"destroy her majesty, and was, from the cardinal, "as from the pope, animated thereto," he exclaimed, "Mr. Topcliffe, you clean mistake the "matter! I deny any such matters to be in the let"ter; and I wish it might be truly examined and "considered of."

After reading the confession, the commissioners proceeded to pass sentence. Parry then pleaded, that "his confession was extorted from him by "dread of the torture." He cried out in a furious manner, that "he never meant to kill the queen, and that "he would lay his blood upon her and "his judges before God and the world." Even after sentence was passed on him, he summoned the queen to answer for his blood before God.

What then is the evidence of the plot?-Parry

"than the picture for whom it had been so often and long "abused. Her majesty commanded it to the fyer; which, in her "sight, by the countree folks, was quickly done, to the content “and unspeakable joy of every one; but some one or two, "who had sucked of the idol's poysened milk: shortly after,

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a great sort of good preachers, who hadde been long com"manded to silence, for a little niceness, were lycenced, and

again commanded to preach. A greater and more univer"sal joy to the countree, and the most of the court, than the "disgrace of the papists. And the gentlemen of those parts "being great and noble, protests, (almost before by pollycye, discredyted and disgraced,) were greatly countenanced."

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This Edward Rookwood, being a popish recusant convict, compounded for his estates in a considerable sum of money; and, it is believed, died in the gaol of Bury St. Edmunds; the following entry of burial appearing in the register of St. James's parish there: “Mr. Rookwood from the jayle, bur. June 14th "1598."

on whose single testimony it rests, had been found guilty of an attempt to murder; he was a spy; and false to the party that employed him. He must have acted villainously, either when he made, or when he retracted his confession. In support of it, no one collateral circumstance of proof was adduced.

Surely, at the tribunal of history, such evidence, particularly when it is brought to criminate individuals of rank and character, and a numerous and honourable portion of a respectable community, should not be received.

His confession is composed with great art. The reader may compare it with the language which the celebrated Blood, when he was seized for an assault on the duke of Ormond, held at his interview with Charles the second; and which saved his life. The same, perhaps, was the real aim of Parry's confession.

When there are a confession and a subsequent retractation, each necessarily neutralizes the other, unless ulterior evidence is produced, which preserves to one its activity. In the present case, some argument in favour of the retractation may be thought to arise from the fear of the rack, under which the confession was given; and from Parry's having often repeated his retractation, and finally adhered to it while he stood on the brink of eternity.

XXXII. 4.

Somerville's Plot.

WITH respect to the plot of which Somerville was accused, both Camden and Echard, as they are cited by the reverend Mr. Potts, the able and judicious author of "The Inquiry into the Moral "and Political Tendency of the Catholic Religion,” insinuate, that it was the invention of lord Leicester, and that this was commonly believed. The French ambassador at the court of Elizabeth mentions, in one of his dispatches, the imprisonment of Somerville for a conspiracy against the queen, and the circumstance of his having procured a dispensation from the pope to murder Elizabeth. He treats it as a fiction, devised for the purpose of inflaming the prejudices of the people against the pope and the English papists*.

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XXXII. 5.

Babington's Plot.

THAT Babington, and about thirteen other catholic gentlemen, conspired to rescue queen Mary and to assassinate queen Elizabeth, as a measure necessary for effectuating the rescue, every catholic admits. Every catholic also acknowledges that it was a crime of the blackest dye. But, while the

* His letter is among the Piéces Justificatives, in mademoiselle Keralio's fifth volume of her Histoire d'Elizabeth Reine d'Angleterre.

catholics acknowledge the crime of the guilty, and the justice of their punishment, they also insist, that the imputation of guilt should be confined to those, who were involved in it, and that nothing can be more unjust than to charge it on the community. For the general body of the catholics took no part whatsoever in Babington's attempt; and their clergy were so far from approving the treasonable attempt, that they addressed a letter to the catholics, in which they dissuaded them from disturbing the peace of the country, and employing force against the enemies of their religion*.

At the time of the trial of Mary, the unfortunate queen of Scots, strong suspicions were entertained that Babington's conspiracy, though not actually contrived, was artfully fomented and regulated by

*«Was any jesuit," father Persons asks, actor, coun"sellor, consenting, or privy to Babington's conspiracy? If "that blessed man, whom they insinuate, (now a martyr), "did go about to mitigate the matter to her majesty, (they "being all catholic gentlemen that died for the same,) and did "also signify, that Mr. Walsingham had, for divers months, "the knowledge and notice of that association, as it is most "certainly known that he did, by the confession of divers "that dealt with him therein, and thereby also most probable "that the poor gentlemen were drawn thereunto by his malice "and craft, what is this, we say, to prove that any jesuits were any dealers, attempters, or counsellors thereof? Was there "any jesuit so much as named in all the process against them, "at the bar or otherwise. Were not D. Allen, and F. Persons, “F. Holt, and F. Creswell, all at Rome or at Naples at that "time, and no one jesuit remaining either in France or "Flanders to treat with any in that affair?" (Manifestation, p.. 43.)

Cecil and Walsingham, with a view to involve Mary in its guilt, and to accomplish, by that means, her ruin. The recent discussions of Mary's alleged criminality by Mr. Goodall, Mr. Tytler, Dr. Gilbert Stuart, Mr. archdeacon Whitaker, and Mr. Chalmers, seem to render this highly probable; and the light in which an ingenious writer, M. d'Israeli, in his "Curiosities of Literature," has lately placed the characters of Babington and his associates, adds to the probability of the hypothesis.

XXXII. 7.

The Result:-Act of the twenty-seventh year of the reign of queen Elizabeth.

SUCH, then, are the plots against queen Elizabeth, with which the catholics are charged. Even if all that is said of their supposed guilt were completely true, how very small a proportion of the body would it criminate? Would it be just to implicate the universal body of the catholics,-consisting, at that time, of two-thirds of the whole population of England, in the crime of twenty or thirty, at the utmost, of its members? Had the number been considerably greater, could it be a matter of just surprise? Would it be allowable to assign any other cause for it than the ordinary feelings and passions of human nature?

They served, however, as a pretence for the severe act of the 27th of Elizabeth: it recites, that "divers persons, called or professed jesuits, semi