SIR EVERARD DIGBY.*

WE suppose that by this time the world has made its mind up about the mysteries of the Gunpowder Plot. The service for Guy Fawkes's Day has become a thing of the past ; the celebrations of the Fifth of November are more honoured in the breach than in the observance, and are more excuses for the indulgence of local prejudices than of anything else. The embers of the war against Popery smoulder only in the very mildest form, and suggest signs of returning friendliness rather than of continued warfare. An unpopular County Councillor has more claims on the stake than the most malignant of Romish intriguers; and the recent publi- cation about Cardinal Manning, deeply regretted as on so many grounds it must be, supplies evidence in some directions of the points upon which his successor bases his sanguine hopes of a Roman Catholic England to come. But the descendant and biographer of Sir Everard Digby, who was beheaded at the age of twenty-five for high- treason (though in another part of the book it is stated to have been thirty-five) and complicity in the Gunpowder Plot, is a Catholic of almost a reactionary type. From the title of the last of the books of which he has been the author we may conclude him to have made his excursion into the domain of the humourists, but by the others he is clearly a theologian; and much of his study of the unhappy Sir Everard is based upon an estimate of the comparative value of the faith of the born Catholic on the one hand, and the convert on the other. The hero of the book was brought up a Protestant, but was

Catholickly inclined, and entertained no prejudice whatever against those of the ancient faith. He went so far as to see no objection to the marriage of his sister to a Catholic as a good and honourable man." "Considering the pains, penalties, and disabilities to which recusants, as they were called, were then exposed, this meant very much more than a similar remark would mean in our times. And not only was he unprejudiced, for he took a keen interest in the religion of Catholics, and the three men talked frequently on that subject, the speakers being usually Lee and Digby, the friend putting in a word occasionally, but for the most part preferring to stand by as a listener."

Painful to the last degree, as far as the unfortunate hero is concerned, is it to look back upon his story ; only another of the entanglements of life which seem to make victims of the most generous and susceptible, and to leave nothing but pity for them, even when we are compelled to acknowledge the human justice of what they suffered. The evil genius and villain of Sir Everard's story is our old friend Catesby, whose principal instrument throughout was the Jesuit Father Garnet,—himself, according to the biographer, a mere tool in the plotter's hands, and but a weak and powerless instance of supposed Jesuit cunning. It was upon Cateaby's assurance of the approval of the Fathers of the Society that Sir Everard consented to join in the conspiracy, and the amount of consent actually obtained from them—if any, as he legally puts it—is claimed by the author to be of the utmost importance to his story. But the argument strikes ne as rather of the legal order than not, and as involving some- thing of special pleading in its absolute acquittal of the Jesuits of what was after all so decided a feature of the time, that in itself it carries with it no intrinsic improbability. The author seems to make little or no distinction between that day and the present. "As a modern Jesuit, the present editor of the Month, a chief Jesuit journal in this country, points out," he says, "Catesby peremptorily demanded of his associates • Ths Life of a Conspirator : being a Biography of Sir Inward Digby, by Ons of his Descendants. By the Author ol "A Life of Archbishop Laud, bye Romish Rteurant," 'The Life of a PI by One," Ac, London: Regan Paul, Trench, and Co.

in the conspiracy, of whom Sir Everard Digby was one, rs promise that they would not mention the project even in confession, lest their ghostly fathers should discountenance and hinder it." And he adds, as his own comment, that as that project, even when regarded in the most favourable light, was one likely to entail very intricate questions of con- science in the course of its preparation and its fulfilment, it is inconceivable how men called, or calling themselves, good Catholics should either make such a demand or consent to it. We confess that at the present day such a thesis as this seems but an insufficient basis for a lengthy work on what is but an episode of biography extended beyond its legitimate limits, and scarcely calculated in any sense to rise to the dignity of history. That the discussion of such a scheme as the Gunpowder Plot amongst the conspirators would be " likely " to entail very intricate questions of conscience may, we should say, be safely premised of conspiracies of a much milder nature than that ; and surely it is rather as good men, then as good Catholics, that those who advised or consented to it ought to be acquitted or condemned. The self-evident conclusion of the argument that it is unfortunate that there should be men of the Digby class as well as the Catesby class, leads to the expression of the opinion that "a priestly judgment has to be given in a Court in which the in- quirer is witness for both plaintiff and defendant, as well as advocate for both plaintiff and defendant. The friend, there- fore, of the inquirer, who is asked to accept the decision which he brings from that spiritual Court, ought not to do so unless he feels assured either that he would lay his case with absolute impartiality before that tribunal, or that the Judge would discredit his evidence if given with partiality." We fear that we fail to grasp the drift of this involved paragraph altogether, beyond the fact that not knowing Catesby very well, Sir Everard had not sufficient grounds to trust him. But we are, perhaps, not too censorious when we conclude that our Recusant is a genuine casuist in no very bad sense, who loves to lose himself in metaphysical speculation where he can, and finds in the intricacies of a political plot—which, of course, this simply was, masquerading under religious pretexts—a good opportunity for the exercise :—

