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to extirpate the Popish religion, but were rendered absolutely necessary by the treasonable practices of the Papists themselves, against the person of the Queen and the existence of the Protestant establishment. Catholic writers deny the reality of these practices, or rather, they deny that they existed to such an extent, and with such circumstances of general. confederacy and concert, as to be a rational cause of alarm to Elizabeth's Government, or a justification of measures of so severe and sweeping a character. Here then is a distinct issue joined on a question of historical fact, and upon which it is by no means easy at this distance of time to form an accurate judgment. It is probable that the truth will be found, as it usually is where facts have been related by two contending political parties, between the extremes: the Protestants exaggerating the dangers to be apprehended from the Catholics in order to give colour of justice to their persecution of them; and the Catholics, while they smarted under the injustice of that persecution, greatly under-rating the dangers which might reasonably be apprehended by Elizabeth's Government from the seditious enterprises of their party. In these times of liberality and enlightened toleration, in which we have seen the total abolition of all disabilities upon Roman Catholic Christians, it would be worse than useless to enter upon the discussion of this controversy; but it is consistent with our general design of illustrating history, and may be both useful and interesting to take a single instance of a trial for a Catholic plot in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, and examine the evidence and the conduct of the parties concerned in it, rather more in detail than the narrative of an historian enables us to do. We have chosen the case of Parry pretty much at random, but the importance which has been attached to it, as well as the copiousness of the

report, might perhaps have justified its particular selection.

In an account which Parry gives of himself in a letter to Lord Burleigh, he says that he was the son of a gentleman in North Wales, who was descended from an ancient family, and that on his mother's side he was connected by blood with Sir John Conway; but in a memoir which was published shortly after his execution these high pretensions are denied, and he is stated to have been obscurely and even meanly descended, his father, whose name was Harry ap David, being the keeper of a common alehouse at Northope in Flintshire. He was at first apprenticed to a lawyer at Chester, from whose service he ran away, and came to London to seek his fortune. After many difficulties and reverses, he found his way into the service of the Earl of Pembroke, where he remained till the death of that nobleman in the year 1569. He afterwards engaged in some public service, the nature of which does not appear, though it is frequently alluded to in his subsequent correspondence with Burleigh. During this period, he took his degrees as a Doctor of Civil Law, and his first wife being dead, he married a rich widow, whose fortune he soon squandered away by his extravagance, and became reduced to great penury and distress. In 1580, an act of violence committed on a gentleman of the name of Hare, one of his creditors, by breaking into his chambers in the Temple at night, with an alleged intent to rob him, obliged him again to quit England. * He was saved from the con

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*This transaction is rather a curious one; -the indictment, which is in the common form for a burglary, together with a summary of the evidence produced on the trial, and some notes upen it by Parry, is to be found amongst the papers of Lord Burleigh in the Lansdowne Collection at the British Museum. It appears that the supposed burglary was committed about six o'clock in the

sequences of his conviction by a pardon, procured at the intercession of his friends, and escaped into France, from whence he wrote to Lord Burleigh soliciting employment under the Government as a collector of secret intelligence in foreign countries. In this capacity he was employed by Burleigh, who seems to have placed great confidence in him. As an instance of this, it is related that when Anthony Bacon, who was Lady Burleigh's nephew, began his travels in the year 1579, he was expressly directed by the Lord Treasurer 'to contract and cultivate an intimate acquaintance with Parry, who was at that time at Paris. The Earl of Leicester being informed of this familiarity between Parry and Bacon, complained to the Queen of Mr Bacon's conduct in this respect; in which the Lord Treasurer satisfied her Majesty, engaging that his nephew should not be shaken either in loyalty or religion by his conversation with Parry.'* As late even as September 1584, (not six months before his trial), we find him writing a familiar and confidential letter to Lord Burleigh, † soliciting his interest in procuring the mastership of St Katharine's; indeed after this time he appears to have received a pension.

From his correspondence when abroad in Burleigh's service, it is manifest that his occupation was the basest and most odious espionage; his daily employment

evening in November, in the most frequented part of the Temple; one witness swears that he does not think any mischief would have ensued if Hare had not threatened to throw Parry into the street. The circumstances are as unlike a felony as can well be conceived, though Parry was convicted and received judgment of death. At the end of the summary of the evidence, there is the following memorandum in Parry's hand-writing; I can prove that the Recorder spake with the jury, and that the foreman did drink.' He probably obtained his pardon upon more substantial objections to the verdict than these.

*Birch's Memoirs, vol. i, p. 12, 13.

+ Lansdowne MSS. Nos 43. 16.

being to insinuate himself into the confidence of English Catholics residing in foreign countries, for the purpose of learning their secrets, and then treacherously betraying them.

He returned to England early in the year 1583, and we then find him a member of the House of Commons, strenuously opposing the imposition of additional severities on the Catholics. A bill* was introduced into Parliament at that time, imposing heavy restrictions upon those who professed the Roman Catholic religion; it declared that if any clergyman, born in England and ordained by the Pope, were found within the realm after the expiration of forty days, he should be adjudged guilty of high treason, and all persons receiving him felons; that persons knowing of his being within the realm, and not discovering him within twelve days, should be fined and imprisoned; that students in the Jesuits' seminaries who 'did not return home within six months after proclamation made should be deemed traitors, and all who furnished them with money incur a præmunire; that parents sending their children to seminaries abroad, without license, should forfeit one hundred pounds, and that the children educated at such seminaries should be disinherited.' Upon the third reading of this bill, Parry denounced it as a measure savouring of treasons, full of blood, danger, and despair to English subjects, and pregnant with fines and forfeitures which would go to enrich not the Queen, but private individuals.' The House were astonished at the boldness of this harangue; he was given to the custody of the Serjeant-at-arms, but was released the next day at the command of the Queen, who stated that he had explained his motives partly to her satisfaction. Within six weeks after this circumstance, he was sent to the Tower on a charge of high treason.

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* 27 Eliz. c. 2.

His subsequent history, including his extraordinary conduct at his arraignment and before his execution, is fully detailed in the following report; the perusal of which, and of his incoherent letters, confessions, and retractations, leaves us in doubt whether we are to consider him as a madman, or as the dupe of Burleigh and his agents, buoyed up with the hope of pardon, or as a religious fanatic who had actually undertaken to assassinate the Queen, but failed in resolution to perpetrate the act. At all events the reader will probably agree with Dr Lingard, that neither his rank nor abilities, his virtues nor vices, could have entitled him to the notice of posterity; though his real or supposed crime, or rather the use which was made of that crime, has rendered him a distinguished personage in the history of Elizabeth's reign."

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Great pains appear to have been taken by the Government, after Parry's execution, to blacken his reputation, and to render his memory odious among the people. A memoir was published by the Queen's printer, in which he is described as a monster of vice and almost every kind of excess, omitting nothing that might serve for a prodigal, dissolute, and most ungodly course of life.' He is charged, in particular, with having wickedly deflowered his own wife's daughter, and sundry ways pitifully abused the old mother. All this is hardly credible, as it is quite inconsistent with the confidence and familiarity shown him by Lord Burleigh. But no minister ever understood better than lord Burleigh, how important it is to enlist popular clamour on the side of power for the purpose of enforcing measures of equivocal policy or justice, and accordingly no pains were spared to render this case of Parry, which was aimed as a deadly arrow against the Catholic party, as malignant and aggravated as possible.

* Strype's Annals, vol. iii, p. 253.

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