Note 138 — Chapter XLII

— Fonblanque, in his “Annals of the House of Percy,” in the chapter dealing with Thomas Percy, expresses the opinion that the Government’s behaviour was comparatively mild, regard being had to the atrocious nature of the designment against the King and Parliament. Such is candidly my own opinion, and this, although I remember that James’s Oath of Allegiance and very tyrannical anti-recusant legislation were the dire consequences of the Plot, which (me judice) — far more than the Marian burnings, the Elizabethan Acts of Supremacy, of Uniformity, Constructive Treason, and the Spanish Armada, all put together — led finally to England’s being “bereft” of what to a Roman Catholic is “the one true faith.”

In regard to James’s Oath of Allegiance (1609), it is to be recollected that while strict Roman Catholics, whether “Jesuitized” or not, refused to take the oath, some Catholics thought they might lawfully take it. Among such was the Arch-priest, Blackwell, who, however, was deposed from his office, as, in general terms, Rome condemned the oath. “The sting” of this famous oath was “in its tail;” inasmuch as it not only contained a disclaimer of the deposing power of the Pope, but declared that the doctrine of the deposing power was “impious, heretical, and damnable.” It is remarkable that all the Roman Catholic peers took the Oath of Allegiance, except Lord Teynham, a collateral descendant of William Roper, the husband of Margaret More.

“An apostate” Jesuit, named Sir Christopher Perkins, aided in framing this searching test, so the Government knew exactly how to get the unhappy papist recusants tightly within their grip. (Perkins, like Sir Edwin Sandys, a philosophic friend of Sir Toby Matthews, was an incipient rationalist. Shakespeare may have known Sir Toby Matthews.)

For valuable information (derived from an unpublished manuscript) as to the working of this Oath of Allegiance, see the late Richard Simpson’s Article, entitled, “A Glimpse of the Working of the Penal Laws,” in “The Rambler,” vol. vi., p. 401 (1856). If this Article has not been printed separately, it ought to be. In it occur the names Middleton, Gascoigne, Ingleby, Whitham, Cholmeley, Vavasour, Dolman, Mennell (or Meynell), and Catterick, of Yorkshire; Preston and Towneley, of Lancashire; Tichbourne, of Hampshire; Wiseman, of Essex; Gage, of Sussex; Vaux, of Northamptonshire; Throckmorton, of Warwickshire; Tregean, of Cornwall; Plowden, of Shropshire; Morgan, of Monmouthshire; Edwards, of Flintshire; together with other English and Welsh names, which can be only described as synonymous with honour, high-mindedness, heroism, and all goodness.