Arthur Browne A Seminary Priest, His Confession after he was Condemned to be hanged, at the Assizes holden at Dorchester the sixteenth day of August.  
After which sentence of death pronounced he fell upon his knees, asking God forgiveness, railing upon the Jesuit, for said he, they, and none but they are the Plotters of mischiefs, and seducers of His majesty's Subjects, and have brought Him to this confusion.  
Humbly praying this Honourable Bench to pardon him, and he would unfold a great part of their villainy which in secret he hath been sworn unto.  
August 25. Printed at London for George Tomlinson. 1642.   

Arthur Browne a Seminary Priest his Confession, after he was condemned to be Hanged at the Assizes holden at Dorchester the 12. day of August, after which Sentence of death pronounced, &c.  
MY Lord, and this honourable Bench, I am here condemned to die for a seducer of his majesty's Subjects. True it is, my actions deserve no less, for I have been carried, and have misled others contrary to my conscience for lucre of respect and service far beyond my deserts.  
Now my Lord, and the rest of this Honourable Bench, I have been in those Western parts ever since the Rebellion in Ireland first sprung up, and privately hid in Catholic houses, being sent by command from the whole company of Jesuites in the University of St. Thomas in Flaunders, for my own part I never affected the Romish Religion, but having been sworn to secrecy, and so many watches over my carriage, I could not invent without great danger or hazard of my life to leave those Popish projects, which God hath since brought to light.  
May it please this Honourable Bench, there is not such diligent search in this kingdom as ought to be, nay there is not one County in this kingdom according to the number of Papists in that County, but they have of all Orders to serve them according to their abilities; lesuits, Friars and Seminaries, two sometimes in one Papists house by turn to read mass.  
There is too too many in all Shires more like Knights in habit, and swaggerers in their carriage to avoid suspicion, than bald-pated Priests and Jesuits, and these are the only Cavaliers of the times, and the causers of these present distempers, and divisions in the kingdom; and if you shall find the thoughts of these Popish Projectors, full of horrid conspiracies and treacheries, their mouths of falsehoods and lies, their hands defiled with blood, and all their pates tracked with Rebellion: wonder not at it, for 'tis no new thing, and he must needs be a stranger in the world that cannot produce multitudes of the like precedents before, nay they are so barbarous as all Heathen Turkish story is to seek for.  
Here is a great motive that stir them to be painful in their callings, for could they bring the kingdom under subjection of the Pope, as in Queen Mary's days, they would be in the way of being a Cardinal, if not a Pope, and if a man should ask them the reason of their conspiracy, they will tell you they hope to see the King and Q. have the same privileges & prerogatives as their predecessors before them, a false suggestion of the devil, it is rather to root out the Protestant Religion and bring in popery, and great reason they have to seek it, they have for these many years laid dormant, and as I may compare them to a hive of Bees, which if a man trouble they will fly about to sting him, it is so with them, the Parliament doth daily search out their habitations, and fellows them so close too and fro, that they have not a place to rest in, but wander up and down like pilgrims everywhere, and now is their time of prey in seeking to set his majesty and kingdom at variance.  
There is another motive which moves them to sow sedition amongst us, for in Queen Mary's days the government of the kingdom was wholly in their hands, disarmed the Protestants, and made them uncapable of any Office or place of trust or profit to the great and extraordinary decay of the Protestants in their estates, education and learning, and in the said Queen's reign, the Protestants were not allowed to have any arms or ammunition as papists, but stood like dead men not able to def●nd themselves in such desperate dangers. But God whose usual time is then to help, when all other help and hope faileth, relieved us with the safe coming of a virtuous Princess Queen Elizabeth whose courage and valour the world adores, whose virtue and piety her Subjects honoured and at her last days governed her people in a most happy and peaceable union one to another.  
The impudence of the Papists & their religion is to be wondered at, yea their bold assertions and presumptuous hopes in matters of religion is unsufferable which I will not now run so far out of the way as to relate it but in brief thus.  
First they wear the picture of our Saviour about their necks, and the measure of the wound of the side of our Lord Jesus (and say they) it hath such a virtue that no fire water, knife or sword can destroy them, nay the devil cannot hurt them.  
Secondly, if they carry this picture or measure of the wound about them, it hath an especial power against the devil, for they are forced to fly out of the bodies of men, and whosoever carrieth this grain about him, needs not to fear any evil & it hath a most powerful ver●ue against wild fire (fit to be used in these times) against the tempest of the Sea, and against all manner of infirmities incident to the soul and body of man, and especially against the fever, pestilence, the temptation of the devil, and of heresies, and they have the virtue of the Agnus Dei.  
Thirdly, Pope Adrian the 3d did give such virtue unto this grain, that when you shall say your paternoster, you shall redeem a soul out of purgatory, and when you confess and repent your fins on the Sunday, you obtain forgiveness of all your unperformed oaths, and if upon Wednesday, Friday and Saturday, that then you get remission of all your sins, or the sins of any other you pray for. This grain ye see is good for all diseases, preserves us from all manner of evil, especially from the temptation of the devil, but yet not their feet from being so swift to shed innocent blood, their hands from theft, their tongues from lying and such like, which are near enough a kin to the devil.  
Thus you may see this grain is the next door to Hell, absolves you from perjury, and if you have any part or parcel of those grains about you, you cannot miscarry divers other wicked practices, as whoring, committing of rapes, and such other lasciviousness, which I omit to relate, being unfit for any chaste ear to be defiled with, and yet all their designs forsooth pretends under the cloak of holiness and religion, which God grant in his goodness to prosper all his Majesties and Parliaments designs, for the reducing of this and other his majesty's kingdoms to due obedience refining and enlarging of our Church and the returning to a more settled peace to this kingdom of England, for which to him only be raised a monument of everlasting praise, and thanksgiving from us and ours, from one generation to another.  
The judge after his Confession asked what Papists house he most frequented in this county or other, who answered and nominated about 15. or 16.  


Mr. Gouge.  
Mr. Winter  
Mr. Ford.  
Mr. Wray, &c.  
Sir. Saintleger.   The judge gave order for his reprieve till the next goal delivery.  
FINIS.