Micah Clarke | Page 7

much that was obscure, and unless that
obscurity were cleared away by a duly elected and consecrated servant
of God, a lineal descendant of the Disciples, all human wisdom might
not serve to interpret it aright. That was my mother's position, and
neither argument nor entreaty could move her from it. The only
question of belief on which my two parents were equally ardent was
their mutual dislike and distrust of the Roman Catholic forms of
worship, and in this the Churchwoman was every whit as decided as
the fanatical Independent.
It may seem strange to you in these days of tolerance, that the adherents
of this venerable creed should have met with such universal ill-will
from successive generations of Englishmen. We recognise now that
there are no more useful or loyal citizens in the state than our Catholic
brethren, and Mr. Alexander Pope or any other leading Papist is no

more looked down upon for his religion than was Mr. William Penn for
his Quakerism in the reign of King James. We can scarce credit how
noblemen like Lord Stafford, ecclesiastics like Archbishop Plunkett,
and commoners like Langhorne and Pickering, were dragged to death
on the testimony of the vilest of the vile, without a voice being raised in
their behalf; or how it could be considered a patriotic act on the part of
an English Protestant to carry a flail loaded with lead beneath his cloak
as a menace against his harmless neighbours who differed from him on
points of doctrine. It was a long madness which has now happily
passed off, or at least shows itself in a milder and rarer form.
Foolish as it appears to us, there were some solid reasons to account for
it. You have read doubtless how, a century before I was born, the great
kingdom of Spain waxed and prospered. Her ships covered every sea.
Her troops were victorious wherever they appeared. In letters, in
learning, in all the arts of war and peace they were the foremost nation
in Europe. You have heard also of the ill-blood which existed between
this great nation and ourselves; how our adventurers harried their
possessions across the Atlantic, while they retorted by burning such of
our seamen as they could catch by their devilish Inquisition, and by
threatening our coasts both from Cadiz and from their provinces in the
Netherlands. At last so hot became the quarrel that the other nations
stood off, as I have seen the folk clear a space for the sword-players at
Hockley-in-the-Hole, so that the Spanish giant and tough little England
were left face to face to fight the matter out. Throughout all that
business it was as the emissary of the Pope, and as the avenger of the
dishonoured Roman Church, that King Philip professed to come. It is
true that Lord Howard and many another gentleman of the old religion
fought stoutly against the Dons, but the people could never forget that
the reformed faith had been the flag under which they had conquered,
and that the blessing of the Pontiff had rested with their opponents.
Then came the cruel and foolish attempt of Mary to force upon them a
creed for which they had no sympathy, and at the heels of it another
great Roman Catholic power menaced our liberty from the Continent.
The growing strength of France promoted a corresponding distrust of
Papistry in England, which reached a head when, at about the time of
which I write, Louis XIV. threatened us with invasion at the very

moment when, by the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, he showed his
intolerant spirit towards the faith which we held dear. The narrow
Protestantism of England was less a religious sentiment than a patriotic
reply to the aggressive bigotry of her enemies. Our Catholic
countrymen were unpopular, not so much because they believed in
Transubstantiation, as because they were unjustly suspected of
sympathising with the Emperor or with the King of France. Now that
our military successes have secured us against all fear of attack, we
have happily lost that bitter religious hatred but for which Oates and
Dangerfield would have lied in vain.
In the days when I was young, special causes had inflamed this dislike
and made it all the more bitter because there was a spice of fear
mingled with it. As long as the Catholics were only an obscure faction
they might be ignored, but when, towards the close of the reign of the
second Charles, it appeared to be absolutely certain that a Catholic
dynasty was about to fill the throne, and that Catholicism was to be the
court religion and the stepping-stone to preferment, it was felt that a
day of vengeance might be at hand for those who had trampled upon it