An apology was always deduced for these measures, whether of restriction or punishment, adopted against all adherents to the Roman church, from the restless activity of that new militia which the holy see had lately organised. The mendicant orders established in the thirteenth century had lent former popes a powerful aid towards subjecting both the laity and the secular priesthood, by their superior learning and ability, their emulous zeal, their systematic concert, their implicit obedience. But in all these requisites for good and faithful janissaries of the church, they were far excelled by the new order of Ignatius Loyola. Rome, I believe, found in their services what has stayed her fall. They contributed in a very material degree to check the tide of the reformation. Subtle alike and intrepid, pliant in their direction, unshaken in their aim, the sworn, implacable, unscrupulous enemies of protestant governments, the jesuits were a legitimate object of jealousy and restraint. As every member of that society enters into an engagement of absolute, unhesitating obedience to its superior, no one could justly complain that he was presumed capable at least of committing any crimes that the policy of his monarch might enjoin. But if the jesuits by their abilities and busy spirit of intrigue promoted the interests of Rome, they raised up enemies by the same means to themselves within the bosom of the church; and became little less obnoxious to the secular clergy, and to a great proportion of the laity, than to the protestants whom they were commissioned to oppose. Their intermeddling character was shown in the very prisons occupied by catholic recusants, where a schism broke out between the two parties, and the secular priests loudly complained of their usurping associates.[261] This was manifestly connected with the great problem of allegiance to the queen, which the one side being always ready to pay, did not relish the sharp usage it endured on account of the other's disaffection. The council indeed gave some signs of attending to this distinction, by a proclamation issued in 1602, ordering all priests to depart from the kingdom, unless they should come in and acknowledge their allegiance, with whom the queen would take further order.[262] Thirteen priests came forward on this, with a declaration of allegiance as full as could be devised. Some of the more violent papists blamed them for this; and the Louvain divines concurred in the censure.[263] There were now two parties among the English catholics; and those who, goaded by the sense of long persecution, and inflamed by obstinate bigotry, regarded every heretical government as unlawful or unworthy of obedience, used every machination to deter the rest from giving any test of their loyalty. These were the more busy, but by much the less numerous class; and their influence was mainly derived from the law's severity, which they had braved or endured with fortitude.