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236 F. X. MARTIN prematurely infirm with arthritis and still concerned for the safety of ·the Irish Mission in view of the opposition of the Walloon Capuchins, could not afford to alienate Friar Joseph. When he was passing through London in 1629 he dealt not merely with Capuchin affairs but with the major problem then agitating the Catholic Church in Great Britain. Richard Smith, bishop of Chalcedon (1625-55), was being defied by the vast majority of the regular clergy under his vast jurisdiction in England, Wales and Scotland. They claimed to be independent of his jurisdiction because of the wide faculties they held from the Holy Office 106 • Nugent gave his support to Smith, and in this ran counter to the policy of the other regulars 107 • One cannot help suspecting that Nugent hoped to stand well with Bishop Smith, and thus benefit the Capuchins in Great Britain. If this was his policy it was in vain. A papal brief, Britannia (9 May 1631), settled the dispute in favour of the regulars. Of more immediate concern to Nugent was the status of the Irish friars at London. He was satisfied with an arrangement, presumably arrived at with the consent of Bishop Smith and of the French Capuchins, that some Irish friars might remain in the London district 108 • It was argued that the Irish brethren were not « natives of the kingdom», and therefore not bound to observe Friar Joseph's decree 109 • One or two of them were to stay in London as links of communication between Ireland and Charleville. 9. - Scotland and the Capuchins If Nugent would not protest against Friar Joseph's decision of October 1625 one prominent Scottish Capuchin did. Archangel Leslie and Epiphanius Lindsay were the only Capuchins working in Scotland HlG P. HUGI-JES, Rome and the Counter-Reformation in England, London 1942, 329-377. 10 7 R. O'Ferrall and R. O'Connell, O.F.M.Cap., Commentarius Rinuccinianus, ed. S. Kav– anagh, I, Dublin 1932, 212-213, state that there was then (i.e. about the year 1661) a substantial body of documents on this incident of Nugent's life in the Capuchin archives at Charleville; the documents showed that Nugent tried to heal the division between the secular and regular clergy when he was going through London in 1629 and again in 1630 when on the return journey to the continent. See also O'CONNELL, Hist.Miss., 341-342; MARTIN, Nugent, 261-262. 10s WILLIAM OF MoATE, The story of the Capuchin Franciscans in England, 15. The names and activities of these Irish friars remain unknown. It was an Irish Capuchin who received Henry Ayscough into the Catholic Church in 1627; Ayscough later became a Jesuit (ibid., 9). - See a petition of the Irish Capuchins to Propaganda, undated but about 1658, in APF, Scritt. rif.cong.gen., 311, 144r, on the need to maintain some of their number in England as links between the friars in Ireland and France. 109 CUTHBERT, Capuchins II, 339.