally justified.

“Yes,” said the princess during one of their conversations, “it was he—it was that Fabiano Dini who brought him in contact with that reprobate of a Lasko!”

And then she told the young girl about that person whose tragical end did not seem to have sufficiently expiated all the evil he had done her son—about his arrival at Florence, the ascendency he acquired over George, and the skill and promptness with which he took advantage of all his weak points. She had been incredulous at first, notwithstanding Adelardi’s warnings—alas! too long, too foolishly incredulous! But her fears once roused, how much had she not suffered! What efforts had she not made! Alas! but in vain!

“He was always so—that dear, unfortunate child! No prudence, no fear of danger, ever stopped him on the very brink where his inclinations led him. Oh! those wretches! they soon discovered his imprudence, his generosity, and his courage! And now,” she exclaimed, rising from her pillow, while her thick but somewhat gray hair fell over her shoulders in unusual disorder, “can he possibly be confounded with them? Oh! if I could only get well, only strong enough to start, to make the journey, to see the young empress even but once, I should obtain his pardon, I am sure!”

Then she fell back exhausted, murmuring as she wrung her hands: “And Vera!—Vera absent from St. Petersburg at such a time! She was expected there, but who knows if she may not arrive too late? And above all, who knows but she will be his worst enemy, and if he has not foolishly poisoned the very source whence he might now derive safety?”

These words, which perhaps might have caused fresh trouble, were not heard by her to whom they were addressed. Fleurange had softly left the princess’ side as she laid her weary head on her pillow, and was at the other end of the room preparing a soothing draught which the poor invalid mechanically took from her hand from hour to hour without obtaining the relief of a moment’s sleep. This overpowering excitement, which resisted every remedy, was somewhat soothed at the arrival of one of the Marquis Adelardi’s frequent letters. He was still at St. Petersburg, and kept her accurately informed of all that happened, sometimes reviving her hopes, and again confirming her fears. But hitherto he had not succeeded in learning anything certain as to the fate reserved for his friend. Sometimes, therefore, after eagerly reading these letters, she threw them into the fire with despair.

So much agitation at length brought on a high fever, and the princess had been confined to her bed several days, when one morning another letter arrived from St. Petersburg. Fleurange softly approached the bedside, and perceived the invalid was fast asleep. It was important this brief moment of repose should not be disturbed, and, besides, the physician had requested, some days previous, that no letter should be given her till it had been read, for fear she might learn some distressing news before she was prepared—as it was easy to foresee might happen. Fleurange promised to read the letters first, and with the less scruple that for more than a week she had been obliged to read them to the princess, who was too worn out to do so herself.

She now left her to the care of the faithful Barbara, and went into the salon, where, carefully closing the door, she broke the seal of the letter in her hands, which was also from the Marquis Adelardi. “At last,” he wrote, “I think I can certainly reassure you as to the most terrible of the events that seemed possible. The extreme rigor of the law will only be enforced against the acknowledged leaders of the conspiracy—four or five in number. All the others, among whom is George, will incur, alas! a terrible penalty, but we must be thankful not to look forward to one more frightful—I say we, my dear unfortunate friend, for, as to him, I fear this sentence will produce a contrary effect. I am persuaded he will consider it a thousand times more dreadful than the other.

“Since I last wrote you, through the intervention of one of the ambassadors, I have been allowed the privilege of entering the fortress where George is confined, and having a private interview with him. Pardon has been offered him if he will reveal the names of some of his accomplices. You will not be surprised at his refusing. But the numerous proofs of their criminal projects, which have been set before him in order to wrest some acknowledgment from him, have convinced him of the nature of the enterprise in which he risked his honor and life. The effect of this discovery has been to plunge him in the deepest dejection, and his only fear now is that his life may be spared.

“ ‘I merit death for my folly, Adelardi,’ said he: ‘you were right in warning me there would be no consolation in such a reflection at the extremity I am now in. But I shall submit to my fate without weakness, as you do me the honor to believe, I hope. I do not wish, however, to appear more courageous than I am, and if, instead of death, I am sentenced to drag out the life of a criminal in Siberia, I do not know what my despair might lead me to do.’

“As much precaution therefore must be taken in informing him of the mitigation of his punishment, as in announcing to others the severity of theirs. Before that time, I hope to obtain entrance again.

