The quickening of animosity between Protestants and Catholics in the last quarter of the sixteenth century had a good deal to do with the censure of travel which we have been describing. In their fear and hatred of the Roman Catholic countries, Englishmen viewed with alarm any attractions, intellectual or otherwise, which the Continent had for their sons. They had rather have them forego the advantages of a liberal education than run the risk of falling body and soul into the hands of the Papists. The intense, fierce patriotism which flared up to meet the Spanish Armada almost blighted the genial impulse of travel for study's sake. It divided the nations again, and took away the common admiration for Italy which had made the young men of the north all rush together there. We can no longer imagine an Englishman like Selling coming to the great Politian at Bologna and grappling him to his heart--"arctissima sibi conjunxit amicum familiaritate,"[152] as the warm humanistic phrase has it. In the seventeenth century Politian would be a "contagious Papist," using his charm to convert men to Romanism, and Selling would be a "true son of the Church of England," railing at Politian for his "debauch'd and Popish principles." The Renaissance had set men travelling to Italy as to the flower of the world. They had scarcely started before the Reformation called it a place of abomination. Lord Burghley, who in Elizabeth's early days had been so bent on a foreign education for his eldest son, had drilled him in languages and pressed him to go to Italy,[153] at the end of his long life left instructions to his children: "Suffer not thy sonnes to pass the Alps, for they shall learn nothing there but pride, blasphemy, and atheism. And if by travel they get a few broken languages, that shall profit them nothing more than to have one meat served on divers dishes."[154]
The mother of Francis Bacon affords a good example of the Puritan distrust of going "beyond seas." She could by no means sympathize with her son Anthony's determination to become versed in foreign affairs, for that led him into intimacy with Roman Catholics. All through his prolonged stay abroad she chafed and fretted, while Anthony perversely remained in France, gaining that acquaintance with valuable correspondents, spies, and intelligencers which later made him one of the greatest authorities in England on continental politics. He had a confidential servant, a Catholic named Lawson, whom he sent over to deliver some important secret news to Lord Burghley. Lady Bacon, in her fear lest Lawson's company should pervert her son's religion and morals, had the man arrested and detained in England. His anxious master sent another man to plead with his mother for Lawson's release; but in vain. The letter of this messenger to Anthony will serve to show the vehemence of anti-Catholic feelings in a British matron in 1589.