This romantic episode has inspired one of the finest chapters of Macaulay's _History of England_, and, whatever blame be laid on the shoulders of Sunderland, there is no question but that the Jesuits were very largely responsible for the unhappy counsels of James II. One of his first acts was to lodge Father Edward Petre in the princely chambers of St. James's Palace, and put the Chapel Royal under his charge; and in a short time he made Petre Clerk of the Closet. The prisons were opened, the recusants now emerged boldly from their secluded homes, and the Jesuits summoned their continental colleagues to come and share the work of harvesting. New chapels were opened in London; and in more than one case, when other priests proposed to open chapels, royal influence cut short their design and secured the buildings for the Jesuits. Free "undenominational" schools were opened, and hundreds of Protestant, as well as Catholic, boys were attracted to these insidious nurseries of the faith by the unwonted absence of fees.
In all this we may see only undue haste and indiscretion, but the policy developed rapidly. When Parliament refused to carry out the wishes of the monarch and his advisers, he proceeded by "dispensing power," and tampered with the judges in order to have his power ratified. Four Catholics were introduced into the Privy Council, and the nobles and officials gradually realised that baptism was the first qualification for higher office. When the Bishop of London refused to suspend a priest for attacking Romanism, an ecclesiastical commission was created to suspend the bishop and stifle the voices of the Protestant clergy. On his own authority James suspended the penal measures, issued a Declaration of Indulgence, interfered with the rights of Protestants in Ireland, solemnly received a papal Nuncio at Windsor, and sent the Earl of Castlemaine as ambassador to the Papacy. The civil and military offices were rapidly transferred to Catholics, and before the end of 1686 Oxford and Cambridge began to feel the illegal pressure of the royal authority in favour of the Catholic creed.
As these things coincided with the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes and persecution of the Protestants in France (from which James, like his brother, received royal alms) the Protestants saw before them a prospect of violence and persecution. Yet James multiplied his indiscreet and, in many cases, illegal acts with blind fanaticism. When the inevitable catastrophe came, the Jesuits deplored the injudiciousness of their patron and cast all the blame on Sunderland. While, however, Sunderland remained a Protestant until a few months before the fall of James, the monarch was throughout the three years surrounded by Jesuits and abjectly devoted to them. A letter written by the Jesuits of Liège to the Jesuits of Freiburg, and intercepted by the Dutch, informs us of the influence they had on James II.[25] He is a devoted son of the Society; he is determined to convert England by its means; he refuses to allow any Jesuit to kiss his hand. And the public action corresponds to the secret letter. Father Warner, the Provincial of the Society, is the King's confessor; Father Petre, a vain and pompous mediocrity, is so much esteemed by him that he besieges the Vatican with a demand of a red hat for Petre. Already courtiers pleasantly address the conceited Jesuit as "Your Eminence." But Innocent XI. is stern and will not countenance the blunders of the English monarch. Castlemaine vainly seeks to impress the Pope with his ambassadorial splendour, and is forced to return with a curt reminder that Jesuits cannot receive dignities. So James makes the Jesuit a Privy Councillor, and Father Petre takes the Oath of Allegiance (with its supposed heresy) and sits in clerical garb in the supreme council of the land. His Roman superiors have not a word to say, either when Petre acquiesces in the demand for a red hat or when he becomes a Privy Councillor. M. Crétineau-Joly is shocked; Father Taunton opines that the whole policy is directed by the Jesuit authorities at Rome.