England, and to maintain a pleasant literary intercourse with his old associates.* After the Restoration he returned to England, and was constantly heard of at Somerset House with the Royal Family, as also at Dytchley. He died at the residence of R. Caryl, Esq., of East Grinstead, Sussex, Aug. 10th, 1674, in the parish church of which place he was buried. 11. Here it will be well to quote an important paragraph from a small treatise by ChanRoman Catho- cellor Harington of Exeter, who therein Ordinations to provides similar testimony, from various foreign authorities both Gallican and Italian, to the existence of a learned and influential school amongst Roman Catholics, the members of which maintained the validity of English ordinations:

Foreign

lics who held

the English

be valid.

"Tis upon the same authority that I shall further allege another fact, better known, and mentioned by Father Le Quien himself in his work. Mr. Goffe, who had been of the Church of England, turning Catholic, was admitted into the Oratory; and there was a talk of making him a Priest. He had already been ordained in England, which occasioned a difficulty. The matter was proposed to many doctors of the Sorbon, who, after having examined it, declared in favour of the ordination. [H. Prideaux's words are, 'gave in their opinion that our orders were good."] But, that affair appearing too important to be left to the decision of a few

66

* Vide Letter of Sir Edward Hyde to Dr. John Earles regarding Hugh Cressy in Clarendon's State Papers, vol. ii. p. 322, Oxford: 1773.

† MS. Letter of the Right Hon. Charlotte Lee, first Countess of Litchfield to Dr. Bonaventure Giffard, A.D. 1694. Lady Litchfield, one of Charles II.'s natural daughters, was a Roman Catholic, and left Bishop Giffard, of Madura in partibus, a legacy of £200. Cressy appears to have been a member of the Queen's Household.

Succession of Bishops in the Church of England unbroken. By E. C. Harington, M.A., pp. 3-6, note. London: 1852.

divines, Rome was consulted, which, according to her practice, enjoined the ordination, upon account that a doubt still remained for want of clearly stating the facts. This is related by Dr. Prideaux, who says, that he had it from a celebrated Catholic, namely, Obadiah Walker, who told him so, and to whom that fact was very well known, because he was at Paris when that affair was transacted. It was, therefore, at that time the prevailing opinion of the doctors of the Sorbon, that the ordinations of the English were valid; and why should it be thought extraordinary that I should think as those learned men did, and maintain an opinion grounded upon evident facts and solid reasons?

"But what I am going to say comes nearer our times, and is more direct to the point. In 1684 Cardinal Casanata, of known learning and probity, and to whom the practice of Rome, about the re-ordination of the English, did not probably appear sufficient to determine him, writ to the Bishop of Castoria, in order to know what he thought of those ordinations: That great Cardinal,' says that prelate, in a letter of the 21st of December, 1684,desires to know whether the ordinations of the Bishops of England were valid. He is afraid their ordination does not come from Bishops duly ordained. I believe 'tis for very important reasons

that he desires to know of me what Catholics and Protestants think of that ordination.' That Cardinal, 'tis likely, believed that the Bishop of Castoria, being near England, and among the Protestants, must be very well informed of that matter. But he was mistaken. The Bishop of Castoria was perfectly ignorant of those. facts, and did upon that subject what is done by all those who are ignorant of them; that is, he began by denying the validity of those ordinations. It was with such a prejudice that he writ at first to Cardinal Casanata, but without giving his thoughts decisively. In the meantime, to be better informed, he consulted two learned friends, whom he thought might be more acquainted with the matter than he was, and who really were so; and the opinion of both of them was contrary to his. The first was Mr. Arnaud, whose learning is well known, and to whom the Jesuits themselves

do not deny the justice of having been one of the most learned writers of his age. The other was the celebrated Dr. Snellaerts, at that time Professor of History at Louvain, whose judicious Commentary upon St. John's Gospel has been newly published. The letter of Mr. Arnaud to the Bishop of Castoria is dated February 4th, 1615. He does not at all hesitate about the fact, and looks upon the Lambeth ordination as undeniable. My Lord,' says he to that Prelate, 'I have seen your last letter to Dr. Snellaerts; but give me leave to tell you, that the fact, viz., that the Bishops in Queen Elizabeth's time were consecrated by true Bishops, appears to me undeniable, whatever Sanders and other controversialists have said to the contrary.'

