The Catholic World Volume Ii Part 90

Charles II., in the letters we have just given, left his son at liberty to set out at the end of autumn or even at the winter season.

Twenty-five days have not elapsed when his resolution changes. He wishes the novice at Rome to make haste to precipitate his departure.

What was the cause of this serious disquietude? It was this: Queen Christina, repenting of her abdication and hating the north, resolved to seek an asylum for her remaining days in the shadow of the Vatican.

Charles was informed of her intention, and at once took alarm.

Christina would then witness the departure of James Stuart; entangling the inexperienced novice in a network of cunning questions, what secret could escape her? Everything would be discovered. Little by little the rumor would spread from Italy to England. Charles already saw his kingdom in revolution and himself reduced to the most grievous extremity. Such was the object of the second letter to the father-general:

TO THE REVEREND FATHER-GENERAL OF THE JESUIT FATHERS AT ROME:

REVEREND FATHER,--We send, with the greatest diligence and with the greatest secresy, an express to Rome charge with two letters, one to your reverence to the end that our well-beloved son set out as soon as possible; the other to the Queen of Sweden--having commanded the messenger to await the arrival of her majesty in any Italian town through which she may pa.s.s, not wishing even that the aforesaid express should appear at your house, through fear of {591} being recognized by some of your order who are English. As he is a person of rank, we have in like manner forbidden his delaying more than one day at Rome, fearing lest he should be recognized by certain Englishmen who are at Rome.

We say, then, to your reverence that, since the first letter that we wrote you, we have received trustworthy news that the Queen of Sweden returns to Rome, contrary to the antic.i.p.ations which we had formed--the which has not a little embarra.s.sed us in the matter of our salvation. This is the reason that, upon this new accident, having taken counsel with the queens, we have determined to write in haste to the Queen of Sweden, feigning to her and persuading her that our very dear and well-beloved son has represented to us that he wishes a.s.signed to him something fixed for life, to the end that in case he should not pursue the religious calling he has commenced, being now a Catholic, he may have something to fall back upon; and that even if he should pursue it, he prays us to settle a sum of money upon him which he may dispose of according to his devotion, which pet.i.tion we have granted him; but since this cannot be effected at Rome, we have ordered him to go to Paris to find certain correspondents of ours, and after that to proceed to Jersey or to Hanton, [Footnote 90] where he will receive from us forty or fifty thousand crowns in total, which may be deposited in some bank; and that we have instructed him not to tell his superior of his birth; but that he shall simply feign to your reverence that he is the son of a rich preacher, who, being deceased some time since, his mother, moved with a desire of becoming a Catholic and to give him the goods which belong to him, has written to him, and that your reverence, desirous of the salvation of this person, and of making her a Catholic, and perceiving also that he can come by his estate, has readily permitted him to go. This we have arranged in order that she shall thus believe that she alone has the secret, and will therefore not break the matter to your reverence from the friendship she bears him. Thus we counteract any suspicion she might have of your letting him come to us and of our being Catholic. But above all it is necessary that our very dear son do not wait, but that he set out as soon as possible; for, as she needs money (and so needs it that she demanded at the last Swedish diet 35,000 crowns in advance), she would embarra.s.s him in such a way that the drama which we wish to play would come off but illy. This we have arranged touching the Queen of Sweden.

[Footnote 90: Now Southhampton.--Ed. C. W.]

Your reverence will not be astonished then if this fear has led us to dread the evils by which we are besieged; a fear all the more lively in us, because these evils are greater and bear in their train consequences more dangerous. Now it is a truth received without dispute among our wisest statesmen, that of all the temporal evils which can befal us, the proof that we are Catholic is the greatest, since it would infallibly cause our death, and at the same time many convulsions in our realm. Your reverence ought not, therefore, to be astonished if we take so many precautions and if we have judged proper to write him this second letter also, as well in the matter of the Queen of Sweden as to supply omissions which we made in the first, and at the same time to retract some things contained therein--that our very dear and honored son do not present himself to our very dear cousin the King of France, nor to our very honored sister the d.u.c.h.ess of Orleans, as we advised before; but only that he come to us, be it through France or through Paris or by other ways, as it shall please your reverence to determine. He will abstain during the journey from writing to the Queen of Sweden, lest she see that those things are not carried out which, as we have heretofore said, have been pretended to her. This we have decided upon with the aid of the queens, fearing a discovery or some accident.

