Suspicious Moderate: The Life and Writings of Francis à Sancta Clara (1598–1680)

By Anne Ashley Davenport and Danielle M. Peters

The historiography of English Catholicism has grown enormously in the last generation, led by scholars such as Peter Lake, Michael Questier, Stefania Tutino, and others. In Suspicious Moderate, Anne Ashley Davenport makes a significant contribution to that literature by presenting a long overdue intellectual biography of the influential English Catholic theologian Francis à Sancta Clara (1598–1680). Born into a Protestant family in Coventry at the end of the sixteenth century, Sancta Clara joined the Franciscan order in 1617. He played key roles in reviving the English Franciscan province and in the efforts that were sponsored by Charles I to reunite the Church of England with Rome. In his voluminous Latin writings, he defended moderate Anglican doctrines, championed the separation of church and state, and called for state protection of freedom of conscience.

Suspicious Moderate offers the first detailed analysis of Sancta Clara's works. In addition to his notorious Deus, natura, gratia (1634), Sancta Clara wrote a comprehensive defense of episcopacy (1640), a monumental treatise on ecumenical councils (1649), and a treatise on natural philosophy and miracles (1662). By carefully examining the context of Sancta Clara's ideas, Davenport argues that he aimed at educating English Roman Catholics into a depoliticized and capacious Catholicism suited to personal moral reasoning in a pluralistic world. In the course of her research, Davenport also discovered that "Philip Scot," the author of the earliest English discussions of Hobbes (a treatise published in 1650), was none other than Sancta Clara. Davenport demonstrates how Sancta Clara joined the effort to fight Hobbes's Erastianism by carefully reflecting on Hobbes's pioneering ideas and by attempting to find common ground with him, no matter how slight.

• Language: English
• Publisher: University of Notre Dame Press
• Release date: May 15, 2017
• ISBN: 9780268101008

Anne Ashley Davenport

Anne Ashley Davenport is a lecturer in the Boston College Honors Program. She is the author of Descartes's Theory of Action and Measure of a Different Greatness: The Intensive Infinite, 1250–1650.

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Suspicious Moderate

Suspicious Moderate

THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF FRANCIS À SANCTA CLARA (1598–1680)

ANNE ASHLEY DAVENPORT

UNIVERSITY OF NOTRE DAME PRESS

NOTRE DAME, INDIANA

University of Notre Dame Press

Notre Dame, Indiana 46556

www.undpress.nd.edu

Copyright © 2017 by the University of Notre Dame

All Rights Reserved

Published in the United States of America

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Davenport, Anne Ashley, author.

Title: Suspicious moderate : the life and writings of Francis áa Sancta Clara (1598–1680) / Anne Ashley Davenport.

Description: Notre Dame, Indiana : University of Notre Dame Press, 2017. | Includes bibliographical references and index. | Identifiers: LCCN 2016058496 (print) | LCCN 2017013688 (ebook) | ISBN 9780268100995 (pdf) | ISBN 9780268101008 (epub) | ISBN 9780268100971 (hardcover : alkaline paper) | ISBN 0268100977 (hardcover : alkaline paper)

Subjects: LCSH: Franciscus a Sancta Clara, 1598–1680. | Franciscus a Sancta Clara, 1598–1680—Political and social views. | Catholic Church—Clergy—Biography. | Franciscans—England—Biography. | Theologians—England—Biography. | England—Church history—17th century. | Catholic Church—England—History—17th century. | Catholic Church—History of doctrines—17th century. | BISAC: RELIGION / Christianity / Catholic. | HISTORY / Modern / 17th Century.

Classification: LCC BX4705. F7318 (ebook) | LCC BX4705. F7318 D38 2017 (print) | DDC 282.092 [B]—dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016058496

ISBN 9780268101008

∞ This paper meets the requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992 (Permanence of Paper).

This e-Book was converted from the original source file by a third-party vendor. Readers who notice any formatting, textual, or readability issues are encouraged to contact the publisher at [e-mail].

A Voice

You who are said to drink of this almost absent water:

Remember that it escapes us, speak to us.

Is it what has deluded us, now finally grasped,

Not water of a mortal taste—and has its word, obscure,

That you have drunk at this ever-living spring,

Illumined you? Or is the water

Merely shadow, where your face

But mirrors back its finitude?

—I do not know, I am no more. Time ends

Like the flood-tide of a dream, with its gods

Still unrevealed; and like water, too, your voice

Fades away in this clear language that consumed me.

Yes, here I can live. The angel that is the earth

Will appear in every bush, and will burn.

I am this empty altar, and these arches, and this abyss—

And yourself, perhaps—and doubt: but the dawn

And the radiance of unsealed stones.

—Yves Bonnefoy (translated by Hoyt Rogers)

CONTENTS

PREFACE

In the summer of 1644, after three years in the Tower of London on charges of high treason, the archbishop of Canterbury, William Laud, was brought to trial before Parliament. The charges against him included the claim that he had conspired to advance Popery in England and reconcile the English Church by degrees to Rome. The evidence that was cited to prove Laud’s guilt was largely circumstantial, except for a vividly hard fact. Laud, it was alleged, had wittingly and willingly held conferences with a Roman Catholic priest—"one called Sancta Clara, alias Damport, a Dangerous Person and Franciscan Friar. Who was this Franciscan, known to many of his contemporaries simply as Sancta Clara," and why would pinning Sancta Clara to Laud help to secure a conviction?

Because he was embroiled in powerful historic trends shaping early modern Europe, Sancta Clara’s life and writings deserve special attention for three chief reasons. The first is that Sancta Clara made the strange choice of joining a loathed, feared, and persecuted papist minority. Born into a Protestant family of Coventry, he attended Oxford from 1613 to 1615, then converted to Roman Catholicism, ran off to the English College of Douay, and joined the Franciscan Order in 1617. Why would a simple Midlands youth from a middling Protestant family embrace Roman superstition, vow to live in voluntary poverty, and devote himself to restoring Franciscan life in England? The question is all the more perplexing given that Sancta Clara’s half brother, John Davenport, founder of New Haven in the American colonies, made a diametrically opposite choice and became a leading pioneer of New England Congregationalism. By examining Sancta Clara’s trajectory, Suspicious Moderate seeks to shed light on a dynamic English generation for whom religious self-invention opened up new existential pathways.

What motivated Franciscus à Sancta Clara to become an author? A second reason to study Sancta Clara’s life and writings is that he matured into an exceptionally good theologian. In his written work, he sought to reframe Catholic theology so as to show that (1) Catholicism is compatible with freedom of conscience, (2) Catholicism is compatible with civil government, and (3) Catholicism is compatible with experimental science. Suspicious Moderate examines Sancta Clara’s theological works in careful detail in order to bring his method and doctrines to light.

