The Mere Force Of Environment, According To Sir Charles Cornwallis,
Ambassador To Spain From 1605-9, Was Enough To Change The Religion Of
Impressionable Spirits.
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]
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 34 of 105
Words from 17314 to 17844
of 55513