" Treason doth never prosper ; what's the reason ?

Why, when it prospers, who dares call it treason ? "

We presume that treason after all was the motive of Sir Everard's action, and its failure the cause of his death. Honestly, his seems to have been a very weak character, which it would have been kinder to leave in the quiet shade of forgetfulness. He bore his disasters with fortitude and patience, though the story discloses no sufficient reason for his incurring them, nor precisely of what value he was to Catesby's schemes ; and it is more from his conviction that adhesion to the Catholic Church was cheaply purchased at any cost whatever, and his pleasure in inquiring into the story and position of the converts of the day, that our author's readers will derive what interest and profit his book may yield, than from any added value that it can lend to the researches of history. Sir Everard was himself, in the first instance, con- verted through the persuasions of his wife, and afterwards varied proselytism with his other avocation so successfully, that he succeeded in inducing Oliver Manners, fourth son of John, fourth Earl of Rutland, to join the ranks of Rome. All honour to Sir Everard, says our biographer, "for having been the medium of bringing about this most happy and blessed conversion I " So excellent a Christian did the young Manners become, that we are assured that his life would make an interesting and edifying volume, which the author will doubtless, with some persuasion, be induced to write.

Poor Sir Everard Digby ! we fear that it was something a a case of the Claimant's "money and no branes," between him and the villain of the play, Catesby. In prison, at the close of his short career, he solaced himself, amongst other things, with the composition of poems, of which two are quoted at length. Bishop Barlow (a Protestant, as the Re- cusant is careful to tell us) found of the first that though the lines "be not excellent, yet have they a good tincture of piety and devotion in them." It must, we fear, be admitted that, as Frank Talfourd said of his amateur friend's acting, "ex- cellent is not the word." The sentiments are good, but the metre is disastrous ; and the revival of his work is but a doubtful kindness to the memory of the luckless conspirator. Here are a few of the lines, however :--

Come, grief, possess that place thy Harbingers have seen, And think most fit to entertain thyself ; Bring with thee all thy troop, and sorrow's longest Teem Of followers, that wail for worldly pelf;

Here shall they see a, Wight more lamentable,

Than all the troop that seem most miserable.

When on my little Babes I think, as I do oft, I cannot chuse but then let fall some tears; Me-thinks I hear the little Pratler. with words soft, Ask, Where is Father that did promise Pears, And other knacks, which I did never see, Nor Father neither, since he promised me.

'Tis true, my Babe, thou never saw'st thy Father since, Nor art thou ever like to Eee again : That stopping Father into mischief which will pinch The tender Bud, and give thee cause to plain His hard dysaster ; that must punish thee, Who art from guilt as any creature free."

The touching candour of the introduction of " Pears " for the sake rather of a kind of rhyme to "tears," than for the pro- mise itself, and the amazing image of the "stopping Father into mischief which will pinch," go far to confirm Bishop Barlow's theories of excellence, and help to make us feel what the book as a whole suggests, that the life of its unfortunate hero has no tendency to edification, and might as well have been left alone. There are parts of it, no doubt, which may be read with interest, but it is too prolix, and we do not our- selves care to see so very clear an instance of high treason,

when high treason was serious, made a sort of ground for theological controversy. There are "good Roman Catholics"

and "bad Romaa Catholics," as there are good Protestants and bad Protestants ; and, all deductions made, the story of the Gunpowder Plot is the story of some very bad ones.