“Meanwhile I have learned with as much admiration as surprise that several who are doomed to the same punishment as he are to have an unexpected and unparalleled consolation. Their wives—their admirable and heroic wives—have begged to be allowed to share their fate, and at this very moment several ladies whom you know, young, beautiful, and accomplished, are preparing to follow their husbands to Siberia by inuring themselves to the rigor of the season. These unfortunate men, degraded from the nobility, deprived of their wealth, and stripped of everything in the world, cannot be deprived of the affection of these self‐sacrificing creatures whose noble devotedness nothing daunts. I confess this amazes and confuses me, for I never before realized, or even suspected, how much heroism and generosity there is in the heart of a woman!”—

Fleurange’s own heart throbbed so violently she was unable to continue the letter. With overflowing eyes she was still dwelling on the page she had just finished—reading it over and over—when she was told the princess was awake, and wished to know if there was a letter for her. For some days her mind had been so full of terrible anticipations about the final result as sometimes to produce fits of delirium. When, therefore, the contents of this letter were communicated to her, she felt an unexpected—an unhoped‐ for relief. His life—George’s life!—would be spared! There was yet time for her to effect something. She began to hope everything from the future, and became calmer than she had been for a long time. She was even to get up in the evening. She conversed, she spoke eagerly of her plans, her hopes, all she would do to soften her son’s exile, and the efforts she would make to abridge it; but what was extraordinary, Fleurange seemed absent‐minded and made scarcely any reply.

About nine o’clock Julian or Clement always came to accompany her back to Rosenheim—a half‐hour’s walk from the princess’ house, which was at the other end of the city. On this occasion, when she was sent for, she was so absorbed in her own thoughts that she did not notice which of the two was with her. It was starlight, but very cold, and her hair was blown about by the wind from beneath her little velvet hat.

“Draw your hood up, Gabrielle; it has not been so cold this winter.”

It was Clement’s voice which suddenly roused her from her reverie.

“Is it you, Clement?—Excuse me, I did not know whether I was with you or Julian.”

He gently attempted to raise her hood.

“No, no!” she said earnestly. “Let me breathe the air. Though it is scarcely more than two years since I saw snow for the first time in my life, I am not afraid of the cold. I could if necessary endure far more severe weather than this.—There!” And she took off her hat and walked some steps with her head completely exposed to the frosty night air. “You know,” she continued, with an animation that singularly contrasted with her previous silence—“you know, during the Russian campaign, those who endured the cold best were the Neapolitan soldiers. Well, like them, I have brought a supply of sunshine from the South which much harder frosts than this could not exhaust!”

Nevertheless, at Clement’s renewed entreaties, she laughingly put on her hat, and they walked quickly along, leaving scarcely a trace of their steps on the hard snow, deep as it was.

Her liveliness that evening was strange! Clement noticed it without comprehending the cause. Her cheerful tone and charming smile, instead of delighting him as usual, now made him inexpressibly uneasy, and sadder than ever!

XLIV.

As is often the case with people of violent and impressionable natures, the Princess Catherine seldom saw things long in the same light. Though her thoughts were sorrowfully fastened on one subject in consequence of the tragical events that so suddenly threw a dark, ominous veil over a life hitherto so smiling, she found means of giving a thousand different shades to her misfortune, and it was not always easy to follow her in the fitful turns of her grief. What consoled her one day was a source of irritation the next: what she affirmed in the morning, she vehemently denied in the evening. Sometimes she expressed her fears on purpose that they might be opposed; at other times, she burst into tears at the slightest contradiction, and, if they endeavored to reassure her, she accused them of cruelty and indifference to her troubles.

In consequence of one of these sudden fluctuations, the day following the arrival of the Marquis Adelardi’s letter which had seemed so consoling, Fleurange, at the hour of her usual visit, found her abandoned to the deepest dejection. Everything had assumed a new aspect, or perhaps it would be more just to say that everything now wore the terrible aspect of truth. And was it really enough that her idolized son was delivered from death? Was not the prospect she now dwelt on almost as fearful to bear? He—George!—her son!—in her eyes the perfect model of manly beauty, elegance, and nobleness of character, clad in the frightful garb of a criminal!—and going alone amid that wretched crowd to that dreary region, where the hardest and most humiliating labor awaited him, without even the consoling voice of a friend to encourage him, to take him by the hand, to love him, and to tell him so!

“Oh!” she exclaimed, in that accent which is as different from every other, as the grief of a mother differs from every other grief—“oh! feeble, ill, and exhausted as I am, why cannot I accompany him? It really seems to me, Gabrielle, if I were allowed, I should find strength, I should have the courage to go. I would start, I would go and share his wretched existence, I would participate in all the severities of so frightful a life, and by dint of affection I would make it endurable for him!”

This energetic cry of disinterested affection—its evident sincerity—was so rare a thing with the princess that it was the more affecting. Pale, silent, and motionless before her, Fleurange listened with an emotion that prevented her uttering the words that hung on her trembling lips. The poor princess was sobbing aloud, with both hands to her face, apparently exhausted by her own vehemence, when Fleurange, suddenly kneeling beside her, said in a low tone:

“Do you remember, princess, the promise you exacted from your son, one evening?”

The princess raised her head with surprise and a shade of resentment: “What do you mean? Do you wish to reproach me at such a time? The moment is well chosen, but such a thing from you, Gabrielle, surprises me!”