Contemporary accounts speak of Sancta Clara’s personal charm and graceful manner. A third reason to study his life and writings is that they provide a window into obscure and colorful aspects of seventeenth-century England. Who were Sancta Clara’s allies and why? He was elected provincial of his order three times, serving from 1637 to 1640 (during the reign of Charles I), from 1650 to 1653 (during the Commonwealth), and from 1665 to 1668 (during the reign of Charles II). Appointed chaplain to Queen Henriette-Marie and theologian to Queen Catherine of Braganza, Sancta Clara sought out a wide variety of interlocutors, from statesmen to scientists. He forged ties of friendship with theologians on both sides of the Channel. He conferred with the Irish Franciscan Luke Wadding and with the Flemish chemist Van Helmont, befriended the Caroline divines Augustine Lindsell and Jeremy Taylor, and interacted with Lord Baltimore’s right-hand man in Maryland, John Lewgar, and with Francis Windebank. Most importantly, he enjoyed a lifelong friendship with the controversial philosopher-priest Thomas Blackloe White and through him came into contact with the circle of Kenelm Digby.

In the process of researching this book, I made the lucky discovery that the mysterious Philip Scot who published one of the earliest English discussions of Hobbes in 1650 was none other than Sancta Clara (first announced in Hobbes Studies in 2014). I now explore some of the ramifications of my discovery. As we will see, Sancta Clara joined the effort to fight Hobbes’s Erastianism by carefully reflecting on Hobbes’s pioneering ideas and by attempting, in characteristic fashion, to find common ground with him, no matter how slight. During the Commonwealth, Sancta Clara petitioned Cromwell for religious freedom in the name of civil peace and formed a friendship with the Oxford librarian and Hobbes admirer Thomas Barlow. After the publication of Leviathan (1651), Sancta Clara attempted to refute Hobbes’s demonization of Roman Catholicism. Six years after Sancta Clara’s death, Pierre Bayle praised Sancta Clara by name in his landmark treatise on religious toleration, the Commentaire philosophique. In the nineteenth century, Sancta Clara’s vision of a less hectoring and more inclusive Catholic Church would help to shape the Boston mission of Bishop Cheverus and the apologetics of Étienne Badin, missionary to Kentucky and donor of the land that became the site of the University of Notre Dame. John Henry Newman’s famous Tractate 90, in turn, owed a close debt to Sancta Clara’s defense of the English articles of religion, which the Anglican reunionist canon F. G. Lee translated and published in 1865. Finally, attesting to a sort of enduring haunting of the English imagination, Joseph Shorthouse published a best seller in 1881, John Inglesant, in which Sancta Clara is prominently featured.

As Sancta Clara’s life was largely lived underground and in the secretive wings of the Stuart court, his written works, mostly in Latin, constitute our chief record of his journey as a Franciscan priest grappling with the legacy of English odium. Only two book-length biographies of Sancta Clara have been written to date, both by Franciscans: one in German by Ermin Klaus (1938) and one in English by John Berkermans Dockery (1960). Neither examines Sancta Clara’s theology in detail or provides sufficient context to interpret it. Sancta Clara’s hallmark irenicism, however, has long attracted attention. In an influential monograph published in 1951, the French scholar Maurice Nédoncelle praised Sancta Clara’s subtle arguments and enthusiastically described him as an intrepid archangel for trying to win tolerance for Roman Catholics from Cromwell. George Tavard, in turn, described Sancta Clara as a fine and little known theologian. Most recently, Sancta Clara found a champion in Bruno Neveu, who emphasized the innovative character of Sancta Clara’s chief theological work, Systema fidei, in an article published posthumously in 2004. Leading scholars of the history of religion in Stuart England, such as Caroline Hibbard, Anthony Milton, Michael Questier, Brian Tyacke, Beverly Southgate, Stefania Tutino, and Jeffrey Collins, to name just a few, have consistently cited Sancta Clara in their rich contextual studies. They have not, however, examined his doctrines in detail to show his full impact on Roman Catholic theology.

Why the title Suspicious Moderate? The epithet was framed by a member of the Great Tew circle and fellow Roman Catholic convert, Hugh Serenus Cressy, apparently to denounce, but actually to praise, Sancta Clara’s irenic strategy of conciliation. Viewed with suspicion from all sides for his attempt to reconcile opposing views, Sancta Clara was himself suspicious—of dogmatism, of the political uses of religion, of Roman Catholic blindness, and of Puritan fanaticism. It is by trusting his own suspiciousness of human folly that Sancta Clara navigated storm after storm to become a champion of freedom of conscience. There is yet a third, darker sense in which the title is meant to remind us of a perennial obstacle facing sincere reformers. As we will see, Protestants were most often unwilling to believe that a Roman Catholic could genuinely be moderate. Even someone like William Penn, who was himself persecuted for being a Quaker, remained suspicious of Sancta Clara’s effort to reframe Catholicism and denounced him as a fraud. By calling attention to Cressy’s characterization of Sancta Clara, the book’s title hopes to emphasize the multidimensional context of suspicion and prejudice in which Sancta Clara’s life and theology evolved. Eschewing the satisfaction of clear-cut positions, moreover, we will immerse ourselves in realms of ambiguity and in strategies that were shaped as much by unreasonable hope and unreasonable suspicion as by facts.

Starting before Sancta Clara’s birth, as an intellectual biography must, because acculturation is marked by initiation before new departures are possible, the first two chapters evoke a key aspect of the anti-Catholic hatred that was transmitted to Sancta Clara by his Protestant milieu and that loomed large over his life. At stake was a highly politicized claim by Protestants that papists were simply incapable of making moral decisions independently of Rome. The attempt to answer Protestants in this regard and to hammer out a new theory of moral freedom for Catholics started with Sancta Clara’s predecessors, jailed at the Clink (see chapter 2). Sancta Clara learned from them, gained their support, and eventually developed their approach into a comprehensive rejection of religious persecution.

Chapters 3 and 4 narrate Sancta Clara’s childhood, education at Oxford, conversion to Roman Catholicism, and Franciscan calling, culminating with his travel to Rome and first publication (1628). Chapter 5 explores the revival of English Franciscan culture under Sancta Clara’s energetic leadership, but it also evokes the religious community of Little Gidding to argue that nostalgia for supererogatory holiness must be singled out as a key feature of the 1620s and 1630s, blurring confessional lines and offering new opportunities for ecumenical rapprochement. This sets the stage for chapters 6 and 7, in which Sancta Clara’s most notorious work of theology, Deus, natura, gratia (1634), is presented and analyzed, along with his appointment as chaplain in Queen Henriette-Marie’s entourage.

Chapter 8 describes Sancta Clara’s effort to reunite the Church of England and the Roman Church, highlighting the atmosphere of anxiety and deceit within which Sancta Clara pursued his dream. Chapter 9 presents Sancta Clara’s exhaustive defense of episcopacy (1640) and argues that Apologia episcoporum was overtly written against Presbyterians and Puritans, but covertly aimed at promoting a moderate alternative to Jesuit papalism, hoping to appeal to Laudian prelates. Chapter 10 examines damaging accounts of Sancta Clara that were written in the context of the English Civil War.

