The troubles of our Catholic fore-fathers related by themselves — Second Series

Preface

To SIR THOMAS DUFFUS HARDY, Deputy Keeper of the Public Records, to the Reverend Father Purbrick, Rector of Stonyhurst, and to the Reverend Father O'Callaghan. Rector of the English College at Rome, I am indebted for the use of valuable manuscripts that form the staple of the contents of this volume. It is a pleasant duty to thank them in this place. I have to offer my grateful thanks to other friends also for much kind assistance. But I owe an especial debt of gratitude for their patience to those who have entrusted to me documents for which I have not been able to find place in this Second Series. I trust to their forbearance, till in the midst of conflicting occupations I can manage to find time to prepare the Third Series for the press.

William Weston and Anthony Tyrrell were thrown about the same time into the midst of the labours and dangers of the English mission, when the persecution under Elizabeth was at its hottest. Their conduct, when the}' fell into the hands of the persecutors, presents a remarkable and instructive contrast. The more important vi Preface.

and more interesting portions of their lives, and especially their experience of imprisonment, were written by themselves. They were brought into personal contact both while at liberty and in prison ; and their narratives thus curiously interlace the one with the other, and mutually support and illustrate one another. This is the more satisfactory as the two autobiographies are entirely independent, and it is only by a happy accident that they now see the light together. The original manuscript of the one is preserved at Stonyhurst ; while the other, which was prepared for the press by the famous Father Robert Persons, is in the Archives of the Venerable English College at Rome. I hope that their publication may be found to be a useful contribution to the materials of history.

The present volume is considerably larger than its predecessor, and I have therefore been more sparing than I could have wished in the use of State Papers, especially in illustration of Father Persons' narrative of Tyrrell's Fall. I regret that when I sent the Chapter on the Bellamy family to press, I had for the moment forgotten an article by Mr. Simpson in the Rambler, by the help of which I could have made that portion of my book more complete.

My object throughout is to let our ancestors speak for themselves. For this reason I have always preferred to give a document in full rather than to state its substance in my own words. Both Father Weston's autobiography and Father Persons' narrative are complete. The book would perhaps

Preface. vii

have gained in some respects, if I had curtailed them ; but on the whole I have considered it better to give them in their integrity. Besides, Father Persons has already used the pruning-knife to Tyrrell's prolix story, and my duty has been to add rather than to take away.

There is but one further remark with which I need detain the reader. The First Series was received with such kindness by the literary journals, that I feel tempted to break through the etiquette which seems to require that authors and editors should receive in silence the criticisms passed upon them. My only temptation would be to return thanks for much unmerited praise, and to acquiesce in the justice of the corrections that have been suggested, if it were not that an expression in a journal of the highest literary ability seems to call for a word of reply in self-defence and explanation. The Pall Mall Gazette, in reviewing the former volume, remarked that "the Editor must be destitute of all sense of humour," who could have published the story of the crosses that appeared on Mrs. Tregian's smock.1 Now I am fain to confess that the same deficiency has accompanied me while compiling the present volume. The old writers, whose v;ords I print, have told various stories that seem to me extremely droll ; but I plead guilty to the accusation that I have not seen the fun of omitting them. Besides, if I had possessed the sense of humour that would have led me to omit the story of Mrs. Tregian's smock, I should have

1 Troubles, First Series, p. 121.

viii Preface.

been bound to resist it, and to leave unmutilated a document that I was printing entire. I have not felt myself obliged to suppress anecdotes which, though gravely told long ago, now raise a smile in the perusal. To strike out such stories as those of the devils swimming like fishes beneath a man's skin, or Mrs. Bellamy's wonderful plant, or the Glastonbury mouth of Purgatory, or the poor man whose interior fire was not quenched by eight gallons of liquor,1 may be a method of showing a "sense of humour," but it would be a poor way of bringing back the records of a bygone time. Our gratitude to our Catholic forefathers for the precious inheritance they have bequeathed to us, is not the less serious and deep because we are now and then amused by their quaint tales. And certainly we do not regard them as less trustworthy witnesses to the historical events they relate, because they reflect with accuracy the feelings of

their own time.

