AN EPISTLE OF THE PERSECUTION OF CATHOLICS IN ENglande. Translated out of french into English and conferred with the Latin copy. by. G. T. To which there is added an epistle by the translator to the right honourable Lords of her majesties preevie council touching the same matter. Psal. 105. Ver. 38. They shed innocent blood, even the blood of their own sons and of their own daughters. Psal. 78. Ver. 2. They lay the dead bodies of thy servants (o Lord) for meat to the fowls of the air and the flesh of thy saints to the beasts of the field. Imprinted at Douay in Artois. TO THE HONOURABLE LORDS OF HER majesties PREEVIE COUNCIL. FINDING this epistle of the persecution of England, divulged in divers foreign languages, Right honourable: I was moved both to translate it to my country men, whom properly it concerneth: & to direct it to your Lordships, to whom principally it appertaineth. My intent herein was simple and plain: First to procure good men's prayers, by disclosing our necessities, secondly, to move your honours at length, (if it might be,) to some favourable & merciful consideration of our calamities: which perhaps in some part are more particularly declared in this discourse, than every one of your honours hath either known or considered of heretofore. For albeit we are not ignorant, that our afflictions and persecutions do pass upon us, both in name & authority as from your Lordships: yet know we also, that you are not always precuie to every our particular agreevement and hard usage, nor if you were, (being wise and honourable) would allow of the same. Wherefore seeing the treatise following ys written by a man, both of great modesty, as appeareth, by his style, and also of good intelligence in English matters passed, as it may seem by the particulars by him alleged: I do most humbly beseech your honours, to lend the labour of reading over the same, and to consider in your own consciences, before the dreadful majesty of our lord and saviour, to whose justice both you and we remain accountable for our doings in this life, whether the sufferings of Catholics here recited, deserve complaint of our side and of your honour's part, consideration or no. It is a lawful and allowable refuge delivered us by nature herself, to mourn and bewail in time of affliction, and to bar us of this, either by offence or punishment, were as hard as to prohibit the sick man to groan, or the child to pule which is greevouslye beaten. If we groan without grief, or complain without cause: we are wnworthye of compassion, and deserve no redress: but if our case be such, as it moveth admiration to as many as hear it, and no small horror to them which consider it: we hope your Lordships, being our born peers and Nobles of our nation, will not always bear yourselves more compassionles towards our miseries, than strangers who have less cause in nature to affect us. Enter in (my good Lords) I beseech you on my knees even for his sake of whom you also must one day crave mercy, enter in (I say) but to some small cogitation, what you do: to whom: for what cause to what end. You persecute heavily, and that in such measure as the like hath scarce been mentioned in Christianity before, albeit in some points What persecution Catholics suffer. more covertly than some other did. And as for the discipline of the Catholic Church, which is commonly accustomed to be laid against us, whereby she punisheth new fangled devisers, and obstinate bringers in of new religion, it hath no comparison at all with this of yours: for first, that discipline is old and ancient, and allowed by your own practice of burning other sectaries then of the part of calvin. Whereby it followeth, that our Church having condemned as orderly john Calvine and his followers, in her late general and most learned Council, as she hath done other sectaries executed by yourselves: if she punish also Calvinistes among other sectaries: she is no more to be blamed for the same in indifferency of reason, than your part for burning Anabaptistes' familians or the like. secondly if we compare the procedings of Catholics to protestants generally, or of English Catholics, towards them of Caluins' part in Queen Mary's time, (for that is The comparison of this persecution to that in Queen mary's time. most of all brought and urged against us:) we shall find that in all respects, this far to surmount and to over reach that, and to be both greater, and incomparably more grievous. For first either few or none were touched then, but such as were either obstinate, or malicious, or wilful to intrude themselves: and how infinite many were tolerated, and winked at, although they were known, some of your honours (I think) will not deny to give particular testimony. secondly they which were complained of, and attached, were civilly dealt withal, disputed with at large both publiquelye and privately, made to see their weakness, though not to confess the same: and if sentence passed against them for obstinacy, yet was their execution, with all favourable compassion, which the law did permit, and mitigation of their pains with short dispathe: the contrary of all which is used towards us. And as for tormenting and racking and prohibiting their friends from sustaining them, with terror to all those which should bodily relieve their poverty: I think our adversaries will not once charge us with it. It is not practised amongst us, upon the greatest heretics that ever were: God for bid that it should, it is to to cruel for Christian natures. We are Matth. 27. commanded by our religion, to feed the hungry, Esa. 58. as Christ himself, and much more, not to bar them that would give relief, when we will not. finally, if we confer numbers to numbers, men to men, prisons to prisons, usage to usage, there is no comparison. Differences betwixt the punished protestants and Catholics. And yet (good Lord) what kin or likeness is there in the matter? they were punished by an ancient general law, for bringing in of new opinions, never hard of in England before, and condemned by the high Consistory and parliament of Christiandome, gathered together for the same purpose. We are persecuted by new national Statutes, for holding the ancient faith of Christianity, and only religion of our forefathers in England, without either trial or public disputation in our doctrine. They dissented not only from us, but also from the first beginners of their own side, and were By Luther: ar. 28. cont. lovan. to. 2. Witten. fo. 503. also by the Edict of the princes of mansfilde anno 1560. and by others. solemnly condemned for heretics by the same. but no such matter can be said of us. They agreed not amongst themselves upon the points of any one religion, but each man as he had received of some particular teacher. So being asked (for Example sake) of the number of Sacraments: a He holdeth three in apolog. confess. August. cap. de sacra. And four in editione vl. loco. con. some held two, with calvinists, some three or four with Melancthon. So me three or two, or one with b So he holdeth in the beginning and end of his captivity of. Babylon: Luther. And if they were demanded of particular sacraments, as of penance: one would hold it no sacrament with Calvin, an other a sacrament with Melancthon, an other only a sacramental sign with c So he holdeth in lib. de ca Babi. Luther in one place, and in an other, a very d So he holdeth expressly ar. 35 cont: Lovan: true sacrament having annexed unto it, the promise of grace. If they were asked of holy orders: one would deny it to be a sacrament with Luther and Melancthon in one place, and an other would hold it a true sacrament with Melancthon in an e in edi: vl: locorum con. other place. Some other would hold it an unordinarie sacrament with f li: 4: c: 14: calvin, and thus as sheep brought out of their fold, and left amazed in the broad filled, not knowing what way or path to take, they stood giddy in their own opinions, and yet with obstinacy every man to die in the same: but we stand all in one faith consonant to itself in every point, not devised by ourselves, but left unto us by the general consent of all antiquity in Christian doom, and yet are we more afflicted for the same, then if we were heretics or devisers of any new religion. The persons punished by your honours are The persons persecuted. of your own blood, and nation, borne subjects of the land, and commonly of such life and conversation, as are not worst liked in the places where they devil: of quiet and civil behaviour most ready both with life & goods to serve their Princess, and your honours, with all dutiful and faithful good will. They neither deal nor practise against the state abroad, nor offer injuries to their neighbours at home. But are most ready and willing to concur with your Lordships, for the preserving their Country in peace and quiet, each man The cause of persecution. according to his power & calling. The only cause of their molestation, is their conscience in religion, which being settled upon invincible grounds, as it seemeth to them, is not in their power to alter at their pleasure, neither is any persecution in the word, able to change the same, but rather confirmeth it more & more, bringing always an argument with it, of lack of truth in the persecutor, which seeketh to supply by external terror the thing he is not able to prove by argument. The end therefore which your Lordships The end of this persecution. pretend by this rigourouse course of austerity to wit, to bring men to conformity in matters of religion, can never doubtless take effect by this means, but must needs make greater disjunction, for the reasons by me declared before. And if your honour should upon terror bring any frail man to conform himself against his conscience, in such external acts, as you require: yet your wisdoms can not but consider, that he is never the nearer gotten for this, but rather in his heart much farther of than before, having wounded his soul and conscience upon compulsion, which lying grievous and festering with in his breast, must needs often put him in mind of the injury received, and so more detest the thing done, than before. Wherefore seeing there is nothing gotten to your Lordship's intent, by this man's dissimulation, but much lost often times unto himself, even as much as the price of his soul for doing against his conscience and judgement, whereby he must be tried at the latter day: there is no cause either in respect of policy or religion, which may persuade us, that your honours will always hold this heavy and extreme race twardes us. And because I fall into the mention here of policy, whereunto I know your honours, (as policy. very wise,) to have a special eye and particular regard, albeit I presume not to pretend any part of that profound judgement, which your honourable wisdoms by nature and long practice have attained in the same: yet to say that, which common reason layeth open to every mean understanding: it appeareth no way to impeach policy (if respect of conscience were laid a side) to proceed some what milder with the Catholic part in England. I will not talk of intrinsical and special by M: I: owlet: & M: D: Allen points, mentioned heretofore by some other, & easy to be considered of by your Lordships, as the counterpesinge of other sects, and dangerous factions, growing and confirming by the quiet they enjoy through our only molestations. I will speak only of the nature of our Catholic religion, which as it was first plotted out by the most high wisdom of God himself, that is, by his Son our Saviour, and founded by them which immediately received their spirit from him, that is, by his Apostles, and disciples: so standeth it substantially, with all right wisdom and policy,) being gifts of God and little sparkles of his infinite wisdom) and establisheth the kingdoms wherein it is received and executed accordingly, in all honour, peace, tranquillity and wealth, as may appear by the long continuance of other realms Catholic abroad, and especially by our own, which hath continued from the beginning of her conversion, for the space of more than a thousand years, in great prosperity, riches, and renown by the same. Whereas in the mean space, divers great kingdoms, states, and principalities, have been overthrown by the occasion of heresy and altering this religion, as Asia, Greece, Egypt, Africa, Hungary, and the like: and what will finally become of divers other countries near unto us and as yet lying under the trial of God's hand, though already greatly razed, spoiled, and impoverished, we can not tell. And the reason of these different effects The different effects of heresy and Catholic religion touching the weal public. in heresy and in the Catholic religion, besides the particular providence of God, standeth principally in this one point, that we have a certain and sure mean to keep unity and consent thorowgh out the whole, by understanding scriptures according to the expositions of our forefathers from time to time, and by obeying the determination of one Supreme pastor, with the general councils of Christian prelate's, in all matter of strife that may fall out. whereas the heretic in the contrary part, obevinge no pastor, but at his pleasure, nor receiving any man's exposition of scripture but his own, must needs raise and maintain much contrariety of opinions, and consequently much division of people by the same: and then having no place to rest, nor way to end (for general Council or pastor he will not hear), also making the temporal prince head of all, which often times is a child, and may easily be impelled to variety of humours: must needs make great innovations, which always are great hazards to kingdoms and states. And this in general is betwixt our religion and others touching the matter of Commonwealthe. But now, if we look into certain particular Particular differences bettwixt Catholic & protestant religion, for maintenance & continuance of the commonwealthe. commodities and helps which our religion bringeth unto a common wealth, and which the religion of our adversaries impugneth and overthroweth: we shall easily, see that permission of the Catholic, can not any way prejudicate the wealepublique of any state. And for example's sake, we will make our comparison in England itself, where the practice and effect of both religions have been now experienced, and divers men yet alive, that have seen and proved the consequence of both, and can the easier give judgement of the comparison. First therefore, our religion teacheth actual restitution of all goods what so ever, either 1. Restitution. wrongfully or deceatfullye gotten, or taken by might or injury. And it teacheth this restitution in such severe manner, as no priest may absolve any man from his sins during his life, nor admit him to any Sacrament, no nor at the extreme point of death itself, (where not withstanding all other matters are released) except he be content to make actual restitution (according to his ability) to the party injuried: neither can any mortal power, or prelate of the Church, dispense in this point, where the will of restitution is not, but that such a one dying, is accounted a reprobate and damned person, and not to be prayed for by our Church, of which thing do ensue two great commodities to the common wealth. Two commodities of restitution. First that men knowing they must make this restitution again, if ever they be able, are much stayed from extortion, theft, bryberye, usury, Simony and the like offences, which temporal laws of themselves can never thorowghlie bridle. secondly that many restitutions are made daily to parties wronged in our Church, at lest wise when men come to die: & of this I could here allege both rare & marvelous examples. But for the protestant, he troubleth himself little about this matter, neither hath he any means in deed to do the same (confession being taken away) and the practice is so strange amongst them, as you shall read in the story following, a good man punished four ye res in the Tower of London, for restoring of twenty powndes for an other man after his death. secondly our religion teacheth the observation 2. Observation of vows. of vows, that is, that who so ever hath made a vow to God, of a thing, honest, lawful and possible: is bound to keep it, according as the scripture biddeth us: Vovete & reddite domino: Psal. 75. vow and pay your vows to God. Of which our church inferreth, that seeing our promiss to our neighbour, is also a kind of vow, we are bound in like sort to keep that for conscience sake: much more than if we stood bound to the same by obligation, and to make dew recompense and restitution, if we break the same. Whereof ensued such The consequent of keeping and breaking of vows. faithful and trusty dealings amongst our ancient forefathers. But now the protestant teaching, that vows made to God may be broken, each man inferreth thereof, if I may break a vow to god, much more a word or promise to a man, and so we see now no promise or bargaytne kept but only for commodity, & there is no trust to men's words any longer. thirdly our religion use the abstinence of 4 Abstinence from flesh. flesh and some other meats at certain times and days, not condemning the creatures, but forbearing the use there of, for punishing our bodies for more fervent serving of God, at certain times more than other: as in lent, fridays, Saturdays, and other, as is appointed by our church, which days being in number very near 160. that is, almost the one half of the year, besides the observances of religious people, whereof many never eat flesh at all, and besides the particular devotions of infinite private people which abstain at certain other times: do bring an inestimable commodity unto a wealepublique. For that fish, herbs, fruit, and The public commodity by abstinence from flesh. the like, which Catholics upon these days do use, do not any way impoverish the land, being taken the most part from the water: But consuming of flesh doth, being wholly fed upon the ground, which flesh, by thes days of abstinence increaseth greatly, especially about the springe time, when our lent falleth out, at what time, by the judgement of skilful men the forbearing of flesh for those only six weeks, is sufficient for the maintenance of all the year after. And what avail this abstinence bringeth to a kingdom in one year, it may be guessed, if a man make but an estimate what the flesh is worth, which would maintain all England one day, and then double the same eight score times in everve year, and consider what it will amount to in fewyeres. And now, albeit the protestant (for policies sake only as he saith) will seem to command the like abstinence at some of thes days: yet saying it is but an external punishment only, and no matter of conscience to break the prince's law therein, as they affirm: how many (trow you) will break the same? or how many protestants themselves do observe it? if you converse with the preachers, you shall see them eat flesh every day, and invite other men to do it, and judge very yvill of them, that will not therein bear them company. The temporal judges also, when in their lent circuit, they publish this very proclamation of abstinence, do eat openly flesh themselves. How then shall the people observe the same, when they see both their Ecclesiastical and temporal governors to do the contrary? the truth is, that the exact observing of this la amongst higher estates, is only in Catholics, as also amongst the common people, except some poor protestant that can get no flesh, and thereby is constrained to make of necessity a virtue, for other wise he will eat it even in despite of the time. So that this commonwealthe point dependeth only in deed of the Catholic part. Fowerthlye our religion, besides this abstinence 4 fasting. aforesaid from flesh, commandeth alsomany of the same days to be kept in fast, to the number at least of a hundred every year in England. In which times there is but one meal to be made a day, and the other to be spared, which one meal saved being valued, but at allow price through out all the people above The sequel of fasting. xvi years of age in England, (for after that time they are bound to fast), amounteth to a great sum of money, and being doubled a hundred times every year, ariseth to much more, which great sum is utterly lost by the protestant that fast the not, and is saved by the Catholic to the wealpublique. Which difference albeit it be not felt presently in a great state (for great palaces shrink not at the beginning with little chunkes:) yet in time it will show his effect, when great multitudes of people shallbe by the same means of protestancy increased (as shallbe showed in the next reason following) & the old provision of the land by little & little consumed, as already I think in part we see it fulfilled. Fifthlye our religion commandeth continency and sole life to all clergy men, and to 5. Sole life of clergy men. all sorts of religious people, which (to omit all other respects) profiteth greatly the common wealth, and the liberty of marriage given by the Protestant, bringeth infinite inconveniences. For first if we make an estimate of the number which lived unmarried in Catholic times in England, allowing to every parish church but two pryestes one with an other, with other temporal offices depending of the spirituality, and therefore requiring sole life: & if we add to this, the great numbers of all religious people, both men and women in monasteries and other where, which perhaps were twice as many as the other: we shall find the number to arise very great. which all living then unmarried and chaste (or else should have done) if we now allow them to mary and account to every couple, but three or four children, and so consequently to their children, and children's children? we shall see that the increase of people will be huge in one age: and much more in many ages following, which all being nourished by the common wealth, must needs pester greatly the land, with main multitude of people, and they, for the most part idle also (for so are clergy men's children commonly) and consequently, much empoverishe the same: Besides this, if we consider the necessity of temporal provision, cast upon clergy men, by their marriage, as to provide first for the present needs, and then for the time to come: as jointer, dowrye, or some portion for the wife, livings for the children, and the like: we shall find that they can neither keep that hospitality for the poor, which was want, nor spare the leases, copieholdes, and other offals of Ecclesiastical livings, to help other men, as in times past was accustomed: and much less build Colleges, Churches, and other such monuments of piety, which their predecessors have done. Nay if the minister die not, and leave often a pack of orphans upon the poor parish, it is more tolerable. So that we see, that the marriage of the clergy men, divers ways spoileth the poor commonalty and consequently impayrethe greatly the wealpublique. Sixthlye our religion prohibiteth landlords to raise their rents, or any other way to 6 raising of rents. press their tenants, except it were upon some great cause and with great moderation, known and allowed of by spiritual men & learned divines, and if they do it rashly and immoderately, our Church doth solemnly once a year accurse them. Which was the cause that our good forefathers in times past, and especially In the bull de caena domini, solemnly recited by the pope every year on mandy thursday, in the title, de pedagiis now is non imponendis: 7 divorcements. Math. 19 3. 6. 7. 8. all religious men, used to let their lands at a reasonable rate: whereby infinite men were sustained and helped., as appeareth by our abbeys in time passed in England, the want whereof the poor countries which devil about them, do now feel. seventhly our religion holdeth touching the state of marriage, that who so ever is once lawfully contracted in wedlock to another, albeit they may be upon cause divorced from compaininge one with an other: yet can the band of marriage never be so broken, as either party may mary again, during the others natural life. And therefore they must either reconcile themselves together again, or else live chaste. Which is a bridle to many mischiefs that must needs ensue upon our adversaries contrary doctrine and practice in this matter, who allow the divorced to mary again, the other party yet living. Which liberty laid open to married people, giveth occasion of easy mislike and divorce betwixt them, upon hope to mary again where they like better, to the great disturbance of commonwealths in process of tyme. eightly, our religion teacheth a point 8 Of obedience to magistrates about magistrates, which greatly concerneth the common wealth, and the contrary doctrine of our adversaries, is very much hurt full and daungeruose unto the same. The point is this. That we teach all laws of magistrates (be the magistrate good or evil) which are of things either good, or indifferent, or not expressly against God's commandment, do bind the subjects consciences to obedience, that Ro: 13. is, the subjects are bound in conscience, to obey them not only externally, but also in private and secret, and to account it as a sin before God, if they willingly break the same, for that the magistrate what soever, is God's minister. Werof it followeth that the laws of the common wealth are obeyed truly, & sincerely, as well in secret as in open show, with love also, and without grudge or contempt to the magistrate. But the protestant theachethe that no la Calvin: l. 4. insti. c. 10. num. 5. of man bindeth the subjects conscience to obedience, whereof it must needs follow, that seeing the subject obeyeth not of conscience but only for policy and in respect of external punishment: when so ever he is not in fear of that punishment, he without scruple This is also the cause why the prince is so infinitely at this day deceived in hercustome of matchandise by all merchants report. will contemn and break that commandment of his magistrate, as for example, he will eat flesh in the lent, in such places and companies, which he is sure, will not accuse him, albeit the magistrates commandment and proclamation be to the contrary: and so in the like. Which thing is very hurtful & dangerous (as I have said) to the weal public. For besides the common breaking of public laws in private, and secret places, whereby the magistrate groweth into contempt, & the state hurted: if at any time the subjects or any faction of them, shallbe so strong and hardy, a Dangerous sequel as not to fear the magistrates punishment, what shall cause them any longer to obey▪ Fear of punishment there is none: In conscience (by this doctrine) they are not bound: why then may not they as well prescribe laws to the magistrate, as he to them? In this point therefore, Catholic religion more upholdethe the wealepublique, then that of our adversaries. Ninthlye it is of no small importance unto a Christian common wealth, (whose end is Of sin & concupiscence. to keep men within the limits of virtue and honesty) that which our religion teacheth of the difference of sins, and of the nature of concupiscence. For touching the first, as we hold, that as some sins are grievous and mortal: so some are lighter, called venial, that is, such as of their nature and by rigour of justice, deserve not eternal damnation, and expel jaco. 1. 