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THE CAPUCHIN MISSION TO ENGLAND AND SCOTLAND 235 suffered from certain disadvantages which militated against their striking permanent roots in England. They were subjects of a foreign power which was always a rival and somet1mes an opponent of England 103 • They spoke a different language and viewed affairs with a different mentality. Their scope was limited to London, nor do they appear to have had the intention of operating outside its bounds. The fact that the Mission received much of its prestige and influence from the patronage of Queen Henrietta Maria was a decided advantage in the social circumstances of the seventeenth century, but a too great dependence on this royal connection meant that with her death the French Mission suffered an irreparable loss. One can understand and forgive all these defects, some of which were inherent in the very structure of a Mission directed from the Paris Province. What one cannot so readily stomach is .. the French decision to abolish the established Mission staffed by « natives of the kingdom ». Friar Joseph, firmly believing in Gesta Dei per Francos as a first principle of his politico-religious activities 101 dreamed of the French Capuchins setting afoot the conversion of England to Catholicism. The decision to make England a preserve for the French Capuchins was intended to exclude not only English and Scottish friars; when the Italian Capuchin, Zacharias Boverio da Saluzzo, wished to come to England in 1632 on the strength of a permission from Charles I he found himself prevented by the French friars 105 • One may accept the decision to exclude all but French Capuchins from the city of London. There the French friars were an unquestion– ed success, particularly among the court nobility. The courageous but limited activities of English and Scottish Capuchins appear slight by comparison. It is a different matter to try and excuse the ruling that all « natives of the kingdom » were to leave Great Britain. The fact that there was no protest from Nugent against the introduction of the French Capuchins - and he was ever one to protest readily - raises the suspicion that he was won over to Friar Joseph's viewpoint. The more accurate judgement would appear to be that Nugent,. ws Fr. Richard, an English Capuchin, lo Cardinal Barberini, London 16 May 1636, attacked Friar Joseph's policy for a French-controlled Mission to England. He stated that the Cap– uchins were in bad odour, suspected as spies of Friar Joseph • he commented « nomen P. Josephi in Anglia est odiosum » (APF, Scritt.rif.cong.gen., 135, 159r-160r). 101 « C'est de la France que doit venir le remecle commc estant le cccur de ce corps » • Friar Joseph to the prioress of Lencloitre, quoted in G. FAGNIEZ, Le Pere Joseph et Richelieu I, Paris 1894, 72. 105 P. HUGHES, The conversion of Charles I, in Clergy Rev. 8(1934) 115-117. For the permission granted to Boverio see ARCHBOLD, Evangel.Fruict, 7.