Robert Parsons SJ and St Edmund Campion SJ

Detail from illustration to George Carleton, Bishop of Chichester A Thankfull Remembrance of Gods Mercy
(London: Robert Mylbourne and Humphrey Robinson, 1627) page 69, showing Parsons and Campion plotting.

Line engraving by Friedrich van Hulsen; © National Portrait Gallery, London; image number NPG D25307
Reproduced under Creative Commons 3 licence (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0)

A sensational illustrated history of all the ‘Popish Plots’ from the reign of Elizabeth up to and including the Gunpowder Plot (1605). It nicely illustrates the paranoia felt by many Englishmen about the Mission to England. This chapter starts with the anti-Jesuit laws of 1580, and describes the setting up by Cardinal Allen of the seminaries at Rheims and the English College at Rome:

From these Colledges they were sent into England under pretence of Religion, but indeed to withdraw subjects from obedience to their Prince, & to draw the Land unto the subjection of strangers. They called themselves Seminaries, because they were to sowe the seede of the Roman Religion in England. And what is that seed of Roman Religion, but the seed of Rebellion? Certainely so it hath ever proved. [page 60]

Campion was hung, drawn, and quartered at Tyburn on 1 December 1581. He was beatified in 1886, and canonised in 1970 as one of the Forty English Martyrs. Robert Parsons left England slightly before that, and spent the rest of his life in diplomatic work, writing, and setting up Jesuit educational establishments, including the seminaries at Valladolid and Seville, and the school at St Omer, which in 1794 returned to England at Stonyhurst. He died in 1610 as the rector of the English College at Rome.

More about this image, and an enlargeable version, from National Portrait Gallery. Text of book available at archive.org.