ing been any ways privy to my flight, or of the general's letter to him. This promise I have faithfully and honourably observed; and should have thought myself guilty of the blackest ingratitude if I had not observed it, being sensible that, had it been known at Rome, that either the rector and general had been accessary to my flight, the Inquisition would have resented it severely in both. For, though a Jesuit in France, in Flanders, or in Germany, is out of the reach of the Inquisition, the general is not; and the high tribunal not only have it in their power to punish the general himself, who resides constantly at Rome, but may oblige him to inflict what punishment they please on any of the order noxious to them.

The rector went that very night out of town; and in his absence, but not without his privity, I took one of the horses of the college, early next morning, as if I were going for change of air, being somewhat indisposed, to pass a few days at Lisle; but, steering a different course, I reached Aire that night, and Calais the next day. I was there in no danger of being stopped and seized at the prosecution of the Inquisition, a tribunal no less abhorred in France than in England. But, being informed by the general, that the nuncios at the different courts had been ordered, soon after my flight, to cause me to be apprehended in the Roman Catholic countries through which I might pass, as an apostate or deserter from the order, I was under no small apprehension of being discovered and apprehended as such, even at Calais. No sooner, therefore, did I alight at the inn, than I went down to the quay; and there, as I was very little acquainted with the sea, and thought the passage much shorter than it is, I endeavoured to engage some fishermen to carry me, that very night, in one of their small vessels over to England. This alarmed the guards of the harbour; and I should have been certainly apprehended, as a person guilty or suspected of some great crime, fleeing from justice, had not Lord Baltimore, whom I had the good luck to meet in the inn, informed me of my danger, and pitying my condition, attended me that moment, with all his company, to the port, and conveyed me immediately on board his yacht. There I lay that night, leaving every thing I had, but the clothes on my back, in the inn ; and the next day, his Lordship set me ashore at Dover, from whence I came in the common stage to London.

not of their conviction, but of their crime; so that all donations made after that time are void; and whatever they have given is claimed by the Inquisition, into what hands soever it may have passed; even the fortunes they have given to their daughters in marriage have been declared to belong to, and are claimed by the inquisition; nor can it be doubted that the desire of those confiscations is one great cause of the injustice and cruelty of that court.

The death of the unhappy Count della Torre was soon publicly known; but no man cared to speak of it, not even his nearest relations, nor so much as to mention his name, lest any thing should inadvertantly escape them that might be construed into a disapprobation of the proceedings of the most holy tribunal; so great is the awe all men live in of that jealous and merciless

court.

The other instance of the cruelty of the Inquisition, related in the spurious account of my escape published by Mr. Baron, happened some years before I belonged to the Inquisition; and I did not relate it as happening in my time, but only as happening in the Inquisition of Macerata. It is related at length in the annals of that Inquisition, and the substance of the relation is as follows: An order was sent from the high tribunal at Rome, to all the Inquisitors throughout Italy, enjoining them to apprehend a clergyman, minutely described in that order. One answering the description in many particulars being discovered in the diocese of Osimo, at a small distance from Macerata, and subject to that Inquisition, he was there decoyed into the Inquisition, and by an order from Rome, so racked as to lose the use of his senses. In the mean time the true person being apprehended, the unhappy wretch was dismissed by a second order from Rome; but he never recovered the use of his senses, nor was any care taken of him by the Inquisition.. Father Piazza, who was then Vicar at Osimo to Father Montecuccoli, Inquisitor at Macerata, and died some years ago a good Protestant, at Cambridge, published an account of this affair, that entirely agrees with the account I read of it in the records of the Inquisition.

The deep impression that the death of my unhappy friend, the most barbarous and inhuman treatment he had met with, and the part I had been obliged to act in so affecting a tragedy, made on my mind, got at once the better of my fears; so that forgetting in a manner the dangers I had till then so much apprehended, I resolved, without further delay, to put in execution the design I had formed of quitting the Inquisition, and bidding forever adieu to Italy. To execute that design with some safety, I proposed

