Volume 2 — Translated from Etudes Religieuses, Historiques et Littéraires, par des Pères de la Compagnie de Jésus. CHARLES II. AND HIS SON, FATHER JAMES STUART. (continued 2)

There are no historical indications to guide us in ascertaining the attitude assumed by the two pious queens when the monarch arrived at this resolution. Probably the princesses partook of the illusion of the Duke of York and of most of the Catholics of the court: they placed an exaggerated hope on the powerful intervention of the King of France. Relying upon this, and on the probable complaisance of the Pope, they supported in his unhappy course the son, the husband, whose safety lay so closely to their heart.

It would do our two missionaries a cruel injustice to suppose that they saw no deeper or clearer. In so elementary a question of theology, these vigorous controversialists, whose learning and keen reasonings we have appreciated, could have had but one opinion—that of their confrère Father Symons, of whom we shall shortly speak. James Stuart, we may fearlessly affirm, fulfilled respectfully but firmly the duty of his ministry. He strove to convince his father that no pontifical letter would authorize either king or emperor to reconcile in his person what the Son of God by his divine lips had declared eternally irreconcilable, to be ashamed of him before men, and yet to find favor in his sight. Two things are certain. On {602} the one hand, the holy novice failed to convince the king; on the other, filial love, happily combined with apostolic prudence, preserved his zeal from all bitterness.

Charles persisted in seeking, through the intervention of Father Oliva, to draw from Clement IX. impossible concessions. Despite the recent fatigues of his late voyage, the young enthusiast offered to be himself the bearer of his father's despatches. The proposition was accepted, and Charles wrote these lines, upon which we have already commented, and which are unfortunately the only source from which the historian can draw a correct judgment upon the results of the secret mission completed in 1668 in the palace of the kings of England by Father J. Stuart.

TO THE REVEREND FATHER-GENERAL OF THE JESUIT FATHERS AT ROME (intrusted to the hand of Mons. de la Cloche, Jesuit at Rome): REVEREND FATHER,—You are too necessary for us in the position where your merit has raised you, not to be frequently troubled by us, in that condition where the misfortune of our birth obliges us to be. Our very dear and honored son will tell you, on our part, all our proceedings, and as we were perplexed in deciding upon some one who should be our messenger once again to your reverence touching our affairs, he represented to us the urgent desire he had of returning himself to Rome on a secret embassy from us to you, reverend father—which desire we have granted him, under the condition that he come back to London as soon as he shall have had an interview with your reverence, and obtained those things which we entreat of you, and which our aforesaid very dear and honored son will explain from us personally, bringing us, on his return through France, the reverend father whom he left there. At the request of our very dear and honored son afore-mentioned, who has represented to us that the place where he has been received into your fellowship is burdened heavily with debts, and that there is need of some buildings and other things, we have arranged that your house, in which he has been received, shall obtain from us, as soon as possible, a notable sum for the expiation of our offences. Waiting, if it please you, till your reverence can advise us of the measures which you will take for its reception, which shall be within a year. If you write to us, it will be by our very dear and honored son, who will tell your reverence all our intentions not intrusted to this paper. We are Charles, King of England. At Whitehall, London, the 18th Nov., 1668.

If it happen that our very dear and honored son be in need of anything, whatever it may be, we beseech you, reverend father, to attend to it, and we will keep an account of all.

The sense of the fourth and last letter of Charles II. to Father Oliva does not appear to us doubtful. If the royal disciple of Father Stuart had shown himself unconditionally and generously disposed to every sacrifice, what could have been this business with the Holy See which he committed to the father-general? Had no difficulty existed, the abjuration ought to have taken place without delay. For the rest, the Duke of York helps us. His illusions, his doubts, avowed by himself in his memoirs, and which very probably he shared with his brother, confirm, point by point, our conjectures upon the nature of the obstacles opposed to the self-sacrifice of the two apostles of Whitehall.

In the closing months of the year 1668, the king renewed his intercourse with his brother, toward whom he had been momentarily estranged by the intrigues of Buckingham. The author of the Life of James II. recalls this fact, and immediately after he adds:

