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]
No threats could persuade Mr Mole to renounce his heresy, and though
many attempts were made to exchange him for some Jesuits caught in
England, he lay for thirty years in the prison of the Inquisition, and
died there, at the age of eighty-one.
It was part of the policy of the Jesuits, according to Sir Henry Wotton,
to thus separate their tutors from young men, and then ply the pupils
with attentions and flattery, with a view to persuading them into the
Church of Rome. Not long after the capture of Mole, Wotton writes to
Salisbury of another case of the same sort.
"My Lord Wentworthe[159] on the 18th of May coming towards Venice ...
accompanied with his brother-in-law Mr Henry Crafts, one Edward
Lichefeld, their governor, and some two or three other English, through
Bologna, as they were there together at supper the very night of their
arrival, came up two Dominican Friars, with the sergeants of the town,
and carried thence the foresaid Lichefeld, with all his papers, into the
prison of the Inquisition where he yet remaineth.[160] Thus standeth
this accident in the bare circumstances thereof, not different, save
only in place, from that of Mr Mole at Rome. And doubtlessly (as we
collect now upon the matter) if Sir John Harington[161] had either gone
the Roman Journey, or taken the ordinary way in his remove thitherwards
out of Tuscany, the like would have befallen his director also, a
gentleman of singular sufficiency;[162] for it appeareth a new piece of
council (infused into the Pope by his artisans the Jesuits) to separate
by some device their guides from our young noblemen (about whom they are
busiest) and afterwards to use themselves (for aught I can yet hear)
with much kindness and security, but yet with restraint (when they come
to Rome) of departing thence without leave; which form was held both
with the Lords Rosse and St Jhons, and with this Lord Wentworthe and his
brother-in-law at their being there. And we have at the present also a
like example or two in Barons of the Almaign nation of our religion,
whose governors are imprisoned, at Rome and Ferrara; so as the matter
seemeth to pass into a rule. And albeit thitherto those before named of
our own be escaped out of that Babylon (as far as I can penetrate)
without any bad impressions, yet surely it appeareth very dangerous to
leave our travellers in this contingency; especially being dispersed in
the middle towns of Italy (whither the language doth most draw them)
certain nimble pleasant wits in quality of interceptors, who deliver
over to their correspondents at Rome the dispositions of gentlemen
before they arrive, and so subject them both to attraction by argument,
and attraction by humour."[163]
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