Excerpt from The History of the Jesuits in England: 1580-1773

Foley's value consists almost as much in his omissions as in his admissions. And I am bound to remark that I have found him, at a critical point, quietly leaving out, without any signs of omission, an essential part of a document which was adverse to his case. His volumes of Records cannot, I regret to have to say it openly, be taken as trustworthy, unless corroborated by more scrupulous writers.

Still stranger is it that no adequate Life of Robert Parsons has been attempted either by his Society or anyone else. And yet he played no small part in the history of his times. During his lifetime, and for a short period after it, the Jesuits came into contact with the making of English history. In the eyes of the world Parsons was their one great man, and now, with the exception of Henry Garnett and Edward Petre, there is hardly the name of another English Jesuit known to the ordinary reader. And I do not-think this general estimate is wrong. The personality of Robert Parsons overshadows the whole book, for, as a matter of fact, he is the History of the English Jesuits, and his successors, men of but little originality of their own, were content, when they had the chance, to put into practice what his fertile brain had conceived as desirable.

I venture to think I have found the key to his character. Puritanism certainly at one time influenced him, and his after-life shows how strong in him was this bias. Now, Puritanism, which I take it is not so much a religious as a mental attitude, gives a consistency to his life and to the efforts of those who set themselves to carry out his policy. I may add I did not approach the subject with this theory in my mind, and it was not until I had the facts of the case before me that I realised the importance of the Puritan episodes in Parsons' life at Oxford.

There is, however, another side to the story of the English Jesuits, and it is one I have been careful to point out.

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