Jesuit Foot First Touched The Soil Of England In 1549

Edward VI. was then on the throne; and the country, under its young master, counselled by Calvin, was seeking to free itself from the yoke of Rome. Two Jesuits, in disguise, hastened across from Holland, their lessons already taught them, to prevent, if possible, the threatened loss of so great a kingdom to the Papal see. They began to preach the tenets of the Anabaptists, and to proclaim the advent of the Fifth Monarchy or Kingdom of the Saints, a doctrine which had deluged many parts of Germany with blood. The scare of anarchy was thought the likeliest to frighten England from entering the path of the Gospel.

There soon came arrest upon the English Reformation from another quarter. On the demise of Edward, Mary ascended the throne. It was no longer necessary for Jesuit, or other agent of the Papacy, to wear disguise of any sort. The most open and violent measures were those which found most favour with the Queen and her counsellors. But these evil days came at last to an end, although, alas ! not till the flower of the English reformers had died at the stake. But why should we grieve for their deaths? Had their blood not watered it, would the Reformation of England ever have attained the goodly stature which it reached in the Puritan age ?

Link (here) to the anti-Catholic and Anti-Jesuit book entitled, The Jesuits: their Moral Maxims and Plots, by James Aitken Wylie.

Painting is of Edward VI