But The Fact Remains
That For The Average Gentleman To Turn Romanist Generally Meant To Drop
Out Of The World.
"Mr Lewknor," writes Father Gerard to Father
Owen,[203] "growing of late to a full resolution of entering the
Society
(of Jesus), and being so much known in England and in the Court as he
is, so that he could not be concealed in the English College at Rome;
and his father, as he considered, being morally sure to lose his
place,[204] which is worth unto him L1000 a year, he therefore will come
privately to Liege, where I doubt not but to keep him wholly unknown."
* * * * *
CHAPTER V
THE INFLUENCE OF THE FRENCH ACADEMIES
The admonitions of their elders did not keep young men from going to
Italy, but as the seventeenth century advanced the conditions they found
there made that country less attractive than France. The fact that the
average Englishman was a Protestant divided him from his compeers in
Italy and damped social intercourse. He was received courteously and
formally by the Italian princes, perhaps, for the sake of his political
uncle or cousin in England, but inner distrust and suspicion blighted
any real friendship. Unless the Englishman was one of those who had a
secret, half-acknowledged allegiance to Romanism, there could not, in
the age of the Puritans, be much comfortable affection between him and
the Italians. The beautiful youth, John Milton, as the author of
excellent Latin verse, was welcomed into the literary life of Florence,
to be sure, and there were other unusual cases, but the typical
traveller of Stuart times was the young gentleman who was sent to France
to learn the graces, with a view to making his fortune at Court, even as
his widowed mother sent George Villiers, afterwards Duke of Buckingham.
The Englishmen who travelled for "the complete polishing of their parts"
continued to visit Italy, to satisfy their curiosity, but it was rather
in the mood of the sight-seer.
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