J. M.

ST. BEUNO'S COLLEGE, ST. ASAPH, May Wi, 1875.

Contents

I. THE LIFE OF FATHER WILLIAM WESTON, SJ. . . 3

Chapter I. — Father Western's Vocation 5 „ II.— The English Jesuit Mission 12

,, III. — Father Weston's landing in England .... 27

„ IV.— Father Weston's first shelter 44

„ V.— The exiles of 1585 66

„ VL — Father Weston's first convert 82

3, VII. — Possessions and exorcisms 96

„ VIII.— Hard times 108

,, IX. — Missionary life 119

„ X. — Arrest 138

„ XL — Government information 152

„ XII.— The Babington Plot 167

„ XIIL— Life in the Clink 190

„ XIV. — Between two prisons 208

„ XV.— Wisbech Castle 221

„ XVL — College life in prison 242

„ XVIL— The Tower, Exile, and Death 264

IL— THE FALL OF ANTHONY TYRRELL .... 287 Introduction 289

THE TRUL AND WONDERFUL STORY OF THE LAMENTABLE FALL OF ANTHONY TYRRELL, PRIEST, FROM THE CATHOLIC FAITH, WRITTEN BY HIS OWN HAND, BEFORE WHICH IS PREFIXED A PREFACE SHOWING THE CAUSES OF PUBLISHING THE SAME UNTO THE WORLD.

The Preface to the Christian Reader, concerning the causes of publishing

this Confession of Anthony Tyrrell . . . .310

•Chapter I. — His accusing of himself, set down in the Preface to the

Reader 320

Contents.

PACK

Chapter II. — Of his Apprehension and Behaviour in Prison, before his Fall, with his Examinations and Answers to the same 325

„ III. — Of the beginning and secret occasion of his Fall and

yielding . . 333

,, IV. — Of his acquaintance and proceeding with Mr. Ballard the priest, and how after Ballard's apprehension the devil tempted him to fall 340

,, V. — Of his desperate resolution to deny his religion against his own conscience, and of his accusing innocent men wrongfully and maliciously : and of Justice Young and the Lord Treasurer's manner of proceeding with him in these affairs 348

,, VI. — Of a Letter written unto him by the Treasurer, and of his most wicked and lying answer to the same, containing the grounds of many men's unjust deaths afterwards . 355

,, VII. — How the Lord Treasurer, upon sight of the former letter, sent twenty-eight new interrogatories, and Tyrrell's answers to the same 362

,, VIII. — What course he held after the giving up of the aforesaid accusations, of his impious writing to the Queen, and talk with the Treasurer, and how he procured to change prison from the Counter to the Clink, to do more hurt 392

,, IX. — Of his dissimulation, treachery, and spiery in the Clink, and Justice Young his dispensation for the same, and what persons he betrayed there, and of the death of Mr. Ballard and his fellows 402

M X. — How he brought to their ends three other godly priests, named Mr. Lowe, Adams, and Dibdale, and of the matter of exorcisms practised in Peckham Place . 411

,, XI. — How he goeth forward with his course of dissimulation and spiery, and the dispensation given him for the same by Justice Young, for saying Mass, and hearing confessions, reconciling, and the like, is confirmed by the Lord Treasurer and the Queen's order . . 418

,, XII. — Of three letters more written by Young to Tyrrell, with the plot of his delivery out of prison to play the spy abroad 425

,, XIII. — He setteth forth his own miserable affliction of conscience whilst he lived in this dissimulation, and showeth how he could not yet brave to be an open Protestant . 433

»» XIV. — How he was convinced and brought to repentance by certain Catholic priests of his acquaintance, and yet how he dissembled again afterwards . . . 443

Contents. xi

PAGE

Chapter XV. — His sorrow for the great crimes rehearsed, with a declaration of the true causes of his Fall, and of the wicked manner of proceeding of the enemy with him . -457

„ XVI. — Of divers letters that after his repentance he wrote as well

to the Queen as to other persons .... 471

„ XVII. — How after all this he went over sea and returned, and fell again, and made new abjuration publicly at Paul's Cross, the 3ist January the next year following, 1588 487

I. The Life Of Father William Weston.sj

THE chief sources from which this Life has been drawn are manuscripts in the possession of Stonyhurst College. One of them is the valuable transcript made in Rome in 1689, by Father Christopher Grene, of the writings of Father Persons that had not been printed. These volumes of his Collectanea were distinguished by Father Grene by the letter P. Of this collection much use has been previously made by Mr. Simpson in his Life of Father Campion.

