The lively interest which Englishmen took in the events and controversies which culminated in the assassination of Henry III of France in 1589, and the succession of Henry of Navarre to the throne, is mirrored in the stream of pamphlets issuing from the London printing-presses and relating to French affairs. At a rough count, at least a score of books and pamphlets relating to France still survive which appeared in London in that year 1589 alone. Several of these were translated from French by the busy publicist and publisher Edward Aggas. One undated translation which came from his pen was that of a celebrated treatise written under the initials E.D.L.I.C. (standing for Edmond de L'Allouette, Iuris-consulte) who is frequently identified with Pierre de Belloy. The French original which first appeared in 15893 is entitled: Apologie catholique contre les libelles … publiées par les Liguez … dépuis le decés de feu Monseigneur, frére unique du Roy.

Before discussing more particularly the embassy on which Sir Anthony Standen was sent by James I in 1603, it has been thought well in the present article to narrate the story of this Elizabethan adventurer previous to that event.

Some time in the winter or spring of 1576-7, Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford, lately back from a tour of the continent, was introduced by his friend Charles Arundell to a seminary priest, Richard Stephens, and became a Catholic. Stephens, an Oxford man recently returned from Douai, had already reconciled, with Arundell, his friends and relatives Lord Henry Howard, the late Duke of Norfolk's brother, and Francis Southwell. As bright young courtiers, they scarcely fall into the category of depressed gentlemen attracted to Rome by economic discontent; but they had about them a certain sense of “outness”, and shared a resentment against the successful Elizabethan families which was at least partly responsible for their conversion. It was less than five years since Norfolk's execution; and Burghley's wardship of Oxford had ended in a marriage to his daughter which was now, like the relations of the two men, severely strained. This discontent led naturally to the idea of upsetting the established system, both in society and in religion; this, they agreed, was what they would work for.

Contrary to the expectation of many, James VI of Scotland ascended the English throne in a peaceful manner, and for the time b~ing, at least, was welcomed. None of the rival claimants in England had sufficient force or following to offer any effective resistance, even had they so desired. In fact, the people as a whole, however much they differed one from the other in religion, appear to have accepted his accession with hope, for diverse and, indeed, contrary reasons. James’s re-establishment of episcopacy in Scotland and the dominant position of Sir Robert Cecil gave assurance to the upholders of the established state church that there would be no change in the religious policy pursued by the late queen. As for the Puritans, James’s connection with the late Earl of Essex, who had had their support, might raise hopes in them of less harsh treatment than had been meted out to them in the latter years of Queen Elizabeth’s reign. Catholics, on the other hand, hoped for milder courses on account of their former attitude to Mary, Queen of Scots, and of the promises the new king had made in Scotland not to persecute them but to allow them liberty of conscience. They knew, too, his earlier friendly relations with the Catholic Scottish earls and ascribed the persecution of their coreligionists in Scotland rather to the fierce bigotry of the Kirk than to James himself. Their hopes, too, were increased by the fact that the new king’s wife, Anne of Denmark, was a Catholic, having been received into the Church a few years previously by a Scottish Jesuit.

When the Gunpowder Plot came to light in November, 1605, the Government tried to implicate the leading Jesuits on the mission, among them John Gerard who was known to have been on friendly terms with several of the plotters. He was publicly named as a traitor, the hue and cry was raised, but through the kindness of friends he remained safely in hiding and was well looked after until, in May, 1606, he escaped to the continent. He never returned to England but spent the rest of his life teaching and performing spiritual duties at English colleges abroad. He was in charge of the Jesuit novices at Louvain from 1609 to 1614 and when the novitiate was transferred to Liège in 1614 he accompanied it, becoming the first rector of the new house. In 1627 he was made spiritual director of the English College at Rome, a post which he held until his death in 1637.

The fact that in the year: 1634 the English Benedictine priest, Leander Jones, came to England on some sort of special mission connected with the Roman and Anglican Churches is comparatively widely known, and a number of writers have referred to it and even given some account of the mission, quoting to a greater or lesser extent from documents that Leander wrote in the course of it. There is not, however, complete agreement among these writers as to either the origin or the exact nature of the work that he was undertaking, and the accounts of it have all been incomplete and incidental. The purpose of this article is to attempt to discover from his own writings what in fact he was trying to do, and to trace, as far as may be, in the ensuing correspondence the reception which his efforts met with in Rome.

The late Harold Laski, in a letter to O. W. Holmes, characterized Persons’s Jesuit’s Memorial as “the most cold-blooded plot for exterminating opponents known outside St. Bartholomew.” On the face of it, this tends to confirm the suspicion which was expressed by Holmes in this very correspondence, and which reviewers have voiced since the letters were published, that Laski often wrote about books of which he had a very imperfect knowledge. And yet there is a sense in which the Jesuit’s Memorial is cold blooded, iust as the whole Counter-Reformation was in a certain sense cold-blooded. Whenever the Church is faced with a new challenge she must tighten up her lines of discipline and ruthlessly prune certain: venerable practices and customs or at least establish an order of priority among them. Many view with distaste the mentality engendered by the Council of Trent. It would be well, however, to try and see what the Counter-Reformation was trying to do before we condemn it. And for a real insight into the Counter Reformation spirit few books can equal the Jesuit’s Memorial.

In 1630 there was published at the College press at St. Omers an anonymous book entitled Charity mistaken, with the want whereof, Catholickes are vniustly charged: for affirming, as they do with grief, that Protestancy vnrepented destroies saluation. It was answered three years later by Christopher Potter, Provost of Queen’s College, Oxford, and there ensued a controversy lasting several years between Potter and Chillingworth, on the Protestant side, and the Jesuits, Matthew Wilson (alias Edward Knott) and John Floyd, on the Catholic side.

From the time of its first appearance in 1582 until the present day there has been confusion as to the sources of Robert Persons’s Christian Directory. Gaspar Loarte and Luis de Granada have each been represented as the principal source used by Persons who has come to be regarded as little more than a translator or editor. In the case of Loarte, Persons himself was indirectly responsible for the confusion. A study of the Christian Directory and its contents, however, reveals that Persons did not borrow from Loarte at all and that if he borrowed from Granada it was only in a very minor way.

The early 1580’s saw a large increase in the publication of martyrologies concerning the sufferings and executions of Catholics in England; understandab1y so, in view of the mounting intensity of the persecution laws, in particular the statutes of 1581 and 1585, the numerous anti-Catholic proclamations, and the large scale executions, including those of Campion and his fellow missionaries in December 1581.

The College attached to the English Benedictine monastery at Dieulouard in Lorraine never consisted of more than a tiny number of students, mostly postulants. The pensioners’ “Apartments” in 1756 contained only eight rooms and a library.

The papers of Sir John Bankes (1589-1644)1, which were deposited in the Bodleian Library in 1950, and have since been purchased by the Library, consist largely of documents written in Bankes’s own hand. They extend chronologically from 1626 through 1644, but are mostly concerned with events from 1634 to 1640 when Bankes served as Attorney General.

William Wigges, Confessor of the Faith, is recorded in Catholic history as a priest, ordained at Douai in 1582, imprisoned in the Clink in 1584, transferred to Newgate in 1585, and brought to trial on July 5 in that year. He was acquitted of High Treason, but was sentenced to imprisonment for life, and incarcerated in Wisbech Castle, dying in prison not earlier than in 1595. From early days he was confused with William Way, as in John Wilson’s English Martyrology of 1608, and was included in lists of martyrs from 1590 onwards, William Way having been executed at Kingston in 1588.