Belloc's "Charles II" (or "The Last Rally: A Story of Charles II")

This is the fifth historical character study by Hilaire Belloc I've read. Mysterium Press has sent me their handsome hardcover editions for my opinions on each: Wolsey, Cranmer, Charles I, and Cromwell, and now Charles II. (I also have James II in queue.) The cover of each book features a striking portrait of the subject, with a tag line that offers a great summing up of Belloc's theme for each man:

Wolsey: "The cardinal who unwittingly steered England to its ruin" [and specifically, regrettably steered the Catholic Church in England to its ruin]

Cranmer: "The archbishop who helped destroy England's founding faith"

Charles I: "The king who stood for liberty and lost his head for it"

Cromwell: "The killer of the king and the butcher of the Irish"

Charles II: "The king who pitted monarchy against money"

and 

James II: "The last king of England's ancient monarchy"

You can see the covers of the entire "Hilaire Belloc English Histories Collection" here. In the USA, these books are available from Os Justi Press. It's kind of surprising that Belloc did not write a study of the other Cromwell, Thomas. You can find his analysis of "The true creator of the English Reformation" (my idea of a tag line) in Characters of the Reformation!

In each of these books I've been impressed by Belloc's political and strategic acumen; his sympathy for the challenges and struggles each man faced; his effort to be honest and straight-forward in his analysis of how their backgrounds and education prepared them for their most crucial decisions and actions; his careful judgment of their strengths and weaknesses--and all those strengths are present this book, which was first published with the title The Last Rally: A Story of Charles II in 1939. 

Belloc adds the ground of a beautiful metaphor to the structure of this book: the young, exiled Prince of Wales's love of being on the sea, captaining a ship, struggling with the elements, winning the battle, and returning to port. That metaphor is expressed in many chapter titles (and remember that Belloc loved sailing too!):

1. The Last Rally
2. The Task
3. The Formation
4. The Annealing
5. First Grasp of the Helm
6. The Fair Run
7. The Fleet and Empire
8. The Sunken Reef
9. The Triangle
10. Gathering Storm
11. Whiggery
12. The Women
13. Full Gale: The Popish Plot
14. Hurricane and Harbor
15. Drop Anchor

An elegant feature in this book.

Throughout this series, the great theme is power: how to get it, how to hold it, and how to lose it. Each man achieves power either by inheriting it (Charles I--with the honorable mention of his father James I and VI--and his heirs Charles II and James II) or by talent, opportunity, and influence (Wolsey, Cranmer, and Cromwell). The variable of this theme is how Charles II tried to restore the power of the monarchy in England after the English Civil War, the Interregnum and Protectorate. As Belloc explains:

As I dealt in my former book with the leading case of Louis XIV of France as a monarch standing up to the Money Power (and, upon the whole, successfully), so in this book I deal with the parallel and complementary case of his contemporary and first cousin, Charles II, Stuart King of England.

He also found himself faced by that unescapable conflict between the Money Power and Monarchy; but, unlike his cousin Louis, Charles failed. The Money Power was too much for him. So long as he lived he managed to fend it off though not to tame it; but immediately after his death, in the less competent hands of his brother James (the last real and active King of England, as also the last by hereditary right), Monarchy went down. (p. 1)

One of the important early chapters is "The Annealing". Annealing is a term of art in metallurgy. This website provides a good, not-too-technical definition: "the process of heating a metal to a high temperature and then cooling it slowly. The slow cooling allows the crystalline structure to settle into a lower-energy, more stable configuration. Fast cooling (quenching) locks in stress and brittleness; slow cooling produces resilience." Applied to human experience, it is "the analogous process by which competing patterns of action gradually resolve into a stable configuration." 

Belloc proposes that from age 17 to 30, Charles, the exiled Prince of Wales, went through this annealing process as he struggled to make his claim to the throne of England after his father's execution and during the Commonwealth and Protectorate. He developed his characteristic responses to danger, decision, and success.

During this struggle, Charles attempted to gain the throne in Scotland, at least, by making a covenant with the Kirk. It included renouncing the Church of England, the Anglican doctrine and structure his late father had held so firmly. He was crowned the King of Scotland and then faced the English military response. In the midst of that struggle, and the subsequent military defeat he and the Scots suffered at Worcester, he met Father John Huddleston, a Catholic priest, and read a book of Catholic apologetics and was convinced it taught the Truth. Of course, we know that he did not follow up on that conviction until on his deathbed, because the restoration of the monarchy in England was his main goal.

Belloc is careful about weighing this dichotomy in Charles's behavior, just as he is in examining Charles's pattern of unfaithfulness to his wife, Catherine of Braganza. He describes how Charles never succumbed to any influence of his mistresses and made sure that his wife was respected, at least outwardly, at Court. It seems the two women who had the most influence on his Court and Reign were Anne Hyde, the Earl of Clarendon's daughter and his brother James, the Duke of York's wife, and his sister Minette (Henrietta Anne, Duchess of Orléans), King Louis XIV's sister-in-law--both through their Catholicism. Minette influenced him in signing the Treaty of Dover, in which he promised to convert to Catholicism at some point.

Another great issue was the conflict with Parliament over funding the government, especially the British Navy to protect trade. This problem led Charles to negotiate for funds with King Louis of France and to triangulate three foes: Louis, Holland, and Parliament against one to another as needed. To Belloc, here Charles succeeded, however briefly, to attain true Royal power and authority. Belloc also notes throughout his discussions of the conflict between King and Parliament that the House of Commons was not at all representative of the population of England and not even of the men who had the privilege to vote in Parliamentary election in proportion to city and county size and commercial etc. influence.

Belloc expresses the greatest condemnation of Charles's behavior in the course of the Popish Plot, especially when he allowed William Howard, 1st Viscount Stafford (a Blessed martyr and grandson of Saint Philip Howard) and Oliver Plunkett (a Sainted martyr) to be executed when the Popish Plot had been exposed as a lie. It is Belloc's opinion that the Popish Plot "gave the deathblow to Catholicism in England." (p. 225). Belloc avers that even as he acknowledges the change in the Catholic legal position in England, the English converts from Newman in 1845 until his own day, and the influx of Irish Catholics. If he is paying attention to matters now, I wonder what he thinks about Catholic revival in England, especially vis-a-vis the Church of England.

In some ways it seems that Belloc expresses greater concern for the triumph of the Monarchy in English government than he does for Charles's dedication to his conscience and the truth of Catholicism. It's one way, of course, that Belloc avoids the accusation of letting his own Catholic faith influence his historical analysis of Charles II's character and reign. I don't think he is betraying his Faith but he is upholding his general thesis in each of these books that a strong executive is essential in governance of a nation. Writing as he was in the age of Roosevelt, Mussolini/Victor Emmanuel, and Hitler (not that I'm suggesting any similarity between Roosevelt and the others--although I do recall that Alistair Cooke stated in his America that FDR basically ignored the Constitution of the United States in his implementation of The New Deal), one can see his concern for the balance of power.

His narration of Charles's deathbed conversion is moving, of course, but the reader knows that the hereditary monarchy would soon fail during James II's reign, especially once the Catholic convert King and his Catholic wife would have a Catholic son and heir. (Belloc had published his study of James II in 1928--this book was published in 1939.)

As usual, Mysterium Press presents a excellent edition of Belloc's work and I appreciate the publisher sending me these copies in exchange for my opinion of them. 

I'll be reading and reviewing James II next.

The Popish Plot: William Bedloe, RIP

William Bedloe who assisted Titus Oates in perjury and false accusations against Jesuit priests and other Catholics in the Popish Plot during the reign of King Charles II died on August 20, 1680. His entry in the Dictionary of National Biography, written by Joseph Woodfall Ebsworth, denounces him as a "dishonest adventurer and 'evidence' in the Popish plot". Bedloe was complicit with the conviction of at least one innocent man, Blessed Edward Coleman or Colman.

