His Reports To England Show A Constant Struggle
To Keep His Train Of Young Gentlemen True To Their National Church.[171]
The Spanish Court was then at Valladolid, in which city flourished an
especially strong College of Jesuits.
Thence Walpole, and other
dangerous persuaders, made sallies upon Cornwallis's fold. At first the
Ambassador was hopeful: -
"Much hath that Creswell and others of that Societie" (the Jesuits)
"bestir'd themselves here in Conference and Persuasion with the
Gentlemen that came to attend his Excellencie[172] and do secretly bragg
of their much prevailinge. Two of myne own Followers I have found
corrupted, the one in such sorte as he refused to come to Prayers, whom
I presently discharged; the other being an honest and sober young
Gentleman, and one that denieth not to be present both at Prayers and
Preachinge, I continue still, having good hope that I shall in time
reduce him."[173]
But within a month he has to report the conversion of Sir Thomas Palmer,
and within another month, the loss of even his own chaplain. "Were God
pleased that onlie young and weak ones did waver, it were more
tollerable," he laments, "but I am put in some doubte of my Chaplaine
himself." He had given the chaplain - one Wadesworth, a good Cambridge
Protestant - leave of absence to visit the University of Salamanca. In a
week the chaplain wrote for a prolongation of his stay, making discourse
of "a strange Tempest that came upon him in the way, of visible Fire
that fell both before and behind him, of an Expectation of present
Death, and of a Vowe he made in that time of Danger." This manner of
writing, and reports from others that he has been a secret visitor to
the College of the Jesuits, make Cornwallis fear the worst. "I should
think him borne in a most unfortunate hower," he wails, "to become the
occasion of such a Scandall."[174] But his fears were realized. The
chaplain never came back. He had turned Romanist.
The reasons for the headway of Catholicism in the reign of James I. do
not concern us here. To explain the agitated mood of our Precepts for
Travellers, it is necessary only to call attention to the fact that
Protestantism was just then losing ground, through the devoted energy of
the Jesuits. Even in England, they were able to strike admiration into
the mind of youth, and to turn its ardour to their own purposes. But in
Spain and in Italy, backed by their impressive environment and
surrounded by the visible power of the Roman Church, they were much more
potent. The English Jesuits in Rome - Oxford scholars, many of
them - engaged the attentions of such of their university friends or
their countrymen who came to see Italy, offering to show them the
antiquities, to be guides and interpreters.[175] By some such means the
traveller was lured into the company of these winning companions, till
their spiritual and intellectual power made an indelible impression on
him.[176]
How much the English Government feared the influence of the Jesuits upon
young men abroad may be seen by the increasing strictness of licences
for travellers. The ordinary licence which everyone but a known merchant
was obliged to obtain from a magistrate before he could leave England,
in 1595 gave permission with the condition that the traveller "do not
haunte or resorte unto the territories or dominions of any foreine
prince or potentate not being with us in league or amitie, nor yet
wittinglie kepe companie with any parson or parsons evell affected to
our State."[177] But the attempt to keep Englishmen out of Italy was
generally fruitless, and the proviso was too frequently disregarded.
Lord Zouche grumbled exceedingly at the limitations of his licence. "I
cannot tell," he writes to Burghley in 1591, "whether I shall do well or
no to touch that part of the licence which prohibiteth me in general to
travel in some countries, and companioning divers persons.... This
restraint is truly as an imprisonment, for I know not how to carry
myself; I know not whether I may pass upon the Lords of Venis, and the
Duke of Florens' territories, because I know not if they have league
with her Majesty or no."[178] Doubtless Bishop Hall was right when he
declared that travellers commonly neglected the cautions about the
king's enemies, and that a limited licence was only a verbal
formality.[179] King James had occasion to remark that "many of the
Gentry, and others of Our Kingdom, under pretence of travel for their
experience, do pass the Alps, and not contenting themselves to remain in
Lombardy or Tuscany, to gain the language there, do daily flock to Rome,
out of vanity and curiosity to see the Antiquities of that City; where
falling into the company of Priests and Jesuits ... return again into
their countries, both averse to Religion and ill-affected to Our State
and Government."[180]
To come to our Instructions for Travellers, as given in the reign of
James I., they abound, as we would expect, in warnings against the
Inquisition and the Jesuits. Sir Robert Dallington, in his Method for
Travell,[181] gives first place to the question of remaining steadfast
in one's religion:
"Concerning the Traveliers religion, I teach not what it should be,
(being out of my element;) only my hopes are, he be of the religion here
established: and my advice is he be therein well settled, and that
howsoever his imagination shall be carried in the voluble Sphere of
divers men's discourses; yet his inmost thoughts like lines in a circle
shall alwaies concenter in this immoveable point, not to alter his first
faith: for that I knowe, that as all innovation is dangerous in a state;
so is this change in the little commonwealth of a man. And it is to be
feared, that he which is of one religion in his youth, and of another in
his manhood, will in his age be of neither....
"I will instance in a Gentleman I knew abroade, of an overt and free
nature Zealously forward in the religion hee carried from home, while he
was in France, who had not bene twentie dayes in Italy, but he was as
farre gone on the contrary Byas, and since his returne is turned againe.
Now what should one say of such men but as the Philosopher saith of a
friend, 'Amicus omnium, Amicus nullorum,' A professor of both, a
believer in neither.[182]
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