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"It was about this time (toward the commencement of the year 1669) that his royal highness, convinced hitherto that the English was the only true church, experienced lively compunctions of conscience and began to reflect seriously upon his salvation. He therefore sent for a Jesuit named Symons, who was reputed a very wise man, to the end that he might converse with him upon this subject. When the Jesuit made his appearance, the duke set forth his intention of becoming a Catholic, and spoke with reference to his reconciliation with the Church. After a long conversation, the father told him frankly that he could not be received into the Catholic Church unless he entirely abandoned the Anglican communion. The duke replied that, according to the belief he had always held, this could be done by means of a papal dispensation. He alleged the singularity of his position, and the advantage which would inhere to the Catholic religion in general, and especially to the Catholics of England, if by a dispensation he could be permitted to follow externally the rites of the Anglican Church, until an occasion offered for declaring himself with greater safety both for his own person and for the Catholics. But the good father insisted, saying that even the Pope himself had no right to grant such a dispensation, seeing that it was the unalterable doctrine of the Catholic Church never to do evil that good might come. The duke having written upon this subject to the Pope, received from the Holy Father confirmation of what the good Jesuit had told him. Up to this time his royal highness had always thought, following the opinion or at least the expressed words of the Anglican theologians, that dispensations of this kind were readily accorded by the Pope; but the remarks of Fr. Symons and the letter of His Holiness caused the duke to conclude that it was high time to make every effort to obtain liberty to declare himself, that he might no longer live in the embarrassing and perilous situation in which he then was." [Footnote 92]

What relation does this historical passage bear to the sojourn of Father Stuart in London? Notice, in the first place, that the date, "at the commencement of the year 1669," cannot be taken literally. We shall find mention, a few lines further on, of a secret council held Jan. 25, in reference to "a declaration of their Catholicism;" the Duke of York being already converted, and the king almost decided to take, like his brother, the last step. Now let us suppose that, on the 1st of Jan., the duke, hitherto a staunch Anglican, "experienced lively compunctions of conscience." With his characteristic caution, he studies into the matter, and finally comes at the truth. Then occurs his interview with Fr. Symons; next he writes to the Pope. The Pope sends his decision. The prince is startled, makes an irrevocable resolution, and thus on the twenty-fifth day of the same month we find him deliberating with Charles II. and three of his ministers upon the political measures necessary to empower them both to practise freely the religion of their choice! A promptness certainly very strange and inexplicable even in this day of express trains and telegraph wires! Evidently the supposition is impossible, and the expressions of the writer must be interpreted very broadly. Glancing back, it will be observed that these events followed closely upon the reconciliation of the two brothers, which occurred, as the English historians inform us, toward the end of 1668, during the autumn when Henrietta of France, the queen-mother, came to England in order to bid her children a final adieu.

If now we confront the whole series of Father Stuart's proceedings in London with the circumstances attending the Duke of York's conversion, these {604} two categories of facts, separate in appearance, unite and coalesce so naturally that it will be almost impossible not to recognize their intimate correlation, or, so to speak, their perfect identity.

Setting out from Leghorn Oct 14, the son of Charles II. after a voyage of twenty-fire or twenty-six days, arrives in the Thames about Nov. 1, O.S. Henrietta of Bourbon, not less jealous for the salvation of her second son than for that of the king, hastens to put the Duke of York in communication with Father James Stuart and the eminent ecclesiastic who accompanied him. Our two apostles divide their days between Charles and his brother. It is in their school that the prince received those strong lessons which in the short space of twenty days overturned and created anew the entire structure of his belief. It was from them that he heard with surprise that the pretended papal permissions were only a ridiculous fable, and that the profession of the Catholic faith obliged him to sacrifice everything, to suffer everything, for the eternal life. Situated as James then was, this declaration was of startling import. It affected his hopes of the crown, his family, his entire future. At this juncture he consults with Fr. Symons; and, still dissatisfied, he resolves to appeal to the Pope. Our argument now takes form; it speaks to the eye. Suppose that the courier of the Duke of York spent twenty-six days each way in his journey to Rome, and remained only eight in that city; to have returned to London six or seven days before the council of Jan. 25, he would have had to quit England the 19th or 20th of Nov. And these are the very dates for the departure of the novice of St. Andrew, upon the close of the conferences, and for his return to the capital of Great Britain after his journey to Italy!

Consider the subject in another light. According to every English historian, the facts relative to the conversion of the Duke of York have their extreme limits in Nov. 1, 1668, and Jan. 25, 1669. They cannot be fixed earlier, nor later. But these are the precise points at which the apostolic mission of Father Stuart at the court of Whitehall commences and ends. Examine this in detail, measure the time necessary to instruct and convert a heretic, to carry a message to Rome, to confer with the Pope, to return to London—there is not a feature which does not present a coincidence almost mathematical.

The novice of St. Andrew left behind him in France the priest whose co-operation had been so useful, and on his return to Rome he made known to the father-general the results of his apostolic labors at the court of the Stuarts. What impression did the royal letter produce upon Father Oliva? It would not be surprising if he thought that he discovered, what many readers will perhaps have felt, in these brief lines, a reserve, a constraint, in perfect contrast with the joy of a soul that has found, after long and sad errors, the Way, the Truth, and the Life.