His biographical entry describes his duplicity with dizzying detail:

He claimed for himself the attainment of proficiency in Latin, heraldry, and mathematics. David Lewis, the Jesuit, who was afterwards executed at Monmouth, took notice of the boy when he was twelve years old, and taught him much, with intent of converting him. When aged twenty, in 1670, he travelled to London with one hundred pounds in his pocket, and lived near two Jesuits, Father Harman and Father Johnson. They dined at Locket's ordinary, and were said to adjourn to Mother Cresswell's. Bedloe certainly lived a sharping life in London before he went to Dunkirk, where he was recommended by the lady abbess to Sir John Warner, who sent him to Father Harcourt, the Jesuit, afterwards executed on the evidence of Oates. By his own account, William Bedloe went to Rome, Flanders, Spain, &c., carrying letters; but opened them and made forged copies, which he delivered, retaining the originals. He bore an alias of Captain Williams, under which he cheated the Prince of Orange, and from him, by fraud, obtained a captain's commission. But this captaincy was as apocryphal as the 'invisible degree' of doctor won by Titus Oates at Salamanca. Five years of varied service, intrigues, frauds, and broils, prepared him, with occasional employment by the Jesuits, for emerging into notice as a betrayer and forsworn spy. He declared that Titus Oates had anticipated and outstripped him in making revelations of the popish plot. At the beginning of August 1678, he confessed that he 'had once been an ill man, but desired to be so no more.' He wrote from Bristol, offering to make startling declarations. The Earl of Danby gave little credit to him; and in revenge for this, Bedloe asserted that a bribe was offered to him by Danby, who promised that he should be supported in whatever country he chose to retire into, if he would suppress his threatened revelations. The commons accepted his account of the murder of Sir E. B. Godfrey, and gave him 500l. The extant portrait of Bedloe, prefixed to his 'Narrative' of the fire of London having been caused by the papists, shows a villainous countenance, harsh and forbidding, full of malice and revenge. With beetle brows, hard mouth, and savage eyes, we see the man, unscrupulous, unrelenting, as he in later life became. Dressed in finery beyond his station, his arrogance is as self-evident as his malice. He declared that Counsellor Reading had tried to tamper with him for suppression of his testimony, and Reading was condemned to a year's imprisonment, with exposure for an hour in the pillory, and to pay a fine of 1,000l. Bedloe made many accusations and found willing associates. The king's chemist, Dr. James, deposed that one Dr. Smith, a papist, tried to make him poison Bedloe with a pill on 20 March 1679. By this time he was almost as popular as Oates. He received ten pounds weekly allowance from the royal funds, and lived at the rate of two thousand a year. Rich dupes were plentiful. The citizens feasted him. His folio pamphlets, with copperplate portrait prefixed, had a large sale. He attributed the most extensive plots and execrable crimes, falsely, to the Romanists.

Bedloe went too far, however, and was facing distrust and waning influence when he died:

Then he was recalled to London in the middle of July 1680. He was now, with Oates, experiencing the fickleness of fortune and the waning of popularity. Sir George Jeffreys [left], on the bench, told him sharp truths, and he felt his power deserting him. He retreated back to Bristol, where he had left his wife Anna, who, in her illness, summoned him, at beginning of August. He fell ill after his hurried journey, having 'broken his gall' by violent riding. He was said to be past cure. At the commencement of the assizes on 16 Aug., Sir Francis North, chief justice of the common pleas, attended Bedloe, and took his dying deposition. There had been a promise of fresh revelations, but none of importance were forthcoming. He reiterated old statements as really true, his wife being beside him. James Bedloe [his brother] made immediate application for money from King Charles, through North, next day. This application, 'that his sickness was very changeable, and that money was required for his subsistence,' explains the persistence of the family in the accusation of the Jesuits. William's death took place on Friday, 20 Aug. 1680.

When Sir George Jeffreys, later of the Bloody Assizes (as featured in the Errol Flynn movie Captain Blood) turns against you, you're in trouble. Although Jeffreys would later serve James II as Lord Chancellor, he was no friend of Catholics and was certainly ready to find them guilty of treason--as was Sir William Scroggs, Lord Chief Justice at the time of the Popish Plot--and it was not until the end, nearly, of all the trials and executions, that these judges began to see the perjury of Oates, Bedloe, and others.

Although Ebsworth denounces Bedloe, he's no friend of Catholics either, using the terms Romanists and Papist, and Romanism (in his biography of Edward Coleman, Bedloe's chief victim).

Charles II's Deathbed Conversion

Apologizing that it was taking him so long, Charles II died on February 6, 1685. He had suffered a fit of apoplexy on February 2 (O.S.) and had asked his brother James the Duke of York to take care of his mistresses (no word about his wife?) and certainly "let not poor Nelly starve."

Before he died Charles' brother and his wife Catherine of Braganza arranged to have the priest Father John Huddleston who had saved him in England after the defeat at Worcester come into the Royal Sickroom. The Bishop of Bath, Thomas Ken (future nonjuror) and all the other Anglicans left the room. The line attributed to James was that the priest who had saved his body was there to help save his soul--and Charles II was received into the Catholic Church and received Holy Communion as Viaticum.

Then when the Bishop and other clergy and nobility came back into the room, Charles did not receive Anglican communion. When he was buried at Westminster Abbey on February 14, his funeral ceremonies were rather restrained, possibly by the knowledge that he had "Poped" before he died.

Charles had ruled alone after dissolving Parliament in 1681, the conflict with Parliament, caused at partially (as it had been for his father) by religious matters. After the furor of the Popish Plot he had restored his brother to the position of High Admiral in violation of Parliament's Test Act and he had begun again to rely on France for funds. He might have been heading for another Civil War, but what some have called his love of ease, his laziness, might have pulled him back so he would avoid exile once again. He was not so dedicated to Catholic faith as James, and would have been more politic, just as waiting until at the point of death to convert he delayed his promised conversion.

Father John Huddleston was a Benedictine monk; he was born in Lancashire into a Catholic family and studied at St. Omer's and at the English College in Rome, being ordained in Rome at St. John Lateran in 1637 and returned to England in 1639. The Catholic Encyclopedia explains how he saved the future Charles II:

In 1651 he was residing at Moseley, Staffordshire, as chaplain to the Whitgreave family. After the defeat at Worcester on 3 September, 1651, Charles II was conducted by Colonel Gyfford to Whiteladies, where he was sheltered by the Penderell family, and it was while seeking for some safer hiding place for the king that John Penderell happened to meet Father Huddleston. Accordingly Charles was disguised as a peasant and removed to Moseley during the night of Sunday, 7 September. To guard against surprise Huddleston was constantly in attendance on the king; his three pupils were stationed as sentinels at upper windows and Thomas Whitgreave patrolled the garden. On Tuesday, 9 September, Cromwell's soldiers came to search the house. The king and Huddleston were hurriedly shut away in the priest's hiding place, and the troops, after first seizing Whitgreave as a fugitive cavalier from Worcester, were eventually convinced that he had not left the house for some weeks and were persuaded to depart without searching the mansion. That night the king left for Bentley, after promising to befriend Huddleston when restored to his throne.

While Charles was in exile, Huddleston became a Benedictine. Once Charles II restored the monarchy, Father Huddleston served first the Dowager Queen Henrietta Maria and then Queen Catherine of Braganza. Charles II helped all those who had helped him, protecting them for example, during the Popish Plot crisis: 

During the disturbances produced by Titus Oates's pretended revelations the House of Lords, by a vote on 7 December, 1678, ordered that Huddleston, Thomas Whitgreave, the brothers Penderell, and others instrumental in the preservation of his Majesty's person after the battle of Worcester, should for their said service live as freely as any of the king's Protestant subjects, without being liable to the penalties of any of the laws relating to Popish recusants.

Father Huddleston's "mind failed" before he died and Louis de Duras, 2nd Earl of Feversham, one of the French nobles of the Duke of York's household/James II's court--who had been present when Father Huddleston received Charles II into the Church--took care of him. Father Huddleston was buried in St. Mary-Le-Strand on September 13, 1698.