After chapter 11 briefly presents a Catholic and Protestant debate over religious infallibility, mainly among members of Great Tew, chapter 12 presents Sancta Clara’s opus magnum, a veritable metatheology entitled Systema fidei (1648). I put forth the thesis that Systema fidei aimed at framing a theory of Catholicism suited to a religiously pluralistic, post-Westphalia Europe. Special attention is given to Sancta Clara’s philosophical fallibilism and to his effort to protect the autonomy of Catholic conscience by arguing that personal assent need never exceed the degree of available evidence.

Chapters 13 to 15 turn to Sancta Clara’s English writings during the Commonwealth, documenting his involvement in clandestine efforts to obtain religious toleration from Cromwell and his engagement with the work of Thomas Hobbes. Once again, the problem of the autonomy of conscience occupies center stage, inspiring Sancta Clara to defend a strict separation of church and state in the hope of refuting Hobbes’s Erastianism. Chapter 16 examines Sancta Clara’s last published treatise, Religio philosophi, which is concerned with miracles. Published during the Restoration, when Sancta Clara was again given a royal appointment as theologian to Queen Catherine of Braganza, Religio philosophi belongs to the expanded context of Thomas Browne’s popular Religio medici. Far from approaching miracles simplistically, our English Franciscan shows that the Catholic belief in miracles (1) poses no threat to the project of science, (2) protects believers against malignant forms of superstition, and (3) puts in place a rational and intersubjective bulwark against atheism. Chapter 17 looks at the last eighteen years of Sancta Clara’s life and brings the investigation back to the problem of the autonomy of personal conscience, arguing that Sancta Clara drew on Hobbes to frame a liberating theory of self-censorship. My epilogue provides a summary of Sancta Clara’s major themes, a sketch of his main intellectual heirs, and suggestions for future research.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

My debts to colleagues, friends, and family over the course of this project are too numerous to acknowledge in detail, so I must confine myself to a few representative individuals in whom many others, as it were, are enclosed. In Oxford, I thank Carole Jordan for her kind sponsorship. In Paris, I thank Jacqueline Demnard, Philippe Leburghe, Martine Jeannet, and Angélique and Fabrice Gaussen for spiritual sustenance. At the University of Notre Dame Press, I most especially thank Stephen Little, Rebecca DeBoer, and copyeditor Scott Barker for their knowledge and patience. In New York, I thank Heyden and Nicholas Rostow, Xéna Lee, and Susan Rita Ruel. In San Francisco Bay, I thank Casey and Jessica Law, Elizabeth Arredondo, and Karla Arredondo for their subtle activism. In Santo Domingo, I thank Hoyt Rogers for the gift of poetry. In leafy New England, I thank Charles and Jessica Golub, Dennis Taylor, Richard and Anne Kearney, Jean-Luc Solère, Regis de Silva, John and Annette Lee, Elaheh Kheirandish, Hormoz Goodarky, Mark Kroll, Carol Lieberman, and Susan Peirce, for inspiration, comfort, and the gift of music. In heaven, I thank my brother Anthony and my cousin Pauline, who turned my writing into a sacra converzatione, connecting me to a myriad of lost voices. Above all, I thank my teacher, friend, and husband, Leon Golub—sine quo (quibus!) non. Finally, I dedicate the book to two resourceful brothers, Pablo Arredondo and Manuel Arredondo, heirs of our fractious Western hemisphere and poets of resilience. May they draw deeply from history to reinvent brotherhood everywhere.

ONE

Anti-Catholicism and the Sanctity of Conscience

A decade before our protagonist’s birth in Coventry, the world of English Catholics underwent dramatic changes. At the heart of these changes lay the issue of the sanctity of private conscience. According to William Overton, for example, who was bishop of Coventry and Lichfield from 1580 to 1609, Roman Catholicism had to be vigorously suppressed because its aim was to deprive individual Christians of their moral responsibility—to snare the simple and mervailously intangle theyr consciences.¹ In sharp contrast, Protestants could be trusted in their own knowledge and conscience, most especially to recognize their duty to rise up against the treacherous discord promoted by Roman Catholicism and the pope.²

When Anthony Munday’s vivid little book, The English Romayne Lyfe, went on sale in London in 1582, English Protestants had a chance to read a firsthand account of Roman Catholic brainwashing. They learned that papist priests routinely seduced English youths to leave their native land by offering to pay for their passage to Rome. Once in Rome, these hapless English students were indoctrinated into the scarlet ways of the Whore of Babylon and sworn to return as missionaries to England to corrupt hearts and suffer public martyrdom.³ Anthony Munday was in a special position to convey the full horror of Rome’s machinations. In Paris, English Catholic exiles mistook him for the son of a Catholic friend of theirs from Staffordshire. Taking advantage of the mistake, Munday traveled to Rome in order to infiltrate the English College. On the evening of his arrival, not far from the Pope’s palace, he was invited to enjoy the college garden, where a priest, a dear friend of his supposed father, took him aside to show him a list of Queen Elizabeth’s supporters who would be burnt at the stake, decapitated, or quartered as soon as England was wholly returned to the pope.⁴

Munday’s narrative was all the more forceful in its impact because he had a playwright’s flair for detail. English youths were given elegant white napkins at meals and whips in the evening to draw blood for personal penance. In winter, they gathered after supper with their Jesuit teachers, who regaled them with heroic stories of martyrdom. In the summer, relaxing amidst vineyards, they were encouraged to vie with one another to recount lurid gossip and demonize the queen—prompting their Jesuit mentors to cross themselves in horror, as though the devil had been named.⁵

Saint Peter’s heir, Pope Gregory XIII, had a special place in his heart for his English lambs. On Candlemas, he sent them each a large taper blessed individually by his own pontifical hand. The Holy Father believed that English hearts could be won over to God’s church in sufficient numbers through missionaries to ensure the success of military force in the near future.⁶ Since 1580, Jesuits had joined the English mission, led by Edmund Campion and Robert Persons. Their chief objective was to pressure English Catholics into abstaining from the schismatic Church of England.⁷ Catholics who continued to attend Protestant churches would be excommunicated. Only Catholic recusants (Catholics who refused to attend the Protestant Church) would receive Roman sacraments.

More than a decade after Munday’s book was published, the English Parliament in 1593 responded to Rome’s new missionary zeal by enacting new penalties for popish recusancy.⁸ English Catholics living in England, such as the Napiers in Oxford or the Throckmortons in the region of Coventry, were suddenly plunged into anxiety. According to the new Jesuit missionaries and to Rome, attending the English Church implied spiritual weakness and the loss of heaven. According to the English Crown, on the other hand, no English subject who refused to worship in the Church of England could be trusted. By rejecting the local English church where their ancestors had worshipped, Catholic recusants showed a culpable foreignness—a treasonous submission to the foreign authority of the Roman pope, to the detriment of their own native sovereign, neighbors, and country. The dilemma facing English Catholics propelled them into a crisis of personal conscience. The very identity of Catholic was turned inside out. To be Catholic now meant worshipping God in secret. It meant receiving sacraments from outlaws.