"Dr. Snellaerts, who being Professor of History, had probably studied that matter more to the bottom, did also treat it much more largely in the letters he writ to the Bishop of Castoria, whose objections gave him occasion to search into that question. He observes, in the first place, as Mr. Arnaud does, that the fact is out of dispute. Afterwards, he confutes at large the objections of the Bishop of Castoria, and says, among other things, that the testimony of Sanders, and the rest, in this present case, is of no weight. After having confirmed this at large, he comes to the last objection of the Bishop of Castoria, and maintains, that the form made use of in King Edward's Ritual contains all that is necessary for ordination; and he does not doubt that such a ritual would be sufficient, if it was used by the Catholic Church. This is a decision of the whole question; since a ritual which is sufficient in the Catholic Church may be sufficient in any other.

"'Tis no surprising thing that, in imitation of those learned men, the illustrious Mr. Bossuet, Bishop of Meaux, should have acknowledged the Validity of the English ordinations, as it appears by his letter to Father Mabillon.

"But this is not all. Mr. Bossuet did not only acknowledge then the Validity of the English ordinations, but also never changed his opinion upon that head. In 1699 the late Mr. Mrcella, Curate of St. Jaques du Haut-Pas at Paris, in company

with a Priest of the Oratory, now Chantor of the Church of Montferrand, making a visit to the Bishop of Meaux, and the conversation falling upon the Church of England, that Prelate fetching a great sigh, told them, that if God would give the English grace to renounce their errors and their schism, their clergy would only want to be reconciled to the Church, and rehabilitated;' and he added, that he had said as much before the King.'

"But here is a stronger one still. The R. F. de Riberolles, who before he was Abbot of St. Genevieve, and SuperiorGeneral of his Congregation, lived a long time with Mr. Bossuet as superior of his seminary, and had his entire confidence a great many years, while he was continually about him, certifies by a declaration, which shall be inserted in the Appendix, that he had the honour to hear that Prelate frequently say, that if the Episcopal succession in England under the government of Cromwell was well proved,-which he had not sufficiently examined, there was no difficulty about the Validity of the English ordinations, and that their Bishops and Priests were as truly ordained as ours. These two declarations, much later than the history of the Variations, and the advice given to Mr. Le Grand, show that the Bishop of Meaux did always persist in the same opinion which he entertained when he wrote to Father Mabillon,-that he had no difficulty about the ordinations in the time of Queen Elizabeth; and what is more essential, that, notwithstanding the pretended suppression of the Sacrifice and Priesthood among the English, he always looked upon King Edward's Ritual as containing whatever is necessary and sufficient for the validity of ordination, since he had no difficulty about the ordinations made in the time of Edward and Elizabeth."

The record of a tradition amongst learned Roman Catholics, both English and Foreign, that our ordinations are good and valid, having thus been brought down to the seventeenth century, will be continued to the present day in the succeeding chapter.

SINCE

CHAPTER XXV.

THE SAME SUBJECT CONTINUED.

INCE the ecclesiastical changes of the sixteenth century, no Archbishop of Canterbury has made so strong a mark and left so important an impress on the Church of England, or has served her cause so well and efficiently, as our far-sighted statesman and noble martyr, William Laud.* By the labours of a life-time, as well as by his death, he successfully prevented the National Church becoming a mere Erastian sect. Stemming the torrent of Calvinistic impiety and the dangerous license of a democratic irreligion, at once illogical and vulgar, he preserved for later generations that Divine organization which had been set up in the seventh century by St. Augustine, England's apostle.

In his lifetime, and mainly owing to his great influence, the Re-union school of the time of the Stuarts was created and consolidated: so that, in conjunction with other great prelates, he succeeded in changing the attitude of cold indifference or active opposition with which the Court of Rome had for

* There can be little doubt that the well-conceived and able policy of Archbishop Laud won for him the universal admiration of Christendom. It is on this ground, in all probability, that he was offered a Cardinal's Hat. None could have offered him that dignity without holding the Validity of his Orders. It may be added that, had Laud been a Roman Catholic he would have been surely canonized within twenty years of his noble and most edifying martyrdom.