There is, however, another aspect of the activity of the Jesuits in England which the French historian discreetly ignores. We saw in an earlier chapter how Father Parsons had intrigued to get control of the continental colleges and to prevent the sending of a bishop to England. His successors continued to exasperate the secular clergy by pursuing this selfish policy. Of the twenty-seven French and Flemish seminaries which supplied the large body of priests in England, the Jesuits controlled five, besides their colleges in Spain, and they made every effort to obtain an ascendency over the priests. When the Archpriest died in 1621, the secular clergy again appealed to the Pope for a bishop, and the Jesuits again opposed the appeal. When, after a long struggle, the Pope inclined to make the appointment, the Jesuits induced Tobie Matthews (a Catholic son of the Archbishop of York) to have James informed. The King sent word to the Pope, through Spain, that he would not suffer the appointment, but he was later convinced that he had been misled and the secular priests obtained a "Bishop of Chalcedon." He died in the following year, and his successor seems to have been imprudent, as the Benedictine monks joined the Jesuits against him. The inner history of this domestic squabble is told us by Panzani, who was the Vatican agent in England a few years afterwards. He tells us that the Jesuits made an improper charge to the King against the Bishop, and he was driven to the Continent.
Since one of the chief problems of Jesuit history is to account for the bitter hostility to them of priests who were no less devoted than they in the service of Catholicism, it is necessary to notice this unpleasant wrangling and intrigue in the very heart of an heretical land. I may, however, refer to Father Taunton's _History of the Jesuits in England_ for a longer account of this domestic struggle and return to the larger historical question.
The early years of the reign of Charles I. were not marred by any enforcement of the more drastic penal laws. The fining of lay Catholics--of whom about eleven thousand were known--still provided the King with a handsome addition to the privy purse, and indeed it was necessary to disarm the sullen suspicion with which the more zealous Protestants watched the foreign queen and her spiritual court. No serious effort was made, however, to enforce the laws against the Jesuits, and they increased in numbers and resources. In 1628 they opened a second novitiate in London. In 1634 one of the secular clergy estimated that there were 360 Jesuits in England, and that they had 550 students in their colleges. This is evidently an exaggeration, as the _Annual Letters_ report a total of 335 members of the Province in the year 1645, and disclose the interesting fact that they had a collective income of 17,405 _scudi_ (about £35,000 in the value of modern money). It is stated by their clerical opponents that part of their income was derived from commerce. A certain soap was genially known in London as "the papist soap," and it is said that the Jesuits had, through their lay friends, shares in the factory which produced it. They were in a strong and comfortable position, and, had they been disposed to lay aside their corporate selfishness and co-operate generously with the other clergy, the story of religion in England might have entered upon a singular development.