15. not alway grace, but may stand with the same. Mortal we call (for examples sake) as to be drunk: venial, to drink a little more than a man should. Mortal, to give consentin a man's heart to an evil cogitation: venial, to be negligent in expelling the same, though he consent not. Our adversaries hold that all sins, be they never so little, are mortal of their own Calvin. in antid. council. Tri. natures, and of themselves do deserve damnation. secondly concupiscence, we hold, that in the regenerate, that is, in Christians after baptism, the natural inclination of lusting, left in man, ad agonem, as the ancient fathers do term it, that is, to strive withal, is Augu. li. 2. cont. julian. & li. 1. de peccat. merit. c. vlt. not sin of itself, except we give consent to the motion. Our adversaries hold that the very motion itself though no consent be given unto it, is sin. Of this diversity of doctrine floweth great diversity of effects into the common wealth. For out of our doctrine ensueth this, that seeing the natural motion of concupiscence in me to evil, is not sin, except I yield unto it: I will strive against it, and not yield consent, for saving of my soul. Again, seeing there is a difference of sin, if I should be carried away a little further than I ought: yet will I at least, strive to refrain mortal sin with all diligence, considering that this sin, bringeth damnation. But out of our adversaries contrary doctrine, ensueth in contrariwise, that seeing concupiscence moveth one whether he will or no, to matters unlawful, as to adultery, theft, murder, and the like: and seeing whether he consent or no, he hath already sinned by the very natural motion: again, seeing all sins are mortal and none venial: what shall let him to consent to the motion, and to accomplish the same, at least in desire, seeing he can but sin mortally, if he do it, and so hath he done already by the very motion itself, which is not in his power to stay. And by this means, seeing he must needs sin mortally whether he consent or not consent to the sin: who will not rather consent to the lust, with pleasure, then strive against the same with great pain, and yet to sin never the less. And so this openeth an infinite gap to sin & all lewd life: for that no man will strive about that which he can not avoid, that is, abowe the resistance of mortal sin. tenthly touching the reward of evil 10. The reward of good, and evil and pains for sin in this life. and good life in the next world, and touching expiation of sin in this life, our religion teacheth, that a mortal sin, being once committed after baptism, is not so soon dispatched again, but besides faith, there is required first, hearty sorrow with full purpose never to commit the same again. Then humble confession Contrition. of the same to the priest. thirdly, after the guylie of the sin remitted by the virtue Confession of Christ's passion in the Sacrament of absolution, there is required some temporal punishment Satisfaction. and penance, for satisfaction of god's justice: the which if a man fulfil not in this life, he must pay it in the next with much more pain. After this, when he cometh to heaven, Purgatory we hold, that he shall receive his degree of glory according to his perfection of life in this world, as also according to his demerit and measure of wickedness, he shall receive the quantity of his torments in hell, if he go thither. Whereof followeth both fear to commit sin, seeing a man must take such pains for the release of the same in this world: as also diligence in all the three works satisfactory, to wit, prayers, alms, and affliction of our own bodies, for preventing the pains of purgatory. Also zeal of perfection in good men, seeing their degree in glory shallbe according to their life here. And finally, some stay from owtrage in wicked men, considering that their torments in hell shallbe but according to the measure of their wickedness. But our adversaries teaching first, that there is no more pain to be taken for the expiation of sin committed after baptism, but only to believe, which is a very easy point, especially to every man that will persuade himself that he beleevethe well: also teaching that there is no place of purgation in the next life, and that no works of satisfaction are here needful on our behalf: thirdly teaching, that all glory is equal to all that are there, and all pain in hell as much to the least offender as to the greatest: must needs open a gap to an infinite sea of wickedness, and licentiousenes in the common wealth. For every man persuading himself, that how evil so ever he live, yet if he hold a faith in Christ, and believe he shall most certainly be saved: that he, without all pains either in this life or in the life to come, shall presently go to heaven, and there be in as great glory as Peter & Paul and other Saints, which led the straightest life in this world. who will not let stand the painful life of virtue, and take his pleasures, which natural concupiscence inviteh him unto, considering that he may be saved as well with them as without? Again who will spare (being once over the shoes) to run in to any extremity what soever of wickedness, when he thinketh that if he be damned, he must have equal punishment with the worst? Eleventhlie as thes opinions of our adversaries, are great fowntaines in deed to all kind of liberty and lose behaviour, considering 11: Works. free-will. & predestination the mighty inclination of our corrupted flesh to the same: so their doctrine about works ad predestination, plucketh up by the very roots all foundation of good life, beateth down the whole hedge of fear, and layeth all open to most dangerous dissolution. For whereas we teach that albeit, all saints of God be predestinate before the woorldes were laid: yet that extinguisheth not the liberty of man's free-will, but that he may (being prevented and assisted by the grace Eccl. 15: of god) do any good works or refuse Luc: 13. them at his pleasure. Which good works Apoc. 3. being done for the love of god, by a man that is in the state of grace, have their reward and merit, even to the least cup of water that a man can give, which is a great prick to Math. 5. & 10. & 12. incite men to the same, used by the holy Scriptures themselves. Heb. 13. But our adversaries teaching first that aman hath no free will to thes things, and secondly that if he do them he shall have no reward for them in heaven: mustes needs utterly discourage all men from the doing of good woorckes. For who will study about a thing that is neither in his power, nor yet necessary or profitable unto him: especially when the thing is both hard of itself, unpleasant, and much repugning to our sensuality? who will give his goods to the poor? his lands from his own kindred, to build hospitals and colleges for strangers? who will afflict his body with fasting and prayer, when he knoweth that he shall receive no reward therefore in heaven? and that without doing the same he may be saved by only faith? Twelfthlie and lastly (for I will touch no more,) our Catholic religion teacheth 12. Private confession. private confession of our sins unto the priest which thing is the very hedge and wall of all virtuous life, and the chiefest bridle of Lycentiousnes in a common wealth. For by this, infinite enormities are redressed, which by public laws can not be remedied. In confession Utilities of confession: many servants are made trusty to their masters, wiche before were false, and they are caused to make privy restitution of many things, when their masters think not of it. Many great breaches betwixt friends, as wife and husband, father and son, and the like, are salved. Many great mischiefs intended either against the magistrate, private people, or the common wealth, are stayed. Many proud heart plucked down and abated with the exaggarations of his sins to his face, by his ghostly father. Many great sinners brought to hearty repentance, and full purpose of amendment, and to promise also, and sometimes and in some cases to swear, never to commit wittinglye and willninglye the like enormimities again. Many afflicted persons comforted with particular helps for their griefs: many desperate folks mollified, and instructed in the ways of a new life. Many Landlords and superiors, brought to deal more mildly with their subjects, and many subjects, to behave themselves more obediently and dewtifullie towards their superiors: many restitutions made, many wrongs recompensed, many quarrels ended: finally, it is impossible to number up the infinite and singular great commodities which do come to man's life, and consequently to the common wealth, by this spiritual court & tribunal of God in earth, that is, by confession. The which being taken away, as it is now by our adversaries in England, (albeit Lutherans in Germany yet use it,) there must needs follow in success of time, intolerable inconveniences. For what way is there now to deal with the conscience of a child if he be disobedient to his parents? Or with a servant, if he be false or prodigal to his master? if you accuse him, he will deny it: if you urge him, he will fall out with you for it: but if himself should confess it to you, as he was wont to do to his ghostly father, asking absolution at his hands, and pardon at Gods for the same: there is offered both fit place & occasion, to entreat with him for it: and he in disposition to hear good council. So if a prince or great parsonage, abuse he in life, who will dare to tell him very fault in particular, or rebuke him for the same? If a man (for examples sake) do exceed in apparel, or other vanity, who will go and reprehend him for it, or with what hope of amendment? To conclude, this holy exercise of confession being taken away, the very lock of good life (whereof not only the soul but also the weal public dependeth) is utterly burst and removed from amongst Christians. Thes differences therefore being betwixt our religion and that of our adversaries, (right honourable) touching the maintenance, continuance, well doing, and secure establishment of a common wealth: there appeareth no reason in policy, that is, in respect of the good estate of our country, (whereof your honours have the charge) which may prohibit your wisdoms to show some more favourable toleration to the Catholic part, if it might please God to instill so good and gracious a motion into your hearts. Nether is it for any of our adversaries to an objection prevented. So D●ffulke hath answered M. howlets reasons of refusal. granting the reasons as they lie, but yet quarelinge at some matter of controversy in the reason. step up here, and to impugn any of our former opinions in religion, (as they are want commonly to eschew the matter in hand, and to deal with impertinent points not intended in that place): for my purpose is not here to handle matters of controversy, which we both offer daily & desire much to try with our adversaries at other times either in writing or public disputation: but my only meaning is, to show, that the practice of our doctrine as we hold it, and of our adversaries as they teach it, whether it be true or false, (which at other times and places is to be discussed): of ours (I say) do follow infinite utilities to a Christian common wealth, which do not from the doctrine of our adversaries, but rather the clean contrary hurts and damages, and this is the state of our question in this place, which Ileave open to any of our adversaries that can, to improve by reason, in the points before recited. Now then, if our religion and the secret The king of Bungo in japan being a heathen hath permitted & protected the catholic religion in his countries thes 28. years only for the commodity he fee lethe his common weal the to receive thereof, in cp. Indic: the like doth the great turk and other Princes of Mahomates sect at this day. exercise thereof, be in no wise hurtful unto your common wealth, (right honourable) but rather do bring great commodities thereunto: it may be one motive unto your wisdoms (as it hath been, and is to some other counsellors else where of the contrary religion) to tolerate more, or at least, to show less extremity against the same, how much so ever you think us deceived in not conforming ourselves to the protestants religion. Albeit to say mine opinion also herein, with your honourable favours, I can not think but that your wisdoms being such as they are, both great and ground, do easily see that our standing in this point, is not without substantial cause and reason in us, albeit not sufficient to move your honours to the same opinion that we are of. For first who doth not see that the very proceeding of our adversaries is a strong reason to make us stay, if there were nothing else, who dare not admit any equal trial, of their cause, neither in writing, preaching, or lawful disputation, they being so often requested by us to the same: But are always at your honour's elbows to stir up the temporal sword against us, If we make any The proceeding of ministers with us. reasonable offer, or never so orderly and dutiful attempt, for the obtaining of this thing, even at home upon their own ground (for abroad they dare not appear with never so much security or courtesy invited) to our own great toil, labour, danger, and disadvantage of our cause? And yet they are not ashamed for some colour of the matter, to Such was the disputation in the tower with. M. campian & others where men were prohibited with bills & tipstaves to enter. And many a knock on the head received for offering to hear: and much money spent to great places. creep into a prison to some poor man miserably racked, or otherwise pitifully handled before, and there without giving the party any warning or time to forethincke himself, or allowing any books, or permitting equal notaries, or suffering him to oppose one argument for his part, to assault with iumpinge interrogátions, leaping from point to point, from matter to matter, according as they came prepared, or as any little show of advantage was offered, with great words, stern countenance, bygg voice, much threatening, and uncivil reviling. Which proceeding of theirs, declaring manifestly their fear and nakedness and utter want both of truth charity and modesty: must needs in the judgements of all wise men, dispute as much for us, as any argument in the voorlde that we can make for ourselves. secondly, how clear so ever the matter The uncertainty of temporal favour in matters of religion: be made against us, in words, and ordinary speech of men, as that we resist the Gospel and manifest word of god, and the like: yet your honours can not but think, that these speeches (when all indifferent trial is refused) can not move us much, especially seeing that in other countries, where other sects do reign, no less differing from us, than this of calvin, they do orderly say the very same of our English protestants, which they do of us, wherein I refer myself to a Lutheran Superintendents book, entitled, Confessio purae doctrinae Nicolaus Amffordius evangelicae. A confession of the pure doctrine of the gospel, where he giveth sentence (as a bishop) of the doctrine now taught in England, by this word Damnamus: we condemn it as dissonant from the pure gospel. And I have showed out of luther before, where he saith of the teachers and maintainers thereof, Haereticos seriò censemus, & alienos ab Ecclefia dei. art. 28. contra lovan. to. 2. witten. fo. 503. We do censure them in earnest for heretics, and removed from the church of god. The like do anabaptists, Trinitaries, and other sects pronounce of them. So that in this common phrase and speech of pure gospel, there is little importance that towcheth the matter. And surely, if after king henry's death the noble man which then could do most, consulting with his friends to bring in a new religion, had pleased to bring in, tow Lutherans, anabaptists, or of any othersecte, as he did two calvinists, to read in the two universities of England (as he might very easily P. Martyr. M. Bueer. have done, for any resistance or trial that then was used:) had not that religion been now called the gospel, the pure word, the la of the lord, the establissed religion, and the like, as now this is called in England, and as thes other sects are called by their professors in the places where they bear rule? And should not we have been punished as much for resisting of them, as we are now for resisting this? yes verily, and no reason to the contrary. Wherefore seeing a man may not always depend safely of the secular magistrate in religion, nor make repose of his soul, upon the fowndation of a temporal la: we are in justice to crave pardon of your honours, for not conforming our opinions to yours in this matter: we can not do it without dissimulation and most grievous remorse of an accusing conscience. If your honours would grant such indifferent trial betwixt the The petition of lawful disputation renewed. learned of both our sides, as we demand for our instruction and due reformation in judgement, if we ere: the matter perhaps might soon be ended: But that being denied, and the adverse party shewing manifest destruct thereby, as it seemeth to us: we remain as before, of contrary opinion in points of belief: but in all other matters as becometh dutiful subjects, most ready to serve her majesty & your honours, to the uttermost of all our earthly & mortal ability. Our desire we have to be rightly informed, may appear, not only by our often and earnest petitions of lawful trial in points of controversy: but also by this, that we require not any long or tedious satisfaction in matters, but only a demonstration of one necessary point, whereof our resolution in other things would soon ensue. And this point is, that seeing the religion of Christ and his Apostles, was (by all parties confession) the very true religion for which we strive, and whereby we must be saved, and so for a hundred or two hundred years after, without contradiction of either party, the religion was pure which was delivered by the Christian church over all the would: let demonstration be made, which of our religions began sense that time (for that must needs be false, having not his beginning from Christ and his Apostles,) and this may be done (as it seemeth to us) both easily, apparently, and sensibly in this manner. When any religion is once publicly planted and received, as the true religion was by our adversaries confession, in the first two An easy, short, and evident way offered of trial: or three hundred years after Christ: it is impossible to bring in a new religion contrary to that, or any articles of faith repugnant to these before, without some contradiction or resistance of them that then lived, possessed in the former religion. This is a proposition evident both by experience and reason. For first, reason teacheth us to be impossible, for one man or many, to Reason. bring in a new religion, contrary to all, and to make it to be received generally of all, without resistance of some, especially the thing being a manifest falsehood touching matter of salvation, as they say our opinions are. This (I say) is impossible in common reason. For if one city would receive it, yet an other would not: if one country or kingdom would allow it, yet an other would make resistance, at least wise for a tyme. And if no City nor country nor kingdom had controlled it, yet some good man or other would have done it in the world abroad. secondly the same appeareth experience by experience, for that there was never yet heresy or error that rose against any one clause or jot of the truth before received, but it was controlled presently and resisted by voices and writings of infinite men. And in England being but a little corner in respect of the whole world there could never yet appear any one opinion contrary to the doctrine before received, but it was strait way noted and rebuked: as the religion of calvin, by the Catholics before in possession: after that, the fancy of the puritan by the pretestant: after that, the devise of the family of love, by both protestant and puritan: and generally there was never yet heresy offered to the church, or to any piece of the same, but that it was strait way known, who were the beginners thereof, at what time, what multitude first left the former religion and followed the same, who resisted, who spoke and written against it, and the like: and this is a truth more clear than the Son itself. This then being so, the issew which we A very reasonable issue offered. desire to join, is evident and plain: to wit that of these articles wherein we descent from them and which they call heresies, as invented by us sense the Apostles time: as the real presence, the sacrifice of the mass, purgatory, prayer for the dead, intercession of saints, merit of good woorckes, grace inherent, five sacraments denied by them, and the like: let them show by any one father, historiographer, or other authentical testimony, when any of these points were brought first into the church and resisted by them that then lived, (as they must needs be if they were contrary to the universal doctrine then received in christianity) and we remain satisfied without any further particular trial. This is a most reasonable demand, so one answered if the truth be with our adversaries. For we take upon us to show all thes particulars before recited in every point of doctrine wherein they descent from us: that is, when it began to be first known in the church by what man, who first controlled it, and the like: but let them do the same by us, and the matter is ended. But if they can find no one book extant in the world against any article of our difference from them, at the first coming of the same into the church, nor can find record of any man that either reprehended or controlled it when it was first invented (as they say) by our forefathers, but that it was received with silence and approbation, not only in one country, but thoroughowt the world, not in one point, but in many, and they most important: as for example, the feigning of five sacraments together, (although we hold in our doctrine that none but Christ can institute a sacrament, no not the whole church together, nor all the Apostles when they were alive), if (I say) they can find no record at all, that any man resisted or controlled thes horrible & blasphemous points at their first entering into the church, (if it be true that they entered in since the Apostles time) then must they think that men were senseless and mad at that time, that would suffer so many, so gross, & so important heresies, to pass unchecked, and never to open their mouths against them, whereas at the very same time, (that is, within the first five hundred years after Christ, wherein our adversaries grant thes heresies to have been crept in to the church) the fathers and doctors that then lived, written most diligently against every other little error that appeared. But now whether it be reasonable to think so of those holy learned and vigilant men or else to think our adversaries some what shameless, in charging them with such absurdities, I leave to the indifferent reader to consider. And thus much have I been bold to lay down to your wisdoms, right honourable, both for the innocency of our cause, the equity of our demand, the reason of our offer, and the easy means of our satisfaction, if our adversaries would agree to the same. Which all tendeth only to this end (as your honours right well can discern) to mitigate the great offence conceived against us, and consequently some part of that extreme rigour used towards us and our cause of later days, which being such, as in very deed is intolerable: we are constrained to make recourse to your honours to whom of due our protection appertaineth and to do, as a certain afflicted man did with an Emperor in times past, that is, to appeal from yourselves unto yourselves: from yourselves, as offended by the instigation of our adversaries: unto yourselves, mollified with our just defence and innocency in crimes objected. If by the rackings, stretchinges, wrestinges, and dreadful tortures, used so often and to so many of our innocent afflicted brethren, and that in so rigorous & merciless manner, there hath been any one thing wrounge out from them, of treason, conspiracy, or practices against the state, wherewith our adversaries, without conscience, do use daily to accuse us in their books and sermons, thereby to stir her majesty and your honours against us: let the party guilty be punished openly, with infamy also to our whole cause, albeit in this later, we offer more than reason. But if after all this ado, after all this fierce haling, and pitiful pulling of men in pieces, nothing hath been found at all, no one act, no word, no cogitation of such matters, but only innocency and Zeal of religion in the tormented: then is our case much more hard at home, in our own country, under our own Sovereign, than it could be any where else under the extremest adversaries of our religion in the world. For I know your honours can not but consider, that the greatest enemies of Christianity this day living, as those of the sect of Mahomet, and many gentles besides, are so far of, from tormenting Catholics, as they permit unto them the liberty and exercise of their conscience, in respect of the antiquity and continuance thereof. For which cause also, the most of Christian princes, do tolerate with the very Iewes: and such as possess the Indes and other places, where gentiles inhabit, never use to molest, and much less to torment them for their consciences, wherein they were borne and bred up: for that, faith being the gift of God, and coming by hearing (as the scripture Rom. 12: sayeth) is not to be put in by torments & persecution. Rom. 10. Pitiful then and compassionable is our case (right honourable): if, of all other men, we find less rest and most extremity, and that also there, and from those, where, and from whom, many great considerations should yield us hope of favour and mercy. No protestant prince of any other country did ever use the like: and it is quite contrary both to the preachings and protestations of all those of that religion in other places, as also of our adversaries in England, before they came to bear rule themselves. Alas (my Lords) what impelleth your wisdoms (for of nature I can not thinckc you sofiers & pityles) to exercise such extremity upon poor people for that cause, whereof your own fathers were as guilty as we are, that is, for our conscience in the ancient religion? If you mean to win men thereby to your opinion, it is the clean contrary course, as I have showed. If you think by terror to make those desist, which of mere zeal after the apostolic manner do offer themselves to danger for maintenance of that faith: you know the wise counsel of honourable Gamaliel: if it be of man, it will soon be dispatched: but if it be of Act. 5. God, human terror can not let it, as hit hereto I am sure it doth greatly increase it. Your honours have procured liberty of conscience for those of your religion in some other countries, which must proceed (as we interpret from a merciful disposition towards the afflicted, and that men's consciences are not to be constrained. We beseech your Lordships then, that we your poor afflicted subjects, may taste some part of that your honourable disposition, whereof