“Reproach you!” cried Fleurange. “No, I did not think of such a thing. It was a request, a petition, or, rather, it was a question I wished to ask you.”

“A question!” The princess looked at Fleurange. She was struck by the expression of her countenance, and interest, mingled with surprise, roused her from her dejection. What request was she going to make in so extraordinary a manner? And why did she look so determined, and speak in so supplicating a tone?

“Go on, speak, ask whatever you wish, Gabrielle.”

“Well, first let me tell you this: The eve of my departure from Florence, while descending from San Miniato with him—with Count George, he asked if I would be his wife, adding he was sure of obtaining your consent.”

“Why recall all these remembrances, Gabrielle? I thought you generous, but you are without mercy!”

Fleurange went on as if she did not hear: “I replied that I would never listen to him, unless, by some unforeseen circumstance impossible to conceive, his mother—you, princess—would gladly consent to receive me as a daughter.” She stopped a moment, as if too agitated to continue.

“What are you aiming at?” said the princess.

“I beg you to listen to me, princess. Here is my question: When this terrible sentence is pronounced, when Count George de Walden is degraded from his rank, deprived of his wealth, and even of his name (you shudder, alas! and I also at the thought)—but to return—when that day comes, if he asks the consent he promised you to wait for, will you grant it?”

The princess looked at her with astonishment, without appearing to comprehend her.

“Will you allow me to tell him you have consented? Will you on that day tell me you are willing I should become your daughter?”

The princess began to catch at her meaning, but she was too stupefied to reply.

“Ah! say the word, princess,” continued Fleurange, her face expressing both angelic tenderness and a more than feminine courage, “say it, and I will start. I will be at St. Petersburg before his sentence is pronounced, and when he comes out of his dungeon I will be there, and before he departs for the place of his exile a tie shall unite us that will permit me to accompany him and share all its severity!”—She continued in faltering tones: “And if ever the tenderness of a mother, the care of a sister, or the love of a wife, were able to alleviate misfortune, my heart shall have the combined power of these various affections.”

We are aware that, when certain chords were touched in the princess’ heart, they vibrated strongly, and made her for a moment forget herself. But never, under any circumstances of her life, had she felt an emotion equal to that now caused by Fleurange’s words and accents. She looked at her a moment in silence while great tears rolled down her cheeks, then, opening her arms and pressing the young girl passionately to her heart, she covered her forehead and eyes with kisses, repeating at intervals with a voice broken by sobs: “Yes, yes, Gabrielle, be my daughter: I consent with joy—with gratitude. I give you now my consent and a mother’s blessing!”—

To Be Continued.

The Poor Ploughman.

A true worker and a good was he,
Living in peace and perfect charity;
God loved he, best, and that with alle his herte,
At alle times, were it gain or smart;
And then his neighbour right as himselve.
He wolde thresh, and thereto dyke and delve
For Christe’s sake, for every poor wight
Withouten hire, if it lay in his might.
His tithes paid he full fair and well,
Both of his proper work, and his cattel.—_S. Anselm._

A Dark Chapter In English History.(103)

One of the most gratifying features of the literature of the present, and one that in some measure compensates us for the evils produced by the many worthless books that are still allowed to issue from the press, is its tendency by close investigation and collation to vindicate the truth of modern history, and especially of that portion of it directly or indirectly relating to the XVIth century. Gradually, but most effectually, the inventions and gross calumnies of the post‐Reformation writers are being dissipated, and the meretricious grandeur with which the characters and acts of the anti‐Catholic sovereigns, statesmen, and generals of that eventful period were designedly clothed, has been stripped off, revealing to their descendants the deformity and impiety of the heroes of the Reformation. Whether we turn to England or Germany, Edinburgh or Geneva, we find the men and women who in our own school‐boy days we were urged to regard as patterns of patriotism and morality, become under the scrutiny of living historiographers the veriest counterfeits—the prey of passion and the untiring enemies of every principle of government and religion which we are bound to respect. Yet this is what, logically, we might have anticipated. A bad cause needs to be sustained by vicious instruments; but so closely and consistently has the web of falsehood been woven around the true designs and actions of the reformers that it required the labor of many skilful and patient hands to undo the meshes and reduce the fabric, so dexterously spun, to its original elements. This is peculiarly difficult with the works of English historians and biographers of the past three centuries, whose unanimity in magnifying the virtues and screening the crimes of their public men is so remarkable as to utterly destroy the value of their works as authorities among people of other nations. The beastly vices of the eighth Henry were, of course, so glaring that they could neither be denied nor extenuated; but who would expect to find that his worthy daughter Elizabeth, the “virgin queen” and _Gloriana_, before whose benign altar even Shakespeare offered the incense of his flattery, should at this remote period be discovered to be: as a woman ugly, ill‐ tempered, and unchaste, and as a ruler fickle, cruel, cold‐blooded, and thoroughly despotic. James I., the head of a long line of gallant princes, to whom his pliant prelates attributed “divine illumination,” and subsequent historians praised for his learning and wit, we at length know to have been a miser and a charlatan, as deformed in mind as he was uncouth in person. “His cowardice,” says his compatriot and co‐religionist Macaulay, “his childishness, his pedantry, his ungainly person and manners, his provincial accent, made him an object of derision” to his English subjects. The unscrupulous Northampton and the subtle Cecil, the trusted ministers of both sovereigns, who had long been regarded as the unswerving champions of English independence and the bulwark of Protestant ascendency, are now proved to have been all along the paid tools of Catholic Spain, with whose ill‐gotten gold their lofty palaces were built and their luxurious wants regularly supplied.(104) The chivalrous and romantic Raleigh of other days, examined by the inexorable scrutiny of the XIXth century, turns out a spy in the pay of a foreign and by no means friendly power; the philosophic Bacon, a common peculator; and Coke, the father of English common law, a falsifier of sworn evidence and a concocter of legal conspiracies against the liberties of his countrymen. Yet these were the leading personages, who, with many others equally corrupt, in their day and generation swayed the destinies of England, desolated the church of God, originated or abetted plots and schemes, at home and abroad, for the spoliation and extermination of the professors of the ancient faith.