The Last Rebel, The Last Battle

As the latest biography of James, the Duke of Monmouth notes:

At first light on July 6, 1685, the last battle ever fought on English soil was almost over. On one side of the watery pasture at Sedgemoor was the dashing thirty-six-year-old Duke of Monmouth, the charismatic son of Charles II, adored by the people. A reformer, a romantic, and a Protestant, he was fighting the army he had once commanded, in opposition to his uncle, King James II. Yet even before he launched his attack, Monmouth knew he would die.

How did he know that he would die? Because he was trapped and his surprise attack had failed, according to this UK Battlefields Resource Center post:

During the night, in a last desperate attempt to salvage something from his abortive rebellion, Monmouth launched a surprise night attack from the least expected direction, across the marshy wastes of Sedgemoor. But the rebels’ bold strategy was discovered before they reached the royal camp and then, in the darkness, their cavalry failed to locate the ford giving access to the royal camp.

With the element of surprise lost any chance of victory had disappeared. The rebel horse soon fled the field and in open country without cavalry support Monmouth’s infantry proved an easy target for the royal cavalry. The discipline, experience and firepower of the well equipped professional soldiers of the army of James II soon began to tell. As the morning light revealed the rebels’ true plight of the rebels, Feversham launched a join cavalry and infantry attack. Monmouth’s army was totally destroyed.

Monmouth, aka James Monmouth Scott, was Charles II's favorite bastard:

Born in the backstreets of Rotterdam in the year his grandfather Charles I was executed, Monmouth was the child of a turbulent age. His mother, the first of Charles II's famous liaisons, played courtesan to the band of raw and restless young royalists forced abroad by the changing political current. Conceived during a revolution and born into a republic, Monmouth, by the time he was twelve, was the sensation of the most licentious and libertine court in Europe. Adored by the king and drenched in honors, he became the greatest rake and reprobate of the age.

On his path to becoming "the last royal rebel," Monmouth consorted with a spectacular list of contemporaries: Louis XIV was his mentor, William of Orange his confidant, Nell Gwyn his friend, the future Duke of Marlborough his pupil, D'Artagnan his lieutenant, John Dryden his censor, and John Locke his comrade. Anna Keay expertly chronicles Monmouth's life and offers splendid insight into this crucial and dramatic period in English history.

It's interesting to note that another of Charles II's illegitimate sons fought for James II: Henry Fitzroy, the 1st Duke of Grafton. He was one of Charles's three sons with Barbara Palmer, the 1st Duchess of Cleveland. He would later support William of Orange in his invasion of England to depose James II, leaving his uncle's service with John Churchill. Churchill and Louis de Duras, 2nd Earl of Feversham also led the king's army against Monmouth's troops. Fitzroy was a Catholic; Monmouth an Anglican.

Monmouth's army was also commanded by Ford Grey, 1st Earl of Tankerville and Benjamin Hewling. Tankerville survived after the defeat:

He was in command of the cavalry, and its defeat on two occasions may have been caused by his cowardice, possibly even by his treachery. He was taken prisoner and condemned for high treason, but he obtained a pardon by freely giving evidence against his former associates, and was restored to his honours in June 1686.

Hewling was one of those executed in the Bloody Assizes condemned by Lord Chief Justice George Jeffreys, who had also presided over many of the Popish Plot trials. Just to show how tangled these webs of family, rebellion, and treachery were: Henry Fitzroy's guardian, Roger Palmer, Barbara's husband and a prominent Catholic (she had become Catholic too) was accused of involvement in the Popish Plot. He was imprisoned in the Tower of London but defended himself ably against Jeffreys and the Lord Chief Justice at the time, William Scroggs.

Monmouth was executed soon after his defeat, on July 15, 1685, despite offering to convert to Catholicism--at the same time, being refused Communion in the Church of England by the bishops of Bath and Wells (Thomas Ken, later a nonjuror) and Ely (Francis Turner, ditto) because he would acknowledge his sins. His execution, commuted from the usual penalty of being hanged, drawn, and quartered, was not merciful at all because Jack Ketch, the headsman, could not cut off the poor man's dead efficiently or expeditiously. According to Thomas Macaulay, Monmouth feared it would be so:

He then accosted John Ketch the executioner, a wretch who had butchered many brave and noble victims, and whose name has, during a century and a half, been vulgarly given to all who have succeeded him in his odious office. 'Here ', said the Duke, 'are six guineas for you. Do not hack me as you did my Lord Russell. I have heard that you struck him three or four times. My servant will give you some more gold if you do the work well.' He then undressed, felt the edge of the axe, expressed some fear that it was not sharp enough, and laid his head on the block. The divines in the meantime continued to ejaculate with great energy; 'God accept your repentance! God accept your imperfect repentance!'

The hangman addressed himself to his office. But he had been disconcerted by what the Duke had said. The first blow inflicted only a slight wound. The Duke struggled, rose from the block, and looked reproachfully at the executioner. The head sank down once more. The stroke was repeated again and again; but still the neck was not severed, and the body continued to move. Yells of rage and horror rose from the crowd. Ketch flung down the axe with a curse. 'I cannot do it,' he said; `my heart fails me.' 'Take up the axe, man,' cried the sheriff. 'Fling him over the rails,' roared the mob. At length the axe was taken up. Two more blows extinguished the last remains of life; but a knife was used to separate the head from the shoulders. The crowd was wrought up to such an ecstasy of rage that the executioner was in danger of being torn in pieces, and was conveyed away under a strong guard.

Finally, you might recall that Raphael Sabatini wrote Captain Blood, an historical novel about a doctor, Peter Blood, who treats a Monmouth supporter wounded at the Battle of Sedgemoor and is transported to the West Indies as a slave during the Bloody Assizes. The novel was made into a movie in 1935 with Errol Flynn and Olivia de Havilland--Vernon Steele appears as James II and Leonard Mudie as Justice Jeffreys. TCM.com provides some scenes from the movie--at the beginning his servant tells Blood that he is thought to be a Papist by some because he is not fighting for Monmouth!

Thomas Ken, Nonjuror and Hymnist

Thomas Ken died on March 19, 1711 at Longleat House, as the guest of Thomas Thynne, 1st Viscount Weymouth. Ken had lived there with an annual pension since he had refused to foreswear his oath of loyalty to King James II in 1691, becoming a non-juror. The irony of his refusal to swear an oath of loyalty to King William III and Queen Mary II is that he had been one of the seven bishops who had refused to publish and proclaim James II's Declaration of Indulgence in 1688. As the Bishop of Bath and Wells, Thomas Ken was a thorough-going High Church Anglican without a shred of Anglo-Catholic sympathy for the Roman Catholic Church.

Along with the other bishops and the Archbishop of Canterbury, he was arrested by James II and placed the Tower of London and charged with rebellion and sedition. At their trial, the bishops were acquitted; a real blow to James's plans. Yet, Ken had sworn an oath to James as the rightful king and he did not accept the parliamentary arrangements that brought James' son-in-law and "ungrateful" daughter to the throne.

According to this site,

He was born in 1637 and reared by his half-sister Anne and her husband the well-known angler Izaak Walton. He became a clergyman and served for a year at the Hague as chaplain to Mary, Princess of England and Queen of Holland, niece of King Charles II of England and wife of the Dutch King William of Orange. During this year he publicly rebuked King William for his treatment of his wife the said Mary, which may be why he was chaplain there for only a year. Upon his return to England, he was made Royal Chaplain to King Charles. The King had a mistress, Nell Gwyn, and for his convenience wished to lodge her in his chaplain's residence. Thomas sent the King a sharp refusal, saying that it was not suitable that the Royal Chaplain should double as the Royal Pimp. Charles admired his honesty and bluntness, and when the bishopric of Bath and Wells became available soon after, he declared, "None shall have it but that little man who refused lodging to poor Nellie!" Ken was accordingly made a bishop. When Charles was on his deathbed, it was Ken whom he asked to be with him and prepare him for death.

(Nevertheless he was asked to leave the room and some point when Charles II was received into the Catholic Church, according to reports.)

