In England, during the reign of Elizabeth, the Papacy was looked upon by Protestants as the arch enemy. It was true that every influence, every action, every attempt, to win back what had been lost to the Catholic Church, radiated from Rome. It was there that English Catholics found a new home and sanctuary where they could be safe and secure from insults and injury. Between Catholics in England and English Catholics in Italy there was a constant intercourse, a going and coming, a series of movements and ties, all the closer for being below the surface; and when gradually the hope for the reconversion of England disappeared, numbers of Englishmen forsook their native land and passed the remainder of their lives in the country of their adoption.

The most prominent among English Catholics of this later time was Cardinal Allen, who, in 1575, had been summoned to Rome by Gregory the Thirteenth, to give advice regarding a college for Englishmen which the Pope proposed to found. A few years later the old English hospital, with all its revenues, was annexed to it. The seminary, as a result of internal dissensions and the jealousy between the English and Welsh students, was placed, in 1579, in charge of the English province of the Society of Jesus, and under the protection of a cardinal. It was presided over by a

1 H. Foley, Records of the English Province of the Society of Jesus, VI, 541. Vide Cardinal Sega, Relazione del Collegio Inglese, 1596, Fondo Ottoboni, 2473 ff., 185-226, Vatican Library, Rome (cited also by Foley op. cit.).

rector, not necessarily an Englishman. A year later it received its first stable endowment and was chartered by an apostolic brief.1

On entering the college an oath was administered to the student. He was obliged to swear always to be ready at the order of the Pope or other lawful superior, to take Holy Orders, and to proceed to England for the aid (ie. conversion) of souls. The form of interrogation used is an interesting one. The novice was questioned, among other things, regarding his relatives, and especially of their religious beliefs; of his own studies, and also of the health of his body and mind. He was asked whether he had been a heretic or schismatic; how, and by what means he had become a Catholic; what things had happened to him on account of this, and if he had suffered anything; last of all, what were the reasons which prompted him to follow an ecclesiastical life.

Between 1579, the year in which the college was founded, and 1603, that of the death of Elizabeth, over three hundred and fifty Englishmen studied there and were admitted to the priesthood. Each year the college sent out its missionaries to England "for the help of perishing souls." Before leaving, they went to kiss the feet of the Pope, who supplied them with funds for their journey. In the records which have been preserved, after each one's name there followed a

1 Foley, VI, 70.

2 Vide Stevenson, Roman Transcripts, English College Series, Vol. 9, Record Office, London.

brief account of his fate; sometimes it was only imprisonment; but often the factus est martyr and the accounts of those hanged, quartered, and disembowelled showed the perils and dangers which awaited such missionaries in the task they had taken on themselves. To the stanch English Protestant, however, the college of Rome seemed a centre of popish abominations and conspiracies, and Anthony Munday, in his English Roman Life, described what he called the treasonable practices and plans concocted there.

2

Any account of the graduates of the college, who, sent back to England, did their best to make converts and stir up disaffection against Elizabeth, would partake too much of both political and religious history to have any place in the present study. The lives and martyrdoms of such enthusiasts as Parsons, Campion and Southwell prove interesting reading, however. Robert Parsons was perhaps the ablest of them all. At one time a fellow at Balliol, he had studied medicine at Padua and then became a Jesuit. With Campion, he led the first Jesuit mission to England, which brought many back to the old faith. When his companion was executed after prolonged tortures, he himself escaped discovery and fled to the Continent to plot with Philip of Spain to attack England. His life was spent in one single devotion to restore Catholicism in England, even at the cost of foreign subjugation,

1 Vide Cardinal Sega, Ms. cit.

2 Vide E. L. Taunton, Jesuits in England. London, 1901.

and he hoped finally to attain it through the conversion of James the Sixth of Scotland, who he recognized would succeed to the English throne. "I would give up my very life blood," he wrote, "to see him converted and king of England."

England through the long reign of Elizabeth became the seat of many Catholic conspiracies which were hatched for the most part in Italy. In the foremost rank among the conspirators in England was Ruberto Ridolfi, against whom nothing could ever be proved, in spite of the fact that he was implicated in nearly all. His career was a remarkable one; he had been brought up as a banker, and, going to London, acquired an influential position in social and mercantile circles. In addition he aided the different Catholic conspiracies, but escaped all punishment. The rôle he played can best be seen from a letter to the Pope. He had been the secret agent of Pius the Fifth, at a time when the Vatican was unable to send its nuncios to England, and had been in touch with all the Catholic noblemen who were anxious to serve the Church. In order to prevent Elizabeth from assisting the Protestants in France and Flanders, the Duke of Northumberland with other noblemen had begun an insurrection in the border counties intended to keep the queen in check; but the conspiracy fell through and its leaders were imprisoned or executed.

1 Letter written in December, 1602 (indexed wrongly, as being by Possevino), Arch. Med., 4185, Florence.

2 Arch. Med., 4185.

Ridolfi, however, escaped, and begged the Pope to reimburse him for his outlays and property, all of which had been confiscated.

The annals of this period were full of accounts of Catholic conspiracies. But the intrigues of Italian churchmen and English Jesuits came to an untimely end with the destruction of the Armada, and, though their efforts did not cease, the issue was never thereafter in doubt.

In addition to the students of the English College at Rome, many other Englishmen lived in Italy toward the end of the sixteenth century. In a report made to the Pope in 1596 by Cardinal Sega, on the condition of the English College, he ascribed its disturbances to the Englishmen residing outside the college, and recommended in consequence that all communications between students and outsiders should come to an end. Italy was then full of English Catholics. Anthony Munday spoke of Cardinal Borromeo's confessor in Milan as one Robert Griffin, a Welshman, who sent him to the house of an English priest there, named Harris. Another English Catholic of prominence was Thomas Goldwell Bishop of St. Asaph, who studied at Padua in his youth and had been a friend of Cardinal Pole. Many of these Catholics proved themselves stanch Englishmen, however, and Sir Richard Shelley, known in Italy as Signor Conchilio, sent valuable information from Venice about the Spanish Armada. It is scarcely necessary to mention more names; enough has already been said here and elsewhere to