This tardy measure of historical justice is partly due to the appearance in different parts of Europe of important public and private documents and correspondence, which have shamed British Protestant authors into something like truthfulness, but principally to the revival of Catholicity in England, which has been the means of drawing out a mass of original and reliable information, that had long been allowed to slumber in the dark closets of a few noble families or in inaccessible libraries during the gloomy era of persecution and proscription. Our readers are already familiar with the articles which formerly appeared in these columns on the long‐unsettled and vexed question of the character of Mary, Queen of Scots, and the justice or injustice of her treatment by Elizabeth—contributions to current literature which in their collective form have found their way among the _literati_ of all nations, and, from their admirable cogency of argument and conscientious appeals to contemporary authorities, have at length cleared away from the character of that ill‐starred lady the foul aspersions and unexampled obloquy heaped on it by the minions of the English sovereign.

Some more recent publications have thrown additional light on the tragic incidents of her reign and of that of her successor James, which, as far as they relate to the Catholics of Great Britain, are full of freshness and interest. Chief among them is the _Life of Father John Gerard_, for many years a Jesuit missionary in England under both rulers, with his account of the celebrated Gunpowder Plot, written soon after the failure of that conspiracy. Many of the participants in the plot were personally known to him, and he himself was accused of having taken an active part in its formation; but, though his name has been frequently mentioned in connection with it and his manuscript narrative more or less correctly quoted, it remained for a member of his Order, the Rev. John Morris, the able editor of the book before us, to present to the world for the first time the only complete and accurate history of an event which has been the fruitful subject of misrepresentation and comment by every writer on English history for the last two hundred years.

Few incidents of modern times can be said to have provoked more hostility to the church and the Jesuit Order than the Gunpowder Plot, few have been so dexterously used by the enemies of Catholicity to poison the public mind against the priesthood, and none the details of which are so little understood even at the present day by friends and foes. The 5th of November, the anniversary of its discovery, has long been a gala‐day with the more ignorant of the British populace; Protestant writers, divines, and politicians of the lower sort are not yet tired of alluding to the time when, as they are wont to allege, the Catholics by one fell swoop attempted to destroy king, lords, and commons; and even Lingard and Tiernay, with the very best intentions and after considerable examination of authorities, give a partial assent to the old popular conviction that, in some way or another, the Jesuits were at the bottom of the diabolical scheme, which in reality was the creation of a handful of desperate laymen. In fact, the former, with a penetration totally at variance with his general character, alludes to the taking of the oath of secrecy by Catesby and his companions in terms that would lead any superficial reader to adopt this absurd hypothesis. “All five,” he says, “having previously sworn each other to secrecy, received in confirmation of their oath the sacrament at the hands of the Jesuit missionary Father Gerard.”(105) It is true that in a subsequent edition of his _History_ he endeavored to explain away, but in a very unsatisfactory manner, the implication of guilty knowledge on the part of Gerard; but, whether from an imperfect acquaintance with the writings of that priest, then unpublished, or from that spirit of timidity which too often characterized the conduct of the English Catholics of the last generation, his refutation is not of that full and hearty nature which might be expected from so clear and critical a scholar.

What Dr. Lingard was unwilling or unable to undertake may now, in view of more complete evidence, be accomplished by persons of lesser erudition, who, untrammelled by national partiality, are not alarmed at popular clamor or unwilling to disturb time‐honored but unfounded historical fallacies. We design, therefore, in this article to prove:

1. That the Gunpowder Plot was formed and carried out to its disastrous end by not more than a dozen desperate men, the victims of unrelenting persecution for conscience’ sake.

