The less savage penal laws were, however, severely enforced, as one would expect in that Puritan atmosphere, and the records of the Jesuits become meagre and uninteresting. We know that in Ireland they were reduced to eighteen fathers, who, living in the marshes or on the bleak hillsides, ministered in great danger and privation to the oppressed people. In England they were confined to an obscure and discreet attempt to hold together the persecuted Catholics. The domestic quarrel was silenced by the fresh catastrophe that had fallen on them. In 1660 Charles II. entered upon his reign, and Catholics came out into the sunlight once more. It is fairly established that during the first twelve years of his reign Charles was disposed to see the country return to its old faith. His personal inclination to Catholicism was so little profound that he could lightly abandon it the moment political events made it expedient to do so, but he was not insensible to the great advantage which was enjoyed by the Catholic autocrats of France and Spain. He therefore lent an indulgent ear when, at the beginning of his reign, the Catholics petitioned for relief. The body of the nation was still strenuously Protestant, and the cry was raised that at least the Jesuits must be exempted from any measure of toleration. Many of the Catholics pressed the Jesuits to sacrifice their province to the general good of the Church, but we can hardly be surprised to learn that they emphatically refused, and a long wrangle ensued. When it was urged that their teaching that the Pope could depose kings unfitted them to remain in the country, they promptly repudiated that doctrine. They remained and prospered. After a few years, in fact, they were brought into friendly relations with Charles in a singular and secret way. Their constitutions as well as stringent papal decrees forbade them to receive men of irregular birth into the Society, but we have often found them doing this, when the sin of the parent was redeemed by the distinction of his position, and we can imagine their joy when one of the illegitimate children of Charles II. presented himself at their Roman novitiate in 1668. James de la Cloche, as the youth called himself, was known by them to be in reality James Stuart, and it was not unknown that Charles was attached to him and thought his accession to the throne a not impossible dream. Genial letters passed, in secret, between the English monarch and the General of the Jesuits; money was sent to General Oliva from London, and after a time the young Jesuit was stealthily conveyed to London and permitted to enjoy the embrace of his father.