Buxton's spiritual kingdom to Elizabeth's kindly rule,
stripped and laid out in rows, like dead game, for Lord Grey de Wilton to
reckon them by.
But his heart sank a little as he remembered the third method of attack,
and of the coming of the Jesuits. By last July all London knew that they
were here, and men's hearts were shaken with apprehension. They reminded
one another of the April earthquake that had tolled the great Westminster
bell, and thrown down stones from the churches. One of the Lambeth
guards, a native of Blunsdon, in Wiltshire, had told Anthony himself that
a pack of hell-hounds had been heard there, in full cry after a ghostly
quarry. Phantom ships had been seen from Bodmin attacking a phantom
castle that rode over the waves off the Cornish coast. An old woman of
Blasedon had given birth to a huge-headed monster with the mouth of a
mouse, eight legs, and a tail; and, worse than all, it was whispered in
the Somersetshire inns that three companies of black-robed men, sixty in
number, had been seen, coming and going overhead in the gloom. These two
strange emissaries, Fathers Persons and Campion--how they appealed to the
imagination, lurking under a hundred disguises, now of servants, now of
gentlemen of means and position! It was known that they were still in
England, going about doing good, their friends said who knew them;
stirring up the people, their enemies said who were searching for them.
Anthony had seen with his own eyes some of the papers connected with
their presence--that containing a statement of their objects in coming,
namely, that they were spiritual not political agents, seeking recruits
for Christ and for none else; Campion's "Challenge and Brag," offering to
meet any English Divine on equal terms in a public disputation; besides
one or two of the controversial pamphlets, purporting to be printed at
Douai, but really emanating from a private printing-press in England, as
the Government experts had discovered from an examination of the
water-marks of the paper employed.
Pages:
271
272
273
274
275
276
277
278
279
280
281
282
283
284
285
286
287
288
289
290
291
292
293
294
295