We have now to see how this characteristic will be maintained during a second century, and will at length bring a terrible catastrophe upon the Society. For half a century the Jesuits will continue to enjoy and augment their wealth and power, but the hatred which they have provoked in the minds of their co-religionists gathers thicker and darker about their splendid prosperity and at length extinguishes it. They die by the hand of Catholics, suffering the just penalty of their grave abuse of power. It will now be more convenient to follow their history continuously in each province, and we may begin with England.
We left the Jesuits struggling in disguise and penury in England at the death of General Acquaviva (1615). After the wave of anger which the Gunpowder Plot had raised had partly subsided, dozens of Jesuits stole bravely into their native land and ministered stealthily to the persecuted Catholics. There were sixty-eight of them in England in 1615; by 1619 the number had increased to nearly two hundred, and the Roman officials raised the mission to the status of a vice-province; in 1623, when there were 284 members, they were formed into a Province of the Society, with Father Blount as Provincial. The indisposition of James I. to persecute emboldened them to act with greater vigour. The fantastic picture of their activity in Crétineau-Joly is, of course, wholly inaccurate. We read of a Father Arrowsmith "issuing from his retreat" to challenge and defeat the Bishop of Chester in a debate, and expose himself to the prelate's vindictiveness. It was not in 1628, but some years before, that Edmund Arrowsmith argued with the Bishop of Chester; he was then not a Jesuit at all, and he did not issue from any retreat to challenge the prelate or suffer any vindictive punishment. He was arrested as a priest, happened to find the bishop eating meat on a Friday and argued the point in passing, and was released.[23]
The truth is that from 1607 to 1618 there were only sixteen persons executed on the ground of religion in England, and none of them was a Jesuit. The prisons, indeed, contained several hundred priests, and several thousand Catholic laymen, but James was disinclined to take extreme measures, and the priests had much liberty even in jail. Father Percy, a Durham man, converted 150 men and women of rank, including the Countess of Buckingham, mother of the famous minister, during his three years in the New Prison on the Thames. James himself condescended to debate with him, and Father Percy ended a long and adventurous career in bed. In 1622, in fact, when James began to negotiate with Spain for a Catholic princess for his son, four thousand Catholics were released from jail, and the execution of the penal laws was greatly relaxed. Catholics generally looked forward with eagerness to the marriage, but the Jesuits opposed it at the Vatican. It is suggested that they dreaded the coming of a bishop in the train of the princess, but it is not improbable that they preferred an alliance with France. When the Spanish negotiations failed--and they would have failed without any assistance from the Jesuits--the laws were enforced once more with some rigour. Still it was only accident or imprudence that brought punishment on the Jesuits. In 1623 one of them, Father Drury, was preaching on a Sunday afternoon to some two or three hundred Catholics in the house of the French Ambassador at Blackfriars, when the floor gave way, and the preacher and a hundred others were killed. The common folk of London made ghastly merriment over "the doleful even-song." Five years later several Jesuits were caught in a house belonging to the Earl of Shrewsbury at Clerkenwell. We find that they had there a regular novitiate and the residence of their Provincial. An imposing ceremony was to take place, and the large intake of provisions aroused the suspicion of the priest-hunters. Only one Jesuit was executed. In 1622 forty of the fathers had attended a provincial congregation of their Society in London, and they had decided to found colleges in Wales and Staffordshire.