{592}

Moreover, we pray your reverence (who are secretly acquainted, as are her most christian majesty the queen, and our very dear sister, Madame the d.u.c.h.ess of Orleans, with the warm disposition for becoming a Catholic which we have for a long time shown),--we pray you, nevertheless, to abstain from writing to them in any fashion touching these matters, but to keep everything quite secret until the providence of G.o.d has otherwise disposed of affairs.

Now as we desire, with all requisite prudence in an affair of so great consequence to ourselves and the peace of our realm, that our very dear and well-beloved son find everything which is necessary in the business of our salvation made easy for him, and to avoid the inconveniences which might spring upon this side, we have taken counsel with the queen to this effect, that when he shall arrive alone in London--for such is our good will and pleasure--he take time to clothe himself, and dress himself as quickly as possible, if he be not sufficiently well-dressed--not having been willing to do so for fear of soiling his garments by the bad weather and muddy roads, which soil a carriage and also all who are in it; and having put himself in order and rendered himself presentable, let him take occasion to address himself to the reigning queen, either when she is dining at our palace of St. James or when her majesty shall go to visit the queen, our very dear and honored mother. To whom, without causing any suspicion, he will present a sealed letter in the form of a supplication, in which he will say in a few words who he is.

Her majesty has directions from us to manage everything which is necessary for an introduction to ourselves, with all possible prudence, and we are a.s.sured that there shall arise no disorder nor suspicion. He has nothing else to do but to let himself be directed according to what shall be advised him, and we command him to observe punctually everything we have written to him, especially what we have put within the envelope.

In the meanwhile, we renew to your reverence the prayer which we made to you from the first, which is, not to write us, nor to make any response saving by the hands of our very dear and well-beloved son, whom we order to set out from Rome as soon as possible, not wishing that the Queen of Sweden speak to him for the aforesaid reasons. Having departed from Rome, he will take his ease in coming to us. We pray, however, your reverence, if this be necessary, to move him to come as soon as possible, representing to him the need we have of him. For we know that he has no little repugnance to England, which we attribute to the fact of his not having been educated there, and also of his finding himself compelled to live there alone, so that we have never been able to induce him to live there more than a year. And even before that year was finished, he presented us so many reasons that we were constrained to let him go to Holland, where he bore himself with great praise and to our great satisfaction in the belles lettres and other studies, in which he made admirable progress.

We believe he has too much judgment to wish to disobey us, and not come as we desire. As soon as he comes we shall endeavor, by means of the queens, to have him made a priest in all secresy. And if there be anything that the bishop ordinary cannot do without permission of His Holiness, let him not fail to provide for it, but very secretly, so that no one shall know who he is: which will be done if possible before he set out from Rome. Meanwhile we beseech you, reverend father, to pray G.o.d for the queens, our realm, and ourselves, who are CHARLES, King of England.

At Whitehall, the 29th Aug., 1668.

Yet even these numerous and urgent recommendations did not quite pacify the timid monarch. One feature in the rule of St. Ignatius, of {593} which his queen's had just advised him, suddenly upset all his ideas. He s.n.a.t.c.hes up the pen. He countermands the orders he has just given. He traces a new plan of campaign in which the clearness of exposition, the ability of conception, the facility of execution, are about on a level. This third letter, we must confess, does little credit to the geographical knowledge and above all to the courage of Charles II. In another point of view, however, it merits the attention of the reader. Precisely because of the trouble which reigns in his thoughts, we detect more than once the cry of the soul. More than at any time hitherto, the unhappy prince lets us discover the cruel anguishes which torture his conscience, and the incontestable sincerity of his desires.

TO THE REVEREND FATHER-GENERAL OF THE JESUIT FATHERS AT ROME:

REVEREND FATHER,--We have never felt so many embarra.s.sments, though we have had enough of them in our life, as at present, when we wish to think seriously of our salvation. We have but just sealed this other letter, which we pray you to read before the one which is open, that you may better learn our intention and the order in which we hold to the writing. The queens have advised us and counselled us not to press his [our son's] coming, because they wish to arrange and bring about certain very necessary and notable precautions, to render the arrival of our very dear and well-beloved son to England very prudent and secret.

