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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