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474
ENGLISH
ward James, Cliristopher Ba(y)les, Edmund Duke,
Eustace White, Polidore Plasden (Palmer), Thomas
Pormont, Joseph Lampton, John Cornehus, S.J., John
Ingram, Robert Southwell, S.J., Henry Walpole, S.J.,
Edward Thwing, Robert Middleton, Thomas Tich-
borne, Robert Watkinson (Wilson), Edward Old-
corne, S.J., John Roberts, O.S.B., Richard Smith
(Newport), John Almond, John Thules, John Lascelles
{vere Lockwood), Edward Morgan (John Singleton),
Henry Morse (alias Claxton), S.J., Brian Cansfield,
S.J., John Woodcock (alias Farrington), O.F.M.,
Edward Mico (alias Baines), Anthony Turner (alias
Ashby), S.J., John Wall (alias Marsh), O.F.M., and
David Lewis (alias Charles Baker), S.J. The cause of
beatification of the following, who all died in prison,
has not yet been introduced: Roche Chaplain, James
Lomax, Martin Sherson, John Brushford, John Harri-
son, and Edward Turner.
The famous Father Robert Persons was rector of the college in 15SS, and again from 159S till his death in 1610. Father Muzio Vitelleschi, afterwards Gen- eral of the Society of Jesus, held the rectorsliip from 1592 to 1594, and again from 1597 to 1598. Cardinal Wiseman went to the college as a student in ISIS, be- came rector in 1S2S, and was made bishop in 1840. The English College may claim as teachers the great Jesuit theologians of the Roman College: Bellarmine, Suarez, Vasquez, in the distant past; and in modern times Perrone, Franzelin, Ballerini, Billot.
IV. Influence on the Church in Engl.\nd. — The college shares with Douai and the other continental seminaries, the honour of having kept alive the lamp of the Faith in England during the dark days of perse- cution. Without these colleges the supply of priests for the English Mission would have entirely failed. Moreover, the college in Rome was for English Catho- lics a connecting link with the centre and Head of Christendom; and the missionaries sent thence formed a visible and tangible bond of union with that Holy See for the supremacy of which the faithful in England were suffering so much. When we turn to the nineteenth century, it suffices to mention the name of Cardinal Nicholas Wiseman, the "Man of Provi- dence ", who had the greatest share in the work of the re-estaljlishment of the Catholic Hierarchy in England in 1850, and, as its head, by his genius reconciled the English people to what they at first regarded as a " Papal Aggression". It was he who put the Church in England on a firm basis, and, under God, whom we have to thank for the "Second Spring". But Wise- man was not alone. Of the rectors of the nineteenth century, all but two were made bishops, and in every part of the country the English College alumni may be founil in positions of responsibility, vicars-general, canons, and especially professors of the ecclesiastical colleges and seminaries, whence the purity of the Roman Faith is diffused throughout the length and breadth of the land.
The Diary of the English College (1579-17S3); published in English by Foley, S.J., Records of the English Province of the Society of Jesus (London, 1880), VI. The title of the original MS. is AnTiales Collegii, Pars /.. Nomina Alumnorum (i. e. the College Register), and Annates Collegii, Pars II (the real Diary). Foley's version is sometimes inaccurate and defective in both the transcript and the translation, names having been omitted from the Register without any indication of such omission; Catuoi-ic Record Society, Miscellanea, II (London, 1906), The Memoirs of FcUher Robert Persons, S.J.; Dodd, Church His- tory of England, Tierney ed. (London, 1839), II and III, with documents in the appendices; Knox, Records of the English r,itl,.,li,-. I. Ii,,u„, hinrus (London. 1878); //, The Letters and M,, „,.,,,,! ..j \\,il:„,n. Cardinal Allen (London, 1882); The CallnJn M,,,,i. ;iMd iri/;i.im Cirdinal Allen (London, 190S); Wiseman, H,-r„ll,;l„ms „f Ih.- L,iM Four Popes (London, 1858); Ward, lAff nf Cirii,,,,,! ir,,s.„„m (London, 1897); Croke. Dublin Re- ririr (.hilv a. Ill CIclol.rr, 1S98), and in the Alii del Congrcsso uil,rn,i:. di S,un:r ,l„r. (Rome, 1903), The National English Institutions of Home during the Fourteenth Century; Gillow,
Biog. Diet, of the Eng. Cath.: Bartou, DeW Istoria delia Com-
pagnia di Giesu, L'Inghillerra (Rome, 1667).
Chakles J. Cronin.
English Confessors and Martyrs (15.34-1729). — Though the resistance of the English as a people to the Reformation compares very badly with the resistance offered by several other nations, the example given by those who did stand firm is remarkably interesting and instructive. (1) They suffered the extreme penalty for maintaining the unity of the Church and the su- premacy of the Apostolic See, the doctrines most im- pugned by the Reformation in all lands and at all times. (2) They maintained their faith almost en- tirely by the most modern methods, and they were the first so to maintain it, i. e. by education of the clergy in seminaries, and of Catholic youth in colleges, at the risk, and often at the cost, of life. (3) The tyranny they had to withstand was, as a rule, not the sudden violence of a tjTant, but the continuous oppression of laws, sanctioned by the people in Parliament, passed on the specious plea of political and national necessity, and operating for centuries with that almost irresisti- ble force which the law acquires when acting for gen- erations in conservative and law-abiding countries. (4) The study of their causes and their acts is easy. The number of martyrs is many; their trials are spread over a long time. We have in many cases the papers of the prosecution as well as those of the de- fence, and the voice of Rome is frequently heard pro- nouncing on the questions in debate, and declaring that this or that matter is essential, on which no com- promise can be permitted; or by her silence she lets it be understood that some other formula may pass.
The Cause of the Beatification of the English Martyrs is important not for England only, but for all missionary countries, where its precedents may possibly be followed. The English cause is a very ancient one. Pope Gregory XIII, between 1580 and 1585, made several important viva voce concessions. Relics of these martyrs might, in default of others, be used for the consecration of altars, a Te Deum might be publicly sung on the receipt of the news of their martyrdoms, and their pictures with their names at- tached might be placed m the church of the English College, Rome. These permissions were given with- out any systematic inquirj' that we know of. Pope Urban VIII, in 1G42, commenced such an inquiry, and though the outbreak of the Civil War in 1642 postponed indefinitely the public progress of the cause, a list of martyrs was drawn up by the then vicar Apostolic, Dr. Richard Smith, Bishop of Chalcedon, which was subsequently amplified and published by Dr. Richard Challoner. It was not till 1855 that the cause was revived, when Canon John Morris (a Jesuit after 1866) became its apostle. After several unsuc- cessful petitions, as that of the Third Synod of West- minster in 1859, to obtain an unmediate sanction of their cultus by a papal decree, a formal "ordinary process" was held in London, June to September, 1874. The work was one of much difficulty, first be- cause nothing of the sort had been attempted in Eng- land before, and secondly because of the multitude of the martjTS. Largely, however, through the public spirit of the Fathers of the London Oratory, who de- voted themselves to it unitedly, success was achieved both in gathering together a large body of evidence and in fulfilling the multifarious ceremonial precau- tions on which the Roman jurists so strongly insist. After the cause had been for twelve years in the Ro- man courts, two decrees were Issued which, broadly speaking, gave full force and efficacy to the two ancient papal ordinations before mentioned (see Beatification and Canonization).
Thus Pope Gregory's concession resulted in the equivalent beatification of sixty-three martyrs men- tioned by name in the pictures (at first, in 1888, fifty-
