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230 F. X. MARTIN a hitch over the form which the safe conduct was to take in writing, and there were delays due to Trumbull's suspicions of Nugent. Unexpectedly Nugent decided to forego meeting the king. He took his courage in his hands and slipped into England in disguise, unaware that a royal messenger with the safe conduct was pursuing him. He stayed secretly for a short time in London with Sir John Francis Bath, an intimate friend of the all-powerful Buckingham. Sir John was an Irishman and a brother of a Capuchin, Edward Bath. It is likely that Nugent while in London sought out the Capuchins, Fathers Anselm and Richard, and visited Father Angelus who was still in jail. Had Nugent but known that James I was genuinely anxious to see him he would doubtless have availed of the opportunity and turned it to the benefit of the Capuchin Mission to Great Britain. Instead, he made bis way to Chester, disguised as a Walloon merchant, and thence to Ireland 80 • We shall meet him in London again in 1629. 8. - Friar Joseph intervenes The lot of the Catholics, at least in London, noticeably improved during the shuttling back and forward of amicable proposals between James I and Rome. Catholics no longer concealed their chapel-going; their children were sent to the continent for education without any interference from the government. It was especially in court circles that Catholics began to take a cautious initiative. Nevertheless, it was Friar Joseph and his French confreres, not Nugent and his fellow-subjects of the Stuart king, who made use of the religious toleration. The Capuchins in France were conducting a highly-successful series of campaigns among the Huguenots, and were to signalise their prominent part in the work by founding a friary at La Rochelle in 1628. Friar Joseph, the director of these Missions, bad the friendship of Richelieu and the support of Louis XIII. Francis Nugent, in contrast with Friar Joseph, was a lone individual constantly sharpening his wits as he tried to devise new ways of using his personal friendships for the furthering of the Missions to Ireland, England and Scotland. Friar Joseph's imperial imagination now spun a vast plan for Missions to Morocco, Tunisia, Constantinople, Greece, Syria, Mesopo– tamia, Armenia, Smyrna, Persia, Egypt, Canada, India and Ethiopia. It is a tribute to his practical genius that all of them were successfully undertaken 81 • England always had a prominent place in Friar Joseph's so Ibid., 214-215. s1 For Friar Joseph's contribution to the foreign missions see DEDOUVRES, Joseph de