sm
long before the Reformation had been a Protestant Catholicism, always in
revolt against Roman claims, always preserving its insularity. It was
idle to question the Catholic intentions of a priesthood that could
produce within a century of the Reformation such prelates as Andrews and
Ken. It was ridiculous at the prompting of the party in the ascendancy
at Westminster to procure a Papal decision against English Orders when
two hundred and fifty years ago there was a cardinal's hat waiting for
Laud if he would leave the Church of England. And what about Paul IV and
Elizabeth? Was he not willing to recognize English Orders if she would
recognize his headship of Christendom?

But these were controversial arguments, and as Mark walked along through
the pleasant vale of Wield with the Cotswold hills rising taller before
him at every mile he apprehended that his adhesion to the English Church
had been secured by the natural scene rather than by argument.
Nevertheless, it was interesting to speculate why Romanism had not made
more progress in England, why even now with a hierarchy and with such a
distinguished line of converts beginning with Newman it remained so
completely out of touch with the national life of the country. While the
Romans converted one soul to Catholicism, the inheritors of the Oxford
Movement were converting twenty. Catholicism must be accounted a
disposition of mind, an attitude toward life that did not necessarily
imply all that was implied by Roman Catholicism. What was the secret of
the Roman failure? Everywhere else in the world Roman Catholicism had
known how to adapt itself to national needs; only in England did it
remain exotic. It was like an Anglo-Indian magnate who returns to find
himself of no importance in his native land, and who but for the flavour
of his curries and perhaps a black servant or two would be utterly
inconspicuous. He tries to fit in with the new conditions of his
readopted country, but he remains an exotic and is regarded by his
neighbours as one to whom the lesson must be taught that he is no
longer of importance. What had been the cause of this breach in the
Roman Catholic tradition, this curious incompetency, this Anglo-Indian
conservatism and pretentiousness? Perhaps it had begun when in the
seventeenth century the propagation of Roman Catholicism in England was
handed over to the Jesuits, who mismanaged the country hopelessly. By
the time Rome had perceived that the con