2. That the Catholic body in England, lay and clerical, till its discovery, neither were aware of its existence, approved of its aims, nor rendered any assistance to its projectors.

3. That no priest, Jesuit or other, was concerned in its formation, or afforded it any encouragement at any time; and that of all the seculars and regulars in the kingdom but two were ever aware of its existence, and that to them the knowledge came under the seal of confession and could not be revealed.

4. That those two used every possible effort to dissuade the conspirators from their design, and denounced on every occasion all violent attempts to redress the wrongs under which the Catholics suffered.

The state of England at the beginning of the XVIIth century, when James of Scotland was called upon to ascend the throne of his mother’s murderer, was deplorable in the extreme. Less than half a century had sufficed to change entirely the whole face of the country socially and morally, and the once “merrie” people were divided into two hostile camps, one the army of plunder and persecution, the other the cowering, dissatisfied, and impoverished masses. Many were yet alive who recollected with sorrow the time when the cross gleamed on the spires of a thousand churches, when the solemn sacrifice was offered up on myriads of altars, when the poor and afflicted easily found food and shelter at the numerous convents and abbeys that dotted the land of S. Augustine, and the young and the aged, the weak woman and the strong man, together bowed their knees in reverence before the statues of the “blessed among women” and other saints. Now all was reformed away—changed not with the consent of the people nor by the argument or eloquence of the preacher, but by the brute force and cunning fraud of a corrupt sovereign, a dissolute and avaricious court, and, partially at least, by a venal and cowardly episcopate. The churches no longer resounded from morning till night with the solemn sacred chants, the monasteries were in ruins or the scenes of impious revelry, the festivals of the church were abolished, and the peasantry, formerly accustomed to look forward to them as days of rest from hard toil and occasions of innocent enjoyment, were sullen and discontented. Those who had shared in the ecclesiastical plunder spent their time in the metropolis in wild extravagance, while the gentry, most of whom still adhered secretly to the faith, remained at home, the prey of anxiety and the tax‐gatherer. The masses were fast degenerating into that state of stolid ignorance and unbelief from which all subsequent legislation has failed to raise them. The laws of Elizabeth aimed at the suppression of all outward manifestation of Catholicity and the ultimate protestantizing of the nation; those of James, at the utter extirpation of the Catholics themselves.

As early as A.D. 1559, the first year of Elizabeth’s reign, a law was passed compelling every person holding office, either temporal or spiritual, under the crown, to take an oath of allegiance declaring the queen the supreme head of the church. The penalty for refusing this oath was forfeiture of goods and imprisonment, and a persistence in such refusal, _death_. Whoever affirmed the spiritual supremacy of the pope was declared guilty of treason; penalty, confiscation and _death_. Attendance at Mass was to be punished by perpetual imprisonment, and non‐attendance at Protestant service by a weekly fine. In the fifth year of her reign, any aider or abettor of such offenders was for the first offence to be fined and imprisoned for life, for the second to suffer _death_. Any clergyman celebrating Mass or refusing to observe the regulations of the _Book of Common Prayer_ forfeited offices, goods, and liberty. In the thirteenth year, introducing into the kingdom a bull or other instrument of the pope was treason, penalty _death_; abetting the same, _death_; acting under such authority, _death_; introducing, wearing, or having in his or her possession an _Agnus Dei_, cross, etc., confiscation and perpetual imprisonment; and for leaving the kingdom without permission, forfeiture of lands and personal estate. In the twenty‐third year, any person granting absolution from sin in the name of the “Roman Church,” or receiving the same, their aiders, etc., was declared guilty of treason, penalty _death_; and for not disclosing knowledge of such offenders, confiscation and imprisonment. In the twenty‐ninth year, the tax for non‐ attendance at Protestant service was increased to £20 per lunar month, or forfeiture of two‐thirds of all lands and goods; and for keeping a schoolmaster or tutor, other than a Protestant, a fine of £10 per month was imposed, together with imprisonment at pleasure. By the statutes of the 21st, 27th, and 28th Elizabeth, every priest, Jesuit, or other ecclesiastic ordained out of the realm was obliged forthwith to leave the kingdom, and in case of his return he was to suffer _death_; those who received or harbored him were subject to a like punishment. Those being educated abroad were required to return home, and after neglect to do so, upon their being found in the kingdom, were to be put to _death_. For contributing money for colleges abroad and for sending students there, fine and imprisonment for life were considered adequate punishments; but by the 25th chapter of Elizabeth, all who persisted in refusing attendance on Protestant worship were liable to be transported for life, and if they evaded the statute they were liable to suffer _death_.(106)

