the Christian
world. He knows that heretical depravity and all other miseries can only
end when this woman is chastised. Reverence for his Holiness and love
for my afflicted country force me to speak. I submit to his most holy
judgment myself and my advice.'

The most ardent Catholic apologist will hardly maintain, in the face of
this document, that the English Jesuits and seminary priests were the
innocent missionaries of religion which the modern enemies of
Elizabeth's Government describe them. Father Parsons, the writer of it,
was himself the leader and director of the Jesuit invasion, and cannot
be supposed to have misrepresented the purpose for which they had been
sent over. The point of special interest is the account which he gives
of the state of parties and general feeling in the English people. Was
there that wide disposition to welcome an invading army in so large a
majority of the nation? The question is supposed to have been
triumphantly answered three years later, when it is asserted that the
difference of creed was forgotten, and Catholics and Protestants fought
side by side for the liberties of England. But, in the first place, the
circumstances were changed. The Queen of Scots no longer lived, and the
success of the Armada implied a foreign sovereign. But, next, the
experiment was not tried. The battle was fought at sea, by a fleet
four-fifths of which was composed of Protestant adventurers, fitted out
and manned by those zealous Puritans whose fidelity to the Queen Parsons
himself admitted. Lord Howard may have been an Anglo-Catholic; Roman
Catholic he never was; but he and his brother were the only loyalists in
the House of Howard. Arundel and the rest of his kindred were all that
Parsons claimed for them. How the country levies would have behaved had
Parma landed is still uncertain. It is likely that if the Spanish army
had gained a first success, there might have been some who would have
behaved as Sir William Stanley did. It is observable that Parsons
mentions Leicester and Huntingdon as the only powerful peers on whom the
Queen could rely, and Leicester, otherwise the unfittest man in her
dominions, she chose to command her land army.

The Duke of Alva and his master Philip, both of them distrusted
political priests. Political priests, they said, did not understand the
facts of things. Theological enthusiasm made them credulous of what they
wished. But Father Parsons's estimate is confirmed in al