Chapter 31 - Page 2

reforming fishers were
darting their harpoons. The Roman Church of Scotland, in particular,
was at her last gasp, actually blowing blood and water, yet still with
unremitted, though animal exertions, maintaining the conflict with the
assailants, who on every side were plunging their weapons into her
bulky body. In many large towns, the monasteries had been suppressed
by the fury of the populace; in other places, their possessions had
been usurped by the power of the reformed nobles; but still the
hierarchy made a part of the common law of the realm, and might claim
both its property and its privileges wherever it had the means of
asserting them. The community of Saint Mary's of Kennaquhair was
considered as being particularly in this situation. They had retained,
undiminished, their territorial power and influence; and the great
barons in the neighbourhood, partly from their attachment to the party
in the state who still upheld the old system of religion, partly
because each grudged the share of the prey which the others must
necessarily claim, had as yet abstained from despoiling the Halidome.
The Community was also understood to be protected by the powerful
Earls of Northumberland and Westmoreland, whose zealous attachment to
the Catholic faith caused at a later period the great rebellion of the
tenth of Elizabeth.

Thus happily placed, it was supposed by the friends of the decaying
cause of the Roman Catholic faith, that some determined example of
courage and resolution, exercised where the franchises of the church
were yet entire, and her jurisdiction undisputed, might awe the
progress of the new opinions into activity; and, protected by the laws
which still existed, and by the favour of the sovereign, might be the
means of securing the territory which Rome yet preserved in Scotland,
and perhaps of recovering that which she had lost.

The matter had been considered more than once by the northern
Catholics of Scotland, and they had held communication with those of
the south. Father Eustace, devoted by his public and private vows,
had caught the flame, and had eagerly advised that they should execute
the doom of heresy on the first reformed preacher, or, according to
his sense, on the first heretic of eminence, who should venture within
the precincts of the Halidome. A heart, naturally kind and noble, was,
in this instance, as it has been in many more, deceived by its own
generosity. Father Eustace would have been a bad administrator of the
inquisitorial power of Spain, where that power was omnipotent, and
where judgment was exercised without danger to those who inflicted it.
In such a situation his rigour might have relented in favour of the
criminal, whom it was at his pleasure to crush or to