We see, therefore, by this comprehensive penal code that every office under the crown was reserved as a bribe to recreant Catholics; that private tutors were commanded to teach nothing but the new heresy in Catholic families, while those who objected to such method of instruction could neither send their children abroad nor contribute to the support of those already there. All priests were obliged to take the oath of supremacy and observe the _Book of Common Prayer_; such as did not were to be banished, and if they returned were to be executed forthwith. No priest could, of course, be ordained at home, and if ordained abroad he was to be hanged whenever caught, without delay. If one of the laity attended Mass or wore the image of his crucified Redeemer, he was to be imprisoned for life; if he did not attend Protestant service, he was to be fined enormously; if he had no money to pay the fine, he might be banished for ever from his home and country, and if he endeavored to conceal himself at home his career was to be ended by the hangman.

Nor must it to be supposed that these sanguinary statutes, affecting the rights and liberties of at least one‐half of the population, were nothing but the splenetic fits of a jealous and tyrannical bigot or mere idle threats to frighten a half‐civilized horde. On the contrary, we have abundant facts to prove that they were thoroughly and cruelly enforced, and that the sufferers were principally the better class of the community. In 1573, the Rev. Thomas Woodhouse was drawn, half‐hanged, and then quartered alive in the usual way at Tyburn, for having denied the queen’s supremacy. Two years later, Father Cuthbert Mayne was executed with similar barbarity in Cornwall for having in his possession a copy of a Jubilee and for saying Mass in the house of a Mr. Teagian; the latter, with fifteen others, for being present on the occasion, was imprisoned for life. In 1577, Mr. Jenks was tried and convicted at Oxford for exposing some Catholic books for sale, and about this time we are informed the prisons were so full of “recusants” that a pestilence broke out and large numbers of the inmates perished. Among the sufferers in 1578 we find the names of Father Nelson and a Mr. Sherwood, who were hanged and quartered solely for being recusants. In 1582, Fathers Campion (the celebrated Jesuit missionary), Sherwin, and Briant, after the mockery of a trial, were executed in London, and in May of the year following no less than seven other priests suffered death at Tyburn. Thus nearly every year supplied its quota to the martyrology of the church in England, not to speak of the nameless thousands who died in confinement by the quick but silent process of torture and pestilence, or abroad, broken‐hearted and neglected. During the fourteen years succeeding the dispersion of the Spanish Armada, when fanaticism was rampant and bigotry held full sway in the councils of Elizabeth, sixty‐one clergymen, forty‐seven laymen, and two gentlewomen expiated their offence of being Catholics by a horrible and ignominious public death; while, according to the records still extant, the total number of the “good Queen Bess’” ecclesiastical victims amounted to the handsome number of one hundred and twenty‐three, including one hundred and thirteen seculars, eight Jesuits, one friar, and one monk, besides innumerable laymen in whose veins flowed the best blood of the land.

The rack and the thumb‐screw almost invariably preceded the half‐hanging and disembowelling, so that many looked upon the gallows as a welcome relief from worse sufferings. Priests were tortured to compel them to disclose the names of their penitents, and laymen to force them into the betrayal of their pastors. Father Campion was four times racked, and then secretly brought before the queen to discuss theology with that model Supreme Head of the Church; while others like Nichols found it more convenient to swear to all their tormentors required, for, as that recreant shepherd naïvely says in his _Apology_, “it is not, I assure you, a pleasant thing to be stretched on the rack till the body becomes almost two feet longer than nature made it.” Father Gerard, who speaks from personal experience, has left us in his Memoirs the following account of this most effectual method of extorting confessions in the glorious reign of that queen to which so many of our modern writers refer with pride and congratulation:

“Then they led me to a great upright beam, or pillar of wood,
which was one of the supports of this vast crypt. At the summit of
this column were fixed certain iron staples for supporting
weights. Here they placed on my wrists manacles of iron, and
ordered me to mount upon two or three wicker steps; then raising
my arms they inserted an iron bar through the rings of the
manacles, and then through the staples in the pillar, putting a
pin through the bar so that it could not slip. My arms being thus
fixed above my head, they withdrew those wicker steps I spoke of,
one by one, from my feet, so that I hung by my hands and arms. The
tips of my toes, however, still touched the ground; so they dug
away the ground beneath, as they could not raise me higher, for
they had suspended me from the topmost staples in the pillar. Thus
hanging by my wrists I began to pray, while those gentlemen
standing around me asked again if I was willing to confess. I
replied, ‘I neither can nor will.’ But so terrible a pain began to
oppress me that I was scarcely able to speak the words. The worst
pain was in my breast and belly, my arms and hands. It seemed to
me that all the blood in my body rushed up my arms into my hands,
and I was under the impression at the time that the blood actually
burst forth from my fingers and the back of my hands. This was,
however, a mistake, the sensation was caused by the swelling of
the flesh over the iron that bound it.... I had hung this way till
after one of the clock, as I think, when I fainted.”(107)

