individuals despatched to Edinburgh for the purpose of ascertaining his intentions upon that subject. Thomas Percy, one of the conspirators in the Gunpowder Plot, had been sent on a mission of this kind; and the Earl of Northumberland states, as the result of that mission, that "when Percy came out of Scotland from the King (his Lordship having written to the King, where his advice was to give good hopes to the Catholics, that he might the more easily without impediment come to the crown), he said that the King's pleasure was, that his Lordship should give the Catholics hopes that they should be well dealt withal, or to that effect*." James afterwards strenuously denied that he had ever authorized Percy to convey such a message to the Earl of Northumberland, or had ever given encouragement to the Catholics to expect from him a relaxation of the penal laws passed against them; but the simple denial of James will not obtain much credit with those who are familiar with his personal history. On the other hand, it was natural and probable that he should be desirous to secure the favour of so important a body as the Catholics then were, by such promises and concessions; and that he actually made them is proved, not only by the above assertion of the Earl of Northumberland, but by a letter of Mons. de Beaumont, the French Ambassador, to Henry IV., dated the 28th March, 1603, when Queen Elizabeth was dying, in which he declares that he had been confidentially informed by the Earl of Northumberland that James had written to him with his own hand, that the Catholic religion should be tolerated †. The fact of James's encouragement of the hopes of the Catholic party is further confirmed by the conduct * Examination of the Earl of Northumberland, 23d November, 1605. State-Paper Office. † Dépêches de Beaumont. of the King himself, and the circumstances which took place shortly after his accession. The King arrived at London about the beginning of April, 1603; in July immediately following, many recusants of quality and distinction, and amongst them Sir Thomas Tresham, were sent for from various parts of the country to Hampton Court by order of the King, and were assured by the Lords of the Privy Council, with expressions of courtesy and respect, that "it was his Majesty's intention to exonerate the English Catholics from the pecuniary fine of 20l. a month for recusancy imposed by the statute of Elizabeth;" and that "they should enjoy this grace and favour so long as they kept themselves upright and civil in all true carriage towards the King and state without contempt." To this the Catholic gentlemen answered, "that recusancy alone might be held for an act of contempt." But the Lords replied, "that his Majesty would not account recusancy for a contempt;" and desired that the King's gracious intentions in this respect might be signified generally to the whole body of Catholics*. In confirmation of this official assurance, the fines for recusancy were actually remitted for the first two years of James's reign. It appears from some notes † of Sir Julius Cæsar, who was Chancellor of the Exchequer in 1607, that in the last year of Queen Elizabeth's reign, the sum paid into the receipt of the Exchequer at Westminster, by and for recusants' fines and forfeitures, was 10,3331. 9s. 7d. In the next year little more than 300l. was paid at the Exchequer on this account. In the following year, being the second of James's reign, the sum barely exceeded 2007.; but in 1605, the year of the Gunpowder Plot, the amount of recusants' fines * Petition Apologetical of the Lay Catholics of England.-Letter from Sir E. Digby to Lord Salisbury, in the State-Paper Office. + Lansdowne MSS. No. 153, p. 206. rises suddenly to more than 6,000l. It cannot be denied that these facts tend strongly to confirm the assertions of the Catholics respecting the promises of the King; for they demonstrate that for some time one of the heaviest oppressions under which they laboured was actually removed by him. At all events, the Catholics of England were fully justified, under these circumstances, in entertaining a confident expectation that upon James's accession some considerable mitigation of the penal laws from which they had so long suffered, would be effected; and that they should in future be allowed the exercise of their religion, if not with perfect freedom, at least under such reasonable and moderate restrictions as would render their condition much more tolerable than it had been during the preceding reign. This persuasion, and the advice of De Beaumont, the French Ambassador, induced the Catholic nobility and gentry to become warm partisans of James's title; and though upon the death of Elizabeth, the Protestants in various parts of the country hesitated, the Catholics, at that critical moment, in general adopted the most active measures to secure his succession to the throne*. Thus Sir Thomas Tresham, with considerable personal danger, and against much resistance on the part of the local magistrates and the populace, immediately proclaimed him at Northampton; while his two sons, Francis and Lewis, with his son-in-law, the Lord Mounteagle, supported the Earl of Southampton in holding the Tower of London for his uset. But the fond hopes and expectations of the Catholics were dissipated and destroyed before six months of James's government had passed away. * Dépêches de Beaumont, 8 April, 1603. + Petition Apologetical of the Lay Catholics of England. Rushton Papers. In Symptoms of an anti-catholic disposition appeared as soon as he felt himself firmly seated on the throne. De Beaumont says*, that "within a month after his arrival in London, he answered an objection made in conversation to the appointment of Lord Henry Howard to a seat in the Privy Council, on account of his being a Catholic, by saying that 'by this one tame duck he hoped to take many wild ones,' at which the Catholics were much alarmed." De Beaumont further reports, that " he maintained openly at table that the Pope was the true Antichrist;' with other like blasphemies, worthy of his doctrine.' the summer of 1603, the obscure and inexplicable plot of Markham and the priests was discovered; and on the trial of Sir Walter Raleigh, which took place in the November following, Sir Edward Coke declared, in his peculiar phraseology, that "the eyes of the Catholics should sooner fall out than they should ever see a toleration for the Romish superstition; for that the King had declared in the hearing of many, "I will lose the crown and my life, before ever I will alter religiont." In the ensuing February James called together his council, and assured them that "he never had any intention of granting toleration to the Catholics; that if he thought his son would condescend to any such course, he would wish the kingdom translated to his daughter; that the mitigation of the payments of the recusant Catholics was in consideration, that not any one of them had lifted up his hand against him at his coming in, and so he gave them a year of probation to conform themselves; which, seeing it had not wrought that effect, he had fortified all the laws that were against them, and made them stronger (saving from blood, from which he had a natural aversion), and com* Dépêches de Beaumont, 24 Mai, 1603. + See ante, vol. i. p. 403. manded that they should be put into execution to the uttermost." His intentions in this respect were pub→ licly declared by the Lords in the Star-Chamber, and signified by the Recorder to the City of London*. A proclamation was issued about the same time, dated the 22d February, 1603-4, in which the King, after protesting that he had " never intended, nor given any man cause to expect, that he would make any innovation in matters of religion," commanded all Jesuits, Seminarists, and other priests, to depart the realm before the 19th of March following, and not to return, under the penalty of being left to the rigour of the lawst. In his speech on opening the Parliament on the 22d March, 1603-4, though he talks of revising the laws against Catholics and of "clearing them by reason in case they had been in times past more rigorously executed by judges than the meaning of the law was," he inveighs against the Catholic clergy, and declares that " as long as they continue to maintain their most obnoxious doctrines, they are in no way sufferable to live in this kingdom." These repeated threats and declarations by the King were practically enforced by proceedings in Parliament, and generally throughout the country, which distinctly indicated to the dismayed Catholics a return to the persecutions and indignities of the reign of Elizabeth. disabling recusants to sit in Parliament, and prohibiting the importation or printing of Popish books, were rejected in the House of Commons by small majorities; but an Act § was passed after much discussion in both houses, declaring that all the laws of Elizabeth against Jesuits and Priests were to be * Winwood, vol. ii. p. 49. Bills |