William Allen (cardinal) - Political Involvements

Political Involvements

In 1577 Allen began exchanging letters of correspondence with Robert Parsons, a Jesuit priest. Allen was again summoned to Rome in 1579, and was charged to suppress an insurrection within the English College, caused by infighting between students from Wales and the rest of the students from England. It was during this visit that he was appointed to the Pontifical Board of Commissioners charged with the task of submitting proposals for the revision of the Latin Vulgate Bible. Brought into personal contact with Parsons, Allen fell completely under the other man's personality and submitted to his influence. Under Allen's orders, the English College at Rome was placed under the control of the Society of Jesus, for a plan to send Jesuit missions and missionaries to England by 1580. Under Allen's instructions, the first Jesuits to be sent, Parsons and Edmund Campion, were to work closely with other Roman Catholic priests in England. The mission was of questionable value, as Campion was put to death only after a year's work, and Parsons had to once again flee from England.

Allen himself saw his work as "scholastical attempts" to end the English schism from Rome. His efforts to secure this were completely unsuccessful, and made matters worse for Roman Catholics in the Kingdoms of England and Ireland. The infamous Regnans in Excelsis, a Bull by Pius V in 1570, sentenced Queen Elizabeth to both excommunication as well as to "deposition", from the Crowns of the Kingdoms of England and of Ireland, and, upon the pain of excommunication, "released" and forbid her subjects in the two Kingdoms from their due allegiance owed to their Queen.

Returning to Rheims, he allowed himself to take part in Parson's political intrigues for the furtherance of Philip's interests in England and in Ireland. Allen's political career had now begun. Parsons had already intended to remove Allen from the seminary at Reims, and to that end, as far back as 6 April 1581, had recommended Allen to Philip II, for the King's recommendation of Allen to become a Cardinal with the Pope. In furtherance of the intrigues, Allen and Parsons went to Rome again in 1585, and there, Allen remained for the rest of his life. In 1587, whilst he was the subject of the intrigue by Philip's agents, he wrote, helped by Parsons, a book in defence of Sir William Stanley, an English officer who had surrendered the town of Deventer in Overijssel, part of and within the modern Kingdom of the Netherlands, to King Philip's Armies. Allen wrote that all Englishmen were obliged, under the pain of eternal damnation, to follow that example, as Elizabeth was "no lawful queen" in the eyes of God (as well as of the Pope).

Allen helped in the planning of the attempted invasion of England, and likely to had been made Archbishop of Canterbury and Lord Chancellor had it been successful. Allen was the head of the Roman Catholic Church in England under the Pope, and in this position, 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 in England (and in Ireland) were clamouring for the King of Spain to come and punish "this woman, hated by God and man". After much deliberation, he was made a Cardinal by Pope Sixtus V on 7 August 1587, possibly to ensure the success of the Spanish Armada.