Upon the receipt of the general's kind letter, the rector was of opinion
that I should repair by all means, and without loss of time, to England,
not only as the safest asylum I could fly to, in my present situation,
but as a place where I should soon recover my native language, and be
usefully employed, either there or in Scotland. The place being thus
agreed on, and it being at the same time settled between the rector and
me, that I should set out the very next morning, I solemnly promised, at
his request and desire, to take no kind of notice, after my arrival
in England, of his having been in any way privy to my flight, or the
general's letter to him. This promise I have faithfully and honorably
observed; and should have thought myself guilty of the blackest
ingratitude if I had not observed it, being sensible that, had it been
known at Rome, that, either the rector or general had been accessary to
my flight, THE INQUISITION WOULD HAVE RESENTED IT SEVERELY IN BOTH. For
although a Jesuit in France, in Flanders, or in Germany, is out of the
reach of the Inquisition, the general is not; and the high tribunal not
only have it in their power to punish the general himself, who resides
constantly at Rome, but may oblige him to inflict what punishment they
please on any of the order obnoxious to them.
The rector went that very night out of town, and in his absence, but not
without his privity, I took one of the horses of the college, early
next morning, as if I were going for a change of air, being somewhat
indisposed, to pass a few days at Lisle; but steering a different
course, I reached Aire that night and Calais the next day. I was there
in no danger of being stopped and seized at the prosecution of the
Inquisition, a tribunal no less abhorred in France than in England.
But being informed that the nuncios at the different courts had been
ordered, soon after my flight, to cause me to be apprehended in Roman
Catholic countries through which I must pass, as an apostate and
deserter from the order, I was under no small apprehension of being
discovered and apprehended as such even at Calais. No sooner, therefore,
did I alight at the Inn, than I went down to the quay, and there as I
was very little acquainted with the sea, and thought the passage much
shorter than it is, I endeavored to engage some fishermen to carry me
that very night, in one of their small vessels, over to England. This
alarmed the guards of the harbor, and I should have been certainly
apprehended as a person guilty, or suspected of some great crime,
fleeing from justice, had not Lord Baltimore, whom I had the good luck
to meet in the Inn, informed me of my danger, and pitying my condition,
attended me that moment, with all his company, to the port, and conveyed
me immediately on board his yacht. There I lay that night, leaving every
thing I had but the clothes on my back, in the Inn; and the next day his
Lordship set me ashore at Dover, from whence I came in the common stage
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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