seculars, but also to discover the real sentiments of the court and
the country towards Rome. The person selected for this difficult work
was Gregory Panzani,[14] an Oratorian, who arrived in England in 1634
and had several interviews with the king and queen. Whatever might
have been the hopes of inducing Laud and some of the leading bishops
to consider the question of returning to the Roman allegiance, the
main object the king had in view in permitting the residence of a
papal envoy in London and in sending English agents to Rome was to
secure the help of Urban VIII. for his nephew of the Palatinate, and
especially to induce the Pope to favour a marriage between this nephew
and the daughter of the King of Poland. Very little was obtained on
either side by these negotiations, nor did the papal agents in England
succeed in composing the differences between the clergy.

In 1640 Laud published the canons framed by Convocation for the
government of the English Church. With the object of clearing himself
of the charge of Papistry he ordered a new persecution to be begun,
but the king intervened to prevent the execution of this measure. At a
time when Charles was receiving large sums of money by way of
compensation for non-attendance at the Protestant services, and when
he foresaw that in the conflict that was to come he could rely on the
Catholic noblemen to stand loyally by him, he had no wish to
exasperate the Catholics in England, or to outrage Catholic feeling in
France and at Rome. In 1640, however, Parliament returned to the
charge. The presence of papal agents in England, the payment of
£10,000 by the Catholic noblemen to help the king in his expedition
against the Scots, and the enrolment of a Catholic army in Ireland by
Strafford, were urged as arguments to prove that the king's failure to
carry out the laws against Catholics was due to causes other than had
been alleged. Indeed both before and after the outbreak of the Civil