Two other Jesuits, Hunt and Worthington, had arrived before the plot, and in 1607 others began again to penetrate the defences of the country. The houses of wealthy Catholics were no longer available as they had been, and the life of the missionary was harder than ever; but the colleges on the Continent continued to send their ardent apostles into the field, and by 1615, when Acquaviva died, there are said to have been sixty-eight Jesuits in England. The prestige of Parsons had fallen low, but he remained, intriguing, on the Continent. For some years students had been passing from the Jesuits to the Benedictines, and in 1602, in spite of the opposition of Parsons, the Benedictines obtained from the Pope the right to work in England. Clement VIII. had received so many complaints that he threatened to expel Parsons from Rome, and Parsons, at a hint given him by Acquaviva, went to Naples for the advantage of his health, and remained there until the death of Clement. He returned with the accession of Paul V. in 1605, and continued to fight the secular clergy in regard to the archpriest. The extraordinary course of deception and intrigue which he maintained until his death in 1610 must be read in the spirited narrative of Father Taunton. His death closes the chief interest of the English mission under Acquaviva, and we will return to the struggling apostles at a later stage. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 15: E.L. Taunton, _History of the Jesuits in England_ (1901): an admirable critical study of Parsons and of the quarrels of the Jesuits with the secular clergy, though not quite a balanced and comprehensive history. R. Simpson's _Edmund Campion_ (1867) is a very fine biography of that high-minded Jesuit; and T. Law has written a learned and exact _Historical Sketch of the Conflicts between the Jesuits and Secular Priests_ (1889). More sympathetic and detailed accounts of the religious work of the English Jesuits are given in Dr. Jessopp's _One Generation of a Norfolk House_ (1879), and Father Morris's _Life of Father Gerard_ (1881). A complete and impartial history of the Jesuits in England, telling with equal candour their heroism and their defects, is desirable. The writings of recent Jesuits are not "history," but very Jesuitical polemic.] [Footnote 16: They were published in the _English Historical Review_, July 1888.] [Footnote 17: So the chief Jesuit manual now in use, Lehmkuhl's _Theologia Moralis_, i. 330; from which I was taught casuistry.] CHAPTER VII THE FIRST CENTURY OF JESUITISM