Note 131 — Chapter VIII · (continued 2)

Heylin, p. 338; Laud's Diary, Oct. 1637; Strafford Letters, i. 426. Garrard, a dependent friend whom Strafford retained, as was usual with great men, to communicate the news of the court, frequently descants on the excessive boldness of the papists. "Laud," he says (vol. ii. p. 74), "does all he can to beat down the general fear conceived of bringing on popery." So in p. 165 and many other places.

It is manifest, by a letter of Laud to Strafford in 1638, that he was not satisfied with the systematic connivance at recusancy. Id. 171. The explanation of the archbishop's conduct with respect to the Roman catholics seems to be, that, with a view of gaining them over to his own half-way protestantism, and also ingratiating himself with the queen, he had for a time gone along with the tide, till he found there was a real danger of being carried farther than he intended. This accounts for the well-known story told by Evelyn, that the jesuits at Rome spoke of him as their bitterest enemy. He is reported to have said, that they and the puritans were the chief obstacles to a re-union of the churches. There is an obscure story of a plot carried on by the pope's legate Con and the English jesuits against Laud, and detected in 1640 by one Andrew Habernfield, which some have treated as a mere fiction. Rushworth, iii. 232.