For this end their majesties, having found means of learning accurately and with judgment the ways of your society regarding those who have but recently joined them, inform us that they have ascertained from a good source that the novices of your holy society, not less than with others, are never sent off without some member of the fraternity accompanying them, as much to be advised of their actions and deportment as to render an account to the superior--the which we admire as a very holy prudence and which can only spring from the divine spirit with which so holy a society is animated. But nevertheless in this matter we beseech your reverence to dispense with this companionship in the case of our very dear son; because we command him absolutely, in virtue of the power which G.o.d has given us over him, to come to us by himself, partly because this will properly accord with the letter which we have sent to the Queen of Sweden, who should believe that he has gone alone--that is to say, unaccompanied by any member of the fraternity; but princ.i.p.ally because of the dangerous inconveniences whereof we should be constantly in fear if he came in the company of any of the fraternity. We have already, with great secresy, pretended to some very safe persons in a great number of the English ports, and by ways entirely concealed, that a foreign prince, of such a carriage, such a mien, alone by himself, is flying to us, and much more indeed which we could not explain to your reverence without going too far into detail. We do this, partly that if we come to be anywise suspected of being too familiar with him (Father James Stuart) we may have something to say to remove the suspicion.

Your reverence can see by this that if he should bring an Italian with him who was recognizable as an Italian, be it by his accent or otherwise, this might be the occasion of overthrowing all our designs and of interrupting the scheme which we wish to work out in order to come most surely to our just desires. Even in case he can have some one other than an Italian with him, we should forbid his bringing any one into England, of whatever nation he might be, for many very considerable reasons, which it would take too long to recount.

Your reverence ought not to be surprised if we are so cautious, because we learned in the time of Cromwell {594} what misery is, and what are the things of this world, what it is to be prudent and to hide one's self in order to succeed in our undertaking. We doubt not that, as our very dear and well-beloved son is young, he is far from eager for company and conversation, and that he does not desire to have intercourse with any one by letter or by discourse; for we know that he does not love the court any too well. But he must needs have patience, inasmuch as it is not reasonable that for a pleasure so brief and of so little consequence, he should put himself in danger of ruining all our designs. Beside, he ought to know that when he shall put foot in our palace, he is not to converse with any one saving with ourselves and the queen, who will give the necessary orders in the matter. Nor will he write any letters saving to you, reverend father, and these letters that he shall write to you we shall despatch by an express in great secresy to Rome, to the end that your reverence relieve us in the necessities which may arise touching our soul.

We have made inquiries respecting the seaports nearest to Rome.

Among many which have been named to us, we recall Civita Vecchia and Genes. We command him, then, to go to Genes. We have ascertained, with all necessary prudence, that your society has at that place a house of your order. Being then at Genes, we wish him to seek out some ship or English shallop, but in such wise that we do not wish any of the fraternity to recommend him to the master nor to those who manage the ship, not showing their acquaintanceship with him, for very considerable reasons; but especially because these seafaring men will repeat it all as soon as they come to port.

Moreover, we desire that he put off and lay aside his religious robes in the house of his friends and brother Jesuits of Genes. He will a.s.sume them again in the same place on his return to Rome, when we send him back to pursue there the religious life he has commenced.

He will land then in our realm solitary and in disguise. He will call himself everywhere he may go Henry de Rohan, which is the name of the family of a certain French prince, a Calvinist, and very well known and intimate with us. We are in such fear lest some accident occur, that in these different ports we at present take cognisance, both very secretly and with the requisite prudence, of ships which have arrived or are due, and even so far as we can of persons, under pretence of a zeal for the well-being of our realm, and under pretence of maintaining the Protestant religion, to which we pretend to be attached more than ever, although, before G.o.d, who knows the heart, we abhor it as very false and pernicious.

Moreover, we forbid our very dear and honored son to pa.s.s through France and by the other pa.s.sages and ports which lie in that part, for he could not bring about our intentions with sufficient secresy sailing from that coast, and therefore we have found no place more proper than Genes for his embarkation. And, in the meanwhile, awaiting his return to Rome, your reverence shall noise it abroad that he has gone to Jersey or Hanton to see his pretended mother, who desires to become a Catholic, as we have suggested and feigned in that other letter, and that, to make the greater haste, he went by sea.

This then we command him to observe, point by point, through the authority that G.o.d has given us over him, and we promise him, on the faith of a king, that we seek nothing else in his coming but the salvation of our souls, his good, and that of the society to which he has attached himself, which, sooner or later, we shall find means to notably favor with our royal magnificence. And so far from forbidding his pursuing his calling, both for the Catholic religion and your society, we and the queens will urge it upon him better than any _director_ he {595} can have. It is very true that when the season and affairs permit us to write and make known to His Holiness the veneration we hold him in as the vicegerent of G.o.d, we hope that he will be too well disposed toward us to refuse him the cardinal's hat, inasmuch as the conditions which could forbid his having this dignity for the honor of our person and of our realm are not fulfilled in his case, viz., residence in England, since we can send him to dwell at Rome, as we promise, and with the royal magnificence requisite for his birth. Nevertheless, if in time he prefer to live according to the religious life he has commenced, we would readily abandon what would be to the honor of our crown and of our person, rather than to urge and procure such dignities against his will.

