ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY 



The other great source from which these missionary priests came was 

 the English College at Rome, which was itself an offshoot from Douay. 

 Unlike its parent institution this college was almost from the outset in the 

 hands or the Jesuits. During its existence Lancashire sent to it over 200 

 students as against 133 sent from Yorkshire.'" The first missionaries sent 

 from it were dispatched in 1 579, and out of five who composed this first 

 batch one, Richard Haydock, was a Lancashire man ; as was also another, 

 Edward Rishton, out of the five dispatched in the following year. 



The influence of these priests was instantly felt in Lancashire. The 

 administration seems to have been alive to the danger. In 1574, the very 

 year of the first arrival of the Douay missionaries, the Privy Council wrote 

 several times to Henry, earl of Derby, touching Popish disorders in the 

 county, ' being the very sink of Popery, where more unlawful acts have been 

 committed and more unlawful persons holden secret than in any other part of 

 the realm.' "' A fresh Commission for Ecclesiastical Causes for the county 

 was issued some time before 22 November, 1574, and the earl of Derby and 

 the bishop of Chester were bidden to execute it and to arrest all persons 

 suspected of having reconciled themselves to the pope.'"" 



For the following six years silence falls on the story of the seminary 

 priests in the county, a silence broken only to-day by the records of the 

 colleges of Douay and Rome. These six years were the seed-time of the 

 harvest to be reaped in the county by Allen's priests. Their proceedings 

 must have been very secret and the bishop of Chester must have been very 

 fast asleep, for it is clear that whilst the central government was still alive to 

 the question of recusancy the local commissioners had no hint of the presence 

 of seminary priests, and the recusant interest was supposed to be but small in 

 the county.'" 



In 1580 Allen returned to Douay from Rome after having concerted 

 with the pope and the Jesuits a new missionary expedition to England on a 

 large scale. This expedition was to be headed by Parsons and Campion on 

 the Jesuit side, and on the secular side by Goldwell, the aged Marian bishop 

 of St. Asaph, and Vaux, the late warden of Manchester. The idea that 

 Allen's previous efforts had been brought to naught by the watchfulness of 

 the queen's administration, and that this was a last effort on his part, is wide 

 of the mark. The recusancy returns soon to be quoted disprove it, as do also 

 the records of the dispatch of missionaries during the years 1574-80. A 

 much more sinister significance indeed attaches to this departure of the 

 year 1580. It marks the capture by the Jesuits of the missionary 

 organization, and the entry of the English Catholic world upon that 

 path of political intrigue under the guiding genius of Parsons which 

 ultimately did more than anything else to blast the permanent prospects 

 of Cathohcism in England. The government was awake to the danger, 

 for it had complete information as to the wide ramifications of this 

 political plot of Catholic Europe. Vaux was arrested at Rochester almost 

 immediately on his landing, about 12 August, 1580. The broader story of 



*" For the records of this college see Foley, Rec. of the Engl. Prov. vi, 67 seq. 

 ^ Acts of the P.C. viii, 276, 302, 317. 



"" There is no extant record of the outcome of these proceedings (unless it is at Chester or in some 

 quarter sessions records). 



•" S.P. Dom. Eliz. vol. 1 18, No. 45. It is printed by Gibson, op. cit. 



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