A Rebel’s Charter
Jesuits were attacked by the appellants as the epitome of political disobedience, and, it was also said, their shenanigans over issues such as the succession had nothing to do with the promotion of the Catholic faith but rather with their own betterment and the advantage of their Spanish paymasters, though, said the appellants, the Society of Jesus’s interests would always in the end take precedence over those of Spain. There was, to many people’s way of thinking, indeed a visible fit between these accusations and the kind of public and polemical politicking in which the likes of Robert Parsons, especially, had engaged. Writers such as William Watson found clear targets here in Parsons’s Conference about the Next Succession and in his manuscript memorandum concerning a potential future and sweeping reformation of the English Church and polity.