We have made discreet inquiries of our physician whether sea-sickness cause any dangerous accidents to those of a feeble const.i.tution, who has answered us that sea-sickness never killed any one, but on the contrary has been the means of greater health.

Nevertheless, if it be too painful for him to make one trip of it, he shall contrive that the bark or shallop in which he sails rest from time to time in some port. He might easily come at once to London; but we do not wish it for good reasons. Let him land at some other port of England, from whence he can come by land in a carriage to London.

We once again entreat your reverence not to write to us nor to make any reply, saving by the hand of our very dear and honored son, when he comes to us. And, if there be a need for anything which he does not possess in making the voyage to London, we beseech you, reverend father, to have particular care in the matter, furnishing him with whatever he requires, whereof he will keep account.

We firmly believe it is G.o.d who has inspired us to all these above-mentioned ways for bringing us in secret our very honored son, because of what he has said in his word--that when two or three are gathered together in his name, he will be in the midst of them. For it is exactly ourselves, and the queen, our very dear mother, and the reigning queen, who decree all these things, not without having invoked, first of all, the Holy Spirit. Beside that, the queens have commanded their priests to celebrate many ma.s.ses in accordance with their intention, which is nothing other than that this affair succeed as well as all our other projects above mentioned, which tend not only to our good, but to that of the Roman Catholic Church and of our realm. We are, CHARLES, King of England.

These last two letters were a sad revelation to Father Oliva, and no doubt very much diminished the hopes which he had before conceived.

However, the order was given to the novice to set out without delay.

If James Stuart could easily obey his father by departing from Rome before the arrival of Queen Christina, it was certainly more difficult for him to conform to the frequently contradictory injunctions concerning the route to be taken and the precautions to be guarded against which had been successively transmitted to him. Everything which was rational and practicable the young man respected. He set sail from Leghorn about the middle of October, a fact which we learn from a brief letter of Father Oliva to the King of England. It is of course unnecessary to explain to the reader why the father-general has dated his note from a Tuscan port rather than from the city of the Roman pontiffs at which he wrote:

SIRE,--The French gentleman who is charged with the delivery of this letter will inform you of my utter carefulness in fulfilling the commands of your three letters and my unlimited devotion to your royal person. Your majesty will always see me execute with the same promptness and the {596} same zeal everything which he shall deign to impose on me. I shall endeavor to be such in reality as he deigns to believe that I am; such as the confidence with which he honors me obliges me to show myself.

I throw myself respectfully at the feet of your majesty.

Leghorn, Oct 14, 1668.

In one very important respect it was found necessary to abandon, or rather to violate, the royal programme. Charles, a perfect stranger to ecclesiastical laws, always supposed that, at his request, his son could be made priest either at Rome or in London. But James Stuart was only twenty-one years old, and was without theological studies. Even if these serious objections had not existed, it would not have been prudent to elevate to the sacred office a novice whose religious experience extended scarcely over a s.p.a.ce of six months. Thus, despite the repugnance of the king, Henry de Rohan, as our young traveller must now be called, took as his companion a priest of the society, a Frenchman, as far as we can judge, who, disguised like himself, was presented to their Britannic majesties in the quality of a friend of the refugee prince. This wise measure, imposed by the timidity of Charles, was attended by so little inconvenience, that we shall find the monarch himself, on the occasion of his son's second voyage to England, earnestly requesting of the father-general the return of this same _religious_ whose talents and virtues he had come to appreciate.

VII.

This is not the place to describe the warmth with which Charles opened his arms to his first-born, whom he had always peculiarly cherished, nor the joy of the two pious princesses, nor the tender emotions of the youth upon whom beamed, at length, the sympathy and affection he had never known before. In the isolation of his earlier life, James Stuart had sadly felt the void which the absence of that sweetest tie on earth, the family, creates. This grief had eaten into him like a cancer, till the day when he resolved to renounce the world. When the victim has immolated himself, when he has said to flesh and blood, I will know you nevermore! behold in a royal palace, by one of the first thrones on earth, the humble novice finds again a home--venerable queens are mothers to him. His father caresses him, and, emulating the example of his brother, the Duke of York, who was also preparing to embrace Catholicism, receives the child of St. Ignatius as an angel from heaven.

But it was not for such pleasures that the young Jesuit had quitted his solitude. Guided by the wise counsels of Father Oliva, and a.s.sisted by his own studies and the able co-operation of his companion, he engaged without delay in the religious instruction of the king. Of these conferences, surrounded with so much mystery, two fragments have come down to us. One word upon the nature and upon the history of this double doc.u.ment.