Conversely, in the name of civic loyalty, what did the government and the Protestant majority require? Roman Catholics were asked to conform publicly to the collective rituals of the English Church. They were asked to keep their dissenting beliefs private for the sake of a visible Christian and English unity. Told to conform to the English Church by their government and to abstain from it by their priests, the wicked and seditious persons terming themselves Catholic had no choice but to search their own consciences and make a personal choice.

Much as Catholic recusants argued that a personal decision to abstain from the English Church was a matter of private religious conscience and implied no civil disloyalty, the argument was rejected by the Protestant majority as a mere pretext.⁹ English Protestants were convinced that Catholic recusants obeyed their Jesuit priests and the Roman pope, not the voice of their own conscience. As a Protestant author explained in 1601, what recusancy mainly revealed was the extent of the pope’s despotic power over Roman Catholics: Recusancy in them is not for Religion, but in acknowledgment of the Pope’s power.¹⁰

Since Catholic recusants acted out of a blind devotion to the pope rather than from a private tender conscience, the fear took root among English Protestants that popish recusants were all potential traitors. Catholics were poised, at the mere command of some missionary priest, to rebel against their Protestant monarch, whom Rome had twice deprived verbally of her pretended title.¹¹ By shunning Sunday services at their local church, Catholic recusants implied that they regarded their Protestant neighbors and their queen as little better than heathen.

As Queen Elizabeth grew frail, visibly staggering under the weight of her mantle at Parliament’s opening, rumors that the Roman pontiff was actively interfering in the English succession raised Protestant anxiety to a new pitch.¹² When the queen’s onetime favorite, the Earl of Essex, tried to incite Londoners to join his rebellion on February 8, 1601, he deliberately played on anti-Catholic fear, shouting out for all to hear that England had been sold to the Spaniards.¹³ Conversely, when the rebellion failed and Essex was put on trial, he was accused of enlisting papists—of plotting to grant papists freedom of conscience in return for their support.¹⁴ Robert Cecil led the charge. Was Essex’s co-conspirator, Sir John Davies, Cecil asked, not a Papist and a Catholick? Essex, dismayed, retorted that he could not search into the secrets of Davies’s heart to accuse him inwardly, but he could vouch that Davies attended the service of God in Essex House and behaved himself very Godlily. Davies complied with the government’s requirement of outward conformity—what more was required under English law?

When Cecil had become Elizabeth’s secretary of state four years earlier in 1597, he had successfully exploited tensions within the clandestine Catholic mission. English Catholic missionaries had become increasingly polarized into two factions. There was a militant, intransigent faction allied with Spain and led by Jesuits,¹⁵ and there was a moderate faction, seeking toleration for the Roman Catholic minority rather than the reconversion of England by force. The second faction was led by secular priests and was generally allied with France.¹⁶ When Jesuits had managed to have an archpriest of their choice, George Blackwell, appointed in 1598, the secular priests of the English mission refused his authority and revolted. The two sides broke out into open war.¹⁷ With Cecil’s approval, Bishop Bancroft helped the secular faction defy Blackwell and the Jesuits by secretly providing them with printing presses and by suspending a number of restrictions.¹⁸

The queen’s edict of November 5, 1602, which was ostensibly aimed at reassuring Puritans that England was not sold to the Spaniard, since it renewed the ban against missionary priests, intimated that priests who reported themselves to the authorities and acknowledged their duty and allegiance to the queen might benefit from special treatment. Cecil’s strategy to secure the support of moderate English Catholics was partly motivated by anxiety over Elizabeth’s succession. Soon after Essex’s execution on February 25, 1601, Cecil replaced Essex as James VI Stuart’s main champion for the English throne and chief secret correspondent.¹⁹

When the news spread in March 1603 that James was proclaimed Elizabeth’s successor, English Catholics for the most part rejoiced, convinced that the son of Mary Stuart would show special benevolence to Catholics.²⁰ Before the king-elect reached London, he was presented with a petition by his ryght truistie cusing Henry Percy, Earl of Northumberland.²¹ The document bore its purpose in its title: The Catholics’ Supplication unto the King’s Majesty, for toleration of Catholic religion in England.²² They urged James to suspend penal laws against Catholic recusants on three chief grounds. First, there was the recent example of France, which proved that religious pluralism did not impair a realm’s unity but instead helped to secure domestic peace by depriving foreign powers of a pretext to meddle internally.²³ Second, English Catholics were not seeking full toleration but only the right to practice the Old Religion of England in privacy, unmolested. Third, unlike Protestants, who obeyed royal authority simply out of natural instinct, or convenience, or fear, Roman Catholics were instructed to obey royal authority as a matter of religious conscience, on penalty of eternal damnation.²⁴ Roman Catholics, the petition argued, possessed a distinctly harsh conscience poised to torture them grievously if they rebelled against James’s temporal authority. Catholics, in other words, presented the advantage of a religiously grounded theory of civic obligation. They were more securely prevented from political rebellion than others by their innermost conscience.

James was not convinced. The problem, in James’s view, was that Roman Catholics were not actually in possession of their own consciences. Rome would not allow Catholics to make up their own moral minds. Roman Catholic declarations of loyalty could not be trusted, James believed, because lyke maried wemen or minors, they allowed their conscience to be overreuled by theire romishe god as it pleasis him to allowe or revoke their conclusions.²⁵ Unlike adult men, who judged for themselves what obligations to undertake and who stood accountable for them before God, Roman Catholics acted under external supervision. Their promises, in effect, were conditional. If Roman Catholicism encouraged a distinctly religious theory of obligation, it was precisely because the pope, standing for God, judged what obligations ought to bind the faithful as a matter of religious conscience. James showed little inclination to respond to the petition favorably.²⁶

When Protestants got wind of the petition, they reacted fiercely. Gabriel Powell, rector of Llansanffraid-ym-Mechain in Montgomeryshire, published the text of the petition along with a scathing commentary outlining the dangers of tolerating Poperie. Powell warned that any Catholic protestation of civil loyalty was worthless. The pope, Powell reminded James and all of England, could exempt English Catholics from their professed loyalty by means of a single word.²⁷ Powell stressed that Roman Catholics were simply not able to performe any allegiance or dutie that the King can desire or expect.²⁸ As long as the Pope may discharge them of allegeance to their prince, Catholics could not be considered loyall Subiects. Moreover, the French case did not apply to England and to English Catholic recusants. The French king alloweth toleration to such as acknowledge him for their lawfull Soveraigne, who never plotted against his Crowne and life, nor can be induced upon any suggestion so to doe.²⁹ English papists simply could not meet the same criteria for safe toleration: It is impossible for Papists to be loyall subiects to any Protestant prince.³⁰

