Volume 2

The court of King James the First / by Dr. Godfrey Goodman, Bishop of Gloucester; to which are added, letters illustrative of the personal history of the most distinguished characters in the court of that monarch and his predecessors. Now first published from the original manuscripts. By John S. Brewer.

  • Goodman, Godfrey, 1583-1656.
Date:
1839
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The court of King James the First / by Dr. Godfrey Goodman, Bishop of Gloucester; to which are added, letters illustrative of the personal history of the most distinguished characters in the court of that monarch and his predecessors. Now first published from the original manuscripts. By John S. Brewer. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    my report, I bad been always suspected to be too forward on the King’s behalf, and rather in policy to draw all Catholics to hope well, and to have a good conceit that the King would be either presently Catholic, or at least proclaim liberty of conscience : by which temporising it was doubted by some that I had deceived many. But, howsoever, the time serving now for it, and it standing upon Catholics, either before the coronation, or not at all, to procure to them- selves quiet and redemption from their bond- age and suppression in Queen Elizabeth’s days ; adding farther, that undoubtedly the Jesuits and archpriest,* with his Jesuitical assistants, would upon the sudden, and at time least looked for, so soon as ever they were prepared for it, send out excommunications against all that should take part against the Spaniard and his associates, &c. And, therefore, he asked me what he should do in that case; and if it were not best for him to go and warn all the Catholics and schismatics in those two shires beforehand to be in a readiness to resist, and not to accept any such excommunica- tion when it came; nor of such, or such, as were like enough in his judgment to work underhand with persuading to acceptance of it, &c. To this I answered, that he should do well to move them so; and, withal, upon such an occasion to exhort and prepare them beforehand to join all together * Dr. Blackwell.