It consists of two divisions, and is a resume of a great theological discussion which, at once, establishes the divine authority of the Roman, and saps the foundation of the Anglican, Church. The original piece is in the French language and in the handwriting of the king. He was not, however, the author. The primitive text has disappeared, probably through fear that a paper of this nature, if it should get abroad, would furnish material proof that a sovereign of Great Britain had held communication with a "papist" priest. These pages of religious controversy Charles carefully concealed. While he lived probably no one, save the Duke of York, had any knowledge of them.

After the death of Charles, James II. found these writings again, one in the private chest, the other in the cabinet of the dead monarch, and in spite of the {597} storm which they were certain to produce, he did not fear to make them public. In 1700 he presented them solemnly, as a proof of the faith which animated his brother, to the general a.s.sembly of the clergy of France convened at St. Germain-en-Laye. Of the many thousand copies which, during the reign of the last of the crowned Stuarts, were circulated on both sides of the Channel, there exists at the present day only one. The Jesuit College at Rome still possess the edition of 1685, and in addition a ma.n.u.script copy of the two papers, both bearing, as a guarantee of their perfect authenticity, the autograph signature of King James. All the English historians speak of these two celebrated writings; but only to declare that the real convictions of Charles had nothing in common with these fragments of a controversy transcribed by him they know not why.

James II. in his "Memoirs" gives us a short anecdote, which from its connection with this subject we will reproduce. One day, finding himself alone in his cabinet with the Archbishop of Canterbury, he availed himself of the opportunity to place in his hands the two papers.

"He, the archbishop, appeared surprised, and remained for a quarter of an hour without making any reply. Then he said that he had not supposed the deceased king was so learned in the matter of controversy, but he nevertheless thought the arguments could be refuted. Upon which the king begged him to make the trial, telling him that if he accomplished it by means of reasons both solid and honestly expressed, he would probably succeed in converting him to his church.

The archbishop replied that it would, perhaps, be evincing a want of respect for the deceased king, should he seek to contradict him; but his majesty relied by urging on him that the hope of converting himself ought to override every other consideration. He besought him then to occupy himself at once with a refutation of these papers, and to employ his pen if he thought proper. Whatever the reason may have been, neither this authorization nor the pressing instance of my Lord Dartmouth could engage him to write, and there appeared no reply during the four years that his majesty reigned in England." [Footnote 91]

[Footnote 91: "_Vie de Jacques II., roi d'Angleterre, d'apres les Memoirs ecrite de sa Main. T. iii., p. 12. Paris, 1819_."]

Here then are these dogmatic pages, almost as unknown in our century as in the time when Charles concealed them in the most secret places in his palace. We publish them exactly as they saw the light.

FIRST WRITING.

The conversation that we had the other day will have satisfied you, as I hope, upon the princ.i.p.al point, which was that Jesus Christ can have, here upon the earth, but one church only, and I believe that it is as clear as it is that the Scripture is printed, that this church does not exist unless it be what is called the Roman Catholic Church.

I believe that there is no need of your troubling yourself with entering upon a sea of particular disputes, since the princ.i.p.al, and in truth the only and simple question, consists in ascertaining where this church is which, in the two creeds, we profess to believe in. We declare, in the two creeds, that we believe in only one catholic and apostolic church, and it does not belong to each individual member to believe everything that comes into his head according to his fancy; but it belongs to the church to whom on earth Jesus Christ has left the power of governing us in matters of faith, and has made these creeds to serve us as a rule.

It would be a most unreasonable thing to make laws for a country, and then to permit the inhabitants to be the interpreters and the judges. For then, {598} each individual would be a judge in his own cause, and consequently, there would be no standard whereby to distinguish justice from injustice. Can we then suppose that G.o.d has abandoned us to such uncertainties as to give us a rule for our conduct, and then to permit each individual to be his own judge? I demand of every honest man if this be not the same thing as following our own imaginations, or of making use thereof in the interpretation of Scripture?

I could wish that some one would show me in what pa.s.sage the power of deciding upon matters of faith is given to each individual. Jesus Christ has left this power to his Church, even for the remission of sins, and he has left his spirit there. This power has been exercised since his resurrection, first by the apostles in their creed, and many years after by the Council of Nice, where the creed was made that bears its name.

By the power which has been received of Jesus Christ, the Holy Scripture itself was judged many years, after the apostles, in determining which were the canonical books and which were not. If we had the power then, I would like to know how it has come to be lost, and by what authority men can separate themselves from this Church.