Note 71 — Chapter II

Of no less importance is it to understand the position of the Catholic body, and the character of the particular Catholics who engaged in this enterprise. We have seen with what hopes the advent of King James had been hailed by those who had suffered so much for his mother's sake, and who interpreted in a too sanguine and trustful spirit his own words and deeds. Their dream of enjoying even toleration at his hands was soon rudely dispelled. After giving them the briefest of respites, the monarch, under the influence, as all believed, of his council, and especially of his chief minister,[71] suddenly reversed his line of action and persecuted his Catholic subjects more cruelly than had his predecessor, calling up the arrears of fines which they fancied had been altogether remitted, ruining many in the process who had hitherto contrived to pay their way,[72] and adding to the sense of injury which such a course necessarily provoked by farming out wealthy recusants to needy courtiers, "to make their profit of," in particular to the Scots who had followed their royal master across the border. Soon it was announced that the king would have blood; all priests were ordered to leave the realm under pain of death, and the searches for them became more frequent and violent than ever. In no long time, as Goodman tells us,[73] "a gentlewoman was hanged only for relieving and harbouring a priest; a citizen was hanged only for being reconciled to the Church of Rome; besides the penal laws were such and so executed that they could not subsist." Father Gerard says:[74] "This being known to Catholics, it is easy to be seen how first their hopes were turned into fears, and then their fears into full knowledge that all the contrary to that they had hoped was intended and prepared for them", and, as one of the victims of these proceedings wrote, "the times of Elizabeth, although most cruel, were the mildest and happiest in comparison with those of King James."[75]