strangers do receive so great relief and comfort. Consider (my good lords.) in most humble manner I desire and request it, what the end of all thes straininges, and most rigorous procedings can arriven unto. In respect of the world, (I must speak plainly) it can be neither honourable nor profitable, nor of any secure continuance, being subject to infinite horror, obloquy, grudge, and hatred, as also to divers breaches and most dangerous wounds, as all extremities are wont to be. And in respect of God, how it is to be liked, each man may guess which readeth the scriptures, detesting every where all merciless proceeding of mortal men with their brethren, and commending, most carefully, compassion one towards the other, with grievous threats to them that use the contrary. Remember (right honourable), that how different so ever our degrees be in this world, yet must we all be equal before the common judge, at the later day, and all those afflicted persons, these tormented, these imprisoned, these impoverished, these poor men, women children, and servants, which lie now in misery by your means, either lurking in corners or driven from place to place, not daring to appear or show their countenance before your Lordships, must standby you without fear at that day, to give in evidence of things passed against them. Good Lord, what comfort can it be to any of your honours, at the day when you must departed this world, to have used such rigour, to your own flesh and blood, for matter of conscience, which you have not done to any other most impious, heinous, or detestable malefactor. What good or comfort can the tormented members of your brethren, the stretched veins, the broken sinews, the dismembered joints, the rented bowels of your country men, of your own quiet subjects, of most peaceable, modest, and innocent priests yield unto your souls at that day? you must yourselves cry for mercy in that dreadful hour, to him whom these men, either in truth, or in opinion do serve, and why then may not we ask some mercy at your honour's hands now, at the least, from thes horrible and servile torments, which Christian and civil hearts do detest to think on? What good can thes outrageous means work any way unto your cause, or when you be dead, what honour, estimation, love, or security, can the eternal me morie of thes extreme dealings, pourchasse unto your posterity. The cause being gods, as we presume: if all the earth should rise against us, we may not give over, nor once shrink in the confession and profession of this faith, though all wrath of man under the cope of heaven should rage's and wax tempestuous. For that, having but one life to yield: we know the uttermost that can be done unto us. And if our torments would defer the same, by long, and often, and slow tortures, to feed upon our pains, as they seem to do: yet, at the last, they can afflict us no longer, than our breath will hold in: and finally, the matter must have an end, and both they and we be transposed to a new judgement seat, where matters must be new traversed again, and new sentence given, & new tortures appointed, of other quality and continuance, Apoc. 21. than thes former were. At what time, if we suffer in a good cause, (as we persuade ourselves we do) all our tears shallbe wiped away by our saviour himself, all our molestations appeased, all our penuries relieved, all our pains assuaged, all our racked members resettled, all our dispersed boweles restored again, Apoc. 21. and we placed out of all fear, sorrow, & affliction, for the time to come, In respect whereof, and especially in consideration of the infinite pains and torments, which our sweet Saviour suffered for us: we are content to bear both this, and what so ever further affliction, his holy hand shall please to lay upon us, being sorry that we have not moelyves than one, to lose in this his cause: for a thousand in each man, can not be answerable to his one death for us, nor to his great love and divine consolation, where with he assisteth daily, and comforteth the hearts and spirits of our afflicted brethren, even in the midst of their greatest tortures, penuries, and miserable calamities. Wherefore, to conclude this woeful matter, The conclusion. without any further tediousness unto your honours, we are in all humility and dutiful submission, to beseech and obtest your most honourable assembly, even for the love of our saviour, in respect of our cause (which we protest before his divine majesty to be only our conscience in religion, and not any evil meaning towards his minister, our sovereign): that you will at length take notice of our distresses, consideration of our calamities, and finally, some merciful inclination, towards our afflictions. Which if your honours do, how so ever otherwise you think us amiss, in our cause of conscience: yet, no doubt but you shall receive the reward due to mercy and clemency, both from God & the world. But if this our supplication of mercy, find no mercy, nor place at all: yet shall not we cease to pray still for your honours, comfoting ourselves with the hope only of God's mercy, when man forsaketh us, and also with this cogitation, that your Lordships are neither the first, nor the greatest, nor shallbe the last which shall persecute this faith, & church, for which we suffer. And how so ever the matter do pass for our lives and times, (whereof we make no great account): yet our posterity shall see, (as our ancestors have seen before) that men done alter, pass and fade, and their cogitations come to changeable and unexpected events, but the truth of our Lord endureth for ever. Psal. 116. Your honours humble orator and unfauned hearty Beadsman. G. T. AN EPISTLE touching THE PERSECUTION OF CATHOLICS IN ENGLAND. To his very loving friend. M. Gerarde at Bononie in Italy. I Have received divers and sundry your letters (my dear friend) and all to like effect and purpose. For you require most earnestly at my hands, that I should signify to you the certainty of our English persecution upon Catholics, whereof you say there is a great brute with you, but yet diversly reported, and of no constant credit. Marry, to me you think it an easy matter, to write the very truth and the certainty of things: for that I lie near to the place where they are done, and may learn daily both by letters and reports of such as come thence, how they pass. The which thing albeit I should grant, (for in deed I lyeneere and do attend with some diligence, both what is written, or reported from thence:) yet whether I may put down the same in writing, and impart it to our friends there, most desirous of the same (as you say) especially with the intent it should be made public: I can hardly resolve myself. For you are not ignorant what a perilous point it is, to complain of injuries received from the mighty, whose fashion is, not to pmitt free the wailings of the afflicted, but rather to take revenge of the very complaints which are made of their doings. Wherefore lest I should hurt them whom I wish best unto, and by recounting their calamities, increase the same, which I would rather ease if I could, though it were with the danger of mine own life: I rest very doubtful, not knowing well what were best to determine. And yet, to say the truth, I must confess, that I find inclination in myself to the satisfying of your demand, both for that the thing seemeth just, which you ask, and also the reasons by you alleged, sufficient to defend it from all cavil of the enemy. For thus you reason: what? is it not lawful to commit to private letters that which is openly and publicly done? and if they would make this a fault: yet is it only your fault, not to be laid upon the poor men already in affliction: punishable upon you, and not upon them. Which reason of yours being taken in deed from the very sense of nature herself, encourageth me much to satisfy your demand, seeing that the wisdom of our adversaries ought to yield us this hope, (for they are not unwise according to flesh & blood) that they will not attribute other men's offences, (if it be an offence) to such as are innocent of the same, albeit truly my endeavour shallbe so to write each thing as (by their own judgements) I may not offend. For I will speak nothing odiously, nothing bitterly, but I will declare what hath been done: & if the rigour of the matter drive me at any time into complaint: it shallbe without the reproach of any man. For I deem it not the part of Catholics to recompense injury with injury, The part of Catholics. or to requite injustice with acerbity of speech. For that we have a merciful and mighty lord to whose only arbitrement all injuries, are to be referred: he hath care of us, (as the scripture saith;) 1. Pet. 5. to him let us leave revenge. He he will Rom. 22. repay: he will discern our cause: he will deliver us from the unholy nation, from the unjust & Psal. 42. Psal. 74. guileful man: he, when time shallbe, will sit in judgement upon [our] justice itself, & how much more upon the unjust psecutions, molestations, & vexations of his servants. In the mean space if we be afflicted; if we be trodden down, if we suffer the spoil of our worldly goods, if we be subject to reproaches, if we be pressed with prisons, if we be tied with chains, if we pine away with hunger, cold, and want of necessaries, if we be whipped and burned in the ears as rogues, if we be drawn hanged and quartered alive, if we be consumed with divers kinds ' of deaths. (for all thes things Catholics in England do sustain:) and if, (which is a matter yet of more grief,) we sustain thes things in the midst of our brethren, in sight and hearing of other Catholics round about us, they looking on, and taking little compassion of our case, nor helping us with their word, when as perhaps they may: yet must not we be discouraged, nor forsake the wholesome anchor of patience. For we are not 4. Re. 19 (as the scirpture saith) better then our fathers Heb. 11. which were hewed in pieces, racked, whipped, and imprisoned. And the Apostle addeth one thing which I would have you to mark: and thesmen (saith he) received no redemption: (that is, no ease of their afflictions in this life) to the end they might find a better resurrection. We being Scholars are not above our master, who Luc. 6. 1. Pet. 3. doing no injustice in the world, yet was reputed amongst the wicked, and suffered much more cruelty for our sakes, and yet Esa. 53. did not he open his mouth as the scripture Luc. 22. saith before his persecutors. Esa. 33. Let us then retain still this ancient The property of heretics. possession of holy sufferance, commended unto us by our savour and conserved by our forefathers. Let us leave unto our adversaries, that disloyal kind of revenge, Rom. 9 Ep. iud. whereby they are wont to resist magistrates to stir up sedition, and whereby in thes our days they have destroyed partly by violence and partly by secret fraud, so many noble men, valeant captains, Holy priests, strong cities, and most noble and renowned common wealths and states. Let them use the arm of man, let them trust in their Hier. 17. 1. Cor. 3. craft and subtlety of wit, let them feed of wickedness as much as they list, our hope Eph. 4. is in god our lord, who will save them that Psal. 61. 16. 113. hope in him: all our help is in the name of our lord, who made heaven and earth, and forgetteth not our poverty and tribulation. It may Psal. 45. please his divine majesty, perhaps, to deliver us over to be chastened for our sins, for that the kings honour loveth judgement. Psal. 98. But certes he will not cast us away, if we repent our sins, and return unto him, for that he is merciful, and full of mercy, and there is no number of his merciful doings. Psal. 49. 77. 140. 144. What could be spokem by him more expressly than this? If his children for sake my la (saith he Psa. 88 of David) & shall not walk in my judgements: if they shall profane my justice, and shall not keep my commandments: I will visit with the rod their iniquities, and their sins with whips: But yet I will not take my mercy from them, neither will I hurt them in my truth, I will not profane my testament, nor make frustrate the words, which have passed from my own lips. I have once sworn in my holy, I will not lie, to David, his seed shall remain for ever and ever. This is the promiss, this is the firm protestation of god, to the seed of David, that is, to the Catholic church of Christ, touching her everlasting continuance, made by an oath, confirmed by his blood, and established by the experience of many ages. Wherefore we must not despair but confidently endure, for who so ever endureth our lord, shall never be confounded. And if he do slay Psal. 24. some what long, yet let us expect him, for that coming he will come, & will not foreslow it. Abac. 2. To this tolerance of adversity, when we in this our banishment for religion, do often cohort one an other for our comfort: there is nothing which we can propose more forcible, either for our consolation or imitation, them the sufferings of our dear brethren in England, so much more grievous and sharper than ours, by how much the wounds do more afflict, which are felt in a man's own body, than those which are made upon external temporalties. I mean that we who flying the hands of our persecutors, do lead a banished life in strange countries, albeit we are beset with many incommodities, through lack of our country and domestical friends, and by the loss of our goods and possessions at home: yet we enjoy the liberty of these two things, which of all other are of most importance, that is both of body and soul, neither of which is permitted unto our Catholics at home. For first besides the taxes and aggravations, which are laid upon their temporal commodities, their very bodies are subject to a thousand vexations, both of bonds, imprisonment, and also of torments. But to their sowls there is nothing left free or at liberty, not their religion not their internal feeling or opinion of God & their conscience, for thou must say as other men say, do as they swear, if thou live there albeit thou think the plain contrary in thy conscience. Which servitude, and illiberal pressure and forcement of mind, especially in matters pertaining to God, being the greatest and most grievous affliction, that may be exercised upon man, maketh our state and condition, (albeit in other things very hard) to seem much more tolerable than that of our brethren at home. For who would not esteem it more grievous than all other incommodities, yea than death itself, to be wrested in conscience, to be forbidden all exercise of religion, to be enforced to swear & make profession of new strange opinions, which his heart doth reject, detest, and abhor: and if by chance he should be taken serving god according to his own manner, and the manner of his fathers and ancestors, & of the most part of Christianity beside, (albeit it were alone, albeit it were privily, and in most secret wise:) yet to be plucked out, as an offender of the supreme majesty of the prince, as an enemy of the common wealth, as a wicked and flagitious caitiff, unworthy of life, or the company of men? And that thes things do so now pass in England (M. Gerard) it shall evidently appear, by the narration following. And first of all that the matter may The laws of England against Catholics. the better be understood, and you the easier conject of the truth of that I say, it seemeth to me no evil method, to lay down first, the public laws which England (borne, & instructed by Catholics, in Christianity,) hath now for their Christian faith, set forth against Catholics. For by thes laws may be easily conceived what Catholics are subject unto, in respect of the power, malice, & iniquity of private adversaries when they list, seeing that public laws do yield so much authority, to every man almost, that would seek a cavil or slander against them. To begin therefore with thes laws, it is first to be known that there are two kind of laws at divers times set forth in dissavoure and punishment of the Catholic Two kinds of laws. religion. The one which concerneth money, possessions, and other goods both of fortune & body, which I think may be called penal or money laws. The other which may rather be called bloody or capital laws, for that they inflict death unto the offenders. And to this division of laws will I apply my speech following. Amongst the penal laws I will Penal laws. put that as first, which was made amongst the last, for the punishment of those which for conscience sake refuse to come to the protestants churches. For this point the adversary urgeth greatly, that (albeit the Catholics be of an other religion, though they detest Caluinisme in their hearts, though they abhor all prayers and conventicles of the ministers, and account their service for most wicked & blasphemous:) yet must they come to it, they must assist and show themselves present, albeit with a repining and resisting conscience. And because Recusants. some do refuse to sin in such horrible wise against god, and their own consciences: therefore this law was made against these scrupulous men for sooth: that 1. For refusing to go to churches of protestants. who so ever should refuse to come to the protestants church, to hear divine service (as they call it) if he be above the age of sixteen years: shall forfeit twenty pounds English every month: and he which can not pay, to lie in prison until he be of better ability to pay. The rest of those laws follow here in order. Who so ever shall be convicted to have heard mass, though it were secretly, shall suffer imprisonment, the space of one whole year, and so long after, until he pay a hundred mark. 2. For hearing or saying mass. But as for the priest which celebrateth mass, he shall never be let owte of prison till he have paid two hundred marks. And that some of money must be paid so oft as any offendeth herein. 3. For abjuration of religion. What soever Ecclesiastical person shall not make public detestation of the roman Religion, and openly abjure the authority and jurisdiction of the bishop of Rome: shall forfeit all his benefices and all his dignities ecclesiastical what soever. 4. For oaths in the universities. No Scholar or student may have any place with in the Colleiges of the universities, or be preferred to any degree of Learning, excecpt such as at his first entry in to the Colleige, and at the taking of every degree, doth by solemn oath, deny the bishop of Rome's authority, in all causes Ecclesiastical. None may have any public Office, 5. For oaths of officers. or other ministery, in the common wealth, except he first solemnly publish, the self same abjuration of the bishop of Rome. No ward comyngeto full age may enter 6. For oaths of wards. in to his inheritance, or enjoy any commodities there of, except he first take the same oath. Who so ever under degree of a Baron, 7. For oaths of perleyament: men. shall be called (as oftentimes it happeneth) to be one of the parliament (in which court voices were wont to be most free) must never the less have no voice there, if he will not take the said common oath against the Pope. What person so ever (under degree 8. For recusants. of a baron) to whom this oath hath been twice ministered, doth the second time refuse the same, shall for fait all his goods and possessions, & be condemned to perpetual prison. Who so ever denieth the queen to 9 For denienge of the queens supremacy. be supreme head of the Church of England, in causes Ecclesiastical, shall sustain the same Penalty of loss of all his goods, and of perpetual imprisonment. Who so ever receiveth or keepeth 10. For receivers of hallowed▪ things: any Agnus dei Rosaries, hallowed grains, medals, or any other thnig which is hallowed by the Pope and brought in to England, shall endure the same punishment of loss of all his goods and of perpetual imprisonment. If any keep a Schoolmaster in his 11 For keeping Catholic schoolmasters. house, to teach his own children or others, which doth not haunt the church of protestants, or is not by one of their by shops allowed: he shall for that cause forfeit ten pounds for every month, until he have removed him. If any do know one, which hath 12. For concealers of reconciled Catholics. reconciled another, to the unity and communion of the church of Rome, and if he do by any way or mean aid, either the reconciler or the reconciled, or do conceal th'one or tother, in such wise as he do not discover them both, to some public magistrate, with in the space of twenty days, than next folowenige: he shall forfeit all his good, as well movable as unmovable, and all his possessions whiles he liveth: and his body shall remain to be disposed, as pleaseth the queen. Who so ever doth know any person, 13. For concealing procurers. to have procured an other, to be reconciled to the faith and religion of Rome, though he himself be no reconciler, nor is reconciled, yet, if such a one do by any way or mean relieve or succour the said procurer, or if he do conceal, or not discover the same procurer to some magistrate (as is above said: (shall incur the same punishment. Who so ever doth know any person 14. For concealing of counsellors to have counseled an other to be reconciled to the Roman Religion, though he himself did not procure it at all: yet if he any way aid such a counsellor, or conceal or not discover him (as is before said:) he shall have the same punishmét. If one know any to have persuaded, 15. For concealing such as obey the pope. procured, or counseled an other to obey the bishop of Rome, in causes Ecclesiastical, and yet doth aid him, conceal or not bewray him (as is above say de:) shall endure the fame pain and punishment. Who so ever knoweth any, which 16. For concealing of promised obedientiaries. hath suffered himself to be perfuaded to obey the bishop of Rome, in causes Ecclesiastical, or which hath promised, any obedience to him for the time to come, and yet doth any way aid, or conceal such a one, or doth not discover him within twenty days (as is aforesaid) he shall suffer the same penalty of loss of all his goods and possessions, and of imprisonment. He which knoweth any priest, to have absolved an other, and yet doth 17. For concealing absolvers. aid or conceal him, or doth not give knowleige of him, in sufficient time (as is aforesaid): shall be condemned in the same penalty. If any know a priest to have authority 18. For concealing such as have authority to absolve. to absolve (albeit the priest exercise not the same, nor absolve any) if he either help or conceal him, or do not discover him, (as is aforesaid) he shall abide the same pain. Who so ever knoweth any to pretend to have authority to absoluet (hough 19 For concealing pretenced absolvers. in deed he have none) and yet doth aid or conceal him, or not discover him, (as is aforesaid) he shall suffer the same punishment. If any know one to be absolved, were he willingly absolved upon his 20. For concealing the absolved. own suit, or wittingly did but suffer himself to be absolved, (though he never desired it): yet if he any way succour, or conceal him, or do not give notice of him, (as is aforesaid) he shall have the same punishment. Who so ever knoweth any to have 21. For concealing dissuaders, of calvinism, dissuaded an other from the religion now public used in England, of intent, to draw him to the obedience of the bysopp, and religion of Rome: or knoweth any to have been a procurer, mover or counselor, to such dissuading of any other: and doth by any way or mean help, conceal, or not discover him to a magistrate within the space of twenty days, (as is a foresaid): he shall endure the same penalties, punishments and pains, so often now remembered, which is asmuch to say in effect, as he shall lose all the joys, comforthes, & commodities which this mortal life can velde to man. And thus much (for so farras I now do remember) touching the penal laws. By these only (though there were no capital laws,) a man may easily conjecture, in how hard terms, the Catholics now in England do stand, against whom, so many dreadful and most perilous laws are laid, like snares for their destruction. who can have a quiet mind, when he is without security to enjoy but one hour the very necessaries where with he should live, being on every side hedged and listed in with so many menacing laws, the dawngers whereof he is not able to eschew, except he would be come impious? how great a sway do cavils bear among these Laws? how great force hath malice here? how much opportunity is given to iniquity? Behold I pray you. If any person do either aid or conceal the reconciler, or the reconciled, the absolver or the absolved, the procurer, counsellor dissuader, or such like: he is guilty (saith the law) of an heinous crime, & worthy to be punished, with loss of all his goods, yea and of his liberty also. Let the matter itself pass: consider but only how wide open to all injustice the Catholics do lie by means of thes laws, if one by chance or unwittingly should receive in to his house, some of the a foresaid persons, and a quarreling fellow would accuse him, that he did it wittingly: how cold he be able in this case to defend himself, or what supportation might he find for his own innocency? If one would dissuade a man from the heresy of Calvin and never speak word at all of By the 21. Law before mentioned. the bishop of Rome: how shall it appear that he is not guilty of treason? I mean, how shall he be able to bring in evidence, that he did not dissuade with this intent, that the other should reject the fantasies of Calvin, and submit himself to the bishop & church of Rome? Yes (you will say) the peril may be easily avoided, if this fellow showlde plain lie move one to the religion of puritanes, Anabaptists, Arians, or yet of Atheists: Each heresy is more safely defended in England, than the Catholic faith. In very truth I believe it well: And surely it is not unproblable that this same clause was so smothelye couched to the rest by the penner of the law, in favour and maintenance of these and such like heresies. Oh how miserable is the condition of these hour days? And thus much touching cavillation The unequality of the laws against Catholics. and surmise. Now as to the unequality of these laws, what should a man say thereof, sith thereby at this day in England the father is bound to accuse his son, the husband his wife, the brother his brother, the penitent his ghostly father, the servant his master, as if it were for a myschoevouse crime? And wherefore I pray you? forsooth for the Catholic religion, under which we were borne, with which we were brought up, and instructed, and the very same, which all other princes do embrace and defend. The like to this without doubt, no age past hath tasted, no memory of our forefathers hath heard, no antiquity of former worlds hath seen. These are the brainsick fantasies only of our days, the variable innovations of particular places, the flexible wilfulness of man's mind, the most vain cogitations of flesh and blood, whereby men do attempt to exchange the unmutable truth of Christ for their own fantasies to serve their own turns in respect of their own commodities. But let us yet see more of these severe laws, & that is, the capital laws, which before, I have called bloody laws, in The capital laws against the Catholics of England. this respect, for that they lie in wait of blood, and do assail, the very life of man. And in these laws, first of all, there is one thing not unmeet to be noted, that all thes laws, do concern religion only, and yet never the less they do infer not only the pain of death, but such a pain, as is provided for offences, committed against her majesties person, which of all other is a most grievous & most odious pain, as due for the most flagitious crime, and that is treason or rebellion. And this course our adversaries do take of special purpose, that the death of Catholics, snoulde not seem to be a martyrdom, but rather might be conveyed through the ears of the ignorant people, under the infamous blot of an heinous crime: and to the intent also that the prince might more easily be persuaded, the Catholic religion to stand styfflie bend against her royal sceptre, and dangerous to the security ofher regiment. Now when this foundation was once laid, it was no hard matter for them, to procure what laws they lusted against Catholics: Albeit in very deed, she of her own disposition, abhorreth such violence, and effusion of man's blood. But now I come to the laws, & thus the first beginneth. Who so ever shall say, writ, affirm, 11. For admitting. dissuason. or by any manner of cipher shall utter, or yet being demanded, shall confess, that the bishop of Rome is head of the church of England, or hath there any jurisdiction in causes ecclesiastical: shall be reputed and taken for a traitor, and shall endure such pains of death, for features & penalties, as are provided in cases of high treason, committed against the state. He which for any cause doth hereafter 2. For appellants to Rome. appeal to the Byssopp of Rome, and obtain from him bulls or other instruments, and bring the same in to England: shall endure the punishment of high treason. If any person do hereafter bring 3. For bringers in of. hallowed things. in to England any Agnus Dei, (as they call them) rosaries, hallowed grains, medals, crucifixes, or any other thing hallowed of the bishop of Rome: shall be reputed deemed and taken for a traitor. What person so ever being under 4. For recusants of the oath. the degree of a baron, to whom the oath or abjuration against the pope's authority, and in the behalf of the queens supreme power in causes ecclesiastical shall be thrice tendered, do at the third time refuse to swear: shall suffer the pains ordained for high treason. 