Under the next king, James II, brother of Charles, matters were different. James converted to Roman Catholicism, the religion of his mother, and political turmoil followed. James issued a decree known as the Declaration of Indulgence, which decreed that various public offices formerly open only to Anglicans, should thereafter be open to all persons. It was feared that the King would appoint large numbers of Roman Catholics to positions of power, and eventually transfer to them the control of the government. When the King commanded the bishops to proclaim the Declaration of Indulgence, seven of them refused to do so and were by the King's command imprisoned in the Tower of London. The people of London rioted, and the bishops were freed and carried in triumph through the streets of the city. Soon after, Parliament offered the crown to the King's daughter Mary and her husband William of Orange and James fled into exile.

William and Mary naturally began their reign by demanding oaths of allegiance from all persons holding public positions, including the bishops. Thomas Ken and others (known as the Non-Jurors -- the older meaning of "juror" is "one who takes an oath," hence "perjurer" as "one who swears falsely") refused to take the oath, on the grounds that they had sworn allegiance to James, and could not during his lifetime swear allegiance to another monarch without making such oaths a mockery. They were accordingly put out of office.

Today, he is best known for several hymns that he wrote, such as those beginning:

Awake my soul, and with the sun
thy daily course of duty run.
Cast off dull sloth, and joyful rise
to pay thy morning sacrifice.

and

All praise to thee, who safe hast kept
and hast refreshed me while I slept!
Grant, Lord, when I from death shall wake,
I may of endless life partake.

and

All praise to thee, my God, this night
for all the blessings of the light.
Keep me, oh keep me, King of Kings,
beneath Thine own almighty wings.

and

Praise God, from Whom all blessings flow.
Praise Him, all creatures here below.
Praise Him above, ye heavenly host.
Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.

Five Jesuit Victims of the Popish Plot

The Jesuits in Britain website gives some background to the Popish Plot, specifically how intra-Catholic conflict contributed to the anti-Jesuit, anti-Catholic conspiracy dreamed up by Titus Oates:

There were two separate forces behind the Popish Plot (known to some Catholics as the Presbyterian Plot). One was political. For many years the old Cromwellian Lord Shaftesbury and the puritan (Whig) faction had been stoking the fires of religious hatred against Catholics and France, in a long game to end absolute monarchy and once again to depose a king. Charles II openly favoured religious toleration of Catholics. This meant a significant minority in parliament always voted with the king. The Whigs therefore wanted to eliminate the Catholics in parliament. The Plot was constructed against the Catholics at court – the Queen, the Duke and Duchess of York, and their clergy, many of whom were Jesuits. The ultimate target, the King, exerted his energy to defend his Queen and his brother. He could not defend all the accused despite the clearly absurd nature of the accusations.

Non Jesuit Catholics were seeking an oath of allegiance to the King which could be accepted by Rome and allow them constitutional rights. Jesuits always blocked this, being unable to compromise their obedience to the pope. In this way they made an enemy of Dr. Sergeant, a secular Catholic priest – the secondary force which caught so many Jesuits in the plot. Early in the onset of hysteria Dr. Sergeant made false denunciations of Jesuits to the Privy Council which lent credence to the plotters. . . .

More on Father John Sergeant here, who seems to have been a contentious figure. This page on the Jesuits in Britain website includes his portrait.

On June 20, 1679, Fathers John Gavan, William Harcourt, Anthony Turner, Thomas Whitbread, and John Fenwick all suffered execution at Tyburn, but not without added drama:

Some of the first to be arrested were the Jesuits who had spurned Oates at St. Omer – William Ireland and Bl Thomas Whitbread who was English provincial. Fr Whitbread was tried in June 1679 alongside fellow Jesuits John Fenwick, John Gavan, William Harcourt and Anthony Turner. Fr Gavan, who was the spokesman, presented an eloquent defence. A brave group of Jesuit novices travelled from St. Omer to give evidence that Oates had been at St Omer's on crucial dates when he claimed to be in London witnessing Jesuit plotting. But the judges argued that as Catholic witnesses could receive a papal dispensation to lie on oath, they were not credible.

The five were hanged at Tyburn where the crowd stood in silence for an hour while each made a speech maintaining his innocence. On the scaffold they were offered the King’s pardon on condition they admit their guilt, but all refused.

Pope Pius XI beatified these five martyrs in 1929; St. Giles-in-the-Fields would be well-worth a visit on a pilgrimage to London, as they, and six other Popish Plot martyrs, are buried there. Perhaps they should be exhumed, however, and reburied at Stonyhurst, where they could receive more appropriate honors and devotion?

Samuel Pepys and the Popish Plot

Accusations of treason against Samuel Pepys were a side product of the Popish Plot: he was accused of being a Catholic (treason enough in England then) and of providing naval secrets to France. The two authors provide tremendous detail about Pepys' accuser, John Scott, the English justice system, the conspiracy against Pepys, and the defense Pepys is able to muster through his contacts and connections. The main connection against him, however, was that his mentor was Charles II's Catholic brother and heir, James, the Duke of York. The main thrust of the Popish Plot was to arrest, try, and execute Jesuit and other Catholic priests, primarily to harm the Jesuits, and Titus Oates took the lead as witness in that project.

The conspiracy against Samuel Pepys was led by John Scott, whose back story almost hijacks this book, as Long and Long trace his history, enumerate his crimes and scams, and detail his difficulties as a witness: he began to get confused about which lies he had told the Court. His animus against Pepys is part of the wider conspiracy against the Duke of York, as Parliament debated the Exclusion Act to keep the Catholic heir from the throne.

Long and Long dedicate a chapter to a Catholic layman who tried to mount the same kind of defense as Pepys, Richard Langhorne, who did have strong links to the Jesuit mission in England since he was their attorney, managing practical matters. Langhorne did not have the same connections Pepys had, however, and he was manifestly a Catholic, but he attempted throughout his trial to show that Titus Oates and William Bedloe were not reliable witnesses and could not have witnessed events as they said, for example, because they were somewhere else on certain dates. Langhorne tried to point out inconsistencies in their testimony but according to Long and Long, the court prevented many of those attempts. His witnesses were also roughed up and threatened.

This untold story has been thoroughly told but since the authors focus so much on the details of Pepys' efforts to make contacts to build his defense, including all the difficulties of conflicting interests, mail service, and diplomatic entanglements, when the case against him falls apart, the resolution is anti-climactic. Traitor to the Crown needed a summing up to identify the consequences of the Popish Plot, the inadequacies of the English judicial system, and what it means for a country and people when fear of the stranger (in this case, Catholics) overwhelms both the legislature and the judiciary--and how it can lead to accusations against the innocent and the unlikely. In a 2007 review in The Telegraph for example, Nicholas Shakespeare made the connections I wanted to see in the book:

For five impossibly happy years, I lived in Wiltshire in a converted Catholic chapel that Italian masons built in 1695 to house temporarily the relics of two early Christian martyrs, the curiously named saints, Primus and Secundus. Recent excavations have exposed a passage 150 yards long that possibly served as an escape route for harried priests who worshipped in what was my bedroom. As the father and son authors of this intriguing book remind us: "To be converted to Catholicism, to attend mass or to possess Catholic apparatus was illegal. Catholic priests were forbidden entry into England; any found within England could be executed."

We're always inventing dragons. In the 1960s, the Reds were under the bed. In the late 17th century, Papists were feared to be in the bed. "If the Pope gets his great toe in England," believed one MP, "all his body would follow." Catholics formed just five per cent of the population, but their hysterical persecution by a Protestant Whig Parliament has unsettling echoes of the Mexican witch-hunt depicted in Graham Greene's novel The Power and the Glory.

In the summer of 1679, there unfolded "the great Holocaust of the Plot", in J P Kenyon's phrase. The invention by Titus Oates - a braying, dish-faced homosexual ex-Jesuit - of a plan to kill Charles II and replace him with his Catholic brother the Duke of York, ignited "a powder-keg of suspicion and anxiety".

