Note 283 — Chapter X

Rushworth Abr. iv. 550. At the very time that he was publicly denying his employment of papists, he wrote to Newcastle, commanding him to make use of all his subjects' services, without examining their consciences, except as to loyalty. Ellis's Letters, iii. 291, from an original in the Museum. No one can rationally blame Charles for anything in this, but his inveterate and useless habit of falsehood. See Clarendon, iii. 610.

It is probable that some foreign catholics were in the parliament's service. But Dodd says, with great appearance of truth, that no one English gentleman of that persuasion was in arms on their side. Church History of Engl. iii. 28. He reports as a matter of hearsay, that, out of about five hundred gentlemen who lost their lives for Charles in the civil war, one hundred and ninety-four were catholics. They were, doubtless, a very powerful faction in the court and army. Lord Spencer (afterwards Earl of Sunderland), in some remarkable letters to his wife from the king's quarters at Shrewsbury, in September 1642, speaks of the insolency of the papists with great dissatisfaction. Sidney Papers, ii. 667.