the former provisions that had made it high treason to reconcile any of her majesty's subjects, or to be reconciled to the church of Rome, imposes a penalty of £20 a month on all persons absenting themselves from church, unless they shall hear the English service at home: such as could not pay the same within three months after judgment were to be imprisoned until they should conform. The queen, by a subsequent act, had the power of seizing two-thirds of the party's land, and all his goods, for default of payment.228 These grievous penalties on recusancy, as the wilful absence of catholics from church came now to be denominated, were doubtless founded on the extreme difficulty of proving an actual celebration of their own rites. But they established a persecution which fell not at all short in principle of that for which the inquisition had become so odious. Nor were the statutes merely designed for terror's sake, to keep a check over the disaffected, as some would pretend. They were executed in the most sweeping and indiscriminating manner, unless perhaps a few families of high rank might enjoy a connivance.229
Execution of Campian and others.—It had certainly been the desire of Elizabeth to abstain from capital punishments on the score of religion. The first instance of a priest suffering death by her statutes was in 1577, when one Mayne was hanged at Launceston, without any charge against him except his religion, and a gentleman who had harboured him was sentenced to imprisonment for life.230 In the next year, if we may trust the zealous catholic writers, Thomas Sherwood, a boy of fourteen years, was executed for refusing to deny the temporal power of the pope, when urged by his judges.231 But in 1581 several seminary priests from Flanders having been arrested, whose projects were supposed (perhaps not wholly without foundation) to be very inconsistent with their allegiance, it was unhappily deemed necessary to hold out some more conspicuous examples of rigour. Of those brought to trial the most eminent was Campian, formerly a protestant, but long known as the boast of Douay for his learning and virtues.232 This man, so justly respected, was put to the rack, and revealed through torture the names of some catholic gentlemen with whom he had conversed.233 He appears to have been indicted along with several other priests, not on the recent statutes, but on that of 25 Edw. III. for compassing and imagining the queen's death. Nothing that I have read affords the slightest proof of Campian's concern in treasonable practices, though his connections, and profession as a jesuit, render it by no means unlikely. If we may confide in the published trial, the prosecution was as unfairly conducted, and supported by as slender evidence, as any perhaps which can be found in our books.234 But as this account, wherein Campian's language is full of a dignified eloquence, rather seems to have been compiled by a partial hand, its faithfulness may not be above suspicion. For the same reason I hesitate to admit his alleged declarations at the place of execution, where, as well as at his trial, he is represented to have expressly acknowledged Elizabeth, and to have prayed for her as his queen de facto and de jure. For this was one of the questions propounded to him before his trial, which he refused to answer, in such a manner as betrayed his way of thinking. Most of those interrogated at the same time, on being pressed whether the queen was their lawful sovereign whom they were bound to obey, notwithstanding any sentence of deprivation that the pope might pronounce, endeavoured, like Campian, to evade the snare. A few, who unequivocally disclaimed the deposing power of the Roman see, were pardoned.235 It is more honourable to Campian's memory that we should reject these pretended declarations, than imagine him to have made them at the expense of his consistency and integrity. For the pope's right to deprive kings of their crowns was in that age the common creed of the jesuits, to whose order Campian belonged; and the continent was full of writings published by the English exiles, by Sanders, Bristow, Persons, and Allen, against Elizabeth's unlawful usurpation of the throne. But many availed themselves of what was called an explanation of the bull of Pius V., given by his successor Gregory XIII.; namely, that the bull should be considered as always in force against Elizabeth and the heretics, but should only be binding on catholics when due execution of it could be had.236 This was designed to satisfy the consciences of some papists in submitting to her government, and taking the oath of allegiance. But in thus granting a permission to dissemble, in hope of better opportunity for revolt, this interpretation was not likely to tranquillise her council, or conciliate them towards the Romish party. The distinction, however, between a king by possession and one by right, was neither heard for the first, nor for the last time, in the reign of Elizabeth. It is the lot of every government that is not founded on the popular opinion of legitimacy, to receive only a precarious allegiance. Subject to this reservation, which was pretty generally known, it does not appear that the priests or other Roman catholics, examined at various times during this reign, are more chargeable with insincerity or dissimulation than accused persons generally are.
The public executions, numerous as they were, scarcely form the most odious part of this persecution. The common law of England has always abhorred the accursed mysteries of a prison-house; and neither admits of torture to extort confession, nor of any penal infliction not warranted by a judicial sentence. But this law, though still sacred in the courts of justice, was set aside by the privy council under the Tudor line. The rack seldom stood idle in the Tower for all the latter part of Elizabeth's reign.237 To those who remember the annals of their country, that dark and gloomy pile affords associations not quite so numerous and recent as the Bastile, yet enough to excite our hatred and horror. But standing as it does in such striking contrast to the fresh and flourishing constructions of modern wealth, the proofs and the rewards of civil and religious liberty, it seems like a captive tyrant, reserved to grace the triumph of a victorious republic, and should teach us to reflect in thankfulness, how highly we have been elevated in virtue and happiness above our forefathers.
Such excessive severities under the pretext of treason, but sustained by very little evidence of any other offence than the exercise of the catholic ministry, excited indignation throughout a great part of Europe. The queen was held forth in pamphlets, dispersed everywhere from Rome and Douay, not only as a usurper and heretic, but a tyrant more ferocious than any heathen persecutor, for inadequate parallels to whom they ransacked all former history.238 These exaggerations, coming from the very precincts of the inquisition, required the unblushing forehead of bigotry; but the charge of cruelty stood on too many facts to be passed over, and it was thought expedient to repel it by two remarkable pamphlets, both ascribed to the pen of Lord Burleigh.
Defence of the queen, by Burleigh.—One of these, entitled "The Execution of Justice in England for Maintenance of public and private Peace," appears to have been published in 1583. It contains an elaborate justification of the late prosecutions for treason, as no way connected with religious tenets, but grounded on the ancient laws for protection of the queen's person and government from conspiracy. It is alleged that a vast number of catholics, whether of the laity or priesthood, among whom the deprived bishops are particularly enumerated, had lived unmolested on the score of their faith, because they paid due temporal allegiance to their sovereign. Nor were any indicted for treason, but such as obstinately maintained the pope's bull depriving the queen of her crown. And even of these offenders, as many as after condemnation would renounce their traitorous principles, had been permitted to live; such was her majesty's unwillingness, it is asserted, to have any blood spilled without this just and urgent cause proceeding from themselves. But that any matter of opinion, not proved to have ripened into an overt act, and extorted only, or rather conjectured, through a compulsive inquiry, could sustain in law or justice a conviction for high treason, is what the author of this pamphlet has not rendered manifest.239
A second and much shorter paper bears for title, "A Declaration of the favourable dealing of her Majesty's Commissioners, appointed for the examination of certain traitors, and of tortures unjustly reported to be done upon them for matter of religion." Its scope was to palliate the imputation of excessive cruelty with which Europe was then resounding. Those who revere the memory of Lord Burleigh must blush for this pitiful apology. "It is affirmed for truth," he says, "that the forms of torture in their severity or rigour of execution have not been such and in such manner performed, as the slanderers and seditious libellers have published. And that even the principal offender, Campian himself, who was sent and came from Rome, and continued here in sundry corners of the realm, having secretly wandered in the greater part of the shires of England in a disguised suit, to be intent to make special preparation of treasons, was never so racked but that he was perfectly able to walk and to write, and did presently write and subscribe all his confessions. The queen's servants, the warders, whose office and