Priests were rumoured to be seen tossing fire-bombs through windows to start another Fire of London. Tracts warned of "troops of papists ravishing your wives and daughters, dashing your little children's brains out against the walls". No one proved more adept at whipping up the London mob than the sour, thin-lipped Earl of Shaftesbury. In one parade, a wax pope attended by devils and nuns was set on fire. "For added realism the effigy was filled with cats, which screeched as the flames took hold."

A survey of several Pepys related websites reveals that this untold story now told has not had much influence on summaries of his biography. This episode is usually dismissed as a brief imprisonment in the Tower of London on charges of giving naval secrets to the French--without any connection to the Popish Plot or anti-Catholicism in English history.

The 23rd of April: St. George, the Garter and King Charles II

Today is the Feast of St. George, the martyr. It's also the anniversary date of the Order of the Garter (founded in 1348) and of the coronation of Charles II in 1661.

More on St. George:

Pictures of St. George usually show him killing a dragon to rescue a beautiful lady. The dragon stands for wickedness. The lady stands for God's holy truth. St. George was a brave martyr who was victorious over the devil.

He was a soldier in the army of the Roman Emperor Diocletian, and he was one of the Emperor's favorite soldiers. Now Diocletian was a pagan and a bitter enemy to the Christians. He put to death every Christian he could find. George was a brave Christian, a real soldier of Christ. Without fear, he went to the Emperor and sternly scolded him for being so cruel. Then he gave up his position in the Roman army. For this he was tortured in many terrible ways and finally beheaded.

So boldly daring and so cheerful was St. George in declaring his Faith and in dying for it that Christians felt courage when they heard about it. Many songs and poems were written about this martyr. Soldiers, especially, have always been devoted to him.
Some information about the Garter:

The Order of the Garter is the most senior and the oldest British Order of Chivalry and was founded by Edward III in 1348.

The Order, consisting of the King and twenty-five knights, honours those who have held public office, who have contributed in a particular way to national life or who have served the Sovereign personally.

The patron saint of the Order is St George (patron saint of soldiers and also of England) and the spiritual home of the Order is St George's Chapel, Windsor.

Here's a description of the Coronation by Samuel Pepys.

Four English poets died on this day:

Henry Vaughan, the Welsh metaphysical poet, 1695;

William Shakespeare in 1616 (this date is traditionally observed as his birthday too, based upon the record of his baptism);

William Wordsworth, the Romantic poet, 1880; and

Rupert Brooke, the WWI poet who did of sepsis in Greece, 1915.

Brooke's poem, "The Soldier" seems to sum up the patriotism of St. George's Day for England:

If I should die, think only this of me:
That there’s some corner of a foreign field
That is for ever England. There shall be
In that rich earth a richer dust concealed;
A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware,
Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam;
A body of England’s, breathing English air,
Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home.

And think, this heart, all evil shed away,
A pulse in the eternal mind, no less
Gives somewhere back the thoughts by England given;
Her sights and sounds; dreams happy as her day;
And laughter, learnt of friends; and gentleness,
In hearts at peace, under an English heaven.

The Fire of London and the Gregorian Calendar

The Great Fire of London began on September 2 in Pudding Lane 348 years ago today (1666) and would burn until September 5, destroying 13,200 houses, 87 parish churches, and many government buildings. King Charles II and his brother James, the Duke of York worked hard to direct fire-fighting efforts, but the fire's penultimate day, Tuesday, September 4th was the day of greatest destruction, as St. Paul's Cathedral caught fire and was ruined that day. This was the great medieval, Gothic cathedral built between 1089 and 1314, containing wondrous stained glass and with a tall spire. It had of course fallen into disrepair, having been damaged by Puritan forces during the Civil War.

Its destruction gave Sir Christopher Wren the opportunity to design and build a new Anglican Cathedral influenced by the design of St. Peter's in Rome and Val-de-Grace in Paris, along with 50 other Anglican churches.

In the aftermath of the fire, someone had to be blamed, and Catholics were held responsible. A French watchmaker did claim responsibility (as an agent of the Pope) but after he was hung at Tyburn, authorities found out he had arrived in London two days after the fire started. Too late!

Charles II commissioned The Monument to the Great Fire of London, which Robert Hooke, not Sir Christopher Wren, designed, and it was built between 1671 and 1677. In 1681, in the midst of the Popish Plot, words were added to the Monument to reflect fear of Catholics and blame them for the Great Fire:

'Here by ye permission of heaven, hell broke loose upon this protestant city from the malicious hearts of barbarous papists, by hand of their agent Hubert, who confessed, and on ye ruines of this place declared the fact for which he was hanged (vizt) that here began that dredfull fire, which is described and perpetuated on and by the neighbouring pillar. Erected Anno 1681 in the Majoraltie of Sr Patience Ward Kt.’

In his Moral Essays, written in 1733-1734 (Epistle iii, line 339) Alexander Pope noted of those words:

Where London's column, pointing at the skies,
Like a tall bully, lifts the head, and lies.

Because, remember, authorities already knew that Hubert could not have started the Great Fire--so they inscribed a lie. During the reign of James II, the anti-Catholic words were removed; with the Dutch invasion and coup d'etat of the Glorious Revolution they were restored and remained there until 1830 after Catholic Emancipation.

It was also on September 2 in 1752 that England finally caught up with the times, adopting the Gregorian calendar. One reason it took so long (Pope Gregory XIII introduced the reformed calendar in 1582, correcting errors in the calculation of Easter presented by the old Julian Calendar) was indeed the source of the correction: the Papacy and the Catholic Church. History Today has an article in its archives about England finally admitting that Rome could be right about something--but it's behind the pay wall:

In 1750 England and her empire, including the American colonies, still adhered to the old Julian calendar, which was now eleven days ahead of the Gregorian calendar, introduced in 1582 by Pope Gregory XIII and in use in most of Europe.

Attempts in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries to adopt the new calendar had broken on the rock of the Church of England, which denounced it as popish. The prime mover in changing the situation was George Parker, second Earl of Macclesfield, a keen astronomer and a Fellow of the Royal Society. He was assisted in his calculations by his friend James Bradley, the astronomer royal, and he gained the influential support of Philip Dormer Stanhope, the sophisticated fourth Earl of Chesterfield (of letters to his son fame), who squared it with Henry Pelham’s initially reluctant government.

It's just so sad and unjust when prejudice and bigotry influence our acceptance of facts: Catholics did not set fire to the city of London, there was no Popish Plot, and the Julian Calendar needed to be reformed.

Note that some think the Gregorian calendar needs to be replaced: here's some analysis of the perceived problems and proposed solutions.

The Second Howard Martyr on the Block

Blessed William Howard, who was St. Philip Howard's grandson, was beheaded on December 29, 1680 on Tower Hill as a result of the Popish Plot; he had been tried in the House of Lords and found guilty. He protested his innocence throughout the trial and on the scaffold:

Next he lift up his hands, standing up, and said. "I beseech Thee, God, not to avenge my innocent blood upon any man in the Whole kingdom ; no, not against those who by their perjuries have brought me here. For I profess before Almighty God that I never combined against the King's life, nor any body else, but whatever I did was only to procure liberty for the Romish religion. And, as for the Duke of York, I do here declare, upon my Salvation, I know of no design that he ever had against the King, but hath ever behaved himself, for ought I know, as a loving, loyal brother ought to do.

So now, upon my Salvation, I have said true all that I have said. And I pray God to have mercy upon my soul." . . .

After which he went round the scaffold and spake to the multitude thus, "I pray God, bless the King, and bless you all, especially the King's loyal subjects (such as I am myself) for I know you have a good and gracious King as ever reigned. God forgive me my sins, I forgive all the world, even those fellows that brought me here, and pray God to send them no worse punishment than to repent and tell the truth. And so, God bless you all."

And some replyed, "God have mercy upon your soul." Then a minister applyed himself, and said, "Sir; you did disown the indulgences of the Romish Church."

To which he answered, with a great passion.