Charles II. also wrote on a matter completely apart from the religious question. In a former postscript, the king had engaged to recompense the Roman fraternity for all the extraordinary expenses to which they had been subjected on account of his son. Unfortunately, when the year expired, the funds of the civil list were found empty. It was one of those financial crises not unusual under a prince who never knew the worth of money until it was gone. Charles was therefore forced to subscribe to an obligation payable in six months for the sum of £800 sterling. This note will close the series of inedited pieces that Father J. Stuart has left for two centuries in the hands of Father Paul Oliva:

"We Charles, by the grace of God King of England, France, Scotland, and Ireland, acknowledge ourselves debtors to the reverend father-general {605} of the Jesuit Fathers to the amount of £800 sterling, viz., 800 pistoles for the maintenance and journeyings of our very dear and honored son the Prince James Stuart, a Jesuit living under the name of La Cloche, the which 800 pistoles the said reverend father-general, Jean Paul Oliva, has furnished him with, and which sum we acknowledge ourselves indebted for, and promise to pay him at his pleasure after six months have passed from the day and date, of the said obligation. In witness whereof, we have given both our sign-manual and our ordinary seal. CHARLES, King of England, L.S. France, Scotland, and Ireland.

Clement IX. was now, for the first time, informed of the secret movement which was drawing into the bosom of the Church the posterity of Mary Stuart. The pontiff received a letter from the Duke of York, and it does not appear improbable that the young traveller had also some words to communicate from the king himself: such at least was the intention of Charles three months previous. But whatever was the monarch's desire, there was only one course open to the Pope. The Master had said to the highest ecclesiastic as to the humblest disciple, "Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or tittle shall not pass from the law, till all be fulfilled." There was then no response to be made but a non possumus, tempered by all those considerations of a charity the most tender which were fitting upon so important an issue. And such, as we know from history, was the nature of the reply of Clement IX. to the Duke of York.

The general of the Jesuits, in his turn, owed thanks for the royal benefactions to the fraternity of Mont Quirinal. This letter, which the commonest dictates of courtesy would have enjoined, is not, however, to be found in the archives of the Jesuits at Rome. One loves to think that it was written, that the son of Charles II. bore it to Whitehall, but that the author, for weighty motives, destroyed it to the last syllable. Fr. Oliva was a man of note. He was the chief of a great apostolic order; he had grown old amid important services rendered to the Church. Italy could justly pride itself for its orators; but in Italy itself his rank for eloquence was high. He had been official "predicateur" to four sovereign pontiffs, and the sermons which he has left behind still attest the vigor, the fire, and the opulence of his rhetoric. It was not in such a nature to leave so significant an event as the conversion of a great monarch to the unaided efforts of a novice. Through all the previous conduct of the mission, he bore a vital part; and now when the supreme moment had come, the king hesitating, the eternal life of a nation in the balance, we cannot doubt that he was moved to write with all the energy and persuasiveness of his being. He must have seen that something more than an Anglican Church or a suspicious parliament stood in the way of the monarch's conversion; that, in the scandalous licentiousness of the English court, there was a stumbling-block equally as great. If the father-general had the courage to mingle with the language of gratitude a sincere but gentle reproof for these delinquencies, it is easy to understand why not a trace of his message remains to us.

Father Stuart was in haste to return to England, where at any moment the great interests which Providence had intrusted to him might unexpectedly be compromised. His stay at Rome was therefore brief. As soon as he had received the verbal or written replies of Fr. Oliva, and in addition (according to our opinion) those that the Pope sent to the court at Whitehall, he set out at once on his return. He quitted Rome never to return. Without doubt, in the course of the following years, he communicated by letter with his superior, who {606} did not die till 1681, four years before Charles II.; but the very nature of this correspondence precluded its being deposited in the archives of the society. From this moment, therefore, we must rely upon English history for our details. Fr. Stuart drops into obscurity; but the work for which he labored still gleams above the darkness.

