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234 F. X. MARTIN converts 97 • Needless to say there was not wanting a current of bitter opposition from the Puritan body. Lewd sketches appeared in public places showing the friars in the company of courtesans. This type of propaganda was more a consolation for the Protestants than a harm to the Catholics. The Capuchins showed their growing confidence and success by holding a colourful ceremony for the laying of the foundation stone of their new church in September 1635 98 • Despite its striking success the French Capuchin Mission was as yet only scratching at the surface, and was limited to London, important as that was for its influence on the country as a whole. Optimistic Catholics such as Friar Joseph saw too rosy a vision of the future, impressed as they were by a government with its quota of crypto-Catholics, a series of outstanding conversions among the nobility, the exclusive choice of Laudian-minded divines as bishops, hopes for the conversion of the archbishop of Canterbury and even of the king. Religion was intertwined with politics and economics. Beyond the assured comfort and etiquette of the court a vigilant Puritanism was gaining more and more strength among the squire and merchant classes, the backbone of the country. The French friars remained as chaplains to the queen throughout the Civil War and Commonwealth periods. They returned with her to England on the restoration of Charles II in 1660. With her death in 1666 their official status at Somerset House ceased 99 • Already at the general chapter of 1656 the Paris Province had announced the abandonment of the Mission to England 100 , but the Irish Mission continued to keep one or two friars in the country 101 , and it was they and their successors who maintained the Capuchin tradition in England into the eighteenth century 102 • It will be readily seen that the French Capuchin missionaries 97 ALBION, op. cit., 196-197. Archbold (Evangel.Fruict, 210) records that Henry Sedgrave of Cabra, county Dublin, who saw the French Capuchins at work in London, judged they were the best suited for such a milieu. 98 Ibid. Cyprien de Gamaches, who assisted at the ceremony, describes it in Memoires, 28-32. 99 CUTHBERT, Capuchins II, 340. Guilday (English Catholic refugees, 296) says they stayed ,on for some years with Queen Catherine of Braganza. 100 Stated in a petition of the Irish friars for permission to allow some of their friars to remain in England (undated but c.1658) : APF, Scritt.rif.cong.gen., 311, 144r. 101 " Rationes negandi Missionem in Angliam Patribus [Capuccinis] Normandiae ,, {Ibid., 145r). Several other documents of the period, 1640-50, speak as if the Irish friars were trying to re-establish themselves rather than maintain continuity - v.g. Capuchin procurator :general to Propaganda, c.1652 (ibid., 297, 83r). 102 WILLIAM OF M0ATE, O.F.M.Cap., Story of the Capuchin Franciscans in England, Rochdale 1924, 9, 11, 17-36.