Still more to our present purpose is Father Weston's Autobiography. The original, in Father Weston's own hand, is very neatly written on large quarto pages. Unfortunately the sizing of the paper was bad, and the manuscript fell to pieces. It has lately been carefully inlaid and bound, but the leaves towards the end are very defective, and all that followed page 76 is now lost The original paging is very peculiar, the alternate folios only being numbered.

The missing leaves at the end were lost before the manuscript was brought to Stonyhurst, for a copy was made by Father John Laurenson, who was librarian of the College when in August, 1 794, it was transferred from Liege. It is a fortunate circumstance that he did so, for owing to the progress of decay many leaves have partially perished that were entirely legible in his time. His copy is in one hundred and thirty-six pages small quarto.

His copy we have called it ; but it is to be lamented that he took unwarrantable liberties with the wording in his transcription. He treated it as he would have treated a boy's theme-book, and corrected the latinity to his own taste. Fortunately a careful comparison with the original assures us that the sense is not affected, and in a translation the alterations are not perceptible.

The kindness of Father Boero, the archivist of the Gesu, has furnished us with another unpublished manuscript It is the Life B 2 of Father Weston, written in Spanish, and apparently the author's autograph, by Father de Peralta, Rector of the English College at Seville. It was written in the year of Father Weston's death, 1615, when forty years had elapsed since the writer's first acquaintance with the subject of his memoir. The title is, Puntos quc el Pc. de Peralta de la Compa. de Jesus, R°? del colegio ingles de Sevilla, junto de personas fidedinas de la Comp* y seglares, cerca de la s*? vida del P. Guillermo Weston de la Comp^ de Jesus, R°r del coll0, ingles de Valid., que murie nel propio colegio en 9 de Abril dcste aiio de 1615, de muchos de los quales es testigo de vista dc cerca de 40 anos, a esta parte cursando con el cstudio, y siendo su superior en el seminario de Sev* mas de seis anos. It consists of twelve folios, small quarto size, and it is divided into seven sections, the last of which is the circular in Spanish to the members of the Society, written on occasion of Father Weston's death, by Father Thomas Silvester, then Minister of the College of Valladolid. A Latin copy of this circular, entitled Elogium P. Gulielmi Westoni, 1615, is in the Archives de FEtat at Brussels, with other papers belonging to St. Omers College, which were seized at Bruges when the Society was suppressed.

In addition to these sources of information, the State Papers in the Public Record Office have been freely quoted. Their accessibility, and the ability and care with which the Calendars have been compiled, are singular advantages that we enjoy over former students of history in its less trodden paths.

LIFE OF FATHER WILLIAM WESTON.

CHAPTER I.

FATHER WESTON'S VOCATION.

WILLIAM WESTON was born at Maidstone, in Kent, in the year 1550. Of his family nothing is known, nor, though he was a contemporary of Father Campion at Oxford, has it been possible to ascertain his College1 at that University. Campion was ten years his senior, but as in those days students went to the Universities in their boyhood, Weston may have been some years at Oxford before Campion left it in 1569. They are said to have been personally acquainted at Oxford, and they met again later in a place of learning of a very different spirit. Weston must, when a very young man, have felt the necessity of leaving his country for the sake of his religion, for as soon as he had taken his bachelor's degree, he went to Paris to continue his studies. This must have been shortly after Campion's departure from Oxford. Letters from Dr. Bristow and Dr. Martin, two of the great lights of the newly-founded Seminary of Douay, drew him from Paris in 1572; and there he found, amongst one hundred and fifty more of like mind and purpose with himself, Edmund Campion, who the year before had begun his

1 Mr. Simpson, in his Life of Campion, p. So, says that he was at All Souls. His assertion would be sufficient authority, if we were not obliged to place against it the assurance of the Reverend the Warden of All Souls, that " the name of William Weston does not occur in the registers of the College."

study of theology. They were not, however, long together, for in the autumn of 1572, Campion set out for Rome.