" Sir ; what have you to do with my religion? Pray do not trouble me. However, I do say that the Church of Rome allows no indulgences for murder, lying, &c., and whatever I have said is true. What need you trouble yourself? "

Min. "Have you received no absolution?"

Answ. "I have received none at all. Sir, trouble not yourself, nor me."

Min. "You said that you never saw those witnesses."

Answ. "I never saw any of them but Dugdale, and that was at a time when I spoke to him about a footboy, or a foot match."

Then his man took off his periwig and upper coat, and with a pair of sizers (sic) cut off the collar of his masters shirt, after which, W.S. lyes down in a white satin waistcoat, a quilted sky-coloured silk cap, with lace turn 'd up, &c.

He gave his watch to a gentleman, crucifix to his page, his staff and paper to another.

Having fitted his neck to the block, rise up upon his knees and prayed to himself, then takes the block and embraced it, then 'his servants cut off more of the linen, in all which time he sent up short prayers, that Christ would receive his spirit. Then lying down and praying upon the block, the sheriff Cornish askt' of the headsman, in kindness to W.S., if he had given him any sign. He answered "No." Whereupon W.S. rose up in a consternation and asked what they wanted. To which it was answered, "What sign will you give, Sir?"

Answ. "No sign at all. Take your own time. God's will be done."

Whereupon the executioner said, " I hope you forgive me?"

He made answer, "I do." Then lying down again, two of his servants came with a piece of black silk to receive the head. Then the headsman took the Axe in 'his hand, and after some pause gave the blow, Which was cleverly done, save the cutting off a little skin, which was cut off immediately with a knife. 

Pope Pius XI beatified William Howard in 1929.

Two Royal Consorts Born on November 25

Charles I's Queen Consort, Henrietta Maria, was born on November 25, 1609, and Catherine of Braganza, Charles II's Queen Consort was born on the same date in 1638. Their married lives could not be more different: Charles I was a faithful and loving husband; his son Charles II was an impossibly unfaithful spouse. Nevertheless, their careers as consorts were both marked by the fact that they were Catholic princesses married to Anglican monarchs, facing conflict with Parliament because of their religion.

Henrietta Maria was the sister of the most Catholic King of France, Louis XIII and had been sent to England with a mission to convert her Anglican husband. She was not crowned Queen of England because she could not receive Holy Communion in the Church of England. At first her arranged marriage to Charles I was as unhappy as one could be when the husband had a male favorite who opposed her possible influence on the young monarch. But once Buckingham was assassinated, Charles and Henrietta Maria grew to love each other.

As Charles became so uxurious, there were some who feared that he would become a Catholic just to please his wife and the mother of their growing brood. Conversions at Court and the very presence of Catholic priest and sacraments at Court were unsettling to the Puritans in Parliament. She was attractive and gathered Catholics and converts around her. Henrietta Maria honored the Catholic martyrs of the past two reigns, processing to Tyburn Tree and praying there. She also worked to protect Catholic priests during her husband's reign, pleading for their release.

When the Civil War began, Charles and his queen set up court in Oxford. She used the chapel at Merton College for Mass. Eventually Henrietta Maria fled England, home to France after a stop in the Netherlands, because she was attainted a traitor by Parliament. She worked hard to raise funds for her husband's cause and was bitterly grieved by his capture and execution.

Upon the Restoration of the Monarchy in the person of her son Charles II she returned to England for a time but then came back home to France, always wearing mourning for her husband. Henrietta Maria died in France on September 9, 1669; she had been given a dose of opiates and did not revive. She was 60 years old and had been a widow for 20 years.

More about Henrietta Maria here, especially about her efforts to support her husband during the English Civil War.

Charles II married a Catholic wife who brought with her dowry the port cities of Tangier and Bombay. She did not speak English when she and Charles married in 1662. Catherine had to accept Charles' rampant infidelity and also endured several miscarriages. Nevertheless, he would not contemplate divorcing her even during the Exclusion Crisis when Parliament urged him to do so in order to have a legitimate Protestant heir to succeed him rather than James, the Catholic Duke of York. Charles always took her side in any conflict with a mistress regarding her position at Court, although never to the point of actually practicing fidelity. While she did not have any surviving children, his mistresses bore his illegitimate children, whom Charles acknowledged and supported.

He definitely defended her against allegations during the infamous faux Popish Plot incident, when Parliament wanted her banished.

Along with James, the Duke of York, Catherine hoped for Charles's conversion to Catholicism on his deathbed. Father John Huddleston, who had helped him escape Scotland in 1650, did receive him and Charles died a repentant Catholic, hopefully.

After Charles died in 1685, Catherine remained at Court; with the fall of James II in 1688 and the invasion and coup by William and Mary of Orange, however, she returned to Portugal in 1692. She died in Lisbon on December 31, 1705 and is buried in the great Jeronimos Monastery in Lisbon. More about Catherine here.

The Seventeenth Century Cardinal Protector of England

According to the Catholic Encylopedia, Philip Cardinal Howard was a: 

Dominican and cardinal, commonly called the "Cardinal of Norfolk"; born at Arundel House, London, 21 September, 1629; died at Rome, 17 June, 1694. He was the third son of Henry Frederick Howard, afterwards Earl of Arundel and Surrey and head of the House of Norfolk (the dukedom of Norfolk being forfeited, though restored in 1660). The mother of Philip was Elizabeth, daughter of the Duke of Lennox; he was thus allied to the reigning sovereign of England. At the age of sixteen he joined the Dominican Order in Italy, was professed at Rome, 1646, and took the name of Thomas in religion. Residing at Naples for his studies, he was chosen to deliver a Latin address to the general chapter of his order in Rome. He justified the choice delivering a fervent address on the conversion of England, which led to a decree being passed by the chapter, urging provincials and priors to do all they could to receive English, Irish, and Scotch novices into the order, with a view to its preservation in those countries. He was thenceforth wholly devoted to the conversion of England and to the progress of his order in that country. He was ordained priest in 1652, and with the sanction of his superiors set himself to carry out the ideas he had matured in his mind. He founded the priory of Bornhem in Flanders, with a college for English youths attached to it, and was himself the first prior and novice master. He also founded at Vilvorde a convent of nuns of the Second Order of St. Dominic, now at Carisbrooke.

In the reign of Charles II Father Howard was made grand almoner to Queen Catherine of Braganza. He resided at St. James's Palace, with a salary of 500 pounds a year, and had a position of influence at Court. An outbreak of Puritan violence compelling him to leave England, he resumed his position as prior at Bornhem. He was made cardinal in 1675, by Pope Clement X, being assigned the title of S. Cecilia trans Tiberim, exchanged later for the Dominican church of S. Maria supra Minervam. He now took up his residence at Rome and entered into the service of the Universal Church, especially watching over the interests of the Catholic faith in England.

In 1672 he was nominated by the Holy See as Vicar Apostolic of England with a see in partibus, but the appointment, owing to the opposition of the "English Chapter" to his being a vicar Apostolic, and the insistence that he should be a bishop with ordinary jurisdiction, was not confirmed. He was to have been Bishop of Helenopolis. In 1679 he was made Protector of England and Scotland. At his instance the Feast of St. Edward the Confessor was extended to the whole Church. He rebuilt the English College in Rome, and revised the rules of Douai College.

Cardinal Howard cooperated later with James II in the increase of vicars Apostolic in England from one to four, an arrangement which lasted till 1840, when the number was increased to eight by Gregory XVI. Burnet shows in his "History" that Cardinal Howard regretted the steps which led to the crisis in the reign of James II and which his counsels sought to avert. The cardinal's plans were thwarted and the ill-starred mission of the Earl of Castlemaine to Rome showed the rise of another spirit which he did not share. When the crisis he foresaw came, he had the consolation at least of knowing that his foundation at Bornhem was beyond the grasp of the new persecutors.

