William Allen (cardinal)

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William Cardinal Allen

Church positions
See	none
Title	Librarian of the Vatican
Period in office	1588-1594
Created cardinal	1587
Predecessor	none
Successor	none
Previous post	canon of the Cathedral Chapter at Rheims
Personal
Date of birth	1532
Place of birth	Rossall, Fleetwood, Lancashire, England
Date of death	16 October 1594
Place of death	Rome

William Allen (1532 – 16 October , 1594) was an English Roman Catholic priest and cardinal. Allen helped plan the Spanish Armada's invasion of England, and was to have been Archbishop of Canterbury and Lord Chancellor had it succeeded. The Douai Bible was printed under Allen's direction. His activities were part of the Counter Reformation, but made matters worse for Roman Catholics in England. He influenced Pope Pius V to depose Elizabeth I. After the Bill of Deposition was issued, Elizabeth chose not to continue her policy of religious tolerance and instead began the persecution of her religious opponents.

[edit] Early life

Allen was born in 1532, at Rossall, Lancashire, England. He was the third son of John Allen. In 1547, at the age of fifteen, he entered Oriel College, Oxford, graduated with B.A. in 1550, and was elected Fellow of the College. In 1554, he proceeded M.A., and two years later, in 1556, was chosen to become principal of St Mary Hall and proctor. He seems also to have held briefly to a canonry at York in or about 1558, in which case he would have to have already been tonsured, a sign that he had already determined to embrace the ecclesiastical state. On the accession of Elizabeth I, and the second break of the Church of England with the Roman Catholic Church, he refused the Oath of Supremacy and was disciplined, but remained in the university until 1561.

His known opposition to the Church of England forced him to leave the country and in that year, having resigned all his preferments, he left England and sought a refuge in the university town of Leuven, to join many students who had left the English universities to avoid the oath of supremacy. Here he continued his theological studies and began to write controversial treatises. The following year he returned to England, though not yet a priest and suffering ill health. He devoted himself to evangelizing his native county. He worked to restrain those Roman Catholics who attended Anglican services, a compromise they were making in order to save their property from confiscation.

During this period of clandestine ministry as a missionary in England he formed the conviction that the people were not set against Rome by choice, but by force of circumstances; and the majority were only too ready, in response to his preaching and ministrations, to return to Roman Catholicism. He was convinced that the Church of England's hold over the country, due to the action of Elizabeth, could only be temporary. When his presence was discovered by the government, he fled Lancashire and retired to the Oxford area.

Styles of William Cardinal Allen
Reference style	His Eminence
Spoken style	Your Eminence
Informal style	Cardinal
See	N/A

After writing a treatise in defence of the priestly power to remit sins, he was obliged to retire to Norfolk, under the protection of the family of the Duke of Norfolk, but was obliged to leave for the continent soon after, in 1565. He would never return to England. traveling to the Low Countries, he was ordained priest at Mechelen in Flanders shortly afterwards and began to lecture in theology at the Benedictine college there.

[edit] The great enterprise

In 1567, he went to Rome for the first time, and conceived his plan for establishing a college where English students could live together and finish their theological course. This was linked to the conviction, arising from his experience as a missioner, that the whole future of the Roman Catholic Church in England depended on there being a supply of trained clergy and controversialists ready to come into the country if Roman Catholicism could be restored. The idea subsequently developed into the establishing of a missionary college, or seminary, to supply priests to England as long as the country remained separated from the Holy See. With the help of friends, and notably of the Benedictine abbots of the neighbouring monasteries, a beginning was made in a hired house at Douai on Michaelmas Day, 29 September 1568, which marked the inauguration of the English College, Douai.

Here Allen was to be joined by many English exiles. One of the most famous, St Edmund Campion was to go on from the college to join the Jesuits. Douai was thought of as a suitable place for Allen's new college because of the recent foundation there of the University of Douai by Pope Paul IV, under the patronage of King Philip II of Spain, in whose dominions Douai then was.

The element for which Allen's college is now most famous, though it was not part of his original scheme, was the sending over of missionaries to work for the conversion of England in defiance of the law. Among the "seminary priests", as they were called, over one hundred and sixty former students of Douai are known to have been put to death. Many more were put into prison. The students celebrated the news of each successive martyrdom, and by a special privilege, sang a solemn Mass of thanksgiving.

[edit] Rome and Rheims

Title page from the 1582 Douai-Rheims New Testament, "specially for the discouerie of the CORRVPTIONS of diuers late translations, and for cleering the CONTROVERSIES in religion."