James’s approach to his Catholic subjects seems to have been guided by two principles, bolstered by a very pragmatic demographic anxiety. To begin with, James was thoroughly convinced of the divine origin and sanctity of the human conscience. Conscience, James believed, was nothing else than the light of knowledge that God hath planted in man, which ever watching over all of his actions, as it beareth him a joyful testimony when he does right, so choppeth it him with a feeling that hee hath done wrong, when ever he commiteth any sinne.³¹

To attempt to change a person’s conscience by external means such as physical threats was essentially sacrilegious—tantamount to interfering with God’s immediate light. The conscience, moreover, played a key role in conserving religion. The mind knows right from wrong, but the conscience does more: it moves us to act as we ought. A Christian king, for example, is bound by his conscience to act justly. As a case in point, his conscience prevents him from resorting to physical persecution to change a subject’s private religious beliefs: I wille never allowe in my conscience that the bloode of any man shall be shedde for diversitie of opinions in religion.³²

James was determined not to persecute Roman Catholics who lived quietly and who gave but an outward obedience to the law.³³ Outward conformity in religion—of the kind that was vouched by Essex on behalf of his Catholic ally Sir John Davies—would suffice. Catholic recusancy, on the other hand, was a different matter. It broke the law of the realm in the name of a competing, higher temporal authority. What sovereign would tolerate it?³⁴

James’s second principle was that kings rule by divine right. Kings are appointed by God to govern their realms and are directly accountable to God—but to God only. There could never be legitimate religious grounds for absolving a king’s subjects of their loyalty.³⁵ A church claiming the right to absolve a king’s subjects of their loyalty disqualified itself, ipso facto, as God’s church.

Finally, James worried about the possible demographic increase of Roman Catholics within England. If a policy of toleration resulted over time in a Roman Catholic majority, what would happen to royal sovereignty, English godliness, and the sanctity of private conscience?³⁶ As long as Roman Catholicism remained intolerably intolerant, Roman Catholicism could not be tolerated in England—at least not to the point of posing a political threat to English tolerance. Robert Cecil soon clarified to disappointed Catholics that the king had promised a moderacion of religion but not a tolleracion.³⁷

James received a second plea for the toleration of Roman Catholics. This time, it came in the guise of a letter of dedication from someone who was destined to play a decisive role in Sancta Clara’s life—Matthew Kellison, Regius Professor at the University of Rheims and a Roman Catholic priest, exiled from England since 1581. Kellison greeted James’s coronation in July 1603 by dedicating his first published treatise, A Survey of the New Religion, to the new English monarch.³⁸ Painting himself to James as a loyal subject unfairly banished from his native country, Kellison explained that he was all at once a Roman Catholic priest, an ordinary human sinner, and a native Englishman. As an annointed priest of God’s church, he was, he argued, God’s legate, empowered to salute James from the Great Monarche of heaven. As a human being, he was, like every other human being, a miserable sinner. Finally, as a native of Northamptonshire, he was James’s lowest subject.³⁹ Kellison’s threefold identity implied a harmony of loyalties. Kellison’s priestly character made him not Rome’s legate, but God’s legate. Moreover, since priesthood did not lift him above the mass of sinful humanity, he was subject to civil government, to which, like every other human being, he owed full obedience. Finally, his most intimate, visceral identity made him a native-born Englishman and James’s subject.

In dedicating his very first treatise to James, Kellison emphasized that he meant to offer his king more than a bare bundel of papers. He meant publicly to offer the king his humble heart, sincere affection and faithfull service as unconditionally as he had pledged himself to serve God.⁴⁰ Kellison’s loyalty to James’s government was thus meant to be confirmed by a voluntary, public, and written declaration of allegiance. Having thus first professed his loyalty, Kellison requested the suspension of penalties against Roman Catholics in the name of freedom of conscience. English Catholics, he explained, sought "neither lands, nor livings, nor offices, but libertie for their conscience, whose restrainte they counte more greevous, then [sic] imprisonment, yea death of their bodyes."⁴¹

As though echoing James’s own expressed beliefs in Basilikon doron regarding conscience and religion, Kellison pointed out that religion and freedom of conscience are mutually indispensable. Far from leading to rebellion, freedom of conscience will secure the deepest loyalty among English Catholics since they will view their freedom through a religiously bound conscience. English Catholics were taught that civil authority comes from God and that they are bound in conscience to obey it, not only when civil authority is vested in a Christian king, but even when it is vested in Pagane Kinges, such as all were, when Sainct Peter and Sainct Paul commanded us to obey them.⁴²

If, however, James remained suspicious of the loyalty of English Catholics, there was a simple remedy: But if your Highnes doubte of our fidelitie, we will bynde ourselves by corporall oathe, to obey your lawes in all temporal causes, and to defend your Roial Person, your Deare Spouse our Gracious Queene, and your towardlie Children, our Noble Lordes, with the laste droppe of our bloud; and this our oath we shall be contented to divulge to all the princes of Europe, yea all the Christian worlde.

Kellison’s 1603 epistle to James implied that there was no religious objection on the part of the Roman Church against English Catholics taking a public oath of allegiance to their king. Roman Catholics could safely vow to obey the king’s laws in all temporal matters. The problem, however, was the ambiguous status of the law requiring English subjects to attend the English Church. Was it a purely temporal law, issued by the English sovereign in his (or her) capacity as temporal ruler? Or was it a religious law, issued by the English sovereign in his (or her) capacity as supreme head of the Church of England? Did James regard church attendance as a key test of his authority in temporal matters?

The idea of a corporall oath binding English Catholics to their king before the whole Christian world was not new. In Elizabeth’s final days, thirteen missionary priests had responded to Cecil’s 1602 edict by composing and signing a Protestation of Allegiance to the queen.⁴³ One of the thirteen signatories, John Colleton, wrote, moreover, an anonymous Supplication to the Kings most excellent Majestie in 1604. Before broaching the idea of a corporeal oath, Colleton stressed that Catholic recusancy did not stem from any disrespect for the king’s authority or for English law, but from a true real obligation of mere conscience based on inward persuasion, which is binding, even if erroneous.⁴⁴ A Protestant monarch, he argued, is conscience-bound to suspend penal laws against Catholic recusants since (1) Protestants are inwardly convinced (whether rightly or wrongly) that freedom of conscience must not be violated, and since (2) Catholic recusants are inwardly convinced (whether rightly or wrongly) that attending the English Church jeopardizes their salvation. In other words, whereas there may or may not be a forceful Roman Catholic argument in favor of religious toleration, there is a forceful Protestant one, based on the special emphasis placed by Protestants on the sanctity of private conscience.⁴⁵