5. For saying the queen is an heretic or scismitique. woe so ever by any way or mean doth from hensefourthe say, writ, signify, or being demanded, doth confess, that the queen is an heretic, or a Shismatique: shall be subject to the same pains for high treason. If any do hereafter reconcile an 6. For reconcilers. other to the unity & communion of the sea of Rome: he shall suffer the same pains & punishments provided for treason. Who so ever shall wittinglle and willingly 7. For the reconciled. be reconciled, to the same unity and communion: shall endure the same punishment. Who so ever doth hereafter procure 8 For procurers of reconciliation. any person to be reconciled to the same unity and communion: shall be condemned to the same punishment. What person so ever doth from 9 For counsellors of reconciliation. henseforthe but only give advise or counsel to any to be reconciled to the same unity and communion, though he do not procure the same: shall never the less have the same punishment. If any person do hereafter persuade 10. For persuaders of obediens to the pope. an other to obey the bishop of Rome in causes ecclesiastical: he shallbe condemned of the same crime of high treason. If any suffer himself to be persuaded 11. For admitting persuasion to such obedience: he shall be deemed guilty of the same crime of high treason. If any do procure such persuasion to be used with an other, or give counsel 12. For procurers and counsellors of such persuasion. thereunto: he shall suffer the same pain of high treason. If any do promise to use in time to come, any such obedience to the sea of 13. For promisers of obediens. Rome in causes ecclesiastical: he shall endure the penalties provided for high treason. If a priest do absolve any of the 14. For absolvers. queens subjects: it shall be judged to be high treason. If any have authority to absolve in England, though he never do in deed 15. For such as have authority to absolve. absolve any: yet shall he never the less be deemed and taken for a traitor. If any do make a pretence or show that he hath such authority to absolve, 16. For pretenders of authority. though in truth he have none: yet shall he be reputed as a traitor. If any person wittingly be absolved 17. Admitters of absolution. of an other, be it that he either made suit for the same absolution, or without making any suit for it, suffered him self to be absolved: he shall be punished as a traitor. If any do procure absolution for 18. procurers of absolution. an other, he shall have the same punishment. If any person do advise or counsel an other to be absolved, though he do 19 Counsellors of absolution not procure it to be done: yet shall he therefore suffer as a traitor. If any do either procure or counsel an other generally to be an absolver, 20. Procurers or counsellors to absolve. all be it that he do not move him to absolve any special person: yet he shall never the less incur the same punishment. If any do hereafter dehort or dissuade an other from the religion now 21. Diswaders of Calvin's religion. publiklye used & professed in England, or do procure any such dissuasion, of intent that the person which is to be dissuaded may be drawn to the obedience and religion of the sea of Rome: he shall be reputed deemed and judged guilty of high treason: and shall endure the same punishment, which is dew for that crime. And that punishment is such as followeth. The pain of Catholics condemned as traitors for religion First, that the person condemned, and drawn a long by land to the place of execution, be (for his greater torment,) half strangled with an halter: then is he to be let down, that whiles he is coming to himself, his privy members may be cut of and brent in the fire before his face: by and by his belly is to be upript with a knife, his guts haled out, and whiles he lieth yet panting and struglinge: his heart, lungs, liver, and all his bowels & entrails must be plucked fourth by the boucher, & thrown in to the fire there at hand: in th'end, his body is boiled, cut in pieces, & hanged by quarters at diverse gates of the City. And as for his goods and possessions, they are all forfeited, and no part thereof must descend to his wife, children, or kindred: yea and they also for this one man's sake are to be blotted with ignominy, and the whole posterity of this dead creature utterly attainted, and distained in blood for ever. Are not these severe enough? are they not (think you my friend Gerard) sufficient sharp for the professors of a religion which they received of their grand fathers and forefathers? And yet, for sooth, The uneven dealing of the ministers of England. our ministers of England, those our innovators, our trompett blowers of the evangelical doctrine, and resemblers (for sooth) of Christian mildness, do daily exclaim for the of pulpits, redouble thick and threefold through their written books, and beat in to the ears of the magistrate, yea and of the prince also in daily speech, that to much lenity is used: that clemency is dangerous: that the toleration and forbearance, which is used in the whole course of that regiment towards Catholics, is blame worthy, and not to be suffered. See now the unadvised folly of spiteful and furious persons. Is there any heinous offence, or detestable act, that can be more sharply punished, than with these torments which here I have set down? is there any fort of men so ungracious, as could be with more laws listed about, with greater pains restrained, to more perils subjecteth, to more mischiefs and inconveniences laid open, than the Catholics are in England by these laws? And yet, when all is done, wherein have these poor Catholics offended? What manner of crime is to be imputed to the faith and religion of our grand fathers and ancestors? well, these adversaries were once of one society with us, but now, when they have taken hold of Calvin's faith, for saken Luther's religion, and contemned ours: they have made themselves our masters, they have banished us out of our own houses, and thrusten us from all degrees of honour and estimation. But for our part, we make no complaint thereof: let them take, and use all at their most liberty. Then why are they not here withal content? why proceed they further silly poor men? what mean they to assail our souls? why are they so rigorous against our blood? how is it, that nothing can satisfy them but our death, or our extreme calamity? if the quarrel which they have against us, be for no other thing, but only for our faith: alas, there are other petty sects no less enemies to calvin than we are: yet can they be content very friendly to entertain them, and to use their favourable ministry. But if a paddlye hyddin the straw: if Varres be afraid to be called to account by order of law: behold, we are content to deliver them from that trouble, to seal them an acquittance, and to yield of our own right and interest. Marry, this is the thing which we only desire, that this be not to us an overthrow, and an occasion of their perpetual displeasure against us, for that ones we enjoyed our native soil, which now we want: for if this had not happened, their public weal had now been none. And thus much of the laws. Now, you see how much our adversaries are able to do against us, under the pretence of these laws: but how much more they would fain do, the matter itself declareth evidently, in that they are not content with the severity now used, but earnestly call for sharper & more painful laws every day. And yet verily I do not think, that any Christian can have so hard and yroned a heart (unless he have lost both feeling of humanity and faith) but might be moved to compassion with these extremities, which our poor Catholics do suffer. The terms where in Catholics do stand in England. For no lamentable distress can be imagined in any kind of calamity, well nigh, which these men do not daily bear, no trouble in any condition of men, can be thought on, which they do not continually sustain. In so much, as they may most truly say, with the Apostle: in tribulatiuns, in necessities, in distresses, in stripes, in prisons, in tumults, in labours. And 2. Cor. 6. with, the same soldier of Christ in an 2. Cor. 11. other place: in perils with in the City, in perils in wilderness, in perils in the sea, in perils among false brethren, in travail and misery. Yea they may also say further, as the Apostle saith: even in death oftentimes. Yet further, that same may be applied unto them, and not unaptly, scornful mocks Heb. 11. and beatings have they felt, over and beside both fetters and prisons, they have been racked, they have been cut and mangled, they have abidden temptations and trials, they have been slain with the sword. And to conclude, that same also very fitly agreeth unto them, we are made a spectacle to the world, to angels and to men: we are evil spoken of, and 1. Cor. 4. we say well of others: we suffer and endure persecution: we are blasphemed and we pray, for them: we are accounted the parings of the world, and the refuse of all to this day. But to make all these more evident, it shall not be (perhaps) far from the purpose, if I touch every thing yet more particularly. And first (to speak of the last execution, The last punishment of Catholics. which our Catholics do endure in the end of all) it can not be doubtful (I think) to any, how many men, and what manner of men, have been put to most painful death, as strangled, bowelled, cut in sunder, boiled, and dispersed by piece meal in the air, and all for religion: and though our adversaries (for more reproach) make a surmise of treason: yet the matter is manifest, and they themselves do not deny, that only religion is the cause of this death. I make no mention here, of the great number of those most reverend bishops, doctors, priests, and other confessors of Christ, which in prison have been either choked with filthy stinking savour, or consumed with sorrow and hunger, whose causes we refer to the judgement seat of Christ alone. I speak here of them only, which openly in the sight of all men, have given testimony to the truth, with their own blood. Who (besides the very torment of the execution, & that common contumely, where in they die (in the opinion of the people) as traitors to the state, and not as Catholics, have also (for the most part) this reward, and good turn given them when they are dead, that they are slandered slandering of dead men. in dispersed libels with some notable false surmise thrown out against their manners and doctrine. In this wise very lately when they had hanged on their common gallows, Paradoxes falsely imputed to M. HANSH. that godly and zealous priest Euerard Hanse, and were afraid lest some perchance, would be moved with the martyrdom of that Innocent: they gave out in two contrary books, th'one impugning tother, certain monstrous errors and paradoxes, (I know not what,) and made this dead man theauthor thereof: Such as this: that the bishop of Rome can not sin: where as in truth master Hanse did speak expressly of the doctrine of faith that is to be published to the universal church, and therein only he said, that the pope could not err. And this is an other: that no prince hath any supremacy within his own dominions, saving the bishop of Rome only: where in deed he spoke only of the supremacy of the Catholic church in causes Ecclesiastical. And this also: that no treason against the queen of England is a sin. whereas being now at the point ready to be executed to death and repeating his own words divers times before the people there present, he affirmed that he spoke not of every kind of treason, but of that only, for the which without desert he was then in dying, and which his adversaries undiscreetly call treason, being in truth no other thing, than a needful confession of the Catholic faith. For now by the recital of the laws before mentioned, it is manifest, how many chief points and Principles of faith made treason. principles of our faith, they have drawn to the case of high treason. In this point therefore, our adversaries exceed the malice of ancient persecutors, that they do not make known the true cause why they martyr men, though themselves do confess the same. And yet the devil in those foremost times had sown much seed of this iniquity, when S. Paul as pernicious & seditious: yea & our saviour Christ: as one seducing Act. 24. the people, & forbidding to pay tribute Luc. 24. to Caesar: were moste injuriously slandered. But now it is (I suppose) scant worth the labour, to put down here in savage rudeness. writing, with how great reproaches, with what outcries, with how many mocks and skorns, with howsower and spite full scoffs, with how bitter and unsavoury taunts, with what rustling noise and din of muttering male contents, and fowl mowthed detractors, these our martyrs were strangled, and in the sight of all the people rend and torn in pieces: for the thing of itself is loathsome to the eyes, and terrible to the ears. O how pitiful is hour case, which are fallen in to these times, when we see so great rigour practised by christians against christians, for the christian faith? And thus much for the pains and punishments ordained for Catholics: Contumelies against Catholics. Now let us say something of the contumelies that they abide before their deaths: but it is an infinite & endless matter, it can not be expressed in few words. For I think verily, that Catholics no where in the world, no not among moors, Goths, Tartars, Saracens, Turcks, or whatsoever other confederates, or sworn enemies of Christ, could be more scornfully, than they are by these contumelious and disdainful new gospelers. If they take a priest at mass: a man How a priest is entreated that is taken at mass. would marvel to see, how impiously & how despitefilly they behave themselves. First, for the sacred yea and consecrated host, they take it away with violence, tread it under foot, thrust it through with knives and daggers, fasten it to a post, and with great wonder show it to Catholics, insult and triumph against it in all scoffing and scornful manner, and call it (such is their blasphemy (the wheaten or breadie god of papists. Now as to the priest, when they have (after their manner) first entreated him ill within doors, than they bring him forth abroad, and in the self same attire wherein they found him standing at the altar, they hail and chase him about, through streets and villages, where all folk gaze and stare upon him the whole multitude scorn him, yea & some spytt in his face, but the most part scold, and rail against him, and every one (well nigh) doth practise some particular spite and injury against this servant of Christ. Then they lock him fast in the counter, or lay him up in some other prison: they bind him in iron cheyns, load him with bolts and shakles, and (if it like them) they put him to the rack, and torture: or else, when they have vexed him in every part with the rod of all manner of reproachful punishments: they hale him fourth to the place of judgement, and their, both him, and all them which were present at his mass, they do condemn to prison, and to pay that sum of money for their fine or ransom, which I told you before is to be paid for this so heinous a fault (God wot) of hearing mass. And when all this is done and passed, (if they think it may any way further their affairs to dispatch the man quite out of the way, and kill him) they exhibit unto him interrogatories touching some articles of the aforesaid capital laws: they appose him with captious and subtle questions: they urge him upon his allegiance to answer directly & plainly. What need many words? Do they not easily (think you) beat out of the poor man some thing that may suffice to serve their turn? yes in deed: for a staff is ever at hand to beat a dog. And here because I have made mention Of prisons. of imprysonments, and you in your letters request advertisement of some particulars thereof by name: I will say some thing also of prisons: whereof this shall be the first: that they are all very full replenished and stuffed up with Catholics, in so much as there is scant any romthe for thieves. Many prisons are Mistress Tomson. new builded of late, but all do not suffice. The Tower of London, (in time passed used for traitors,) is now fraught full of priests. Yea, our Bridewell, an infamous place of light houswyves' & lewd folk, is not without some part. For it is not long since a young maid, a gentle woman borne, confessing the Catholic faith some what zealously, was thrust in to this dishonourable place by the superintendant of London. Now to the wants, distresses and inner troubles of prisoners I dare say nothing, lest with my complaint I might afflict the afflicted more. This nevertheless is common, that no friend of theirs may visit them, all intercourse of speech and letters is forbidden, straight watch is laid, & narrowly it is observed who resorteth unto them, in so much as none without present peril, can either give them any alms or other ways relieve them with any work of charity. And I hear of much harder dealings, concerning the order of their diet, specially in the prisons at york and hull. Yet because those extremities may proceed perhaps of some peculiar frowardness of jailer's: I will not touch them here as afflictions common to all prisoners. But yet the report of a rigour vse● in a prison at Lanson in the county of The prison at Lanson. Cornwall, is certainly true, and the fact more than barbarous. For when six (as I ween) or eight Catholics were shooveled together and piled up in to one hole: though they were of good calling, and for more part gentlemen borne: yet had they neither meat given them, nor allowed to them, other than unsavoury and Loathsome, yea and begged of alms from door to door, nor use of any water but of corrupt & filthy. And as for place of easement to their bodily necessities, they had none at all, other than the very floor where on they did lie. A savage part of a Jackanapes. But of all other this exceeded: that when these poor wretches began at last to complain of this inhuman and savage cruelty: the Ambassador threatened them further, that he would from thenceforth tie them to maungers, and feed them like brute beasts. Yet in the end by longesute and continual soliciting of friends, it came to pass, that they were removed from this prison about two hundred miles thence, and posted over to a prison in london, with a common guard. Of which pilgrimage this was the ceremony & circumstance. How Catholics are led to prison in England. Every one of them was fett on a silly lean & bare horse, without bridle spur, or other furniture for a horseman: the horses were fastened each one to othera tail, marching in a long rue one after an other. Each man's feet were tied under his horse belly, and his arms were bound hard & fast behind him. When they came near to any city or town: one was appointed to ride before, and to give warning to the inhabitants, that there were coming at hand, certain papifts, foes to the Gospel, and enemies in the common weal. Upon which notice, the people being stirred up, did run in flocks forth of their houses in to the streets, and welcome the comers with as spiteful contumelies as they could. With a very like pomp and solemnity Master Edmund Campian of the Society of jesus, led in triumph. (fashioned and framed all together for reproach, & to every trick & toy of mockery) did they lately lead through the city of london, twelve catholics, whereof five were priests, & the rest were of good estate and calling. Their fault forsooth was this: they were found praying & at mass all in one house with master Edmund Campian, of the Society of jesus, a great learned clerk, a harmless and very Innocent man. This good man, for offering to the ministers a most just defence of his faith by way of disputation, was by our adversary slandered as a seditious person, and to that end and effect, a large paper was most spitefully written with great letters, which they forced him to bear upon his head in this triumph. All this the good man did bear (not unlike as Christ did bear the title and superscription of his cross Calmelye, mildly, modestly, with a glad mind and a cheerful countenance. At last after this tragedy was ended, How Catholiqnes be tormented in the tower. when they were come to the tower of London: as they had before that time entreated other of gods servants, and specially priests: so did they now put Master Campian to the rack and to extreme torments, and thereby would have wrested out of him, in what places he Light causes of tortute. had seiourned, in whose houses he had been entertained, by whose friend ship and liberality he had been maintained, where he had bated or inned: whom he had visited by the way, whom he had made of his counsel, whose help, and industry he had used, and (to be short) who they were through out all England, which favour the Catholic religion, and who abhor Calvinism in their hearts. O heinous crimes, sufficient (no doubt) to bring free borne men to be turmoiled in so exquisite manner of examination, & that by torture too, even, for a mere surmise, and but a suspicion there of. Now (I pray you) tell us if you can when was this practice used any where before these days? In what barbarous Scythia was this asmuch as heard of by any report at any time, that freeborn men, of honest state & condition, learned, of good education, well instructed and trained up in gentlemanly manner, dedicated and vowed to the sacred function of priesthood, should be for the testimony only of an ancient religion, of long continuance left unto them by their ancestors, stauled up in cages to be racked on a pain bank (as bondslaves were wont to be) and with dire and horrible pains, grieves, & afflictions wrested and writhe out of their joints, unless they will appeach, & traitorously deliver up to the torture their own companions in faith and profession: which to do they are forbidden by the law of nations, by the rule of nature, by civil duty, by common honesty, & by every religion? Is this (think you) a very just cause of torture? is this a reason effectual enough to bring men to their inquisition? specially so extreme, so rigorous, so servile a manner of inquisition for free born men to endure? did Catholics in any age practice this, even against the desperatest and perversest heretics? Assuredly, if there were nothing else The dissimulation of heresy. to admonish a circumspect and attentive person of the fraud of heresy, and of that desperate wickedness, which lieth lurking under her hypocrisy: though the novelty of their opimons, the contrariety among themselves, the variable uncertainty of their assertions, their licentious dissolution in conversation of life could say nothing to the matter: yet this one thing would (to him I say that hath good eyes & ears) sufficientli discover the whole frame of all their dissimulation: to wit: that these self same fellows which of late so freshelye professed all kind of humanity and courtesy, & have so fiercely inveighed against the Catholic church of Christ for her most even and most indifferent discipline, by most just and most ancient laws ordained, do now use such savage cruelty upon light and tristinge causes, as the very churlish, rude. and barbarous did scant practise for most heinous offences. Well, he must bear with my grief and sorrow, who so ever thinketh my words to be over sharpp. For I am displeased in deed and not well content: but not so much with these men, which have committed these owtrages (for I beseech God forgive them): as I am with heresy, by whose means these men (not cruel of their own nature, but much disposed rather to lenity and meekness) are driven in to so great (I will not say woodenesse, lest I should offend them, but) sharpp angriness in deed, and fore displeasure against their own: as, neither for neighbourhood of one native soil, nor for integrity oflyfe, ornament of learning, or flower of age they can be induced, nor in respect of the prerogative of freedom, nor in regard of the privilege of priesthood, nor by entreaty of words, nor by abundance of tears they can be moved to take pity and compassion upon innocents and guiltless men, nor can be stayed back from doing extreme and outrageous violence. I humbly beseech our most merciful and most mighty God, that this huge offence be not imputed unto them, but rather that they may find mercy in the day of our Lord, who in their own day, that is, in the day of man, have showed no mercy to their brethren. Esa. 13. 