When the number of students had risen rapidly to one hundred and twenty, the Pope summoned Allen to Rome to establish a similar college there. In 1575 Allen made a second journey to Rome, where he helped Pope Gregory XIII to found another college For this purpose possession was obtained of the ancient English hospice in Rome, now turned into a seminary to send missionaries to England and Jesuits were placed there to help Dr Maurice Clennock, the rector. The pope appointed Allen to a canonry in Kortrijk and sent him back to Douai in July 1576, but here he had to face a new difficulty. Besides the reported plots to assassinate him by agents of the English government, the insurgents against Spain, urged on by Elizabeth's emissaries, expelled the students from Douai as being partisans of the enemy in March 1578. Allen moved his establishment to Rheims under the protection of the House of Guise. The collegians took refuge at the University of Rheims, where they were well received, and continued their work as before, Allen being soon afterwards elected canon of the Cathedral Chapter. Thomas Stapleton, Richard Bristowe, Gregory Martin, Morgan Philips, and others were able early companions.

From the College press came forth a constant stream of controversial and other Roman Catholic literature, which could not be printed in England on account of the Penal Laws. In this Allen himself took a prominent part. One of the chief works undertaken in the early years of the college was the preparation under Allen's direction of the well-known Douai Bible. The New Testament was published in 1582, when the college was at Rheims; but the Old Testament, though completed at the same time, was delayed for lack of funds. It eventually appeared at Douai, in 1609, two years before the Anglican Authorized Version.

[edit] Political involvements

In 1577 Allen began a correspondence with Robert Parsons, the Jesuit. He was summoned again to Rome in 1579 to quell the a disturbance that had befallen the English college between the English and Welsh students. It was during this visit that he was appointed a member of the Pontifical Commission for the revision of the Vulgate. Brought into personal contact with Parsons, Allen fell completely under the dominating personality of the redoubtable Jesuit, and submitted entirely to his influence. He arranged that the Society should take over the English college at Rome and should begin the Jesuit mission to England in 1580. Under Allen's negotiations, the first Jesuits to be sent Robert Parsons and Edmund Campion, were to work closely with the other priests in England. The mission was of questionable value as Campion was executed after only a year of work, and Parsons had to flee the country.

King Philip II of Spain had Allen created a cardinal in 1587.

Allen himself saw his work as "scholastical attempts" at ending the English breach with Rome. His political labours to secure the same end, which may be said to have begun about this time, were completely unsuccessful and made matters worse for Roman Catholics. The famous Bull Regnans in excelsis was issued by Pius V in 1570, deposing Queen Elizabeth, and releasing her subjects from their allegiance, but this plan provoked a harsh response from England.

Returning to Rheims he joined in all the political intrigues which Parsons' fertile brain had hatched to promote the Spanish interest in England. Allen's political career now began. Parsons had already intended to remove Allen from the seminary at Reims, and for this purpose, as far back as 6 April 1581, had recommended him to Philip II to be promoted to the cardinalate. In furtherance of the intrigues, Allen and Parsons went to Rome again in 1585 and there Allen stayed for the rest of his life. In 1587, while he was being manoeuvred by Philip's agents, he wrote, helped by Parsons, a book in defence of Sir William Stanley, an English officer, who had surrendered Deventer to the Spaniards. Allen wrote that all Englishmen were bound, under pain of damnation, to follow this example, as Elizabeth was no lawful queen.

Allen helped plan the invasion of England, and was to have been Archbishop of Canterbury and Lord Chancellor had it succeeded. Allen had the position of the head of the Roman Catholics of England; and as such, just after the death of Mary Queen of Scots, he wrote to Philip II (19 March 1587) to encourage him to undertake an invasion of England, stating that the Roman Catholics there were clamouring for the king to come and punish "this woman, hated by God and man." After much negotiation, he was made cardinal by Pope Sixtus V on 7 August 1587, partly to ensure the success of the Spanish Armada.

[edit] Spanish Armada

Portrait of Elizabeth made to commemorate the defeat of the Spanish Armada, depicted in the background.

Allen was then once more in Rome, he had been summoned by the pope after a dangerous illness two years before. He never left Rome again, but he kept in constant communication with his countrymen in England. It had been due to his influence that the Society of Jesus, to which he was greatly attached, undertook to join in the work of the English mission; and now Allen and Father Parsons became joint leaders of the "Spanish Party" among the English Roman Catholics.