Campion's journey was made on foot and alone. His object in going to Rome was to offer himself to St. Francis Borgia for admission into the Society. He tried to persuade William Weston to accompany him with the same intention, but the time was not yet come and the friends parted ; and though they had the happiness of being sons of the same Society, they never met again. The impression that Father Campion made on the mind of Father Weston may be best gathered from the name that he chose in the place of his own by which to be called when sent on the English mission. Edmund Campion had then set the crown to his apostolic career by his happy martyrdom, and Father Weston, out of veneration for him, took the name of Edmonds, by which he was better known in England than by his own.

This was not the only instance of homage of this sort to Campion's name. In those times it was necessary for all who thought of coming on the English mission to conceal their identity as far as possible by change of name. The love of Father Campion must have been strong to induce a priest to take a name that was so likely to draw attention to him, and bring him into trouble; yet this was what was done by the martyred priest, whom we honour under the name of Edward Campion. His true name was Edwards,1 and he said on his examination, as Lord Keeper Puckering notes against him,2 that "he wisheth he were no worse a traitor than Campion, that was executed for treason." Edwards was of " White Hall," now St. John's, Father Campion's College at Oxford. Others also adopted the surname, as Robert Wigmore, who died in the Jesuit Novitiate at Louvain, in 1614,

1 British Museum, Harltian MSS. 360, fol. 25.

3 Strype, Annals, vol. iv. p. 255; P.R.O. State Papers, Domestic, Elizabeth, vol. cc. n. 36.

and Father John Pointz, alias Stephens, who was known by the name of Campion while a student in the English College at Rome, of which College he was afterwards Rector.

The desire of entering the Society induced William Weston to leave Douay College and to follow Campion to Rome. And he travelled, as Campion travelled, on foot He went " on pilgrimage," the Douay Journal says ; and how much of fatigue and hardship was involved in the term, we of a more feeble generation are not likely ever to experience. " He went four hundred leagues on foot to ask admission into the Society," is Father de Peralta's note on the journey. In one respect Weston's was an easier journey than Campion's, for he had a companion, John Lane, an Oxford Master of Arts and Fellow of Corpus, who like himself sought admittance into the Society.

Immediately on his conversion Lane had gone from Oxford to Rome, and there in 1574, at the end of September, Persons found him, when desiring to have him to share the studies he proposed to pursue at Padua.1 They were present together when Pope Gregory XIII. opened the Porta Sancta, at the beginning of the year of Jubilee, 1575, and then, with Luke Atslow, they went to Padua. There, Father Persons says in his fragmentary Autobiography, " we took a very commodious house of our own, they two studying law and I physic, and finding ourselves very well settled, I bought good store of books for my faculty, as also provision of apparel." The arrangement did not last long. " It was at the end of the month of May," Father Persons continues, "when I left Padua, and though I was no good goer on foot, and the weather very hot, yet by God's help I made all that journey without any riding." Rome was Persons' destination ; and the thought in his mind, which 1 Stonyhurst MSS., Father Clir. Grene's Collectan., P. foL 225.

had broken up the promising plan of study at Padua, was that perhaps he was called by God to the religious life in the Society of Jesus. Persons arrived in Rome at the end of May, and " stayed some weeks in Rome before he resolved to offer himself to the Society, which finally he entered upon St. James' day," July 25, 1585. Weston found him in the Novitiate of St. Andrew's, on the Quirinal, when he reached Rome a few months later. "My two companions at Padua," Father Persons adds, " Mr. Lucas Atslow and John Lane, hearing of my resolution, they made the like, but Mr. Atslow died soon after in Padua, and Mr. John Lane came and entered the Society in Rome." Lane, when left at Padua by Persons, and when he had lost Atslow, betook himself to Douay, but only to leave it again in company with William Weston on his pilgrimage to Rome. Weston evidently entered the Society as soon as they reached Rome, for he was received at St. Andrew's on the 5th of November, 1575, being then twenty-five years of age. John Lane was a little after him, being admitted February 2, 1576. According to Father Grene, Lane died at Alcala, May 6, 1579.

