They entered Rheims the last day of May, 1580, for in Rheims was the soul, if not the body, of the College now driven, partly for convenience, partly by force of trouble, out of Douay. That College was never re-formed: but the scholar-exiles lived close together, up and down the street still called _Rue des Anglais_. The travellers were rapturously welcomed by all, especially by the great Englishman whom the old narrative quaintly calls “Mr. Dr. Allen, the President.” Here at Rheims the venerable Bishop of St. Asaph fell ill of a fever. He was never again to cross the Channel. By the time he had fairly recovered, rumours of his movements had naturally got abroad, and the Pope was unwilling to imperil so important and precious a person. While still a convalescent at Rheims, Goldwell wrote to his Holiness in person, begging him to listen to no objections, but to anoint at once three or four new Bishops to shepherd their own needy Church; and he very touchingly assures the Holy Father, knowing that the question of a fitting maintenance for them would arise, that God had so inclined the minds of all the English priests whom he knew to put up with their penniless and hunted daily lives, and the vision of the gallows always before them, that any of these, once consecrated, would be entirely contented to go on as poorly as he had gone heretofore, like a Bishop of the Early Church. The application failed. “Etiquette and routine prevailed,” says Simpson, in summing up this incident. In truth, it was not that good-will was lacking. Nobody on the Catholic side believed that the new sad order of things in England was going to last, and consequently, waiting and postponing in a matter of this sort, could not seem the disastrous mistake which it really was. The upshot, in any case, was that the good Bishop was recalled to Rome, and there died; and that for thirty weary years the poor flock struggled on without any qualified prelate to supply their crying spiritual wants and hold them together. Then the first provisional leader, known as the Archpriest, was appointed, and later came Vicars Apostolic. When finally the longed-for mitres were seen again in the land, they had been absent too long. The nominal link snapped; the great native tradition was broken; the titles of the ancient Sees, given up, as if in sleep, by their lineal heirs, were never reclaimed. So far as surface connection goes,—and it goes far indeed with people in general, who neither reason nor read, but get all their ideas from what they see and hear, this was the most tragic loss which could possibly have befallen the post-Reformation Church. (The English Benedictines kept the thread of their own dynasty in their hands: but this did not affect the Catholic body, and the lay interest.) The stranger who could not destroy the life and blessing of the firstborn has had possession, for three centuries and a half, by royal grant, of his home and of his very name. VIII