1. Cor. 4. But now I omit to speak of the other outrages, which in this Tower of London are perpetrated, and patiently endured. The strait ward & evil entreaty Catholics in the tower. For though they be many and very grievous: yet can they not easily come to our knowleige, by reason of that close and strait ward, wherein the sound of all speech, and mourning of the afflicted is shut up from the ears of them that are abroad. Nay, our adversaries bestow no small diligence in this point: that the afflictions and torments which are there practised within doors, be not brought to the knowleige of them that are witheoute: but buried rather in darkness, and clean hid in blind and obscure dungeons. But if these break forth at any time, & the doleful voice of the afflicted be plainly heard: then are those fellows grievously offended, and either flatly deny all that was done, or with pleasant words extenuate the matter. For twice now of late Master Campian hath been pulled on the rack. And what adversary did not utterly deny it? Yet at length the truth of the matter came to light, when master Campian himself did utter it in an open audience, & in the hearing of our adversaries: twit, (say de they) it was a merry pastime: he was cramped or pulled a little, not in earnest, but in ieaste. After the same manner they jested of others, which had been racked before. So great delight these merry conceited fellows do take, in making skosses and sports of the afflictions of forie poor men. Our adversaries accustomed to lie. But they have yet an other stratagem or politic shyst, familiarly acquainted in this tower: that is, to surmise and forge what they lust of the prisoner, & to publish it to his shame, and for a trapp to beguile other Catholics. The thing is evident, and hath plenty of examples: but because I purpose to be brief, I will touch but a few. When master Campian had been afflicted with torments: it was reported that he had confessed what soever they had demanded of him: specially at whose houses, & in what places he had been. And (to give to the lie his right shape and perfection) it was further bruited abroad, that he had promised a recantation of I know not what. But that tale no man thought to be probable: yet there were that doubted thereof, because the adversaries had so earnestly affirmed it. For many gentlemen, and some of the nobility were called up to London, from their own houses, and charged with a supposed confession of master Campian: And yet in very truth (as afterward it well appeared) he never yielded one word to his torments. A like shift the lieutenant of the In the guildhall at London tower used, & (of purpose to lay a bate to seduce others, by some example) affirmed openly at a common session, that there were no catholics' under his ward, which refused to go to the church of our adversaries: yet it was well known to all there, that even they whom he meant of, went not willingly to the church, but upon compulsion and drawn by violence had been present at a few sermons, yet they always openly spoke against the same, called the preacher from his railing speech, and challenged him to disputation, even in the presence of the same lieutenant albeit angerly he threatened them often with heavy bolts & shakles. But it is hard by writing to discourse through all the particulars in every kind of affliction, which the prisoners in that tower do endure: yet such as have some time been present vewers of the matter do tell us part: upon whose faithful relation I will put down this one to give a conjecture of the rest. There was a young man, of honest Conper. parentage, well entered in learning for he had been Scholar & servant to Doctor harpesfeild a very learned man, that died in prison for Christ's cause. This young man, for religion and learning sake, had appointed a journey in to these parts: And being ready for it, made his repair to the haven (with the wealth that he had got together in money or other things) of purpose to pass over the sea. But by some chance the matter was discovered, the young man was apprehended by an officer, and sent back to London: where first he was spoiled of all his goods and cast in to the Tower of London: Beauchamp, tower. there he was very straightly kept in that part of the prison which, is called Becheams Tower, destitute of all comfort and consolation needful for man, saving one sorry bed, that his friends sent, and yet hardly could he be allowed to have it. Within a while after, this young man (being but of a weak complexion, and accustomed to open and clear air) partly through Hunger and cold, partly through the filthy savour, and lothesomenesse of the place, and corruption of the air, did fall in to a sickness, and seemed to be vexed with an ache, or giddiness of his head. The lieutenant New found physic. hearing hereof, devised a marvelous strange medicine for this disease. For he commanded the bed to be taken away, that for the better recovery of his health, he might lie upon the bare floor. To be short: within few days the poor man dieth, starved, wasted, & pined away by extremity of cold and Hunger: and thereof remained this evident testimony and proof, that when his clothes were to be taken of, that he might be buried: his flesh being putrefied and rotten by cold, did stick fast to his hose, and was with the hose pulled of from the bare bones, & fell in gobbets upon the ground: a pitiful sight of a churlish barbarousness and of an odd kind of cruelty. nevertheless there be men yet living which did see this with their eyes. And (were it not for their peril) I could name them. And because I am entered in to this kind of talk: I will be some what more liberal than my promiss. And one other example I will lay down, to let you see what good store I have, if I list to set it forth to the show. another young man not unlike the Shear wood. The lady tregonell. Martin her son. former, the son of a Catholic confessor did frequent the house of a right worshipful lady, who had a son clear opposite and contrary to the mother, and one full gorged with calvin. This man did fume and fret in his mind very much for that he deemed his mother had mass often times in her house by this young man's help and procurement. On a time therefore, as he by chance did meet the young man in a street in London: he crieth very outrageously, O rebel and traitor: take hold on the traitor, for by this term they name us, to make us more odious: and with this kind of most unjust ignominy they vex us. The they of the city hearing these words, traitor and rebel, leap forth of their shops, lay hands on the man, and hale him to the justices or commissioners. And at their next session when he came before them: the exclamer had nothing whereof to accuse the young man, nothing where with to charge him, save only a bare suspicion of the Catholic religion: for he was not able to convince him of the fact. The commissioners not withstanding would not give him leave to depart. For a presentment of religion is of all other most adiouse. And if the presenter want sufficient matter: the presentment is helped and set forward by interrogatories and questions, to be ministered by the commissioners themselves. The justices therefore examine the young man, what he doth believe, or think touching the chief points of faith. And at last by way of argument they wrest out, that he supposeth the bishop of Rome ought to have chief authority in causes Ecclesiastical, yea, and in England also. Upon the hearing hereof: there followed a like sentence as was given in an other session of justices. Why require we Marc. 14. any further proof? you have beard blasphemy, what think you? all they condemned him to be guilty of death. Then was he removed over to the tower of London, & there Laid up in a privy chamber near to the place where the Engines for torments do lie. In the mean season his chamber which he had in the city, was rifled and ransacked, and all his goods snatched up, & therewithal about thirty pounds' english more, (which he had taken up of other men for debts oweing to his most miserably afflicted father) were also stolen & carried away. Well, the poor man in prison was sore afflicted with torments, to enforce him to discover the places where he had heard mass: for being but a lay man he could not himself say mass. Then, after very grievous torments, which he endured with great courage (for, so much an adversary that had been there present did confess:) he was thrown in to a very obscure dungeon, that was both dark & dreadful, without light, without bedding, without needful apparel. And of his diet you may easily conjecture, when he could not be allowed to have any piece or paring of his own goods, no not for the necessary sustentation of his own life: Nay, there is an other thing that doth looth me to M. william Roper. tell. For when a certain devout and charitable man being (upon the common brute of this young man's extreme calamity) moved to compassion, had sent a Sum of money to be conveyed unto this poor man for his relief, and by the mean of an other prisoner had delivered the same to his under keeper (for here each prisoner hath his under keeper): the under keeper received the money, and brought it again the next day to him of whom he had it, and told him that the lieutenant of the tower would not suffer the poor man to enjoy the benefit of that alms. And when the keeper was very earnestly requested to take part thereof & bestow it in some thing for the poor man's relief he denied to take it, and said that he might not in any wise take apenny, except it were six pence to buy him straw to lie upon. So malitiouselie bend was that lieutenant against the silly poor man. In the end after six months (as I think) were over passed in this most grievous kind of martyrdom they draw him forth along through the streets on a hurdle, and hang him up a little, let him down again, and then as he is in reviving, they afflict him with the other kind of tortures, which they use to practise upon such as are traiters to the state, but in far more terrible manner than they handle those traiters. For our adversaries are more rigourouse and more Protestant's are merciless to Catholics merciless against us, than they are against any sort of malefactors, how ungracious naughty so ever they be. For when these by order o flaw are to suffer the same kind of death, they find such favour, as either they are, by compassion and pity of our adversaries, full dead before they be cut down from the gallows: or in deed the execution is so handled according to the prescript rule of the law, as they are suffered to hang till they be half dead at the least, to dull the sense and feeling of pains in the torments following. But far otherwise it is in the case of Catholics. For they are no sooner hanged, than the hangman enforceth himself in a furious manner of haste to cut the halter in sunder, & whiles they are yet alive, and alive like, yea and of perfect sense and feeling: he bringeth them to the other torments: and this oftentime he doth so readily, and with such dexterity and nimbleness: as not only their senses for most part are perfect, but they speak also distinctly and plainly after their bowels be digged up, yea and whiles the bouchars fingers are scratching at their very hearts and entrails. And yet this bloody sight worketh no compassion in the hearts of our adversaries: but they deride and scorn the sorry poor wights, yea and spitefully rail against them, even whiles they are yet in dying, and specially if any being overcome with pain do groan, or happen (which is very rare) to make any lamentable noise. For thus a certain preacher of theirs (and not a mean one) in a printed book doth collect & conclude, that our very Martyrs, are not Martyrs, because forsuthe (saith he) one Fulk. of them cried out in his torments, and (that I may use his own words) did yell and howl like a hell hound. O goodly sentence well dreaming such a preacher. O new found charity of a new found gospel: what ever hacker or ruffian would have uttered such a word without blushing? what ever cutthroat hath showed so savage and barbarous a mind? But truly these fellows seem to degenerate clean from all sense & feeling of human nature, and to be quite transformed in to (I can not tell what) unnatural wildness, utterly forgetful of that sentence: judgement without mercy to him which hath not showed mercy: And jac. 3. specially of this saying. A hard heart shall feel sorrow in the last day: This appeareth Eccle. 2. not only by these examples which I have already put down, but by infinite other also, which now I may not prosecute, lest I should be longer than an epistle may suffer. Yet I will note unto you some such things by way of example, as may make the matter most clear and evident. A certain young gentleman, of an ancient M. Tirwit son to Sir Robert Tirwit. and right worshipful family, was accused for hearing of a mass celebrated (as it was reported) at the marriage of his sister. Where upon he fled from his father's house, and kept himself secret in London the year last passed. And there, by reason of his travail in flyeing away, and (as I think) through the intemperature of the summer, he fell in to a grievous fever. The adversaries hearing hereof, do run unto him by and by, and in all haste will needs pull him out of the house, and throw him in to prison, even as he then was, feeble, faint, and grievously sick. This seemed to the beholders thereof to be a manner of dealing both churlish & detestable. They pray, they entreat, they make intercession, they use all the means they can, to move the adversary to have consideration of the sick, not to heap sorrow upon sorrow, nor affliction upon an extremely afflicted man, not to take away the life of so comely a young gentleman: they proffer as sufficient assurance for his forth coming, as his adversaries would demand, and to under take for his appearance before the justices immediately upon the recovery of his health: but it will not be accepted. The physicians come, they affirm for certain, that he is utterly undone and casten away, if he should be removed forth of that place in to the inconveniences of a prison. All this is nothing regarded: they laid hands on the sickman, haled him away, shut him up in prison, & with in two days next after he died: they bury him, and make no bones of the matter, nor scruple, or any regard at all. Even so it feel out against a right M. Dimmok. worshipful and valiant gentleman, one (for a peculiar honour in the Armurie which he did bear) very famous, and son in law to the right honourable Earl of lincoln. This gentleman had been troubled many years with a vehement palsy, & such a resolution of his sinews, as he was not able to go forth of his own house, or move a foot out of his place, but as he was lifted or holden up by the hands or arms of his servants. At the last upon an information touching the Catholic Religion, preferred against him to the superintendant of that province (for by that term would they be named which now detain the possessions of ancient byshopriks:) he was noted & appeached as suspected to hold the faith of his ancestors: and thereupon he was summoned to appear before the commissioners as evidently guilty of Catholicism or Catholicque Religion, which they in contempt call papistry. But this palsy sickman appeared not. Nevertheless he made his own excuse very advisedly by letters. Yet is it not accepted: for the superintendant himself cometh with all speed to the diseased man's house, & throwghlie vieweth with his own eyes the impotency of the gentleman: but no motion of compassion entereth in to this snperintendents breeste: he commandeth him to be carried to the jail. What need many words? Nether the age of that man, nor his degree in calling, nor the woorshipp of his kindred, nor the nobleness of his affinity, nor the resolution of his limbs could deliver him from the present trouble and mischief of imprisonment. What followed? by these inconveniences in very short space after, he dieth. And yet they leave him not when he is dying: yea than they vex and afflict him more. For they come when he is extreme sick, they come whiles he is wrestling with the pangs of death, they come as he is passing out of this lice, they come whiles he is yielding up the ghost: then they trouble him: them they do not suffer him to rest, nor permit him to die in such sort as he desired to die: (for his desire was to die according to the custom of the universal christian church:) but then the ministers flock about him: them they intrude themselves upon him: then they urge him to pray such sorry prayers of their own making, as in health he contemned, in sickness with open voice he rejected, and (now dumb & half dead,) by his countenance, by signs & tokens, & by gesture of his body he did utterly detest and abhor. What greater uncourtesy, or cruelty rather, can be imagined than this? But here I may not pass over in silence Mistress Thimilbie an other matter which happened at the same time, and in the same city. For a young gentle woman, upon licence first obtained, did go for duty sake to visit her husband, & entered in to the prison where he lay for religion. When this was known: the superintendant (as one ready to catch hold of a pray fallen in to his own snare) giveth commandment to shut her up also in prison. The gentle woman shortly after (either upon some grief conceived for this inhuman dealing, or through terror of some further treachery, or else upon some annoyance taken by the distemperature and lothesomenesse of the place) is possessed with a very grievous sickness, and falleth into a manifest peril of her life. And when it Great inhumanity was looked for every hour that she would die: her sorrowful husband made humble suit that she might be en larged a little, & removed (if it were but for one day) forth of the prison, to some other place, where she might use the help of skilful women. But his suit would not be heard. O hearts of iron. I have now been long enough in prisons (my dear friend Gerard,) & my speech (perhaps) may seem to have tarried overlong in this kind of discourse. But where (I pray you) should I be with better will, than with our own friends? why do I say our own friends? Nay rather with the most dear friends of Christ our God and saviour? for the life of these friends is our light: their constancy is our example: their fortitude is our woorshipp and honour: and their death is our glory. Wherefore, I confess, that though in body I am absent: yet in spirit I do converse continually with them, & they shall never slip out of my mind. For I prefer their bolts and shackles, I extol their prisons, I exalt their reproaches and contumelies far above the riches, wealth, & diadem of any Croesus, who so ever he be. Yet notwithstanding I would leave these captives for a time, and go forth to visit them which are toiled & turmoiled abroad, were it not that the fit occasion of this place admonisheth me (before I depart) to make mention of a certain bare shift, or poor starting hole, which hour adversary (upon the opportunity of imprisonment) taketh hold of, and fortifieth: I mean that deceitful pretence of a disputation, A pretence to dispute. which he would be thought to proffer to captives in prifon: but to such as are at liberty he will not yield therein, no not when he is requested, or becalled and challenged there unto: Nay, nor yield therein to the self same captives upon any indifferent or reasonable condition or law. And thus the case standeth. About twenty years past, when our adversaries had expelled us, before we were called to our answer: and when they were in full possession of our roomths and habitations: then lo, (upon a practice to give a show to the people, that they hold by justice that which they have usurped by violence) they proffered a combat, by way of writing, in the whole matter of controversy. And here Protestant's provoke catholics to write. And yet forbydd their books. upon they becalled us forth to write, & they challenged so many of our party, as were either learned in deed, or so accounted, with this condition annexed to the challenge, that who so ever shall win the victory in writing, shall be accounted, sounder in truth of teaching. Our Catholics most willingly take hold of the condition. Many very great learned men (though troubled with the discommodities of exile) did nevertheless write much in the English tongue, for the defence of the Catholic faith: as those famous doctors & Learned clerks, Saunders, Harding, Fekenan, Alan, Stapleton, Heskin, Martial Dorman, Rastall, and others. They set forth the state of the whole controversy very plainly: they show what reason, authority and truth we have on our side: And they lay wydeopen the great fraud, falsehood, lapse, fall and error, on our adversaries side. But when they on the other side perceived themselves to be over reached by their own cunning, & in a manner beaten down in this open combat: then they devised an other shift, such a one in deed, as indesperate cases were necessary, albeit no discrete nor skilful mean for the safety of their estimation and credit. For they procured the queens very sharp and threatening injunction to be proclaimed against all those persons which should have, read, receive, bring or convey in to England any such book as those, which they themselves before had urged the Catholics to write. Here upon what great vexations from hence forth our Catholics have endured for these books. It is no easy matter to judge. For many have been haled to the rack Persecution for Catholic books. & painbank: many have been straightly examined upon their oaths: some have been deeply fined: very many have been chased away, and for fear forced to fly into exile: An infinite numbered of houses have been by night searched, narrowly perused, rifled and ransacked in every corner: And all, but upon a light suspicion only of these books. And if any of these books happened to be found in a search: it was (be ye assured) a matter sufficient for a grievous presentment. If a man should bid an adversary answer one of those books: it were a vehement presumption (forsooth) of no good subject. If one should speak but a word in defence of such a book: oh, that were a plain evidence, yea and a flat verdict of a traitorous heart. Now, when our men see them selves driven in to these straits and difficulties, that they could not (without very great inconveniences and molestations) either writ or speak in the defence of the cause of God, and of his church universal: what did they then think you? truly (even as it beseemed good & Catholic Christians to do) as occasions of matters required, they submitted their bodies to prisons, their hands to gives & manacles, their feet to bolts & shackles, their goods to ravin and spoil, yea and their lives to perils of death. In the mean season (lest they might seem to distrust their own cause, and by silence to betray gods business) they made a petition quietly and calmly, for to have indifferent conferences with their adversaries: and (with as much submission & earnest suit as might be) they humbly sued to every magistrate, that either public disputation, or at the least private conference touching the now litigious points of religion might be admitted, under reasonable and indifferent laws & conditions. Many at home, and many abroad did The earnest suit of Catholics for liberty to dispute. solicit this suit by way of petition: some applied it earnestly by favour of friends: other pursued it by authority and credit as they might: and very many preferred it by other ways & means. Our men for their parts (though by the way of great disaduauntages, yet leaning to the word of the prince, and for truth sake) offered themselves willingly and gladly to enter in to this combat, with this only hope and confidence, that they trusted, many souls, which were redeemed with the precious blood of our saviour Christ, & now are defiledd with heresy, might with disceptation by gods grace be recalled and recovered. Whereupon they gave to the adversaries the whole liberty and choice, either to use their own homemates, or to call for others forth of foreign countries, for the defence of their cause: yea and to appoint the day, to choose the place, to move the question, to prescribe the order and form, to begin, to end, and to do all things after their own will & fantasy, so always, and upon such condition, as some law, rule, form and order of a disputation might be observed and kept. Protestant's distrnst their own cause. But (to make a short tale) the adversary will none of these. For he did foresee (and not unwisely) that his party would go to wrack, if the matter were once to be tried by combat, hand to hand in open field. And therefore he refused this open cooping at barriers in Schools, as to lightsome a place for their dark dealings, and to famous a trial of their deceit and guile, according to the saying of our saviour: every one that doth evil, hateth joan. 3. the light, and cometh not to the light, to the end that his works be not reproved: but he that worketh truth, cometh to the light: that his works may be manifest, for they are wrooght in god. Yet in fine, two practices our adversaries (lest they might seem to do nothing) did put in execution for their more security and estimation sake. First, they stir up sharper persecution against all Catholics, but specially against the more learned, and against such as were thought able in this conflict to annoy them with reasoning. Therefore they removed from london the Lord bishop of lincoln, & the Lord Abbot of westminster, with others of sound learning, profownd knowledge, very much gravity, & great virtue, not a few. All these The castle of wisbiche. they cast into an uplandisne dungeon, spoil them clean of all their books, debar them from all intercourse of talk and conference one with an other, (except at meal time) and shut them up close & severally in dark corners. And if any besides of name and account were left out, them also they call unto these Iron grates of prisons, that this way, at the least, they may put all to silence. secondly, when they had contrived The shift & craft of ministers in their all these things according to their own desires: them they convey themselves with great secrecy in to prisons. There they set upon the captive Catholics suddenly pretence to dispute. ere they be aware, and call them in all haste to dispute of faith, without any time before hand to think on the matter, or liberty to talk thereof among themselves, And lest they might help or comfort one an other, or testify one for an other: they assail them (for the most part) severally, every man alone by himself. And yfanie of our party did object their uneven dealing, or desire time to consider, books for study, or speech with his companions for instruction, and other things requisite for his defence: and if any alleiged further (as some did) that there wanted an indifferent judge to give the sentence, convenient auditory to bear witness, and faithful notaries to set down the arguments in writing: then lo, our adversaries exclaimed that we refuse the combat, that we stand upon bare shifts of words, that we seek for excuses, and fly in to holes and corners: In so much as many on our side moved with the importunate clamour of these fellows did yield themselves to all manner of conditions that were offered, putting their on lie confidence in the goodness of their cause. But what so ever our men alleiged, it served to small purpose there. For either did our adversaries contumeliously reject it, or odiously draw and wrest it to treason, or else most unjustly deprave, pervert, and misreport it to the people. And thereof I have many examples: but here a few may suffice. First it fell out of late, that after the sentence of death was pronounced against diverse examples of