LAST YEARS AT LITTLE MALVERN.

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arrived at Little Malvern; and then, through the charity of his good niece, his troubles and his wanderings were over.

His life at Little Malvern was extremely edifying, for he observed solitude and silence almost as strictly as in a Charterhouse, and kept as far as practicable the other rules of his Order. During the eleven years which had elapsed since his expulsion from Sheen Anglorum he had always lived in religious houses, and he had lost nothing of his Carthusian spirit. A very old man, who died lately at Little Malvern, remembered Father Williams. He told his landlord, Mr. Berington, that the Father was never seen beyond a certain tree, and that he never spoke. "And," said the old man, "it would have been of no use if he had, as he spoke nothing but Latin, as he was brought up in France." This remark, though it shows the ignorance of the speaker, is a valuable evidence of Father Williams's silence, for the old man saw him almost daily.

At length the pious Father's course was run. On the 2nd of June, 1797, he fell asleep in our Lord; and with him died out the remnant of the English Carthusians, which owed to Maurice Chauncy its unbroken succession from the martyred heroes of the London Charterhouse. Almost all that Father Williams left, including relics, books, papers, and the seal of Sheen Anglorum, is now the property of the modern English Charterhouse.

For this we are indebted to the kindness of Mr.

Berington.

In closing this chapter we may mention a fact which is but little known either within or without the Carthusian Order. There were other Carthusians in England when the last English Prior was living at Little Malvern. Their names and their number are unknown; but they were undoubtedly some French refugees driven from their country by the dreadful Revolution. Through the kindness of Lord Arundell of Wardour, they were settled for some time in a place known as Combe Priory, between Wardour Castle and Shaftesbury. In 1794 his lordship wrote to Father Williams, and invited. him to join these "good Carthusians." The Father's answer is lost, but it is certain that he remained at Little Malvern. The present Lord Arundell of Wardour informs us that he does not think these Carthusians stayed long at Combe Priory, and that he has heard that they afterwards removed into Dorsetshire.

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CHAPTER VIII.

THE CAUSE OF THE MARTYRS.

Now that our story is told, we may return for a moment to the worthiest of all the monks who have been mentioned-the martyrs of the London Charterhouse. Though it is only since December, 1886, that they have received on earth the honours of the blessed, these monks, as well as Bishop Fisher, Sir Thomas More, and others who died in the same cause, have always been looked upon as true martyrs to the Catholic faith.

In the Carthusian Order, the memory of the saintly John Houghton and his companions has ever been fostered. Several editions of Maurice Chauncy's Historia have appeared, and the martyrs' names have been repeatedly inserted in lists of Carthusian celebrities. But it is chiefly by pictures of their sufferings that the Carthusians have manifested their devotion to these glories of their Order in England The most ancient of these is probably an engraving called of Ferrara. A painting on wood, at the

Grande Chartreuse, is also very old. It bears the following inscription in the French of the sixteenth century" Le martyr des Relligieux Chartreux execute en Angleterre sovbz le roy Henry hvictiesme de ce nom en lan mil cinq cent trente & cincq." Another is of the Italian school, and is supposed to be of the seventeenth century. There were also two large pictures at the Grande Chartreuse, painted by Mignard about the year 1670. They were lost in the fire of 1676. The two sketches by the same artist, still preserved in the Museum of Avignon, are different from those just mentioned. In the Italian Charterhouses of Pavia, Florence, Naples, and Trisulti, there are frescoes of our martyrs. That in the last-named monastery is, however, quite modern. Our monasteries at Granada and Miraflores, in Spain, can boast, the former of some very remarkable paintings, the latter of four small pictures on the retable of the high altar. There are also some pictures at Paular. It is said, moreover, that in the Charterhouse du Val-Sainte-Aldegonde, near St. Omer, there were some coloured windows in the Little Cloister, and that among the persons represented upon them were the English Carthusian martyrs. Another picture that was painted in the Church of the English College at Rome, by authority of Pope Gregory XIII., has been of incomparably greater importance, as it is due to it that our Holy Father Pope Leo XIII. has published the decree

CORRESPONDENCE WITH DR. GRIFFITHS.

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which confers upon our martyrs the title of blessed servants of God.' But first we must speak of some efforts made by the Carthusians themselves to obtain the confirmation of the cultus always rendered to the martyrs.

In 1841 Dom Basil Nyel, Coadjutor at the Charterhouse of Sainte-Croix de Beauregard, near Voiron, had some correspondence with Bishop Griffiths, Vicar Apostolic of the London District, and the subject of the letters was the approval of the public veneration of the Carthusian martyrs. "We have in England," wrote Dr. Griffiths in reply to the Coadjutor's first letter, "the highest veneration for those blessed martyrs to the Catholic faith; and if the other English Bishops think as I do, that the time has come when we can take part in this holy work without danger, I shall be glad to send you the letter that you ask for. I am writing to-day to the other Bishops, and, after receiving their replies, I hope to have the honour of sending you a letter to be forwarded to his Holiness." 2

After waiting for some weeks, it seems that the Father Coadjutor, guessing that the other English Bishops were unfavourable to the project, wrote another letter to Dr. Griffiths. The following is a translation of the Bishop's reply, which, like the

1

The Pictures of the English College at Rome; with a Preface by Father John Morris, S.J., Stonyhurst College, 1887. Picture No. 2.

2 Archives of the Grande Chartreuse