Cardinal Howard assisted at three conclaves, for the election of Innocent XI in 1676, Alexander VIII in 1689, and Innocent XII in 1691. He died in the twentieth year of his cardinalate, at the age of 64, and was buried in his titular church of S. Maria supra Minervam at Rome.His foundations in Flanders flourished till the French Revolution, when they were despoiled to a great extent, and were eventually transferred to England. The English Dominican Province looks to him as its father and restorer, and the American Province also regards him to a great extent in the same light. After his death the Master General, Father Antoninus Cloche, addressed a letter to the whole order, lamenting the loss of one who had done so great a work for the English Church and the order.

As the website for the Dominican order in England notes, his efforts were crucial to re-establish community life for those English men and women following their call to vocation in the religious life. Cardinal Howard was the third son of Henry Howard, the 22nd Earl of Arundel, son of Thomas Howard, the 21st Earl of Arundell and the son of St. Philip Howard, the 20th Earl of Arundel. His eldest brother, Thomas Howard, although he did succeed as the 5th Duke of Norfolk, was mentally deficient, and the middle brother, Henry Howard, fulfilled the elder's duties at Earl Marshall, succeeding him as the 6th Duke of Norfolk in 1677. It's sad to note that Henry Howard voted in the House of Lords for the conviction of his uncle William Howard, the 1st Viscount Stafford (along with almost all of the other Howards) in the charge of treason brought upon him by the Popish Plot--especially when Henry Howard had been forced into exile by the Test Acts and been charged with recusancy himself. Only his son, also named Henry, voted for the Viscount's innocence.

Lord Rochester, RIP (and the Monkey?)

John Wilmot, the 2nd Earl of Rochester, Restoration poet, satirist, courtier, and patron of the arts, died on July 26, 1680. According to the wikipedia article on his life, career, and reputation, at Court he "was renowned for drunkenness, vivacious conversation, and "extravagant frolics" as part of the Merry Gang (as Andrew Marvell described them)." Charles II tolerated his bad behavior and made him a Gentleman of the Bedchamber and forgave his attempted elopement (abduction) of a rich heiress after only three weeks in the Tower of London.

His satires and attacks on the poets he sometimes supported and on Charles II led him into great trouble at Court, however and he did not stay in Charles's good graces long. He died at the young age of 33, and might have had a deathbed conversion, renouncing his wide life of debauchery and sin when Gilbert Burnet (before he became Bishop of Salisbury) visited him as his mother's insistence.

Graham Greene wrote a biography of Lord Rochester, and I remember reading it and being quite thrilled with how wicked Lord Rochester was! Walter Clemons reviewed Greene's book in 1974 for The New York Times and explained the title:

In the best known portrait of John Wilmot, Second Earl of Rochester, a pet monkey proffers a tattered page ripped from one of his master's books. The Earl, resplendent in silks, coolly awards the beast a laurel crown. "Were I...," Rochester wrote, "a spirit free, to choose for my own share/ what sort of flesh and blood I pleas'd to wear,/ I'd be a dog, a monkey or a bear,/ Or any thing but that vain animal/ Who is so proud of being rational."

For more than two centuries Rochester's notoriety as the wildest of "the merry gang" of wits who converged at Charles II's court during the 1660's overshadowed his reputation as a poet. The poetry- skeptical, parodistic, obscene and scathing- was a rediscovery of the 1920's, though John Hayward's 1926 Nonesuch edition escaped prosecution only by being limited to 1,050 copies. A scholarly biography by Vivian de Sola Pinto (1935; revised as "Enthusiast in Wit," 1962) usefully related Rochester's libertinism to Hobbesian materialism- specifically to Hobbes's doctrine that sensory experience was the only philosophical reality. Pinto pitched his claims high: "If Milton is the great poet of belief in the 17th century, Rochester is the great poet of unbelief." . . .

Rochester told the historian Gibert Burnet that "for five years together he was continually drunk; not all the while under the visible effect of it." He was repeatedly banished- and as often recalled- by the King he scurrilously lampooned. Drink made him "extravagantly pleasant"; it also led to disgraces like the smashing of the royal sundial and the brawl at Epsom in which his friend Mr. Downes was killed. Greene plausibly links the most famous of Rochester's masquerades to the aftermath of the Epsom affray: he vanished from London and a mysterious Dr. Alexander Bendo- astrologer, diviner of dreams, dispenser of beauty aids and cures for women's diseases- set up shop on Tower Hill. "Dr. Bendo's" advertisement is one of the most dazzling virtuoso pieces of 17th-century prose. In its impromptu rush of quackery and Biblical cadences, its promises of marvels and its teasing challenge to distinguish the counterfeit from the real. Greene astutely notes "the cracks in the universe of Hobbes, the disturbing doubts in his disbelief, which may have been in Rochester's mind even in the midst of his masquerade, so riddled is the broadsheet with half truths."

Dating his poems is a snare, but Rochester's Songs and his best satires- "A Ramble in St. James's Park," the "Satyr Against Reason and Mankind," "A Letter from Artemisia in the Town to Chloe in the Country," "The Maim'd Debauchee"- all seem to have been written before he turned 29. Thereafter "an embittered and thoughtful man who would die in 1680 of old age at 33," he seldom appeared at court. In his last year he debated theology with the Anglican Gilbert Burnet and underwent a religious conversion, the authenticity of which was impugned when Burnet published his account of it but which Greene, like Vivian de Sola Pinto, believes to have been genuine. "The hand of God touched him," Burnet wrote- "but," Greene characteristically adds, "it did not touch him through the rational arguments of a cleric. If God appeared at the end, it was the sudden secret appearance of a thief... without reason, an act of grace."

The 1976 Penguin edition of Greene's life of Rochester I possess is wonderfully well illustrated with four color portraits, line drawings and frontispieces. Greene demonstrates a great deal of sympathy for this drunken, lustful man, and while Rochester might be "the great poet of unbelief" the topic of religion and faith--Catholic, Puritan, and Anglican--comes up often in the pages.

Titus Oates, RIP, July 13, 1705

Titus Oates died in 1705 on July 13, after marrying and becoming a Baptist minister (and then being defrocked); relatively obscure and with his fame forgotten--but still receiving a pension from the British government. BBC History Magazine selected Titus Oates as the Worst Briton of the 17th century and the third worst Briton in last one thousand years in 2006.

With the so-called Popish Plot, Oates implicated and caused the deaths of 15 Catholic priests and laity who were certainly not guilty of any plot to kill King Charles II--since there was no plot. Before the horror of those three years, however, Titus Oates also indicated an inability to decide which Church he belonged to, a propensity to immorality, and a previous charge of perjury. Although he failed at two colleges at the University of Cambridge, he was ordained in the Church of England and served in a parish and as chaplain on a ship, during which service he was accused of sodomy.

After joining the household of the Catholic Duke of Norfolk as a chaplain to the Anglicans in that household, he became a Catholic in 1677. At the same time, however, he was writing anti-Catholic pamphlets.

He studied for a time with the Jesuits in the seminary at Valladolid in Spain, later claiming just to have been there as a spy--he was indeed kicked out in 1678. By September of that same year, Oates was testifying to the King's Council about the Jesuit's plot to murder the Anglican Charles so that Charles' brother James, the Catholic Duke of York could succeed him.

Charles soon figured out that Oates was making some things up, at least, when he caught him in several lies and inaccuracies. He had Oates arrested, but Parliament forced his release. Oates was soon in posh apartments with a nice annual stipend. After a time, however, Judge William Scroggs, who had been subjecting the Catholic defendants to horrible verbal abuse in addition to sentencing them to death, began to turn his scorn upon those testifying against them, and declared the midwife Elizabeth Cellier and Lord Castlemaine, the husband of one of Charles II's mistresses, Barbara, innocent in their trials. In Cellier's trial, he sentenced her accuser to prison for perjury.

Finally, in 1681, Oates was disgraced--kicked out of his nice pad, charged and convicted of sedition, and put in prison. When the Duke of York did succeed his brother, James II had Oates retried, convicted of perjury and sentenced to annual pillory, as pictured above.

During the reign of William and Mary Oates was pardoned and granted another pension.