cavils & untrue surmise of ministers. Master hanse (the good priest) for the Catholic faith, and he now in prison preparing himself to die: there came unto him a certain minister under colour of frindeshipp, with a countenance settled and framed to an hypocrisy of holiness, but the issue of the matter proved him to be full of bitter malice, and of every subtle shift to deceive the poor man. For in speech between them two, this minister, besides many other reproachful words, did charge that martyr of Christ with treason against the queens person: where upon when the same martyr had made this answer, that he had never offended against the queens Majesty, that he had but only made a profession of the Catholic faith and religion, which cannot betray nor hurt the Majesty of any human creature, for so much as above all other things it most pleaseth the Majesty of God. When good master hanse (I say) had spoken these and other like words: and said further that he most willingly would embrace this death, sith he was then clear in his conscience, that he had never committed any heinous crime against her majesty: but rather (according to his duty) had commended her to God in his prayers: and that this crime of treason against her majesty, imputed unto him, by his adversaries, is in truth neither any crime of treason at all, nor any sin in the sight of God: Lo this goodly gospeler (as one that had catched plenty of matter, whereupon to forge a malicious surmise) passeth forth of the prison, bruiteth abrood to the people & publisheth in a libel written and printed, that hanse affirmed no treason to be a sin before God: Master hanse having intelligence hereof, complained of this injury openly to the people when he was brought to the place of execution: and there he opened his meaning touching his former words, and besought god to pardon the accuser, for so unjust, and so odious an untruth. Likewise two ministers for conference sake came into a prison, to a gentleman Tripp & Crowley against M. Thomas pound. which had been some time a courtier, and then was become a prisoner, & so had been many years, for his faith. And when they had onerworne and wasted all their matter with contumelious and lewd words, and had wearied the gentle man with blasphemies (as he himself by letters complained), and yet for their parts had not either concluded upon any matter, or refuted any thing by argument: then this gentleman (lest their talk should have been altogether idle and unprofitable) moved them at length to conclude upon some certain principal points whereupon they might afterward proceed to discuss the rest. And the point was this: whether the private spirit of each The controversy. particular person, or the common spirit of the universal church ought to judge of the sense of holy scripture? For when he had heard them alleige scripture out of all places, and wrongfully: he affirmed that in these matters of controversy, a man should not run to the bare letter of scripture, in such sense as every particular man list to take it: (for by this A necessary principle for deciding of controversies. mean all heresies are defended:) but that we ought to resort to the most certain judgement of the church universal, at the least way most ancient: which being directed by the spirit of God, doth lay down before us the true & natural sense of scriptures. And because the ministers did not admit this ground, nor yet refel it: but (as their fashion is) run into corners, creaks and starting holes: he put down in writing (being but a lay man, & not much travailed in scriptures) six strong reasons to fortify his opinion: whereunto he desired that the ministers would answer, & there with all requested that it might be lawful for him, by speech or pen to confute their answers, if they should seem to him either impertinent and doubtful, or otherwise weak and insufficient. Well, when these ministers had got the writing: thence they pack in haste, & to the superintendant of london they go: & to him they complain of the man's pertinacy, how, notwithstanding their advises and motions, he refused to be a Calvinian, yea and that he durst take upon him to defend his opinion by writing. This superintendant (as in very deed he is a fumish hasty man, and by nature choleric) being outrageously incensed with ire, desineth the gentleman by and by in his mind to some special pain, purposing to punish him throughly: And thereupon he thrusteth him so delulie out of london into a stricter kind of imprisonment: he locketh him Strateford castle. up in an old decayed castle, a raw, unhaunted and obscure place, where he could neither have the sight of the Sun or other light, nor yet of men: he loadeth him with irons: and (not to recite all particulars) he afflicteth him with calamities marvelous & without all measure. Now these ministers (being thus put out of all doubt & fear of their adversary) do set forth a book, and make a kind of answer to the reasons by him before laid down unto them: and as in other things, so especially in this, they dealt most injuriously with him: for they conceal and dissemble the very state and principal point of the question and controversy, charging him to have said that the scriptures are (in his opinion) of less authority than the church: where in truth he talked not of the authority of such scriptures as are evidently known to be divine scriptures: but his talk was either touching the knowing and discerning of such uncertain scriptures as have been called in question and doubted of: or touching the understanding of the sense & true meaning of dark & obscure places of divine scripture. Walker. In the marshalsea. Moreover, a certain divine doctor, and one of some authority among our adversaries, came one day (with no small ostentation, nor light train of followers) to a certain prison for disputation sake, as he pretended: (for these fellows would gladly bear the people on hand & make them believe that they do offer to our men disputations thick and threefold,) there, this glorious doctor calleth together in to the hall every prisoner which whas shut up in that prison for religion, both young and old, priests and lay folk: he telleth them that he is come to dispute: he and his associates take their seats on the bench, & sit down solemnelre. And first of all, though the prisoners were in number many: yet he demandeth of each man his name, & dwelling place. If any answer not readily: the divine So he railed against M. Cotton a priest, for telling his surname & not his proper name. by and by would fall in a terrible chafe, and shake up the prisoner outrageously. Then before the disputation did begin, one of the prisoners upon occasion did alleige forth of holy scripture some thing which the doctor had denied: whereupon, the silly old man waxeth very augrie, & in no case will admit that any such thing is to be found in scripture: the book is brought forth, and the thing is recited very clearly word for word as it had been alleged. The old man taketh his spectables and readeth: but for that the book was an other man's book, he would not credit ye, but called for his own: his companions fall to laughing. And (to be short) without further proceeding they all arose & departed: and thus the disputation was ended before it began. Then the sorry old fellow (when he seethe that he could not prevail) falleth a cursing, & wisheth mischief and destruction to the house and to all the prisoners there. And all this fell out thus, the keeper of that prison being present, and ashamed of the matter. Now, what can be said more fond or more ridiculous than this? And yet nevertheless it was reported for certain and sure, that this mighty Hercules had overthrown and beaten down the Catholics: albeit in very deed he never used argument: but only a bare brabbling and contention in words. There is also among our adversaries Fulk. one other odd minister, a big man in his own opinion, yet in other men's judgements he is but mean: how be it in tongue not unready, yet rash and headlong, by reason that he knoweth not himself. This fellow not long ago (hoping to pick out some piece of estimation by contending with great personages) crept, unlooked for, into a prison, where the aforesaid learned and reverend wisbiche castle. fathers, the bishop of Lincoln and▪ Abbot of west minister with others of good account are imprisoned for religion: And at his first entry he giveth in commandment that they all appears personally before him: he telleth them that he his come to confer about the chief litigious points of religion: and signifieth his will and pleasure, that they should begin the dispision. But when those good fathers (as they are wise) did perceive the man to do all this without warrant, and without any certain order or form of conference, but only upon a rash and undiscrete head of his own, and merely for vainglory: they make small account of him, but contemn such ridiculous vanity of the arrogant young fellow. And therefore when they had spoken something about the unreasonable condition then offered, and of their want of books, time and other things: they leave the man to his own follies, & (as best beseemed their gravity) they let him pass away, as one by them contemned, rather than vexed. But yet the young peacock (as his manner is) advanced up his tail triumphed abroad with all bravery, and publisheth a pamphlet of his great conquests and victories over captives: In which pamphlet there are many untruths, very many frivolous toys, and nothing to serve his turn, nothing to make for his side, but mere vanity, and that even by his own declaration, as he himself telleth his own tale. But when such huddling & shifting of matters was known, so as many even of our adversaries, did mislike it (for it had almost bred a common quarrel, & had wellnigh put into the people's heads some suspicion that their cause was over thrown:) Some there were which (to salve this sore and to take away the infamy) made a certain promise that within short space there should be a disputation with conditions very indifferent and very reasonable. And thereupon, the In November. 1580. knight Marshal writeth unto the keeper of the marshalsey, and commandeth him to inquire and signify, if any papists under his charge would maintain their cause by A new disputation. appointed disputation: that they should send to him in writing such conclusions as they would defend, and should subscribe their names, make themselves ready to dispute: that he himself would advertise them very shortly of the manner, place and time of the disputation. M. Bosgrave. M Shyrwin. M. Hart. This thing pleased all men. Three of our priests, though younger in years, & of less reading (for such as were of more ability & experience were all sent away from London as I told you before): yet with a certain good assurance, trust and confidence in their cause, do under take the charge: And therefore they close up certain conclusions in writing, subscribe their names, and send them away to the knight Martial with great thanks. But the conclusions please not our adversaries: they appoint others according to their own fantasy & send them back. These our men do allow: the day for the disputation is appointed: great is the expectation thereof. But what followed? Forsooth, in the day (as I think) next before they should dispute, the aforesaid defendants on our side were removed from the prison of the Marshallsei, and conveyed to the tower of London to be racked: that sith they would not be taught nor persuaded with reasons fett from authority, they might there be trained up and exercised with arguments derived from the rack and torture. But yet all this could not terrefye our catholics from their suit touching a disputation to be had with an indifferent condition. Where upon a noblemon, & one of the chief of her majesties most honourable Thee Earl of Lecestre Council, moved (as I think) with the urgent petitions of some Catholics, agreed thus far at length, that in this common suit, he would in a private manner satisfy some principal persons that were then in prison for religion. For he called them unto his chamber, and said, that upon the love he bore unto them, he was moved to agree unto their requests, and desired them to show themselves indifferent and diligent hearers, and not perversely obstinate in a desperate case: And said further, that he putteth no doubt, but by this one conference of very well learned men, the truth of the matter might most easily be discovered. The gentlemen show themselves willing to be conformable to that request, and humbly thank his Lordeshypp for so great a benefit. But they look about if they could see any Catholic divine to defend their cause by disputation D. Laurence hunfrey with his fellows. (for there were four ministers present to impugn it) yet they find none: they marvel much: nevertheless they speak not a word of it: Because they would see the issue and end of the matter. And at the last up riseth a minister Adam squire. from the bench, and (with very great commendations of his associates before) down he goeth as smoothly as may be among the prisoners, & offereth himself to be our spokesman, and to plead our cause. Who cold forbear laughing, if the reverence of the place would have admitted a scorn? who would not have pitied our case, to see us thus frustrate and disappointed of our own friendly counsellors, and committed to the defence of none but of our foes? Yet forsooth he giveth us fair words, & will needs bear us on hand that he will support us with his faithful assistance. And thereupon he steppeth forth, and up he jerketh his hands, & white of his eyes to heaven ward, (as his manner is) and (full devoutly like a good man) he there undertaketh the defence of the cause: but of what cause I pray you? forsooth even of that same cause, which before (like an apostata) he had betrayed and forsaken, and made his brag thereof when he had so done. But who would believe a scornful and light tryfeler? Is there any so mad (think you) as to commit so weighty a cause to him that pleadeth in scorn? or to trust a jesting disputer with a matter of salvation upon his bare word: who (as it is reported) can not be trusted of his creditors in a money matter, no not upon his oath when he sweareth most deeply? And these are all in a manner, that can be said of the disputations or conferences with ministers in matters of learning. For I do not remember, that our adversaries ever yielded to grant any disputation to Catholics, besides these which here I have mentioned: saving only The disputation with father Campian. the late disputation which they granted to master Campian, being then a prisoner, & twice before that time racked, destitute of books, and unprovided of And once again racked sins the time here mentioned. all things, saving only of a good cause, & of a well willing mind. But as for that disputation, we hear (even by the testimoni of them which were present) of much partiality, & injury therein used, yea & of many such odd shifts, as perhaps to learned men might seem scant credible: but we are so admonished by examples in experience of former times, as we are forced to mistrust any thing, be yt never so unlikely, touching the indirect dealing of timourous and false-hearted men in a naughty cause. For who is ignorant, that need maketh the naked man to run, or that the sword of necessity is of all other most dangerous? or who doth nor very well understand that old proverb, poverty maketh many thieves, and that error and want in a desperate case, lead many men into unhonest ways? but now let us digress a little while to other matters, for me thinks I have spoken enough of prisoners. And though their condition seem hard and painful: yet is the condition of those men either more painful or more intricate, and more encumbered which live abroad under some colour of liberty and are nevertheless vexed and shaken with storms and tempests. For they which are shut up close within the limits of prisons: though in other respects they seem to be full of calamity, yet in this one point seem very happy, that in mind they have some quietness and tranquillity. The affliction of Catholics out of prisons. But the Catholics which are abrood I mean those that are dwelling dispersed through England, are neither suffered to rest nor abide any where: but are tossed and turmoiled to and fro, as it were with waves & winds in continual vexations and troubles. For where so ever you would set your feet, what way so ever you would go by street or path, you may see lamentable sights: this man to fly away: that man to lie hidden in a corner: an other to convey himself privily in disguised apparel: some apprehended and led to the justice: others to be sought for & not taken: many to abide among bushes and woods: a greate number to haunt the fields in the day time, and never to repair home but at midnight. And yet when they are at home in Searching of houses by night. their own houses: they can not so be in security one hour. For at midnight our adversaries oftentimes rush in forcibly upon them, and set a watch about the house, that none may escape: then they search every chamber, even the bedchambers of wives and maidens: about they go through all the house from place to place, veweing, tossing, & rifling in every corner, chests, coffers, boxes, caskets and closetts. And if any thing happen to be found that may work some detection of religion, or may breed any blame, or minister matter of surmise: as silver chalices, patens, candlesticks, crosses, books, vestments, & other ornaments which are called church stuff: these they snatch away, by a privilege of robbery, and by the prerogative of their gospel: for other law they have none to maintain these their doings. And that these things may not go alone, they catch hold oftentimes, for company, of what so ever other thing lieth buy. And lest any thing else should be lost by negligence, they stick not to rifle the bosoms, purses, and coffers of honest matrons, yea and to uncover their very innermost garments, & oftentimes to tear & rend the a sunder with violence, to see if any Agnus del, crucifix, medals, beads or any hallowed things do lie hid there. These pageants their sergeants do play, their catchepoles I mean, whom they call pursyvants, those hungry starven beasts running most fiercely on every prey or booty: And in the power of these fellows it lieth, whom so ever they do find in the house either to commit to prison, or at their will and liking to trouble with other vexations, except they be anointed with the oil of the sinner, Psal. 140. and pacified with some grateful sacrifice of money. This is the peace and rest which our Catholics do find at home in their own houses. Let us see a little what entertainment they do find abroad. I have told you how these pursyvants like thievish night fyendes do run with deadly hatred to do displeasures in houses: we may add hereunto how Psalm. 99 they beset the common ways and cross streets with ambushements like noon day devils. For if any of our men, whose name is presented, do happen to pass through either city, town or villaige: him they apprehend in the common street. If any enter in to any city yea by night, and be betrayed or bewrayed by the detectiò of some espial, tale-teller or pickthank (whereof we have great store:) him they hale and draw forth of the common tavern, or in: but though one be neither presented, nor bewrayed, yet is he not for all that in safety, except he utterly eschew all company and conversation with men: For by many ways and means, even upon a light suspicion only may a man be brought in peril: As for example, if a man do refuse to eateflesche on days prohibited by the church: if he be seen to pray some what earnestly, and specially in latin prayers: if he bless himself with the sign of the cross: if he counsel any to fast, or move one to virginity or single life: if he some what earnestly commend the ancient fathers: if he say or affirm any thing on the behalf of the Catholic religion, or confute a very manifest untruth of our adversaries: Nay, when others by course one after an other do rail and speak reproachfully against the Catholic religion, if he (for his part only) hold his peace and speak never a word: any of these is matter sufficient to bring a man in question for religion. And to be short, there is extant an edict and law, not In November 1580. long a go published, whereby every man hath power and authority to present, appeach, or accuse any man, who so everhe be, upon every least circumstance, which may induce any suspicion or surmise of the Catholic religion. By mean whereof, many since that time have been apprehended, and very many have been afflicted with diverse vexations & adversities. But there is one manner of rough dealing (for I will not use a more grievous term) which afflictetth more than all the rest: I mean that, which our men do find and feel in suits of law, in trial and judgements before justices, in private businesses; and in the common conversation and intercourses of living together one with an other. For this is a matter which in deed toucheth the very veins and sinews of the natural society of mankind, that are nourished and preserved by justice & humanity or gentle behaviour: &, do detest all cruel barbarousness. But for my part, I do neither complain, nor think it meet to complain, if neither favour be showed unto our persons, nor pity nor compassion to our estate and condition, be it never so afflicted or miserable, (for I can be content, sith they will needs have it so, that such humanity and civil courtesy as nature granteth even among enemies be denied unto us their brethren, for the hatred which they bear to our religion:) yet in very truth, for so much as there be some, which are not satiate with the rigour of laws, and grievousness The great rigour of some judges against Catholics. of pains and punishments laid upon us all ready, but they will needs add a bitter vexation of malice and evil will of their own devise and making: inso much as either by pretence of law they use rigour against us, where there is no law to warrant them: or else they extend the rigour of the law, further than the mind of the lawmaker did reach: and that in greatest, and most weighty causes, even such as concern our lives and our blood: no man should wonder, it we mourn, if we lament, if we sigh and groan a little under so great a burden of calamity. Let us therefore see, what Catholics do endure also in this manner of persecution, which ariseth upon hatred and despite of the Christian religion. first, there is a certain law (which before I have recited) that, who so ever shall obtain from the by shop of Rome bulls or public Page. Number 2. instruments, or bring the same in to England: he must be reputed guilty of high treason. Now admit this to be a most just law: (for I do not here entreat of the equity and indifferency of the law, but of the mind and intent of the law:) who seethe not that the intent of this law was only to except, provide & take order, that the pope should not determine or appoint any such thing to be done, touching causes or affairs of England, as he was wont to do by way of bulls (as they term them) or writs Apostolic? And yet not withstanding, not long ago, when a certain bare copy of 1575. the bull, containing a denunciation of a year of Jubilee, then past, was found: albeit the same pertained not to English men: although it was printed with in an other prince's dominions: although the force thereof was determined more than a year before: although it lay (as matter of no account) among only torn & cast A notable point of injustice. papers: all this not with standing: the grievousness of the matter was so vehemently enlarged, & aggravated by the severity judge Manwoode. M. Main priest. of a judge: as a priest in whose chamber the copy was found, was, for that same cause, put to a most cruel death: and a M. Trugion gentleman of great woorshipp, though ignorant of the matter, yet because he entertained the same priest in his house, was by the sentence of the same judge turned out of all his goods & possessions (which were very worshipful) and cast in to perpetual prison. Again, before the same judge and promoter, (for he executeth both those At dorcester the fifth of September. 1581. offices against Catholics) a certain honest man was arraigned of high treason, upon the one and twentieth capital law before mentioned, because he had given page. 67. Number. 