"Suffer Not Thy Sonnes To Pass The Alps, For They Shall
Learn Nothing There But Pride, Blasphemy, And Atheism.
And if by travel
they get a few broken languages, that shall profit them nothing more
than to have one meat served on divers dishes."[154]
The mother of Francis Bacon affords a good example of the Puritan
distrust of going "beyond seas." She could by no means sympathize with
her son Anthony's determination to become versed in foreign affairs, for
that led him into intimacy with Roman Catholics. All through his
prolonged stay abroad she chafed and fretted, while Anthony perversely
remained in France, gaining that acquaintance with valuable
correspondents, spies, and intelligencers which later made him one of
the greatest authorities in England on continental politics. He had a
confidential servant, a Catholic named Lawson, whom he sent over to
deliver some important secret news to Lord Burghley. Lady Bacon, in her
fear lest Lawson's company should pervert her son's religion and morals,
had the man arrested and detained in England. His anxious master sent
another man to plead with his mother for Lawson's release; but in vain.
The letter of this messenger to Anthony will serve to show the vehemence
of anti-Catholic feelings in a British matron in 1589.
"Upon my arrival at Godombery my Lady used me courteously until such
time I began to move her for Mr Lawson; and, to say the truth, for
yourself; being so much transported with your abode there that she let
not to say that you are a traitor to God and your country; you have
undone her; you seek her death; and when you have that you seek for, you
shall have but a hundred pounds more than you have now.
"She is resolved to procure Her Majesty's letter to force you to return;
and when that should be, if Her Majesty give you your right or desert,
she should clap you up in prison. She cannot abide to hear of you, as
she saith, nor of the other especially, and told me plainly she should
be the worse this month for my coming without you, and axed me why you
could not have come from thence as well as myself.
"She saith you are hated of all the chiefest on that side and cursed of
God in all your actions, since Mr Lawson's being with you....
"When you have received your provision, make your repair home again,
lest you be a means to shorten her days, for she told me the grief of
mind received daily by your stay will be her end; also saith her jewels
be spent for you, and that she borrowed the last money of seven several
persons.
"Thus much I must confess unto you for a conclusion, that I have never
seen nor never shall see a wise Lady, an honourable woman, a mother,
more perplexed for her son's absence than I have seen that honourable
dame for yours."[155]
It was not only a general hatred of Roman Catholics which made staunch
Protestants anxious to detain their sons from foreign travel towards the
end of Elizabeth's reign, but a very lively and well-grounded fear of
the Inquisition and the Jesuits. When England was at war with Spain, any
Englishman caught on Spanish territory was a lawful prisoner for ransom;
and since Spanish territory meant Sicily, Naples, and Milan, and Rome
was the territory of Spain's patron, the Pope, Italy was far from safe
for Englishmen and Protestants. Even when peace with Spain was declared,
on the accession of James I., the spies of the Inquisition were
everywhere on the alert to find some slight pretext for arresting
travellers and to lure them into the dilemma of renouncing their faith,
or being imprisoned and tortured. There is a letter, for instance, to
Salisbury from one of his agents on the Continent, concerning overtures
made to him by the Pope's nuncio, to decoy some Englishman of
note - young Lord Roos or Lord Cranborne - into papal dominions, where he
might be seized and detained, in hope of procuring a release for Baldwin
the Jesuit.[156] William Bedell, about to go to Italy as chaplain to Sir
Henry Wotton, the Ambassador to Venice, very anxiously asks a friend
what route is best to Italy. "For it is told me that the Inquisition is
in Millaine, and that if a man duck not low at every Cross, he may be
cast in prison.... Send me, I pray you, a note of the chief towns to be
passed through. I care not for seeing places, but to go thither the
shortest and safest way."[157]
Bedell's fears were not without reason, for the very next year occurred
the arrest of the unfortunate Mr Mole, whose case was one of the
sensations of the day. Fuller, in his Church History, under the year
1607, records how -
"About this time Mr Molle, Governour to the Lord Ross in his travails,
began his unhappy journey beyond the Seas.... He was appointed by
Thomas, Earl of Exeter, to be Governour in Travail to his Grandchilde,
the Lord Ross, undertaking the charge with much reluctance (as a presage
of ill successe) and with a profession, and a resolution not to passe
the Alpes.
"But a Vagari took the Lord Ross to go to Rome, though some conceive
this notion had its root in more mischievous brains. In vain doth Mr
Molle dissuade him, grown now so wilfull, he would in some sort govern
his Governour. What should this good man doe? To leave him were to
desert his trust, to goe along with him were to endanger his own life.
At last his affections to his charge so prevailed against his judgment,
that unwillingly willing he went with him. Now, at what rate soever they
rode to Rome, the fame of their coming came thither before them; so that
no sooner had they entered their Inne, but Officers asked for Mr Molle,
took and carried him to the Inquisition-House, where he remained a
prisoner whilest the Lord Ross was daily feasted, favoured, entertained:
so that some will not stick to say, That here he changed no Religion for
a bad one."[158]
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