ABSTRACT

Father John Warner SJ was to show the consistency of the policy of a small clique within the secular clergy chapter, Thomas White (or Blacklo), Henry Holden and John Sergeant, whose aim was to bargain with the government of the day, be it Cavalier or Roundhead, to obtain toleration at the price of the exclusion of the Jesuits from England. The dossier of letters that Warner published had been collected by Robert Pugh, who had been arrested during the Plot and died in Newgate goal. The dossier had been deposited at the Jesuit College at Ghent and presumably on Pugh’s death Warner felt entitled to use it. Lord Acton included Holden, Blacklo and Sergeant among the handful of ‘original thinkers among the English Catholics’.