It was on Jan. 18, 1669, if our previous calculation be accepted, that the pretended Prince Henry de Rohan appears again at the court of London, bringing with him his old companion in accordance with the wish expressed by the king in his last letter to Fr. Oliva. The pontifical letters, touching, energetic, full of the wisdom of God, have then been remitted; the emphatic opinions of the general of the society are known. James Stuart and the French Jesuit have had their interview with Charles; they have aroused anew in his heart those earnest and holy impressions which swayed him two months before; and the venerable Henrietta de Bourbon is waiting anxiously and in tears the moment when she may say, in the language of the gospel, "Now thou dost dismiss thy servant, O Lord, according to thy word, in peace." Such is the situation of affairs at Whitehall. Recurring to the "Life of James II." we find that the historian, after speaking of the Duke of York, his interview with Fr. Symons, and his letter to the Pope, continues as follows:

"This is why his royal highness, knowing that the king was of the same mind, and had already opened himself to Lord Arundel, to Lord Arlington, and to Sir Thomas Clifford, seized an opportunity to converse with his majesty on this subject. He found him fully decided to become a Catholic, and penetrated with the danger and the constraint of his position. The king added that he desired to have, in the cabinet of the duke, a secret interview with the persons we have just named, in order to consult with them upon the means which it would be necessary to employ in order to extend the Catholic religion in the state. This interview was fixed for Jan. 25, the day on which the Church celebrates the conversion of St Paul: "When they had come together, the king declared his sentiments upon matters of religion; he repeated what he had said to the duke regarding the embarrassments which he had experienced in being prevented from the profession of the faith to which he was attached, and told them that he had summoned them to consult upon the measures necessary to be employed in the re-establishment of the Catholic religion in his realm, and upon the most favorable measure for declaring himself openly. He remarked that there was no time to lose; that he expected to find great difficulties in the execution of his project; and that for himself he preferred to enter upon it while, like his brother, he was in the prime of life, and capable of supporting the greatest fatigues, rather than put it off later, when he would no longer have the energy to successfully manage so great a design. His majesty spoke with much force; tears filled his eyes, and he besought the gentlemen to do all that was fitting wise men and good Catholics. "The consultation was protracted, and the ultimate decision was to act in concert with France, and to demand the assistance of his very christian majesty: the house of Austria being no longer in a condition to co-operate."

The Duke of York at once abjured with great secresy; but did Charles II. also abjure? Our opinion is that the two brothers separated from the Anglican Church at the same time; and that on the same day, at the foot of the same altar, in the hands of the same priest, they made the same profession of faith. Only one remained unchangeable in his fidelity. The other, sincere but feeble, made an honest effort to give his country liberty of conscience, was defeated at every point by the united mass of the {607} English factions, and finally fell back upon dissimulations and hypocrisies. It was Fr. Stuart who presided at this abjuration—a fact which the following considerations prove.

On the 5th of Jan., 1685, Fr. Huddleston, an English Benedictine, and a chaplain to the queen, summoned, says Lingard, in the absence of a foreign ecclesiastic in London, administered at evening the last sacraments to the king without demanding from him that act which should have preceded all others—abjuration. Charles throughout the rest of the night had full consciousness, and it would be perfectly absurd to suppose that neither Fr. Huddleston, a priest for twenty-five or thirty years, nor any of the queen's almoners, nor the Duke of York, as well as the other Catholics present, nor the sick man himself, should have thought, for five hours, of satisfying this most necessary of all conditions for admitting one among the children of the true Church.

Clearly, then, Charles had made his abjuration before his last illness. Studying the sequence of his reign, we remark that the year 1669 closes the period of calm which the brother of James II. enjoyed. Immediately after the French alliance exasperated the nation; and the rage and fury of Anglicanism were excited by the known conversion of the Duke and the Duchess of York, by that of Sir Thomas Clifford, by the second marriage of the Duke with the princess of Modena, by all that movement of Catholic activity the signs of which multiplied around the palace of the Stuarts. Presently persecution began anew, and Charles, incapable of holding head against the storm, yielded in everything; he signed the decrees of proscription, he permitted the flow of innocent blood. What priest, in such a conjuncture, would have consented to receive his abjuration? But in Jan., 1669, the presence of Henrietta of Bourbon, the pious joy of all that royal family, the hope which might reasonably be founded on the probable influence of Fr. James Stuart, united in urging forward so desirable a consummation. Charles, whose good faith we cannot justly suspect without satisfactory proof,—Charles persuaded himself that, assisted by the French monarch, and supported by his brother the duke, there was no domestic coalition which could defeat him, and he brought over the rest to his opinion by that seductive eloquence which, with him, was almost irresistible. The priest doubtless had many fears; but the priest, when there was the appearance of security, inclined toward indulgence, and on the present occasion so many reiterated assurances, so many moving supplications, so many marvellous advantages in perspective, finally disarmed him. Nothing in the duke's account prejudices this conclusion. His delicate sense of family honor, the reproach which would have attached to Charles and ultimately to all the Stuarts if the act were known, the reticence necessary to maintain regarding the king's eldest son—each and all explain the silence of that prince. Beside the offer to take the sword in hand, and to run the chances of a long and perilous civil war, would indicate less a future step than a step in the past. In our opinion, therefore, the council of Jan. 25 followed the abjuration of Charles rather than preceded it.

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