The friendship that subsisted between the great Seminary of Douay, the mother of the English secular clergy, and the Society of Jesus, was very close and most edifying. When Father Weston left Douay he made a gift to the Seminary of all that he possessed.1 On the other side it is charming to see how his old friends at Douay rejoiced in his vocation to the happy life of Religion. "On the 5th of April, 1576," we translate from the Douay Diary, " four of ours who left us half a year ago on a pilgrimage to Rome, have returned to us again, and to the great joy of our souls they have told us that Mr. William Weston and Mr. Lane, honourable men of great promise (who

about the same time left this for Rome on pilgrimage), have there entered the Society of Jesus." And in the list of priests ordained and sent on the mission there is a not less friendly entry. " In the year 1575, two priests entered the Society of Jesus, men of weight, Mr. Thomas Robinson, of Lincoln, and Mr. Thomas Marshall, of York ; also Mr. William Weston, of Canterbury, not yet a priest, but learned and very pious."

St. Francis Borgia had died before Campion reached Rome, and his successor, Everard Mercurian, was the General by whom the English were received into the Society. Campion, who had entered the Society in June, 1573, as soon as the new General was elected, had finished his two years' noviceship before the entrance into the Society of Weston or even Persons, and when they came to Rome he was in Austria. Father Weston wras not destined to meet him again. Oxford associates, however, not a few, met in the Novitiate on the Quirinal Hill. Besides Persons of Balliol and Lane of Corpus, there were Henry Garnet, the future martyr, Giles Wallop, and soon after, Thomas Stephens, from the same University. Wallop, or as his name was Latinized, Gallop, died in Rome in 15/9. Stephens went as a missionary to Goa, and there died, after forty years of exile and apostolic labour, in 1619, in his seventieth year. At St Andrew's, with such fellow-novices as Persons and Garnet, Weston remained for some months.

In the course of 1576 Father Weston went to Spain. Don Alonzo Perez de Guzman, Duke of Medina Sidonia, had petitioned the General for an English Father to hear the confessions of his countrymen at the ports of Cadiz and St. Lucar. To prepare him for this charge, William Weston was sent to Montilla, in the Province of Andalusia, to finish his novitiate. This completed, he went to the. College of Cordova to finish his studies in theology, which had been broken off when his io Life of Father William Weston.

vocation induced him to leave Douay ; and at Cordova he remained for three years. He had, together with all the students then at Douay, been tonsured and promoted to the minor orders at Brussels, in the month of March, 1573.

One of his companions during his theological course was Francis de Peralta, who was afterwards his Superior for six years in the College of Seville. From the pen of this excellent witness, we are so fortunate as to have an account of the life of Father Weston, written in 1615, the year of his death.1 "All the three years that he was at Cordova," Father de Peralta says, " he was a living picture of all virtues, and rare was the example which he gave to all by his holy life. When his time was not spent in attending lectures and in study, he devoted himself to continual prayer, recollection, silence and mortification. His delight was to help in all the humblest and meanest offices of the house, such as carrying water and taking part with the lay-brothers in cleaning the rooms." Meanwhile he made, as men of such spirit are apt to do, great progress in study, and Father de Peralta especially notes the proficiency that he had brought with him to Cordova, not only in Latin, but in Greek and Hebrew.