Colleton proposed that all missionary priests take a corporeal oath of loyalty to the Crown. If this were insufficient, they could provide sufficient sureties, one or moe, who shall stand bound, life for life, for the performance of the said allegeance.⁴⁶ The English Crown, he implied, could take hostages. And if any missionary group cannot provide such sureties, then all of the priests will join to ask the Pope to recall such priests from England.⁴⁷ A satisfactory modus vivendi could thus be reached. Conscientious missionary priests who were appropriately patriotic would take an oath of loyalty to the English Crown, while papalist hardliners (Jesuits) would be barred from England. Lay English Catholics, in turn, would practice their religion unmolested, according to their conscience, ministered privately by (secular, not Jesuit) priests who were known to the government and against whom the government could retaliate if a plot were suspected. Colleton’s proposal was vehemently rejected by two Protestant divines, Matthew Sutcliffe, dean of Exeter, and Gabriel Powel. Full of indignation, they reminded England of the many Catholic statements granting the pope power to annul oaths and depose princes.⁴⁸

James was again petitioned in 1604 by anonymous lay Catholics, in a document composed by John Lecey and entitled Petition apologeticall, presented to the Kinges most excellent Maiesty, by the lay Catholikes of England. Conceding that the chief obstacle to toleration was the problem of Roman Catholic loyalitie and obedience, Lecey proposed a forme of the Catholikes submission in which English Catholics vowed to defend the king as their lawful sovereign against all pretendantes to the contrary and against all invasions, or forraigne enemies, upon what pretence soever.⁴⁹ English Catholics would agree not only to take a personal oath of loyalty in such manner as shall seem best to your majesty but would also take responsibility for ensuring that priests take the same oath of loyalty before being admitted into their homes.⁵⁰ An internally policed and locally registered English Roman Catholic clergy would thus replace a shadowy underground mission of papalist fanatics controlled from abroad. As a side effect, English Catholic laymen would become directly accountable to the government for the loyalty of their priests and thus break new ground in shaping the character and operation of their church, at least in England.

The Gunpowder Plot of November 1605, aimed at blowing up Parliament and the royal family, caused a dramatic turn. King James and Robert Cecil reacted strategically. Hoping to calm Puritan outrage at home without provoking Catholic retaliation abroad, James proposed, as part of a comprehensive Act for the better discovering and repressing of Popish Recusants, a new oath of allegiance, enacted by Parliament in 1606.⁵¹ Ostensibly aimed at distinguishing loyal Roman Catholic subjects from potentially dangerous traitors,⁵² the Jacobean oath made a new demand on Roman Catholic conscience. Although it shunned any mention of the king’s supremacy in all Spiritual and Ecclesiastical things, the new oath required Catholics to characterize the pope’s deposing power as heresy. English Catholics were not simply asked to swear that they personally would not ever comply with the pope’s deposing power (this was essentially Lecey’s formulation), they were also asked to denounce the pope’s deposing power as contrary to Christian faith. Catholics were asked personally to judge a matter of faith.⁵³

The same year, 1606, Cecil published a short pamphlet against a Catholic admonition that blamed him personally for the new anti-Catholic legislation enacted in the wake of the Gunpowder Plot. Whether or not the exchange was fictitious, Cecil’s Answere to certaine scandalous papers sheds important light on the government’s strategy. Cecil implied that there may be sincere Catholic recusants who abstain from the English Church based on private scruples of conscience, but the test of their sincerity is precisely that, faced with a national emergency, they will joyn with us in chearfull Songs for this our happy deliverance.⁵⁴ Like Kellison three years earlier, Cecil implied that freedom of conscience and religion are indivisibly joined, so that the same person who refrains from a religious practice for the sake of conscience will also refrain from political treason for the sake of conscience. It follows that anyone who pledges his unconditional loyalty to the Crown deserves to be excused from attending the English Church for conscience’s sake, while anyone who refuses to pledge his unconditional loyalty to the government demonstrates that he acts not on the basis of conscience but on some other basis.

Before elaborating further, Cecil made two closely related preliminary points. First, he challenged Rome either to renounce its deposing power or to clarify the exact nature of its claim.⁵⁵ Second, he denounced "that most strange and grosse doctrine of Equivocation which is so highly extolled in the Church of Rome as a strategy on Rome’s part to control Catholic consciences. Addressing English Catholics directly, Cecil warned them that the men that rule your consciences have first dazled your eyes with fearefull, but false obiects, thereby hoping to engage you more deeply in their pernicious Attempts."⁵⁶

Cecil’s appeal to English Catholics to trust their own consciences, moreover, served as a general lesson on the sacred character of personal conscience: "Let me appeale to your owne consciences, which in every man holdeth place of Juge and Witnesse. The problem, Cecil explained, is not simply that unlearned papists are discouraged from thinking for themselves and are enticed blindly into plots like trained attack hawks with blinders (Hawkes hooded)—they are positively indoctrinated to obey external authority, so that the scruples of Conscience and the seeds of Treason grow up jointly and indivisibly, as close together as the huske and Corne in one ear. Because Catholics are not in possession of their own consciences, their consciences have been usurped and depraved into blindly doing another’s bidding. The way forward is for Catholics to open their eyes and resolve to become cognizant of their dueties both divine and humane."⁵⁷

As a case in point, a sound conscience will teach rulers (and secretaries of state) always to prefer clemency over cruelty in safeguarding kingdoms. The heart that holds any seeds of Conscience is protected against malice and treason, while the heart that is bereft of a private conscience cannot have any sense of Religion at all.⁵⁸ Clearly, the majority of English Catholics are not bereft of conscience since the Gunpowder plotters received little help. Catholic recusants who are so for conscience’s sake must not be punished along with traitors, since conscience tells us to distinguish between sins of ignorance and deliberate acts of wickedness. In conclusion, Cecil set a vivid personal example of why we must detach ourselves from external indoctrination and learn to appreciate our own conscience: "I will henceforth rest in peace in the House of mine owne Conscience, where if I doe good deeds, no matter who sees them; if bad, knowing them myselfe, no matter from whom I hide them; for they are of record before a Iudge, from whose presence I cannot flee. If all the world applaud me, and hee accuse me, their praise is vaine. Falli potest fama, conscientia nunquam [Common opinion is able to be deceived, conscience never]. Within the House of mine owne Conscience, I cannot escape the torment of guilt if I act badly, nor can anyone or anything deprive me of the reward of serene peace if I act well. Or, as Bishop Overton put it, the proper effect and worke of the Gospell was to bring joy and peace of conscience unto those that heare it and embrace it."⁵⁹

It is important to review Jacobean attempts to engage the private conscience of English Catholic recusants because Sancta Clara will struggle with the Jacobean oath all of his life—defending it, taking it, rewriting it, proposing alternatives. A pressing question confronting James’s privy councillors and Parliament in 1606 was how to probe the inner thoughts and attitudes of Catholic recusants.⁶⁰ James’s friend, the Scottish jurist William Barclay, who lived in exile in France rather than be forced to attend the Protestant English Church, actively defended royal prerogatives in civil matters against Rome. Barclay’s son John was back in London in 1606, preparing to refute papal claims to temporal power while abstaining from Protestant communion.⁶¹

In 1606, Roman Catholic Venice lay under papal interdict for resisting the pope’s encroachments in temporal affairs. The dispute was over Venetian real estate. All of London cheered the Serene Republic and read the details of its heroic defiance in Paolo Sarpi’s account.⁶² As Sarpi made clear, the pope’s power in temporalibus could be challenged by Roman Catholics on soundly Roman Catholic grounds. The pope could hardly rest his claim to Venetian real estate on the doctrine of Ecclesiasticall liberty since the precise meaning of the doctrine was not yet decided and was a matter of debate.⁶³ The same undecided status was also true of the doctrine of the pope’s deposing power.