21. a reason to one of his neighbours, why he himself might not go to the churches of protestants with a safe conscience. Now, this judge did interpret the man's words in such a sense, as if by the reason which he gave, he meant to have drawn his neighbour to his own opinion, and consequently to have dissuaded him from the Religion of England, and by an other A hard construction of a saw. consequence to bring him to the obedience of the bishop of Rome. So long are the snares which are set to intrapp our blood. But there is yet an other severe practice of this judge, to give more show of his cruel mind in this matter. For when it was referred to a jury (as the custom of the country requireth:) and that the inquest could not find the offence to be so grievous as deserved death: they were compelled by the authority of the same judge to find it to be a matter of treason: such a practice as was never wont to be used, nor aught to be used against any man, were he never so far past hope of grace, never so detestable naughty. The la against vagabonds. And where there is a law in England that such slothful beggars as will not abide in one certain place, but idly rove abroad from place to place like vagabonds should be whipped and burned in the ears with an hot iron: it so fell out that a Marck. syppet. vong man, born of honest and rich parents, sikillfull in humame learning, having left his study for a time, and going from London to visit his friends was apprehended, and brought before a judge for religion. What affinity is here with the persons noted to be punishable by this law? yet because the young man was then lately come forth of france, & had been trained up in the pope's Seminary: therefore and hasty froward judge, in despite and malice that he beareth to the Christian ●letewood. religion & Catholic cause, would not dimisse the poor man before he was whipped through London, and odiously burned in the ear. The like punishment touching burning in the ear was executed very lately at the City of yorcke (as I have heard) & upon a priest. And I could reckon up a great number of like strict Fulk. dealings of judges against Catholics: but this may suffice for a complaint. God which judgeth the poor in justice, and requiteth Esa. 11. the proud abundantly. Our Lord Psal. 30. which is both judge and witness (as jeremy jer. 29. saith), & will judge in measure against Esa. 27. measure, when measure shall be cast away, pardon these judges for so wicked and so unjust judgements. But what might a man say to the wickedness of this time? whether now (good God) whether now have these exulcerate and rancorous controversies touching matters of faith and religion thrust us? how have they plucked us down? no nation in the world adorned with civil manners: no country endued with the holy light of Christ's Gospel: no people instructed with Christian laws & customs, was ever either better framed to courtesy and humanity, more disposed to beneficence and fryndelie behaviour, more inclined to the love of equity, more bend to pity and mercy, than this English people and nation was, before such time as this unlucky, detestable and pestiferous heresy had hardened the heart, and entrails of love, infecting them with deadly poisons of malice. For this is she that hath shaken in sunder the bolts and bears of right and equity: this is she that hath dissolved the bonds of love and amity: this is she that hath blown up the fowndations of mercy and beneficence: this is she that hath cut in sunder the veins & sinews of the common society of men, and with a fyendelie force and tempestuous violence hath knocked together the members thereof and beaten them one against an other into miserable disorder & confusion. But now perhaps (friend Gerard) the time would require me to make some end of this epistle: for me thinks I am very long: and I ought to have care that I weary you not with a report so grievous and lamentable, as in truth it can not but vehemently trouble you (I think) whiles you are reading it, seeing it worketh such passions in myself in writing it, as some times I can not refrain from weeping, whiles I considre, either what I have written, or what I have omitted. For there be far more things that ought to be suppressed and passed over in silence, rather than here to be committed to writing: partly for that I should charge myself with an infinite labour in reciting all the particulars: partly, because the certain knowledge of very many things in these difficulties and troubles of times and causes, can not be had: but most especially, for that the explication & notice of the principal matters, and the discovery of the persons whom they concern, do run together in such sort, as they can not be so separated that the matters may be well understood, nor so annexed as the persons may not be damnified. For the things can not be committed to public speech or writing, but that the persons may be drawn thereby in to private peril. Let us therefore leave these things to them which are to come after us, that they may either commit them to writing when opportunity shall serve: or else in the mean time, with inward amazedness, & secret sorrow marvel and be wail the case. Now these things which I have told may suffice to minister matter, either for sorrow and heaviness, or for a lesson and example. For our calamity ought to be a perpetual lesson, not only to our selves and our posterity but to all Catholics also through the world: how terrible a thing it is (as the Apostle sayeth (, to fall in to the hands of the living god: And to refuse to do the worthy works Heb. 10. of penance: yea, after men have been thereunto admonished. For our own sins and the sins of our parents and ancestors have laid upon us this most heavy and painful scourge of God, which will wax heavier without doubt, and reach further, if the justice of God, (by due repentance of Catholics, and amendment of their sinful lives) be not prevented. And as for sorrow, particular or common, (friend Gerard,) who would not judge that the things now by me recited may procure sorrow, and heaviness enough, either to you or me, or to any Catholic who so ever: for as they be very many, most grievous, and haunt us daily: so in respect of the cause, they are most unjust: for their manner of dealing, they are most adiouse, and for the innocency of the persons which suffer, they are most unseemly & full of indignities. The strait examination of Catholics. Nevertheless (as I have said before) I could not touch every special matter, nor yet the chief and principal points: then much less is any man able to put down in writing the particularities of matters moved in that strict manner of examination, practised by our adversaries against us, with interrogatories so drawn in length by piece meal, with such searching and sifting even in to the smallest motes that may be discerned, so curiously, so circumspectly, with so many eyes cast upon a man, and with so many notes, and observations as nothing can escape them. And if a word, yea a piece of a word slip forth of a man's mouth at unwares, or that he happen to give but a wink with his eye, or a nod with his head, whereby any suspicion may arise, that he favoureth our cause: there is then matter enough, whereupon either to accuse him, or to cast him in prison. As of late (by report) some were put in prison for speaching a few words in commendation of Catholics touching the late disputations. But behold a more strange practice put In August. 1581. in execution by our adversaries, not many days a go. For all the students abiding with in the universities, were by them enforced upon their oaths, to discover and appeach every person, whom so ever they knew or suspected to favour the Catholic religion in heart: to this intent and purpose (with out doubt,) that they might drive away all suspected Catholics forth of the universities. Now I pray you look well in to this devise. This matter of suspecting, how far doth it reach think you? how easily is it covered under the cloak of dissimulation? how readily doth it attend upon hatred and envy? what licentious scope doth it give to ambition? how much force doth it bring to ill will & malice? & how sharp spur is it to prick forward every kind of revenge? See then an experiment fallen out even of the present occasion of In Oxford. this deep devise. A minister forsooth did accuse one upon suspicion of the Roman religion. The person accused did ask the minister what he had for him to induce that suspicion: because (said the minister) I do not see you resort so much to sermons, as you would do, if you A foolish surmise of a minister. were fervent in the zeal of our religion. How weighty and strong is this conjecture, to enforce an accusation? Alas full grievous and troublesome is the state & condition of them which even by laws and public authority are subject to these storms of malice, and to these tempests of the surmising forgery of sycophants. And because I am talking here of that promptness, facility and rash disposition to accuse, whereby our adversaries usually do charge us with offences, and do surmise slanderous tales, & mere cavils against us, and that upon most frivolous and impertinent occasions: And albeit for haste I thought to have omitted this point: yet one example I will leave for this place: whereby you may perceive, that we are not only accused for small and tryfeling matters, but blamed and punished oftentimes for the benefits which we bestow upon them. The history is notably well known, pleasant also, and it will give to your Italians there (beside matter to maruaille at) some pattern also of the estate and condition of our affairs and troubles. And thus it is. A courtlike gentleman of good wealth, An history touching restitution. that had lived in much bravery, happened to fall sick. And whiles he was lying in great pain: he did fall (as at that time ytt happeneth often to the most reckless) in to a vehement cogitation & deep study of the life to come. Whereupon he called for a priest (for in mind and opinion he was Catholic) that by his advise and counsel he might learn to die well. The priest (according to his duty, and the custom of the Catholic church) admonished the sick-man among other things that if he had any way hurt or injured any man, or unjustly possessed other men's goods: he should go about by and by to make restitution according to his ability. The sick man did agree to do so, and called to remembrance that he had taken away somewhat from a certain Calvinian under colour and pretence of law in deed, but not under any good assurance for a Catholic conscience to trust unto: therefore he took order for restitution to be made, & died. The widow, his wife being very desirous to accomplish her husband's will, and affrayed to commit the matter to an heretic, was in very great perplexity of mind, and could not rid herself out of it. Now whiles she was thus entangled in the breres of dowbtfullnesse: by good hap a priest cometh to her she declared her M. Alwai. grief unto him, and beseecheth him for god's sake to help her, either with his travail or with his counsel. Now the good man, when he perfectly understood the devout and holy desire of the gentlewoman, being himself a very zealous and charitable man, willingly proffered to put himself in all peril that might befall in doing the thing which she desired, persuading himself that no man would be so cruel and barbarous as of a benefit to desire revengement. Therefore first he commended the matter The third day in Easter week. to God, than he mounted on horseback & away he goeth on his journey. And when he came to the town where the man did dwell to whom the money was to be delivered: he setteth up his horse in the next Inn, that he might be readier at hand, for scaping immediately after his Fisher of warwick business were dispatched: he goeth himself to the creditor's house, he calleth the man forth alone, taketh him by the hand, and leadeth him a side from the company Twenty pounds english. of others. Then he declareth that he hath money for him, which he would deliver to him with this condition, that he inquire no further, either who sent it, who bringeth it, or what the cause or matter is, but only receive the money, and use it as his own. The old fellow promiseth fair, and with a good will giveth his word faithfulli to do so and with many thanks he dimisseth the man, and sendeth him away. The good priest with all the speed he was able to make hasteneth to his hosts house, for to catch hold of his horse & fly away: but all in vain. For forthwith Two of the said fishers brethren. the deceitful old fellow betrayed the priest, and sent men after to apprehended him. And first to begynn with all, they made this surmise against him, that forsooth he is not a man but a devil, which had brought money of his own making He is taken for a devil which maketh restitution of ill gotten goods. to bewitch the old man. And for a proof there of, they used this argument among others, that he had a black horse. And this horse they did observe & watch diligently whether he did eat hay as other horses eat or no. And as for the priest, they put a horse lock about his leg, shut him up close in a strong chamber, and appointed a fellow to be with him continually both day and night, which should watch yfhe did put off his boots at any time, & if his feet were like horsefete, or that he were cloven footed: or had feet flytand forked as beasts have. For this they affirmed to be a special mark whereby to know the devil, when he lieth lurking under the shape and likeness of a man. Then the people assembled about the house in great numbers, and proffered money largely that they might see this monster with their own eyes. For by this time, the people are persuaded that he is in deed an ill spirit or a very devil. For what man was ever heard of (say they) which (yfhe had the mind, understanding and sense of a man) would of his own voluntary will and without any respect or consideration at all give or proffer such a sum of money to a man utterly unknown, of no acquaintance with him, and a mere stranger of an other country. Now when they had thus contumeliously vexed Christ's servant a while: they pretended to set the man at liberty, and licensed him to departed and go away whether he would: yet all was but a deceitful practice to work him more spite and injury. For lo, the ungrateful & The brother of the said fisher churlish Calvinian, which had received the money, sent out privily a suborned fellow to stay the good priest as he was going forth: to with hold him from escaping away: and to accuse him of high treason. This was no sooner done than the man was all rifled, and spoiled: his horse ridden and used as pleased them, his money all taken from him, saving a little portion to serve for his expenses to the city of London, whether shortly after they sent him as a prisoner with a strong and curious guard, And when he came thither, and had opened the matter to her majesties Council (or rather to one of them, that the matter might not be uttered abroad to the reproach of the dead:) he was by them casten of, and put over to the superintendant of London, and by him thrown, first into one prison, then in to an other, and thirdly in to the Tower That is, first in to his own porters lodge: them in to the gate house at westminster. of London, where the space wellnigh of a quarter of a year (hardly escaping the rack and tortures) he was sore punished for that heinous offence (forsuthe) of restitution. And here the recital of this history putteth me in remembrance of that ridiculous and wanton manner of chatting of our adversaries (as our most ancient enemies were wont to do) in slandering Catholics to be of familiar acquaintance with devils. And I might sooner lack time than matter, if I should reckon up all the surmises, and fables which they have forged, touching this point. But among many this is one. Paul's Paul's steeple burned. steeple in London was marvelously (a few years since) blasted with lightning, and set on a light burning fire ragiouse hot and scant extinguishible: Our adversaries laid the fault and blame thereof upon us, & were not a shamed to say that it was done by jugglings and conjurings practised by Catholics. Again, it happened that certain charms or enchantments, and devices of witchcraft wound up together in pieces of parchment with figures, characters & such like fond toys, and hid in the ground, were at length found by certain persons: The matter was supposed to have been contrived for some mischief or destruction to the queens Majesty. But who was he among all our adversaries which did not charge Catholics with that fact? yet lo, not long after, it was found out and proved, that a certain minister was the The minister of Newington. Author and principal of this sorcery, & had diverse complices & accessaries which were very zealous gospelers: whereupon all was hushed suddenly: vea (as busy as they were before) now they say not one word of the matter, saving that some (to turn the fault from one to an other, that the blame might fall some way on catholics) said that this minister had perhaps dissembled his religion and was a very papist in his heart. A like surmise was devised upon an accident that happened in a city and university. Where Oxford. a bookbinder for speaking some words in the favour of the Catholic religion was arraigned at the assizes, before the judges, and roughly handled by all the bench. For beside much grief and vexation which he endured in prison: the matter fell out thus at the last, partly by the verdict of the jury, and partly by the rigour of the judges: that the poor man was first made to stand openly in the market place to his reproach and infamy, than were his ears nailed hard and fast to a post and a knife was put into his own hand, there with all to cut his own ears in sunder & so to deliver himself. This was a fevere sentence above measure as many men than did think. But what followed? A wonder full judgement of God undoubtedly. For within few days after, the two judges, and well nigh all the jury, many of the justices & freeholders, with very many other of them which had been present there, died all of a strange kind of disease, some in the said city, and some in other places. But all the blame for this was laid upon Catholics: all this was imputed to magic and sorcery, as practised by Catholics. What safety then or security (friend Gerard) is there for us? In how hard terms stand we think you, when not only other men's faults are laid upon us, but the manifest judgements of almighty God are perversely interpreted to our inconvenience and infamy? I could never make end if I should prosecute all the other means which our adversaries work to the dishonour and slander of our cause. For if they may find one (be he never so base & so bad) which can tell any reproachful tale against Rome: or bring any tidings sounding to the rebuke thereof, or of any others which are thought to favour our faith and religion: albeit that the stuff which he bringeth, or the tale which he telleth be either nothing but very rakinges of the sink & camnells of filthy detraction, or else void of all probability or appearance of truth: yet such a fellow is for their tooth: him they take hold of as affectuously as they can, and obtrude him to the people as a prophet: to him they give free leave, and liberty to talk, to So was 10. Nicols a grammarion, and minister coming from Rome & lying of Rome. Set up in the pulpit & honoured with an honourable presence. dispute, to preach, and to write what so ever he lusteth according to his own fantasy & pleasure, so he do it by way of despite and contumely against the Catholic religion. Now whence cometh so great rancour and hatred? whereof springeth so much displeasure and malice? what may be the cause of all this spite and envy? can ye tell? Yea but they rest not thus: they stay not with in this degree of immodesty: nor are content to be kept with in these limits of folly: they run headlong much further: for if there be none to be found, which can tell scornful and scoffing tales, nor throw up on heaps any filthiness, nor observe and note any milbehaviours against Rome: then do these fellows forth of their own forge coin and create new miracles and wonders of Rome, to do themselves some pleasure or service in pulpits, tables, The 23. 24. 25. days of januarie. 1580. This fablingbook was printed by 10. charlewood and Ed. white with approbation under noted. & books. And to such an effect they have lately set forth in a printed pamphlet many marvelous things to have happened the last year at Rome, & that by the space of many days. Whereby they would make us believe that God by great and strange signs and tokens doth show his wrath and indignation against that city, for they tell us of two Suns and two rainbows that appeared at one time: that saint Peter's great gate did fall down, and kill fourteen persons with eight soldiers. That two towers also of Saint Peter's church were fallen, had beaten down the church and crushed in pieces much people, among whom were eighteen priests: further more, that the churches of the franciscanes, saint same's, & of saint Bartilmew, with our ladies church, the whole Monastery of Marie Magdalen, the whole armory of the city of Rome, the hospital of an hundred and fifty persons with an infinity number of other houses and buildings fell down all at once: And all this happened (say they) to the intent that the world might understand the Roman Religion to displease God. I pass over and omit very many such artificial shifts and devices which our adversaries do lean to, of purpose to make our cause more odious in the open sight of the people. Now therefore (to come at the last to an end) you know the state of our case, in what terms we stand, and to what Issue our matters in England are grown. All is on a hotefire with the light burning flames of pesecutions: Catholics and right believers are every where afflicted with all manner of discommodities, with hatreds, with reproaches, with bonds, with imprisonments, with injuries, and with what else soever serveth to an afflicted life or helpeth to make up a calamity, full, absolute and perfit: And yet for all this our adversaries are not moved at all with any affection of pity or compassion: but their wrath waxeth fierce, and their malice groweth fresh daily more & more: In so much as now they seem to be come to that point whereof our saviour foretold: that every one that killeth you, think he doth a service to God. joh. 16. But the Catholics do comfort themselves with the words of our saviour following in the same place: These things they will do to you, because they have not Io. 16. known my father nor me: but these things I have spoken unto you, that when the hour shall come, ye may remember them, for I have spoken to you. That saying also of Saint paul they do often recite for their consort. God is faithful, which will not suffer 2. Cor. 10 you to be tempted above that you may, but even with temptation he will make an increase, that ye may endure. This increase of the faithful, thus promised before hand as a recompense for patiented sufferance of persecution, the Catholics in England do sensibly feel The increase of Catholics in England. to be passing good: And thereupon it falleth out, that beside the inward sweetness of the holy ghost, they are also not a little animated and confirmed with this external comfort and consolation, whiles they understand and see with their eyes the number of right believing Catholics to be so marvelously increased, sins the rigour of the persecutors hath been doubled and redoubled upon them. For this is a manifest signification of gods love, whereby he doth assure and certify us that he will never forsake this our cause, or rather I might say his own cause, if we for our parts do fulfil and keep the rules and precepts of humility, meknesse, longanimity and patience. And without doubt if in mind and memory we would run over & view the troubles which Catholics have suffered allredye: or measure & esteem by conjecture the vexations which may hang over their heads to be yet suffered: we shall find, how it can neither be imputed to the power or ability of man, that hither to they have sustained the same: nor may be looked for that hereafter by man's power they may persevere steadfastly to the end. This must be begged and craved of God alone, and must by continual prayers be obtained of the father of lights, from whom every best guyst and every perfect jac. 1. guyft proceedeth. Now, what puissance and value of mind think you might suffice? what nobleness of courage were needful? what strong and steadfast constancy do you judge requisite to make men able to bear and endure those vexations which before I have reported? those contumelies (I mean) and those despites? those rebukes and dishonours? those prisons, bolts and shakles? those deformities and disorders? those loothsome and ill favoured sights? those stinking savours? those putrefactions for want of good lodging? those consumptions, waisting and pinings away for lack of natural sustenance? those torments? those deaths? And nevertheless that same which before I have said, I must here eftsoons repeat and you must keep it in memory, for it is true, that I have scant touched the hundredth part of those afflictions which our Catholics daily sustain in prison. But yet if Catholics might find such favour as they might be entreated and used in such manner as thieves, man murderers, parricides, and heinous offenders are used, or might be relieved with their own goods, or refreshed with the benignity and alms that other men would bestow of them: we should have no cause to grudge, and we might well think that we were not hardly dealt withal. For I know there will be found in England many, aswell of honest calling, as of the degrees of wooshipp and honour, which willingly would be content to sell away all their goods, lands and possessions, and to yield themselves to become servants to the afflicted Catholics, rather than the same Catholics should suffer so unseemly and dishonourable misehiefes and inconveniences of hunger, famine, poverty and want of necessaries as they do daily suffer and endure: but it will not be allowed nor permitted. Yet I would not you should take me other wise than I mean. I speak not of those principal persons of honour or woorshipp, which are in prison for religion: who (I deny not) have liberty to use their own goods. But I speak of the great multitude of most miserable poor captives, and specially of priests, who at this day are kept so straitly, as no man hath access unto them: and who so ever desireth access, he is called in suspicion: and except he can purge himself, he is apprehended by and by. So Master hanse of late, when he desired to speak with some prisoners (because he had alms to deliver to them) was attached as suspected for religion, and in short space after hanged on the gallows. In like sort many other, for the same cause, have been arrested upon suspicion, and clapped in prison. And by these means our adversaries do terrify Catholics, that none should dare to bring any alms for prisoners. And it is no less peril to the givers than to the bringars, if the matter be once known: But it happeneth to be known many ways: and our adversaries, to get the knowleige thereof, do oftentimes put priests to the rack, or other tortures, and examine than who they are which M. johnson M. Briant an others racked for the same cause, all most to death. have given them alms? and who hath bestowed upon them other works of piety? And if any by force of torment should confess any such thing (which to this day, by gods help, none hath done:) then would our adversary thereupon two manner of ways annoy us. First, he would utterly discredit the man, as a traitor to his own friends: then would he so afflict the giver of alms, as for dread of punishment he would drive away others from exercise of like works of piety. Now, sith our adversaries by this cunning devise have brought this to pass, that none dare give alms, nor any dare carry to a prison the alms which is given: it must medes hereupon follow (as plainly with our eyes we see hath followed) that our Catholics in prison through penury, neediness, and want of necessaries must languish & wear away, and at the last for very pining hunger & nakedness pitifully perish in prison I suppose you have heard of a certain number of persons lately extinct and dead in prison at york: I will not take upon me to avouch or suspect more hardly thereof, than as I have said: albeit there be some which do suspect somewhat because 〈◊〉 of huntingdon. that precedent there beareth such mortal and inconsiderate hatred against us, as he seemeth to covet nothing in the world so much as our utter ruin & destruction. God be gracious to him, give him a better mind, and send him a mileder spirit toward miserable captives, that he himself also, once at the length when the time will come, may for himself obtain mercy at the hands of the general and common Lord and judge of us all. If I would recite the bitter affliction and inhumanity which Catholics in that prison at york the years by past have felt and suffered, or at this time do feel and suffer more than ever before: I should never make end. But by this one we may conjecture of the rest. A certain minister M. Bell. competently learned, which had stood a great while on our adversaries side, and had very earnestly to the uttermost of his power defended the same: came at the length to such intelligence by reading of the holy fathers, as he did see very clearly that his companions had no truth to lean unto, but that all was on our side, and that, with out all doubt. The zealous young man could not stop the conceived light of truth, nor suppress the flame thereof burning within his breast. When this was known abroad to the world our adversaries apprehend the man, they seek by threathinges to put him in fear: But he for all that is not terrified: they set upon him with arguments, but he was to hard for them: they would win him with fair words, but he is not alured. What then? they thrust him into prison, they handle him sharply: yet is he nothing relented. At the last they hang him upward are in such manner, as his feet being