At the request of King Philip, Allen was created cardinal in 1587, and held himself in readiness to go to England immediately, should the invasion prove successful. In estimating the number of those who would be adherents to the scheme, however, Allen and Parsons were both at fault. The large majority of English Roman Catholics sided with their own nation against the Spanish, and the defeat of the Armada, in 1588, was a subject of rejoicing to them no less than to their Anglican countrymen. Allen survived the defeat of the Armada six years. To the end of his life he remained fully convinced that the time was not far distant when England would be Roman Catholic again. During his last years there was an estrangement between him and the Jesuits, though his personal relations with Father Parsons remained unimpaired

On his promotion Allen wrote to Rheims that he owed the hat to Parsons. One of his first acts was to issue, under his own name, two works for the purpose of inciting Roman Catholics in England to rise against Elizabeth: The Declaration of the Sentence of Sixtus V, a broadside, and a book, An Admonition to the nobility and people of England (Antwerp, 1588). After the failure of the Armada, Philip, to get rid of the burden of supporting Allen as a cardinal, nominated him to the be Archbishop of Mechelen, but for some reason which has never been satisfactorily explained, the nomination, although publicly allowed to stand several years, was never canonically confirmed.

[edit] Last years

Pope Gregory XIV gave him the title of Librarian of the Vatican. In 1589, he co-operated in establishing a new English college at Valladolid, in Spain. He took part in four conclaves, though his influence was diminished after the failure of the Armada. Before his death, which took place in Rome, he appears to have changed his mind about the wisdom of Jesuit politics in Rome and England, and would have tried to curb their activities, had he lived. Certainly his political involvements gave a pretext to Elizabeth's government for regarding the continental English seminaries as hotbeds of sedition.

He continued to reside at the English College, Rome, until his death. As a cardinal, Allen had lived in poverty and he died in debt, at Rome on 16 October 1594. He was buried in the chapel of the Holy Trinity adjoining the college.

Allen's foundation at Douai survives today in two seminaries, Ushaw College, near Durham, and Allen Hall, Chelsea, London, the successor of St Edmund's College, Ware. The English College at Valladolid continues to train English and Welsh men for the priesthood. There is also a Catholic secondary school named in his honour in his home town of Fleetwood. A secondary school named Cardinal Allen also existed in Enfield, Middlesex until around 1980.

[edit] References

• This article incorporates text from the 1913 Catholic Encyclopedia article "William Allen" by Bernard Ward, a publication now in the public domain.
• This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition article "William Allen", a publication now in the public domain.

[edit] Further reading

[edit] Printed works

The following is a list of William Allen's printed works:

• Certain Brief Reasons concerning the Catholick Faith (Douay, 1564)
• A Defense and Declaration of the Catholike Churches Doctrine touching Purgatory, and Prayers of the Soules Departed (Antwerp, 1565), re-edited in 1886
• A Treatise made in defense of the Lawful Power and Authoritie of the Preesthoode to remitte sinnes &c. (1578)
• De Sacramentis (Antwerp, 1565; Douay, 1603)
• An Apology for the English Seminaries (1581)
• Apologia Martyrum (1583)
• Martyrium R.P. Edmundi Campiani, S.J. (1583)
• An Answer to the Libel of English Justice (Mons, 1584)
• The Copie of a Letter written by M. Doctor Allen concerning the Yeelding up of the Citie of Daventrie, unto his Catholike Majestie, by Sir William Stanley Knight (Antwerp, 1587), reprinted by the Chetham Society, 1851
• An Admonition to the Nobility and People of England and Ireland, concerning the present Warres made for the Execution of his Holines Sentence, by the highe and mightie Kinge Catholike of Spain, by the Cardinal of Englande (1588)
• A Declaration of the sentence and deposition of Elizabeth, the usurper and pretended Queene of England (1588; reprinted London, 1842).

[edit] Studies

• Thomas Francis Knox, Letters and Memorials of Cardinal Allen (London, 1882)
• Thomas Francis Knox, First and Second Diaries of the English College, Douay: Historical Introduction" (London, 1877)
• Alphons Bellesheim, Wilhelm Cardinal Allen und die englischen Seminare auf dem Festlande (Mainz, 1885)
• First and Second Diaries of the English College, Douai (London, 1878)
• Nicholas Fitzherbert, De Antiquitate et continuations religionis in Anglia et de Alani Cardinalis vita libellus (Rome, 1608)
• Ethelred Taunton, History of the Jesuits in England (London, 1901)
• Alexandre Teulet, vol. v.; the Spanish State Papers (Simancas), vols. lii. and iv.

A list of Allen's works is given in Joseph Gillow, Biographical Dictionary of the English Catholics, vol. L, under his name.