In the second edition of his Survey of the New Religion (1605), Matthew Kellison added a new introductory epistle, addressed to the king’s privy councillors. He assured them that Roman Catholics were not so enamored of their church as to forget to render unto Cesar what was Cesar’s, nor so devoted to the pope as to be deaf to the voice of Nature that called them to cherish and defend their native countrie.⁶⁴ English Catholics, Kellison wrote, are "men as others are and are as English as who are most. Indeed is there any force of friendship, he argued, that is comparable to the natural affection which we beare to our countrie? If the king’s privy councillors could only peer directly into the hearts of English Catholics! If they could, they would see only the staunchest love and loyalty: If hartes had windowes, as Socrates wished, or were penetrable by sight, as cristal is, that their secrets might be discovered, I would not doubt but that your H. H. should see, which how iustly you may believe, as true affection and loyaltie in the Catholiques hartes, as any subjects can bear to their Souveraigne."⁶⁵

As James argued before Parliament in 1606, scrupulous Catholics should be given a chance to prove that they retained in their hearts the print of their naturall dutie to their Souveraigne.⁶⁶ The purpose of the Jacobean oath was to make the recusant’s heart visible.

Shortly after Parliament enacted the oath of allegiance, a posthumous volume on cases of conscience by the celebrated Cambridge divine William Perkins appeared for sale in London, containing a chapter on oaths.⁶⁷ Perkins defines an oath as a religious and necessarie confirmation of things doubtfull by calling on God, to be a witnesse of truth and a revenger of falsehood.⁶⁸ Why religious when no clergy is involved? An oath, Perkins explains, is no less a part of God’s worshippe than prayer itself because God is directly invoked and irrevocably made a party to the transaction.⁶⁹ An oath is said to be necessarie, in turn, because it must be taken only when all other humane proofs do fail. Thus an oath is essentially a pragmatic substitute for evident knowledge when evident knowledge is required but not available. Its aim is to show what lies hidden.

In order to be valid, an oath must be taken truthfully, meaning that a person must sweare as he thinketh and be in conscience persuaded of the same.⁷⁰ Perkins explains that the kind of truth that is relevant to oaths is "morall veritie." A swearer who is honestly convinced but mistaken about a point of fact is not guilty of perjury so long as he swears according to his true conviction.⁷¹ The crux of morall veritie is that God is called upon to certify the subjective sincerity (truthfulness) of my belief—to certify that I am morally certain of my belief—not the objective veracity of the content of my belief. Whether what I swear to be true turns out to be true or not, God considers my oath to be true as long as I swear it truthfully.

Perkins lists four types of circumstances in which an oath may legitimately be taken: (1) to further God’s glory, as when an oath serves to clarify sound doctrine; (2) to promote brotherly love, as when an oath serves to preserve a neighbor’s life or to attest to a neighbor’s good name; (3) to facilitate private transactions, as when an oath serves to defend my own good name or allows me to enter into contracts; and (4) to secure civil peace, as when the Magistrate doth exact it, by order of justice.⁷² The Jacobean oath nicely fits all four conditions: (1) it furthers God’s glory by purging religion of an impious doctrine (the deposing power); (2) it attests to the loyalty of Catholic recusants and thus removes Protestant fear of Catholic neighbors; (3) it allows Catholic recusants to conduct daily business by making them trustworthy with regard to contracts; and (4) it is mandated by law for the sake of public peace and duly exacted by a magistrate. The Jacobean oath thus appears to be a model oath.

With regard to oaths that are exacted by magistrates, Perkins urges three cautions. First, on the magistrate’s part, the oath must be administered lawfully, which is to say not against piety or charity. Presumably, Perkins means to exclude physical coercion, since, as he explains later in section 3, an oath taken under duress may or may not be binding.⁷³ Second, on the swearer’s part, there must be no mental reservation, which means that the swearer must swear according to the magistrate’s mind, not his own. Third, again on the swearer’s part, there must be no equivocation. The swearer must swear unambiguously, clarifying the content of his oath with the magistrate if need be. The purpose of an oath is thus very explicitly to bring private beliefs to public light as transparently as possible. The last two considerations are crucial in this regard, Perkins warns, since Popish teachers affirme that in some cases, they may swear in a doubtfull meaning, most especially in time of Danger when being convented before the Magistrate.⁷⁴ A well-crafted oath, Perkins says, should address these concerns openly. The Jacobean oath, as a case in point, concludes by asking the swearer to swear (1) that the oath has been lawfully administered and (2) that there is neither mental reservation nor equivocation on his part. Thus the swearer affirms in his conscience and before God, that there is no hidden discrepancy between what he privately believes and what he publicly professes to believe.

Is an oath always binding? An oathe taken of things certaine, lawfull and possible, Perkins affirms, is to be kept and binds always. A valid oath is binding though it be tendred even to our enemies.⁷⁵ Perkins lists exactly six cases in which an oath fails to put the swearer under obligation. An oath is not binding (1) if it contradicts God’s Word or (2) the laws of the commonwealth; (3) if it is asked of a madman or (4) a legal minor; (5) if it is a vain oath (impossible to keep); or (6) if it is reversed by God himself, such as occurs in the case of a monk who discovers that his oath to remain celibate is impossible since God has not in fact given him the gift of continence.⁷⁶ The Jacobean oath carefully avoids these impediments: with regard to content, it promotes both religion and justice; as for persons, it applies only to competent adults; and it requires the swearer to defend James and his heirs to the swearer’s uttermost power, not absolutely. The Jacobean oath, in short, is sound.

To the six legitimate cases just outlined, Perkins warns, papists wrongly add two more. First, papists regard customary swearing as nonbinding when they should, instead, condemn it as rash, sinful, and blasphemous. Second, and far more problematically, papists claim that an oath is not binding when the Superior power, that is, the Pope, or other inferior Bishops, give order to the contrarie, by relaxation or dispensation.⁷⁷ Perkins vehemently rejects the idea that a human being can discharge another human being of the obligation incurred by a valid oath. His argument is that a valid oath establishes an immediate bond between the swearer and God: In every lawful oath there is a double-bond; one of man to man, the other of man to God. Now, if in the oath taken, man were only obliged to man, the oath might be dispensable to man. But seeing man, when he sweareth to man, sweareth also to God, and thereby is immediately bound to God himselfe, hence it followeth that an oath taken, cannot have release from any creature.… And herein the Pope shewes himselfe to be Antichrist, in that he challengeth power to dispense with a lawfull oath, made without error and deceit, of things honest and possible.⁷⁸

Perkins cites numerous scriptural passages to bolster his argument, including, somewhat surprisingly, Matthew 19:6—The things which God has coupled, let no man separate. Once a lawful oath is validly sworn, no one but God can break the obligation to which the oath gives rise in the swearer. Any human being who claims the right to discharge the swearer of his obligation usurps God’s prerogative. And since the pope cannot annul valid oaths, the pope, in claiming a power of dispensation, is guilty, in effect, of encouraging perjury—precisely what God is called upon to punish.⁷⁹

James and his supporters were convinced that the law of God and Nature, which is inscribed in the human heart and rules the natural conscience, commands subjects to obey their lawful rulers. As William Barclay argued to Pope Clement VIII, no subject can ever be absolved of his duty to obey his prince since there can be no human dispensation where God and Nature command immediately. A subject is bound to obey his prince by the laws of God and Nature, prior to any oath and independently of any oath.⁸⁰ The oath merely verbalizes and publicizes what the moral law commands.