put in a pair of high stocks, he lay with his shoulders only upon the floor, and that without either bedding or any thing to lean upon other than the bare floor, the space of very many days together, saving that they showed him such favour only; as at certain times they eased him some what, for his bodily needs. What can be more cruel than this? I omit here the rigours which are used against women there imprisoned for religion; to whom over and besides the yexations that are incident to prisons: this further grief is added, that albeit their husbands do yield, and are conformable (as they term it) to our adversaries: yet are they all punished, except they will either compel their wives to do as they themselves do, or else will take away from them their necessary food & sustenance. What then shall these miserable afflicted women do, when they cannot be permitted to have the necessary relief of life, no not at their husband's hands? must they not perish through the inconveniences of penury and nedyenesse? and yet our gospelers are not moved with any compassion or pity for all these. And as to other prisons which are in London, I could report to you many lamentable cases aswell of such as late were extinct therein, as of them which yet live there in misery, but that I fear lest my complaint would be an occasion of more grievous affliction yet this is most certain, that many have endured very great extremities through penury, and yet daily look for more grievous vexation, if that most severe la touching going to churches be put Before mentioned. in execution. For it will so utterly beggar exhaust and oppress Catholics: as they shall not be able to relieve either themselves or their families, and much less to succeure others that are afflicted. And thereupon the state and conditions of Catholics in England seemeth likely to fall in to extreme calamities, and inconveniences, never heard of before with christian ears, in such wise, as Innocents shall be spoiled of their own goods, yea and pine away perish and be consumed with famine: and all for their conscience only, touching the faith and religion of their ancestors. But when I behold & earneslie look into that passing excellent, singular and in deed princely nobleness of heart, with the exceeding great clemency and mild disposition which nature hath planted in our Queen: I am hardly induced to believe that her majesty will permit such a strait and extreme law to be put in execution, to the utter ruin of men afflicted with misery, to the overthrow of her own subjects, to the disturbance of her kingdom, and to drive all the whole world beside, in to a maze with the wonder thereof. Yet nevertheless on the otherside, when I deeply consider how her grace is incensed against us with the continual clamours of our adversaries, and by how subtle means and cunning shifts, daily incited and stirred up to our persecution and destruction, whiles there is not one in the way either to excuse or defend us, or yet in our behalf, by way of humble suit, to procure some compassion for our afflictions: then I see it to be possible, that not only these extremities, but greater also, and far harder extremities may be permitted against us. The conclusion. Now therefore (to conclude all in one word) two things only remain for us to do in these strait distresses wherein we stand. One, that with servant vowos, and deu out prayers we humbly call and cry upon our Lord and saviour Christ, to mollify the hearts of our persecutors. The other, that we remain in a steadfast sure and resolute mind to suffer, & bear for his sake, what so ever happeneth to us, referring all the rest to his most holy providence, with this most certain persuasion, trust & belief, that if we stand fast in this mind, and lay ourselves wholly under his custody and protection, he will direct us the safest way into the haven of our salvation. And if we persist firmly in this mind and purpose, if we put on this armour of hope, faith, and servant charity, with the contempt of all mortal and wordly things: if we be (I say) once fast planted and deeply rooted in this most firm and unmovable roole, which is our Christ crucified We shall be able with great ease, and without trouble to endure, and abide what rigour or cruelty so ever our adversaries shall practise against us. For we shall peaceably enjoy the passing great security ● quietness of that man, whom our saviour in the gospel commendeth as a right wise man which builded Matth. 7. his house upon the rock, and the rain did fall and the floods came, and the winds did blow, and rushed against that house, and it fell not for it was 〈◊〉 upon a rock: yea we shall sensibly feel in out hearts, and profess by mouth, as Saint Paul did, that most holy and most valiant capita●● of our religion and champion of Christ our saviour: Who shall separate us from Rom. 8. the love of Christ? shall tribulation? shall adversity? shall nakedness? shall peril? shall persecution? shall the sword? As who should say none of these: for by and by he expoundeth himself: Neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principality, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor strength, nor highness, nor deepness, nor other creature can separat us from the love of God, which is in Christ jesus, our lord. O passing noble saying, and worthy to proceed from so great an Apostle as Saint Paul was. What can be spoken or imagined more courageous? What can be thought in man's mind with more assured trust and confidence? This therefore must be deeply considered of us who are persecuted for the same cause for which he was persecuted: this must we imitate, which wrestle in the same barriars where he wrestled, and contend for the same game for which he contended: which hope for the same garland which he hoped for, and expect the same recompenser which he expected. Hither must all our cogitations and studies tend: hither must our forces and powers be applied all together: that in all troubles, and adversities, we retain fast this sure hope and confidence, whereof, in deed, so exceeding great fortitude will spring: & in all distresses (be they never so grievous, hard & doubtful) such passing good comfort will arise and grow: as may suffice to bring us through by fire and water Psalm. 65. in to the refrigerie (as the prophet saith 〈◊〉 that is, by the painful troubles and calamities of this world, in to the everlasting rest, glory, and felicity of God and all Saints. Amen. AN ADMONITION SENT BY GERARD TO THE READER touching the former epistle. When I imparted with some of my familiars this epistle, which was sent unto me from a friend over the Alps: upon their earnest request and certain kind of devout 〈◊〉. I was comment to let it pass further in to the hands of some noble and principal persons, by whole persuasion, or rather commandment it was put in print. For I thought it to be much available to the common estate of Christendom, that this so notable a persecution of Catholics in England should be not only communicated to the knowledge of this present age, but put over also to the mind and memory of our posterity. For it hath matter enough to stir up them now living to compassion and pity, and to instruct them that are to come, of what things they ought to take heed & beware. But of one thing I would advertise the reader (as my friend in other letters hath advertised me) that among many matters not mentioned in the other parts of his Epistle this one in the rehearsal of laws he hath willingly omitted: that is, how by many statutes, and proclamations such order is taken in England as no Catholic, either by exile, or by forsaking of his country, can escape, or with draw himself from those pains or persecutions which follow him for religion For it is provided (to this effect) that no Catholic may go forth of the 〈◊〉 without leave and licence first obtained And that if any do go forth without licence he shall forfeit all his possessions during his life was and further, that none before his departure forth of the realm may give away his possessions no not to his wife, children nor friend 〈…〉 do: it shall be taken as done of 〈◊〉 defraud the queen of her for 〈…〉 for such forfeitures, they 〈…〉 by information of coven. But this statute of fugitives (for so it is called) is so strictly and severely observed against Catholics, as none within the realm, dare by any way or mean help, succour, or relieve either father, mother, husband, brethren, or children, which are Catholics, and without licece abiding out of England. And as for this licence to be absent out of the realm, as it is hardly obtained for others: so is it never or seldom, and with very much difficulty granted to Catholics. Yea further, (which is more severe) all those parents (whose children are abiding in these parts, or else where out of England, for study sake, are compelled to enter in bond, with good assurance, either to draw their children home again by and by without tarrying, or to deprive them utterly of all exhibition and relief. All which things do tend to this end, that no part nor portion of any reloose or comfort, be it never so little, might freely come to the English Catholics, either at home or abroad. And these be the matters where of I thought good to admonish you, because they are not spoke of in the epistle. There remaineth now no more but that all true Christians would thoroughly view and consider the great distresses of their brethren & of their own 〈◊〉, and with most fervent prayer, for the common bond sake of Charity, which passeth thorowgh the whole corpse of Christendom, to commend their case to the common 〈◊〉 over all. THE COPY OF A LETTER SENT from a priest, being prisoner in the Tower of London, to the fathers of the Society of jesus in England. To the devout reader. Although it be true, that Catholics imprisoned in the tower of london, are kept so straitly, and uncourteously in ward: as neither friends may have access unto them, nor they permitted either to have company or to speak with other men, and much less to have books, paper, or pen and ink: Yet during the late disputatio there with father Campian the prisoner, some of them which were entered in to hear the disputations, finding opportunity, stepped a side unto the holes of some seclused priests, to visit and salute those servants of Christ: by which means, as by gods holy providence, some things were understood and known, touching their state and passing great comfort, where which God of his goodness doth refresh and recreate them, in the mids of their extreme troubles and distresses. And among other things, this epistle following, written in haste, (even forth of the mouth dowtlesse, as it seemeth, of the holy ghost) by a good priest, which had been miserably tormented, and sundry times racked, came to my hands from the reverend fathers of the Society of jesus, to whom it was sent. And here I thought good to place it word by word taken out of the Authors own handwriting, that all mortal men may understand gods hand not to be abbriged, but that aswell now, as in old time, he aideth his confessors in their necessities, Esa. 56. and assisteth them with in those dark and close prisons. TO THE REVEREND FATTERS of the Society of jesus. AS often as ever I consider with myself (reverend fathers) howferuentlie, and by how many ways and means almighty God seekeeth our salvation, desireth our love, wisheth to possess our heart, and to reign with in us: even so many times, am I ashamed & abashed, that neither benefits do move us, nor rewards all ure is, nor terror of God's judgement do the provoque us miserable men, to serve and obey him with all force and endeavour, yea and most freely to present our bodies as a living sacrifice, and perfect offering to his divine majesty. For beside those his passing great benefits of creation, redemption, preservation, justification, and expected glorification beside these (I say) and infinite other his benefits, bestowed upon us: he exhorteth us with most sweet words to haste apace towards him. I love them (saith he) which love me: & he which early in the morning waketh to me, shall find me: blessed is the man which heareth me, watcheth at my gates daily, and attendeth at the posts of my door: he which findeth me, shall find life, and obtain salvation at the hands of his lord. Now, where he is to be sought, he himself teacheth us by these words; where so ever two or three are gathered together in my name (saith he) there am I in the mids of the. We must then think Christ to be truly in that place, where many being fast joined in love and charity, do assemble together to this end that they may honour God, serve god only, keep his commandments and enlarge his most glorious kingdom. Who so ever heareth him, shall learn truth and shall not walk, in darkness and in blindness of errors, but shall go safe and sure to the fountains of waters. In such sacred congregations, dedicated to god, lieth the right way to heaven: away not planted about with briars and brambles, not haunted of lewed livers, but continually trodden with the feet of devout people, A way not abounding in vain delights; nor in fair flattering enticements: A way not adorned with the fading flowers of this wicked world, but fenced and fortified with most holy laws and rules, that the simple and ignorant can not err therein, nor any other go a stray out of that way: except such as utterly neglect their own saluatio. Here things are aptly disposed in number, weight, and measure, in so much as it may well be said, that true wisdom in deed dwelleth here, by whose me is all things are set in good order marvelously. Here is used and exercised a certain heavenly reformation of brethren, a sweet correction and amedment of stoward affections with a wonderful procurement and invitation to mutual love and charity. For these or such like respects, I had determined with myself now two years ago to enter in to this kind of life, if god so would: & I had some speech with a learned and devout man, than my Ghostly father to this effect: whether there were any hope, that the fathers of the society would receive me under their holy rule and obedience, if I showlde upon reasonable cause return forth of my natural country again; for than I was in the parts beyond the seas: his opinion was clear that I had no need at all to doubt thereof, Hereupon my hope increased, my courage was augmented, and in these two years, whiles I have been in England, I have oftentimes renewed this purpose. But upon hope and trust that my travail and industry here, in the harvest of our, Lord, is not altogether unprofitable, I have differred the execution of my said purpose. Yet now, seethe I am by the appointment of god deprived of liberty, so as I can not any longer employ myself in this profitable exercise: my desire is eftsoons revived, my spirit waxeth fervent hot, and at the last I have made a vow and promise to god, not rashly (as I hope) but in the fear of god, not to any other end, than that I might thereby more devoutly, and, more acceptably serve god, to my more certain salvation, & to a more glorious triumph over my ghostly enemy. I have made a vow (I say) that when so ever it shall please god to deliver me (so that once at the length it like him) I will with in one year than next following, assign myself wholly to the fathers of the society, and that (If god inspire their hearts to admit me:) I will gladly, and with exceeding great joy thoroughly, and most wlie, from the bottom of my haste give up and surrender all my will to the service of god, and in all obedience under them. This vow was to me a passing great joy, and consolation, in the mids of all my distresses, and tribulations. And therefore, w●●h greater hope to obtain fortitude and patience pdrew near to the throne of his divine majesty, with the assistance of the blessed and perpetual virgin Marie, and of all Saints. And I hope verify this came of God, for I did it even in the time of prayer, when me thought, my mind was settled upon heavenly things. For thus it was. The same day that I was first tormented on the rack, before I came to the place, giving my mind to prayer, and commending myself and all mine to our Lord. I was replenished, and filled up with a kind of supper natural swetenelle of Spirit. And even while I was calling upon the most holy name of jesus, and upon the blessed virgin Marie (for I was in saying the rosary): my mind was cheerfully disposed, well comforted, and readily prepared, and bend to suffer, and endure those torments, which even then I most certainly looked for. At the length my former purpose came in to my mind, and there with all a thought to incidently fell upon me to ratify that now by now which before I had determined. When I had ended my prayers. I revolved these things in my mind deeply? and with reason as well as I could) I did debate and discuss them thoroughly: I judged it god, and expedient for me: I accomplished my desire: I put forth my vow and promise freely, and boldly, with the condition afore said. Which act, (me thinketh) god himself did approve and allow by and by. For in all my afflictions and torments, he of his infinite goodness, mercifully and tenderly, did stand by and assist me, comforting me in my trouble and necessity. Delivering my soul from wicked lips, from the deceitful tongue, and from the roaring lions, then ready gaping for their prey. Whether this that Iwill say, be miraculous or no: God he knoweth: but true it is, & thereof my conscience is a witness before God. And this I say: that in the end of the torture though my hands & feet were violently stretched & racked, and my adversaries fulfiled their wicked lust, in practising their cruel tyranny upon my body yet notwithstanding I was with out sense and feeling well nigh of all grief, & pain: and not so only, but as it were comforted, eased and refreshed by the grieves of the torture by past, I continued still with perfect & present senses, in quietnesses of heart, & tranquillity of mind. Which thing when the commissioners did see, they departed, and in going forth of the door, they gave order to rack me again the next day following, after the same, sorry. Now when I heard them say so: It gave me in my mind by and by, and I did verily believe & trust, that with the help of god, I should be able to bear & suffer it patiently. In the mean time (as well as I could) I did muse and meditate upon the most bitter passion of our saviour, and how full of innumerable pains it was. And whiles I was thus occupied: me thought, that my left hand was wounded in the palm, and that I felt the blood run out: but in very deed, there was no such thing, nor any other pain than that, did then grieve my hand. Now then, that my suit and request may be well known unto you: for so much as I am out of hope, in short time to recover & enjoy my former liberty, so as I might personally speak unto you, And whether happily I shall once at length speak unto you in this world, no mortal man doth know: In the mean season I humbly submit myself unto you, & (supplian the kneeling) I beseech you, to do, and dispose for me, and of me, as shall seem good to your wisdoms And with an humble mind most heartily I crave, that (if it may be in my absens) it would please you to admit me into your Society, & to register and enrol me among you: that so, with humble men I may have a sense and feeling of humility, with devout men I may sound out a lowde, the lauds and praises of God, and continually render thanks to him, for his benefits: and then after, being aided by the prayers of many, I may run more safely to the mark which I shoot at, and with out peril attain to the price that is promised. And I am not ignorant that the snares & wiles of our ancient enemy are infinite: for he is the sly serpent, which lieth in the shadow, of woods, winding, whirling, & turning about many ways: and with his wiles & subtle shifts, he attempteth marvelously to delude & abuse the souls of the simple, which want a faithful guide: in so much, as it is not without cause, that we are admonished, to try the spirits, if they be of God. To you therefore, because you are spiritual, and accustomed to this kind of conflict, I commend all this business: beseeching you even by the bowels of gods mercy that you would vouchsafe to direct me with your counsel and wisdom. And if in your sight it seem profitable, for more honour to God, more commodity to his church, and eternal salvation to my soul, that I be preferred to that Society of the most holy name of jesus: then presently before god, and in the court of my conscience, I do promise obedience, to all and singular rectors, & governors established all ready, or to be hereafter established, and likewise to all rules, or laws received in this society, to the uttermost of my power, and so far as God doth give me grace: God is my witness, and this my own hand writing shallbe a testimony hereof in the day of judgement. As for the health of my body, you have no cause to doubt, for now well near I have recovered my former strength and hardness by gods help, & I wax every day stronger than other. Thus in all other things commending myself to your prayers, I bid you farewell in our Lord, carefully expecting what you think good to determine of me. Vale. THE TRANSLATOR TO THE gentle reader. SInce the printing of this epistle last rehearsed, I have heard that the Author thereof was one Master Briant, who lately suffered (as is said) with Master Campian, and Master Sherwyn, three most blessed and fortunate men: whose hap hath been after so many torments and tortures suffered for god's cause, to seal with their innocent blood, the truth, which they taught with so much pain and dangers before. Now Master briant hath more than his desire, being joined in society with jesus himself, to whose holy name he so much coveted to dedicate his life in this world, as appeareth by this his epistle. And I dowbt not, but that it was a singular comfort unto him to suffer in the company of good father Campian, so rare a man of that Society, whereof he desired so greatly to be a member whiles he lived. How far all treason, and other disorder of life, was from the hearts, hands, and words of these Innocent men, and the rest which were condemned with them, all they can testify which ever knew them, or lived with them: for that their words and exhortations, were always to the contrary, in detestation of all vice, and in commendation of virtuous life, with contempt of the world, and humbly suffering all troubles and persecutions for Christ his sake, adding always, that Catholics must rather love, & heartily pray for their persecutors, than seek any way to hurt them, or to revenge their selves upon them, if it lay in their power. This have I heard, and so have thousands more in England besides me, and no man living (I know) did ever hear from their mowthes the contrary. Their lives also were such in all secret austerity of discipline to themselves: as he that had known them, would little believe, that they were men to attempt such matters, as they were charged withal. If these men had been guilty of such horrible treasons: they should never have been so dallied with all, first in disputations, and much less should they have had life, liberty, and favour offered them, for only yielding to go to church, as master Campian openly affirmed that they often had, and amongst many, named one of some account there present (as it was credibly told me) which had offered the same to him with terrible threats, not only of death, but also of renting of his nails from his fingers with pins, if he yielded not thereunto. Again, their joyful acceptation of judgement, and thanks giving to God for the same, with their several and most vehement protestation, there made at the bar, after their condemnation, doth declare sufficiently the clearness of their consciences. For then, and there, Master Campian protested before God and his angels, heaven and earth, the world and that judgement Seat there present, which (as he truly said) was but a little figure of the most dreadful judgement seat of God, before which he to his great joy expected shortly to be presented: he protested (I say upon eternal perdition of his Soul, that he was most innocent, guiltless, and unwitting of all and singular the matters in that indictment alleiged, and of every part and parcel thereof. Master Sherwyn protested with like vehemency, that if ever his head did imagine, or his heart conceived, or his tongue uttered, or his hand attempted, any thing against his sovereign lady Queen Elizabeth, or against any of her honourable Council, or against the common wealth, or realm of England: he renounced there his portion in heaven, and desired God, as a just judge to damn him both in body and soul to the eternal darkness and torments of hell fire And when he had done, he cried out: O happy and blessed day that ever he was borne. The like did the rest, which were condemned with him, forgiving openly their false accusers there present, and praying to God for them. Now let any man show to me, that ever traitor died so, or that a guilty conscience, doth yield such confidence, when they knew now that there was no way with them but death. Well, God be blessed for them: and surely his holy name hath been greatly glorified by them. What strange torments and other extremities they have suffered before they came to die, he alone knoweth, and we hear only of some part thereof, for we see they were not men to complain of every thing done to them, but were content to put it up in secret, with hope to receive their reward at his hand. Yet if we had not heard of their several & often rackings: master Campian his coming to the bar with his hands folden in linen cloth, and with that feebleness, as he was neither able to pluck of his own mytton of freése nor life a cup of drink to his mouth without help, may well show how he had been handled. Our sorde show his tormentors more mercy at the day of his judgement, than they have showed him. How man's nature had been able to bear out so great rigour & extremities, as they have passed, (except Gods holy grace had been plentiful unto them) I do not see. And that our lord did concur with extraordinary comfort, in their torments, it may appear in this epistle going before of Master Briant: whom Master Norton the Rackem aister (if he be not misreported) vaunted in the court to have pulled one good foot longer than ever God made him and yet in the mids of all he seemed to care nothing, and therefore out of dowbt (saith he) he had a devil withein him. But whether it be a more property to the devil to suffer patiently, or to torment other men mercyleslie, master Briant and master Norton shall dispute the matter one day, when devils shall be at hand to bear witness, and the judge both of devils and devilish men, shall be at hand to give sentence. In the mean space I beseech God to accept the Innocent blood of his virtuous priests, for some part of pacification of his wrath towards us, and towards our persecutors, that they having the mist of error taken from their eyes, may see the truth of Christ's Catholic religion, for professing where of, they afflict us so grievously as he seethe, to whose eyes all injuries do lie open, and to whose only judgement, we leave our cause and doings to be tried and discerned, when it shall seem most convenient to his divine majesty. Amen. FINIS.