The beginning of serious French interest in the affairs of English Catholicism falls in the first years of the seventeenth century. Since the Reformation, French kings and their ministers had usually felt that Catholicism in England was, on political grounds, to be discouraged rather than advanced; from a more recent date, they had ceased to have a foreign policy at all. Interest in English Catholicism had been left to the Spaniards, who had coped with it as best they could. Two explanations can be offered why things began to take a different turn during the reign of Henri IV. The first is that the reconstruction of what Sully described as “la faction fran9oise dans la Chrestiente” carried with it almost automatically a revival of the anti-English posture traditionally associated with it; the combination is a familiar one.

There has been a tradition at Harvington Hall in Worcestershire that for twelve years (sometimes given as 1666-1678) it was the home of the martyr John Wall, who was hanged at Worcester in August 1679. The stock printed accounts are those of Dom Bede Camm, O.S.B., in Forgotten Shrines (1910, 1936), pp. 253-280, and in his Life of Blessed John Wall, The Martyr of Harvington Hall (1932, 1947). More recent views can be found in my “Blessed John Wall” (The Venerabile, May and November 1960), in Fr. Howard Docherty's “Blessed John Joachim Wall” (Westminster Cathedral Chronicle, August 1960), and in Mr. Frank Davets Blessed John Wall (Office of the Vice-Postulation, 1962).