The real meaning of the Jacobean oath becomes clear. From the government’s point of view, the king’s subjects were simply requested to make open profession of their naturall Allegiance, and civill Obedience.⁸¹ Catholics were not really asked to judge a point of Christian theology but simply to explicate and endorse the moral law. Whoever refused to take the Jacobean oath betrayed a denatured conscience. The Jacobean oath forced the Roman Catholic swearer to show that he possessed a godly conscience with regard to civil authorities—to show himself to be authentically God-fearing by allowing magistrates to peer into his innermost conscience and ascertain that it functioned naturally.

As Cecil’s ally the jurist Edward Coke explained, moreover, there was an ineffably English dimension to the moral transparency afforded by state oaths. Coke emphasized that every natural-born subject owes allegiance to his sovereign as soon as he is born.⁸² State oaths provided a means for the adult subject, in effect, to participate in an immemorial moral ritual of political and social cohesion. According to Coke, just as ligatures or strings do knit together the joints of all parts of the body, so doth ligeance join together the sovereign and all his subjects.⁸³ Implicitly, every natural-born Englishman not only feels a natural obedience but wishes to declare his allegiance to his sovereign. Invisible to outsiders in Rome and elsewhere, a secret voluntarism and organic intimacy suffused the Jacobean oath, making it more compelling to the English Catholic heart, perhaps, than Bellarmine understood.

TWO

In the Clink

We must now consider a group of English Catholic priests whose resistance to papal authority critically shaped Sancta Clara’s outlook. Their arguments in favor of the legitimacy of the Jacobean oath inspired Sancta Clara’s life effort to define different levels of certainty in religion and to associate a distinct degree of moral obligation to each level. A generation before William Chillingworth made his well-documented contributions to probability and moral certainty in religious matters, Roman Catholic priests and Benedictines incarcerated in the Clink explored the issue with a similar aim of defending freedom of conscience.¹

Almost as soon as the Jacobean oath was enacted in the summer of 1606, Pope Paul V issued a breve prohibiting Roman Catholics from taking it on the grounds that it contained many things which are flat contrary to Faith and Salvation.² Nonetheless, in late June 1607, the archpriest George Blackwell was arrested and took the oath.³ In September, a second papal breve reiterated the condemnation. Cardinal Bellarmine, in turn, wrote Blackwell a letter of rebuke, urging him to choose martyrdom over an oath that perfidiously denied the Primacy of the Apostolicke See.⁴ Blackwell retorted that he "had no recollection of ever having waivered in the least article that certainly and definitely appertaines to the sublime majestie and supreme authority of the see Apostolicke.⁵ Blackwell’s point was that the pope’s deposing power could safely be denied by Catholics since it was not an article of Catholic faith: There is no certaintie he wrote to Bellarmine, as yet defined by the Church touching the Popes authoritie in things temporall."⁶ Contrary to what the two papal breves appeared to insinuate, the oath contained no clause that was repugnant to any point of faith as yet concluded upon by the Church.⁷ By making the spiritual supremacy of the apostolic see rest upon a wonderfull uncertaintie, Blackwell argued, Bellarmine in fact dangerously weakened it.⁸ Blackwell reiterated his approval of the oath and his advice to English Catholics to take it.⁹ Nor should Roman Catholics who refused the oath fancy themselves to be glorious martyrs, since martyrdom involves dying for the Faith, not for a disputed opinion.¹⁰

Not only did Blackwell see no firm impediment against taking the oath, he was also convinced, as he wrote in his pastoral letter to fellow priests, that he would have sinned against his own conscience and incurred God’s wrath if he had refused it.¹¹ Heartened by Blackwell’s example, many among his fellow prisoners and scores of lay Catholic recusants across England took the oath. By the spring of 1608, James’s defense of the oath, Triplici nodo, was published, citing and refuting Bellarmine’s arguments against Blackwell. The pope responded by deposing Blackwell from his functions and appointing a new archpriest to replace him. King James retaliated by ordering that the oath be administered to anyone who entered England.¹²

The Jesuit Robert Parsons answered James’s Triplici nodo in 1608.¹³ The oath, Parsons argued, is unlawfull unto a Catholicke conscience because it is a disguised new version of the oath of supremacy. The Jacobean oath threatens the unity of God’s flock, which was meant to be obedient to the same general head and Pastor with regard to both belief and manner of worship.¹⁴ As far as Parsons was concerned, English Catholics could not split their hearts in two.

In the spring of 1608, William Warmington, a priest and oblate of Saint Ambrose, was arrested by two pursuivants and committed to the Clink.¹⁵ The son of a Catholic recusant father who had died in jail, Warmington was no stranger to imprisonment. He had been arrested as a missionary in 1581, condemned to death, reprieved, and exiled. He was also no stranger to Roman Catholic plotting—he had joined the Roman household of William Cardinal Allen in 1586. At Allen’s death in 1594, Warmington expressed the wish to live in frugal obscurity and joined Cardinal Borromeo’s fraternity of secular priests.¹⁶ Warmington eventually returned to his native England as a missionary, perhaps at James’s ascent to the throne.¹⁷ In March 1608, when he entered the Clink, Warmington was greeted by Blackwell and other schismatic priests, who soon convinced him of the legitimacy of their position and the force of their arguments.¹⁸ A year later, in August 1611, Warmington was stripped of his priestly faculties, along with Blackwell and other Clinkers who persisted in defending the Jacobean oath.¹⁹ In 1612, Warmington published a work entitled A moderate defence of the Oath of Allegiance, claiming explicitly to prove the legitimacy of the Jacobean oath and to solve the chiefest objections raised against it.²⁰

Warmington’s A moderate defence starts by rejecting the pope’s and Bellarmine’s claim that the Jacobean oath aims at undermining the confessional purity of Catholics. Instead, the oath is narrowly tied to the immediate context of the Gunpowder Plot. Warmington writes that the oath is a convenient means for the English government to distinguish true and faithful Catholicke subjects from hollow-hearted ones—thus implicitly agreeing with James that English Catholics who refuse