It must not be supposed, however, that the zeal of the queen’s ministers was satisfied with these harsh measures against the clergy and the more prominent delinquents. All Catholics were put beyond the pale of the law. The country swarmed with spies and informers. Lists were accurately made out and carefully preserved of the recusants who owned property of any sort, and every possible method of espionage was adopted to detect them in the slightest infraction of the bloody code. Domiciliary visits became the order of the day, or rather of the night, for that was the time usually chosen by the pursuivants. Doors were broken open, closets ransacked, bedrooms of women and invalids invaded without ceremony; and frequently, the previous movements having been properly concerted, whole families were simultaneously borne off to prison, there to be detained without the least warrant of law for months and years. The tax of £260 annually, equal to at least five thousand dollars at the present day, was not only vigorously enforced, but upon the faintest rumor of a foreign invasion or domestic broil, special imposts were laid on the remaining property of the Catholics, and the owners were carried to the nearest dungeon till the affair blew over, when they were as unceremoniously dismissed until the next occasion arose for plunder and personal revenge.

Thus was the work of reformation and evangelization urged briskly forward in free England, and she was fast becoming converted and enlightened. Torture, death, and confiscation dogged the steps of the unhappy recusant who dare to profess, even in the privacy of his house, the faith of his fathers for ten centuries—that religion which had raised his ancestors from barbarism, freed him from the thraldom of feudalism, and given him _Magna Charta_, trial by jury, and representative government. The crown lawyers, like Coke, Stanhope, and Bacon, laid the plans, pious bishops like those of London, Ely, and Winchester, leaving their flocks to the devouring Puritan wolves, constituted themselves a sort of episcopal sheriffalty, and vied with each other in their ardor for the spread of the Gospel and their love for the spoils of the Papists. Their leader in all this was a vulgar wretch named Topcliffe, whose audacity, profanity, and lewdness made him the terror of men and the abhorrence of women, but whose usefulness was so apparent that he was constantly the object of government favors and clerical eulogy.

But human hate and diabolical ingenuity, it was thought, could not last for ever. On the 24th of March, A.D. 1603, Elizabeth died, to the last the prey of vain desires and unsatisfied ambition. For weeks before her decease she was haunted by the phantoms of her innumerable crimes, and so terrified at the approach of death that she refused to lie in her bed or to receive any sustenance from her usual attendants. The courts of Europe, to which she had ever been an object of dislike and fear, could ill conceal their pleasure at the event, but millions of her subjects, the impoverished, the widowed, and the orphaned, made desolate by her despotic cruelty, in silence execrated her memory.

The Catholics generally found consolation in the thought of her successor, and, with that unqualified confidence in the house of Stuart, which now seems like fatality, they began to hope for better days under his sway. Was he not, they asked each other, the son of Elizabeth’s royal victim, and could he be unmindful of the affection with which the Catholics of the three kingdoms ever regarded his mother? Had he not before he ever put foot in England authorized Father Watson to promise in his name justice and protection, and did not Percy, the agent and kinsman of the great Duke of Northumberland, assure his friends, on the strength of the royal word solemnly pledged, that the days of persecution were at an end? Poor deluded people, they little knew how much deceit lay in the heart of him whom the Protestant lord primate rather blasphemously averred “the like had not been since the time of Christ.” He had scarcely put on the crown when the Catholics discovered that they had neither mercy nor justice to expect from him. Once secure in the support of the Protestant party, he turned a deaf ear to their complaints, and even had the mendacity to deny his own word of honor, giving as a reason “that, since Protestants had so generally received and proclaimed him king, he had now no need of Papists.” Being by nature intolerant, he oppressed the Puritans, by whom he had been trained, to please the Episcopalians, and to gratify both he ground the Catholics into dust; arrests for recusancy multiplied, illegal visitations became more frequent, and if possible more annoying, the arrears of the monthly tax which he at first pretended to remit were demanded, and the amount, already enormous, was even increased so as to satisfy the ever‐increasing rapacity of his pauper courtiers who had followed him into England. In place and out of it, he made the most violent attacks on the faith of his dead mother and of at least one‐half of his English subjects, and his remarks were taken up and repeated from every Protestant pulpit and in every conventicle throughout the length and breadth of the land, till the hopes of the Catholics grew fainter and fainter, and finally expired. Unlike Elizabeth, he was not only expected to live a long life, but his progeny would succeed him, the heirs of his authority and cruelty; and being constitutionally a coward and an intriguer, he was bent on making peace with foreign powers, and thus cutting off all sympathy which the Catholic sovereigns might have felt it their interest to express for their suffering co‐religionists in Great Britain.

