Welsh Journals

Search over 450 titles and 1.2 million pages

unwilling to be drawn into English Jesuit political subversion" [emphasis minel.78 Father Owen's evaluation is asserted without documentation. Instead he simply relies on the popular image of the Machiavellian Jesuit whose plots and intrigues were responsible for the persecution. But were all English and Welsh Jesuits political subversives? Were the political intrigues of the second half of Elizabeth's era solely the machinations of Jesuits? And did these alleged activities really result in the Reformation's victory in Wales? We shall return to these issues shortly. In his exposition Father Owen cited inaccurately Professor Glanmor Williams's evaluation: "All the same, the Counter-Reformation had to be reckoned a failure in Wales, largely because those who directed it had concentrated too much on England, even to the extent of diverting many Welsh-speaking priests there."79 J M Cleary calculated that one hundred Welsh seminarians passed through the colleges in Douai, Rome, Valladolid and Seville during Elizabeth's reign. Of them, seventy-one were ordained and sixty-five sent on the mission.80 Where did these sixty-five work? Were they sent back to Wales? Or were they scattered throughout the realm? A thorough study of Godfrey Anstruther's The Seminary Priests and of Dominic Aidan Bellenger's English and Welsh Priests 1558-1800: A Working Lisfi1 could provide the basis for answers. Until that research is completed, we do not know where the Welsh clergy worked. If we ascertain that the majority worked in England, their loss may well explain the decline of Welsh Catholicism. If, however, we discover that most did work in Wales, then a different hypothesis is necessary. From information extracted from Jesuit catalogues we can address this problem from a Jesuit perspective. Between 1561 and 1625, at least twenty-five Welshmen entered the Society of Jesus: eleven during Elizabeth's reign and fourteen during James's. Two entered before the Society initiated its mission: one apparently died prematurely and the other worked in Germany. Of the other nine Elizabethan Welsh Jesuits, four died young, one worked in Germany, and four returned to Wales. During James's reign, two of the fourteen Jesuits were laybrothers who worked in Jesuit colleges on the continent, two were dismissed, and Walter Morgan died five years after his entrance. The remaining nine returned to Wales. If Wales lacked priests it was not because the Society was hoarding them in England or sending them to other missions. Father Owen's claim that "English Jesuit political subversion" alienated the Welsh has a long pedigree. Having noted the involvement of Welshmen such as Hugh Owen and Thomas Morgan in conspiracies against Elizabeth, Professor Williams observed that "conspiracies were disliked in Wales, [and] those with Catholic sympathies were usually completely loyal