After much discourse about the matter, the Jesuit very sincerely
told him, that unless he would quit the communion of the Church
of England, he could not be received into the Catholic Church.
The duke then said he thought it might be done by a dispensation
from the pope, alleging the singularity of his case, and the
advantage it might bring to the catholic religion in general, and
in particular to those of it in England, if he might have such
dispensation for outwardly appearing a protestant, at least till
he could own himself publicly to be a catholic, with more
security to his own person and advantage to them. But the father
insisted that even the pope himself had not the power to grant
it, for it was an unalterable doctrine of the Catholic Church,
not to do ill that good might follow. What this Jesuit thus said
was afterwards confirmed to the duke by the pope himself, to whom
he wrote upon the same subject. Till this time his royal
highness believed (as it is commonly believed, or at least said
by the Church of England doctors) that dispensations in any such
cases are by the pope easily granted; but Father Simons's words,
and the letter of his holiness, made the duke think it high time
to use all the endeavours he could, to be at liberty to declare
himself, and not to live in so unsafe and so uneasy a condition.
Inasmuch as what immediately followed touches a point of great
delicacy and vast importance, the words of the historian, mainly
taken from the "Stuart Papers," are best given here, "His royal
highness well-knowing that the king was of the same mind, and
that his majesty had opened himself upon it to Lord Arundel of
Wardour, Lord Arlington, and Sir Thomas Clifford, took an
occasion to discourse with him upon that subject about the same
time, and found him resolved as to his being a catholic, and that
he intended to have a private meeting with those persons above
named at the duke's closet, to advise with them about the ways
and methods fit to he taken for advancing the catholic religion
in his dominions, being resolved not to live any longer in the
constraint he was under.
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