Though the principles of reciprocal protection and allegiance were not as well defined at that period as, they have since been, the Catholics of England would have been more or less than human if they could have regarded James’ government with any feeling other than detestation, and the wonder is not that a plot was laid to destroy it, but that so very few of the persecuted multitude could be found to embark in it, notwithstanding the manifold reasons afforded by the king and parliament for their destruction. It was an age of conspiracies and counterplots, when the highest and most trusted in every land endeavored by force or fraud to accomplish political and personal ends, success being the only criterion of merit. The history of Europe from the middle of the preceding century is full of dark schemes and secret contrivances, in which nobles and princes figure alternately as the bribers or the bribed, the patrons or the victims of the assassin, now devoted patriots and anon double‐dyed traitors. The long civil wars, the vicious legacy of the Lutheran attempt to unsettle the faith of Christendom, had nearly ceased from sheer exhaustion, and unemployed soldiers of desperate fortunes but undoubted courage were to be easily had for any enterprise, no matter how dangerous.

Of this character was Guy or Guido Fawkes, whose name, though not himself the originator of the Gunpowder Plot, is most intimately associated with it in popular tradition. The real authors were Robert Catesby, Thomas Percy, Thomas Winter, and John Wright; all of whom were country gentlemen of good family and education, but, except Catesby, very much reduced in circumstances owing to the unjust and repeated exactions of the penal laws, which had not only robbed them of their property and shut them out from all public employment, but had branded them with the stigma of traitors to their country and enemies to their sovereign; for, having in the early part of their lives conformed to Protestantism, they had subsequently returned to the church into which they had been baptized—an offence in the eyes of the rulers of that day of the deepest dye.

In the early part of 1604, the five conspirators met in London, and, having taken a solemn oath of secrecy, determined on their future schemes for the total destruction of the government. Wishing, however, it seems, to exhaust all milder remedies, they sent agents to Spain and other foreign powers friendly to the Catholic cause, to induce them to use their good offices in mitigating the sufferings of the English recusants. The answers were generally favorable, but non‐committal, and the practical result nothing. They then determined to depend on themselves alone, and in the autumn rented a building adjoining the Palace of Westminster, the old House of Parliament, and commenced to undermine the dividing wall. This, some three yards thick of solid masonry, they found a work of difficulty, and from the paucity of their numbers and their inexperience in manual labor, advanced slowly. A circumstance soon occurred to modify their plans. A portion of the cellar immediately under the prince’s chamber, which had been used by a coal dealer, was vacated by the tenant, and Percy rented it, ostensibly for storage purposes. The mine was abandoned, and thirty‐two barrels of powder, which had been stored previously at Lambeth, were introduced in the night‐time, and covered from observation by wood, furniture, etc. All that was now required to complete the conspiracy was a proper moment for the application of the match. This work had brought them into the spring of 1605, and, as parliament was not to assemble for some months, they resolved to separate, some going into the country to see their relatives, and others to the Continent to enlist the assistance of such adventurers as could be found willing to take service under the anticipated new _régime_. Meanwhile eight more persons were admitted into the plot, the principal of whom were Rokewood, Grant, Tresham, and Sir Everard Digby, all young men of family and fortune, whose proud spirits chafed continually under the social and political ostracism to which all recusants of the period were doomed.

The opening of parliament, expected in September, was, however, postponed till the 5th of November, but, to the secret satisfaction of Catesby and his fellows, the penal laws continued to be rigidly enforced, and additional measures of persecution were devised by the king’s council for the adoption by the legislature when it should meet. As that time approached and everything augured success, the parts of the leading actors in the bloody drama were distributed. Fawkes was to fire the powder which was to blow the king, his oldest son Henry, and the lords and commons into eternity; Prince Charles, the next in succession, having been seized by Percy, was to be proclaimed king at Charing Cross by Catesby; while Tresham, Grant, and Digby were to gain possession of the person of the infant princess Elizabeth, at Lord Harrington’s country‐seat. After the explosion, Fawkes was to sail for Flanders to bring over reinforcements, and the others, a protector for the royal children having been appointed, were to rendezvous at Digby’s residence and raise the country in favor of the new government. There was a method in the madness of these men, and the first part of their programme would undoubtedly have been carried out but for one important fact upon which it seems they did not reckon: Cecil was fully cognizant of all their movements, and for his own good reasons, as we shall hereafter see, allowed them to proceed unchecked to the very last moment.

That moment expired soon after midnight on the night of the 4th‐5th of November, only a few hours before the expected catastrophe. As Fawkes was entering the cellar to assure himself that all was in readiness, he was seized by a body of soldiers under the command of Sir Thomas Knevett. His dress denoted that he was prepared for a journey, arms and matches were found upon his person, a dark‐lantern was discovered in a corner, and the removal of the _débris_ that was piled in the vault revealed the powder arranged ready for explosion.