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English Travellers of the Renaissance by Clare Howard
page 70 of 231 (30%)
office, practise no profession. Neither law nor medicine, nor parliament
nor the army, nor the university, was open to him. Banished from London
and the Court, shunned by his contemporaries, he lurked in some country
house, now miserably lonely, now plagued by officers in search of
priests. At last, generally, he went abroad, and wandered out his life,
an exile, despised by his countrymen, who met him hanging on at foreign
Courts; or else he sought a monastery and was buried there. To be sure,
the laws against recusants were not uniformly enforced; papistry in
favourites and friends of the king was winked at, and the rich noblemen,
who were able to pay fines, did not suffer much. But the fact remains
that for the average gentleman to turn Romanist generally meant to drop
out of the world. "Mr Lewknor," writes Father Gerard to Father
Owen,[203] "growing of late to a full resolution of entering the Society
(of Jesus), and being so much known in England and in the Court as he
is, so that he could not be concealed in the English College at Rome;
and his father, as he considered, being morally sure to lose his
place,[204] which is worth unto him £1000 a year, he therefore will come
privately to Liege, where I doubt not but to keep him wholly unknown."

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CHAPTER V

THE INFLUENCE OF THE FRENCH ACADEMIES


The admonitions of their elders did not keep young men from going to
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