In 1579, he was ordained priest, and was soon after sent to Cadiz and to St. Lucar, where for about two years he showed great charity in the exercise of the sacred ministry, both to the English and Spaniards. Falling ill, however, at Cadiz, he was sent by his superiors to Seville, where he remained for a little more than two years. He became a great favourite with the English students there, many of whom chose him for their confessor. He never knew the students by name, and all that passed between them was Una palabrita de Dios — the word or two about Almighty God that on such occasions descends into the heart. " Holy Father William,"

1 This Life was used by Father Henry More in his History of the Province, but Father Nathaniel Southwell never saw it.

was the name by which the students knew him. They also saw him during this time in the professor's chair, for he had to teach them Greek. The reputation of his sanctity was as high amongst his fellow-religious. He was occasionally appointed to hear the confessions of the Community, and there were many who availed themselves of the opportunity of the help of such a man to make general confessions.

"The greater part of the time that he lived in this College," Father de Peralta continues, " one would see him scouring the copper and helping in the kitchen, and in the humblest offices in the house, without ever having been asked to do so. He usually called the others in the morning." Father Campion did the same, while Professor of Rhetoric at Prague. "At that time I was Minister in the College," says Father de Peralta, " and it happened to me sometimes to get up before the Community. I then found Father Weston on the terrace in prayer, on his knees, with his eyes fixed on heaven, waiting for it to be time to call the others.

"Just then there was so large a number in the College, and so great a want of rooms, that the Superior was the only one who had a room to himself. Father Weston's chamber-fellow was Brother Forivio de el Palacio, the Procurator of the College, which office he filled in 1585, in the house where I was then Superior, and he told me three things of Father Weston. The first was that almost always on entering the room, he found him on his knees. The second, thai frequently he found him in some posture taken for mortification, and Father Diego de Cordova, who was Minister all the while that Father Weston studied at Cordova, has told me that he has often observed the same. The third thing was that every night he would discipline himself cruelly at midnight Father Alvaro Gongales, who was a professor for five-and-thirty years, at one time shared his room, and he told me that he was often awakened by the sound of his discipline, and that he too, on entering the room, generally found him kneeling ; " so that, to use the beautiful phrase that Father Henry More has recorded for us,1 he seemed studendo orare et orando studere — to pray by study and to study by prayer. We thus see how he came to deserve the high encomium of the Douay record, that he was doctus et valde pins. In the College at Seville Father Weston remained till he was summoned to the toils and perils of the English mission in 1584.

CHAPTER II.

THE ENGLISH JESUIT MISSION.

THE first impulse to the Society William Weston had received while still at Oxford. Some of the Annual Letters from the Jesuit missionaries in Japan had fallen into his hands, and he was greatly attracted by the narrative of conversions and good works done in that very interesting mission. Twenty years only had elapsed since the death of St. Francis Xavier, and his work in that fervent young Christianity was carried on by men who were worthy to succeed the Apostle of the East. The story was one to stir the heart, and to arouse within a man like Weston the desire to do his utmost for his own salvation and perfection and for that of others. When duly prepared by study and prayer, England was to be his Japan. It was a mission in which souls were in greater need, and where help was then brought to those who needed it at far greater risk to the bringer. The blood of priests was shed in England sooner than in Japan, and the persecution was hardly less fierce and persistent.

1 Historia Frew. Angl. lib. iv. n. 16, p. 142.

The impression made on such a mind as Weston's by the news of Father Campion's martyrdom may well be imagined. The day so memorable for the Society, on which its English protomartyr suffered, was the 1st of December, 1581. This was about the time when Father Weston went to Seville. In the course of the following year many heroes suffered for their faith, and the number of priests thus martyred was so considerable that a missionary going to England must have seen plainly that he carried his life in his hand. Cuthbert Maine had led the way in 1577) the first °f the glorious holocaust of Douay priests. In 1578 one priest had been martyred, John Nelson ; and one layman, Thomas Sherwood, a Douay student. Four priests suffered in 1581, Campion's year; and in 1582 no less than eleven. As Weston was at Douay with the first generation of students, and did not leave the College before 1575, he was personally acquainted with many of those of whom he now heard these great tidings. He was certainly the college companion of Thomas Ford, Cuthbert Maine, John Nelson, John Paine, and Robert Johnson, who were martyred before he set foot in England, as well as of others, like Momford Scott, who suffered later.