A Benedictine Popish Plot Victim: Blessed Thomas Pickering

Blessed Thomas Pickering was a Benedictine lay brother and martyr caught up in Titus Oates' duplicitous plot; a member of an old Westmoreland family, b. c. 1621; executed at Tyburn, 9 May, 1679. He was sent to the Benedictine monastery of St. Gregory at Douai, where he took vows as a lay brother in 1660. In 1665 he was sent to London, where, as steward or procurator to the little community of Benedictines who served Queen Catherine of Braganza's chapel royal, he became known personally to the queen and Charles II; and when in 1675, urged by the parliament, Charles issued a proclamation ordering the Benedictines to leave England within a fixed time, Pickering was allowed to remain, probably on the ground that he was not a priest.

In 1678 came the pretended revelations of Titus Oates, and Pickering was accused of conspiring to murder the king. No evidence except Oates's word was produced and Pickering's innocence was so obvious that the queen publicly announced her belief in him, but the jury found him guilty, and with two others he was condemned to be hanged, drawn, and quartered. The king was divided between the wish to save the innocent men and fear of the popular clamour, which loudly demanded the death of Oates's victims, and twice within a month the three prisoners were ordered for execution and then reprieved. At length Charles remitted the execution of the other two, hoping that this would satisfy the people and save Pickering from his fate. The contrary took place, however, and 26 April, 1679, the House of Commons petitioned for Pickering's execution. Charles yielded and the long-deferred sentence was carried out on the ninth of May. A small piece of cloth stained with his blood is preserved among the relics at Downside Abbey.

The British Museum has a page dedicated to the deck of the Popish/Oates Plot playing cards, one of which depicted Brother Thomas Pickering's fictitious attempt on Charles II's life--and so does the V&A, providing this background:

Object Type
These playing cards are engravings. The images were made by cutting lines into the surface of a flat piece of metal, inking the plate and then transferring the ink held in the lines onto a sheet of paper. Francis Barlow's original drawings for the engravings are in the British Museum, London.

Subject
The Popish Plot was a fictitious Catholic conspiracy to kill Charles II that the Reverend Titus Oates claimed to have uncovered in 1678.The pictures on these cards tell the story of the plot and show the dire penalties meted out to alleged Roman Catholic enemies of the state. Sets of playing cards depicting historical events were very popular in the last quarter of the 17th century. There are other political packs from the time of the Popish Plot depicting 'All the Popish Plots' and the Rye House Plot, a conspiracy to assassinate Charles II and his brother, James, Duke of York.

Historical Context
There was great fear in Britain at the time of Catholic intrigue and a very real apprehension that on the death of Charles his Roman Catholic brother, James, would be placed on the throne. Prints were used to fuel public anxiety, and playing cards were another ideal means of spreading political propaganda at a low cost. Many packs were designed and engraved by leading artists of the day.

Episode Nine of the The English Reformation Today

Today on "The English Reformation Today" on Radio Maria US, I'll cover lots of history by focusing on the religious aspects of the English Civil War, the execution of King Charles I, Interregnum period (when Parliament and Oliver Cromwell ruled), and the Popish Plot during the reign of Charles II--we'll see how far I get in the hour! The plan I submitted to Radio Maria included this summary for today's episode:

Highlight the religious conflict in England leading to the English Civil War; describe the Puritan Experiment in government, including its attack on Christmas. Describe the great religious crisis of the Popish Plot during the reign of the restored Stuart monarch, Charles II--recount the injustice of the trials of the last great wave of Catholic martyrs from 1679 to 1681. Continue the story of Maryland, describing Calvert's heirs and their efforts to inculcate religious tolerance and freedom of religion in their colony--the changing fortunes of Catholics in the Maryland colony during the the Civil War and Restoration.

As I commented, the Stuart dynasty coming to England seemed more stable--unlike Elizabeth I, with no family heir (not even a cousin left, after she got rid of Mary, Queen of Scots and her Grey cousins, Nine-Day-Jane's sister Mary and Katherine)--James I of England had two sons in case the eldest died (and he did) and Charles I had more than two prepared to succeed him. But the Stuart monarchy endured two overthrows--the English Civil War toppled Charles I from the throne and his head from his neck, while the Glorious Revolution of 1688 deposed his son James II and left his son and grandsons to be Pretenders.

Why? I don't think we can ignore how religious division and dissent contributed to this dynasty's troubles, whatever the personal or regal failings of its monarchs--the Tudor model of asserting supremacy and uniformity had left the country divided: Anglican, Puritan, and Catholic. The Catholic opposition, as we know well from the past few episodes, had been driven underground, but a consistent, muted danger to the State. The Puritan opposition remained a force above ground with influence in both Church and State, and it would prove to be the real source of danger to the Stuarts--at least to Charles I and Charles II (in the latter case, when Scotland backed his succession to his father). As I explain in this article, Stuart devotion to the Protestant cause was always suspect until after the Glorious Revolution, as the first four Stuarts seem to "flirt" with Catholicism, with Catholic wives and catholic (lower case) sympathies:

From the beginning of the Stuart dynasty in England, there seemed to be uncertainty about how loyal the kings from James I to James II were to the Church of England and to Protestantism.

At the beginning of his reign, James I wanted to hold an ecumenical council with the Pope! He also negotiated a treaty with Spain for his son and heir Charles to marry the Infanta. That treaty, like the one eventually signed when Charles married Henrietta Maria of France, sister of King Louis XIII, allowed the foreign bride to remain a Catholic, to have priests at Court as her chaplains and confessors, and to have a chapel in which to worship-and even promised leniency to Catholics. On the other hand, Parliament did not think that James I did enough to support his own son-in-law, the Elector of the Palatinate in Bohemia, when he lost the Battle of the White Mountain, defeated by Catholic forces in 1620. The Catholicism of James' wife, Queen Anne, didn't help, although they became estranged soon after he succeeded to the throne of England. She did not receive Anglican communion at their coronation ceremony, however, and that was pointed.

Charles I indeed allowed his wife that freedom and members of his Court were often concerned that his uxoriousness might lead him to become Catholic. Henrietta Maria was a devout Catholic, processing to Tyburn Tree to honor the Elizabethan and Jamesian martyrs, refurbishing her chapel in the latest baroque style, and attracting converts. The presence of the Capuchin friars and the celebration of Catholic Mass shocked and disturbed Anglican courtiers. When Parliament was not in session, Charles indeed showed leniency to Catholic priests and Henrietta Maria often pled for clemency. Parliament indicted her for treason during the Civil War and she fled the country for exile in France. The religious conflict between Puritans in Parliament and Charles I's arminian High Church Anglicanism contributed to the causes of the Civil War and the execution of the the king in 1649 after he lost.

Charles II returned to England in 1660 in the security of the re-established Church of England, the Book of Common Prayer, the Authorized Version of the Bible, and the monarchy. He married a Catholic princess, however, Catherine of Braganza, and refused to divorce her even though she bore him no sons. He treated her as well as possible considering his rampant infidelity, maintaining both Protestant and Catholic mistresses-thus the occasion when Nell Gwynn called out to the crowds jostling her carriage, "Good people, I am the Protestant whore!" If Charles's cabinet had known what he had agreed on May 26 in 1670, they would have been stunned. Although they did not know about the secret contents in the Treaty of Dover (no one did until the 19th century), they knew that Charles attempted to extend freedom from the penal laws to Catholics in his Declaration of Indulgence in 1672. He had to back away from that move when Parliament rejected his proclamation, and for a time seemed to turn more toward Protestant interests on the Continent, allying with William of Orange against the French. Imagine the surprise when they discovered that he had converted on his deathbed, encouraged by his Catholic brother. . . . (You may read the rest here)

I welcome all listeners of Radio Maria US to my blog, whether you're listening on one of their radio stations or on line or through one of their apps. I invite you to call in with questions and comments toll-free at 866-333-MARY(6279). Just a reminder, too, that podcasts of previous episodes of The English Reformation Today are available on the Radio Maria US website. Next week: The Long Eighteenth Century for Catholics from the Glorious Revolution of 1688, the Jacobite Pretenders, to the first Catholic Relief Acts!