They must work, fight, intrigue against the heretic and the heretic state, or leave their mission unfulfilled. And Coleman was in the same position. He was a pupil of the Jesuits, and under the guise of secretary to the Duchess of York maintained an active correspondence with agents abroad in the interest of their chief hope, the duke. Intrigue was his business, and his conduct of it was made more eager by the keenness of a convert. No one in the least acquainted with the history of the Jesuits and with the writings of their apologists can believe that their method of procedure was by conversion of individuals alone. The society has always been in its essence political, and in the troubled times of the seventeenth century political action of the exiled, the feared, the reputed traitor was seldom calculated to avoid the retribution of the laws by which those against whom it was directed were fenced. The penal laws were harsh, but harshness was of necessity; and the very necessity of their harshness begot retaliation; while retaliation completed the circle by driving into conflict with the law many who would have been glad to obey in peace and nurse conscience in quiet. The class of Catholics whom Ruvigny found opposed to the Jesuit policy was large. At the close of the seventeenth century it probably comprised a majority of Roman Catholics in England. These were they who would take the oath of allegiance to their sovereign, holding it no bar to their faith, the followers of Blackloe, of Peter Walsh, of John Sergeant, the men who thought it no shame to liberalise belief by divorcing it from statecraft, the adherents of the church but not of the court of Rome.[94] The Jesuits had already once in the reign of Charles II interposed to prevent Roman Catholics in England from bettering their position, and when persecution fell on these in the evil days of Oates’ grandeur, they showed to the astonishment of the society that it had earned small gratitude from them.[95] On the question of the oath of allegiance the English Catholic body was divided throughout the century. Catholics were willing to prove their loyalty by taking the oath, but this proof they were not allowed to give. The fruitless concessions offered by Charles I showed conclusively that despite all protestations the papal party would not abandon the deposing power. Whenever the movement in favour of the oath seemed to be gaining strength, the whole weight of the papal court and of the Society of Jesus was thrown into the scale against it. It was probably the only point upon which the two were at this time in agreement. The Earls of Bristol, Berkshire, Cardigan, Lord Stafford, and Lord Petre actually took the oath, and of these, horrid thought to the Jesuits, two had for their confessors Benedictines; Lord Arundel, and for a time the Duke of York, stood firm in refusal.[96] The division between the Catholics was purely political; it marked