to beg leave of the Inquisitor to visit the Virgin of Loretto, batTM thirteen miles distant, and to pass a week there; but in the mean time, to make the best of my way to the country of the Grisons, the nearest country to Macerata, out of the reach of the Inquisition. Having therefore, after many conflicts with myself, asked leave to visit the neighbouring sanctuary, and obtained it, I set out on horseback the very next morning, leaving," as I proposed to keep the horse, his full value with the owner. I took the road to Loretto, but turned out of it at a small distance from Recanati, after a most violent struggle with myself, the attempt appearing to me, at that juncture, quite desperate and impracticable, and the dreadful doom reserved for me, should I miscarry, presented itself to my mind in the strongest light. But the reflection that I had it in my power to avoid being taken alive, and a pursuasion that a man in my situation might lawfully avoid it, when every other means failed him, at the expense of his life, revived my staggered resolution; and all my fears ceasing at once, I steered my course, leaving Loretto behind me, to Rocca Contrada, to Fossonbrone, to Calvi in the dukedom of Urbino, and from thence through the Romagna into the Bolognese, keeping the by roads, and at a good distance from the cities of Fano, Pesaro, Rimini, Forli, Faenza, and Imola, through which the high road passed. Thus I advanced very slowly, travelling, generally speaking, in very bad roads, and often in places where there was no road at all, to avoid, not only the cities and towns, but even the villages. In the mean time, I seldom had any other support but some coarse provisions, and a very small quantity even of them, that the poor shepherds, the conntrymen, or wood cleavers, I met in those unfrequented by places could spare me. My horse fared not much better than myself; but, in choosing my sleeping place, I consulted his convenience as much as my own, passing the night where I found most shelter for myself and most grass for him. In Italy there are a very few solitary farm houses or cottages, the country people there all living together in villages; and I thought it far safer to lie where I could be any way sheltered, than to venture into any of them. Thus I spent seventeen days before I got out of the ecclesiastical state; and I very narrowly escaped being taken or murdered, on the very borders of that state; it happened thus:

I had passed two whole days without any kind of subsistence whatever, meeting with nobody in the by roads that would supply me with any, and fearing to come near any house, as I was not far from the borders of the dominions of the Pope. I thought I should be able to hold it till I got into the Modanese

where I believed I should be in less danger than while I remained in the papal dominions; but, finding myself, about noon of the third day, extremely weak and ready to faint away, I came into the high road that leads from Bologna to Florence, at a few miles distant from the former city, and alighted at a post-house that stood quite by itself. Having asked the woman of the house whether she had any victuals ready, and being told that she had, I went to open the door of the only room in the house (that being a place where gentlemen only stop to change horses) and saw, to my great surprise, a placard pasted on it with a most minute description of my whole person, and the promise of a reward of 800 crowns, about £200 English money, for delivering me up alive to the Inquisition, being a fugitive from the holy tribunal, and of 600 crowns for my head. By the same placard, all persons were forbidden, on the pain of the greater excommunication, to receive, harbour or entertain me, to conceal or screen me, or to be any way aiding and assisting to me in making my escape. This greatly alarmed me, as the reader may well imagine; but I was still more affrighted when entering the room, I saw two fellows drinking there, who, fixing their eyes upon me as soon as I came in, continued looking at me very steadfastly. I strove, by wiping my face, by blowing my nose, by looking out of the window, to prevent their having a full view of me. But, one of them saying, the gentleman seems afraid to be seen, I put up my handkerchief, and turning to the fellow, said boldly, What do you mean you rascal? Look at me, am I afraid to be seen? He said nothing, but looking again steadfastly at me and nodding his head, went out, and his companion immediately followed him. I watched them, and seeing them, with two or three more, in close conference, and no doubt consulting whether they should apprehend me or not, I walked that moment into the stable, mounted my horse unobserved by them, and while they were deliberating in an orchard, behind the house, rode off full speed, and in a few hours got into thre Modanese, where I refreshed both with food and with rest, as I was there in no immediate danger, my horse and myself. I was indeed surprised to find that those fellows did not pursue me; nor can I any other way account for it, but by supposing, what is not improbable, that, as they were strangers as well as myself, and had all the appearance of banditti or rufiians flying out of the dominions of the Pope, the woman of the house did not care to trust them with her horses. From the Modanese I continued my journey, more leisurely, through the Parmesan, the Milanese, and part of the Venetian territory, to Chiavenna, subject with its district, to the Grisons, who abhor the very name