from resorting to
England, had made disguise necessary. But all disguise was now thrown
off. Injudicious members of the King's Church, encouraged by him, took
a pride in defying statutes which were still of undoubted validity,
and feelings which had a stronger hold of the national mind than at any
former period. Roman Catholic chapels rose all over the country. Cowls,
girdles of ropes, and strings of beads constantly appeared in the
streets, and astonished a population, the oldest of whom had never seen
a conventual garb except on the stage. A convent rose at Clerkenwell on
the site of the ancient cloister of Saint John. The Franciscans occupied
a mansion in Lincoln's Inn Fields. The Carmelites were quartered in the
City. A society of Benedictine monks was lodged in Saint James's Palace.
In the Savoy a spacious house, including a church and a school, was
built for the Jesuits. [104] The skill and care with which those fathers
had, during several generations, conducted the education of youth, had
drawn forth reluctant praises from the wisest Protestants. Bacon had
pronounced the mode of instruction followed in the Jesuit colleges to
be the best yet known in the world, and had warmly expressed his regret
that so admirable a system of intellectual and moral discipline should
be subservient to the interests of a corrupt religion. [105] It was
not improbable that the new academy in the Savoy might, under royal
patronage, prove a formidable rival to the great foundations of Eton,
Westminster, and Winchester. Indeed, soon after the school was opened,
the classes consisted of four hundred boys, about one half of whom were
Protestants. The Protestant pupils were not required to attend mass: but
there could be no doubt that the influence of able preceptors, devoted
to the Roman Catholic Church, and versed in all the arts which win the
confidence and affection of youth, would make many converts.

These things produced great excitement among the populace, which is
always more moved by what impresses the senses than by what is
addressed to the reason. Thousands of rude and ignorant men, to whom the
dispensing power and the Ecclesiastical Commission were words without a
meaning, saw with dismay and indignation a Jesuit college rising on the
banks of the Thames, friars in hoods and gowns walking in the Strand,
and crowds of devotees pressing in at the doors of temples where homage
was paid to graven images. Riots broke out in several