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THE CAPUCHIN MISSION TO ENGLAND AND SCOTLAND 239" 1618 he wrote from Monte La Verna to Cardinal Barberini complaining with sarcastic indignation of the treatment meted out to his cousin,.. · Thomas Dempster, the historian, who was also a convert. Driven from England as a papist he found himself treated as a heretic in Italy. How was he now to be classified, Leslie asked, - as an atheist?!1 21 •. Permission to become a missionary in Scotland was not easily come by, but finally in the year 1623 Leslie crossed to London in the· suite of the marques de la Hinojosa, Spanish ambassador-extraordi– nary to the court of James I. From thence he went north to Scotland where for six years he showed what an active and audacious mis– sionary could achieve. It was not in his nature to live a furtive existence. In 1624 he published a challenge to the Protestants - Where was your Church before Luther? - and drew a hard-hitting reply from Andrew Logie, archdeacon of Aberdeen. Leslie continued in his semi-public defiance of the Presbyterians until 2 December· 1628 when the Scottish Privy Council ordered the arrest of « the Capuchin Leslie, commonly called Archangel » 122 • For a year he was forced to keep in close hiding, until the order from Friar Joseph dismissed him from Scotland. He made his way to Rome, and there made plain to the Congre– gation of Propaganda the true state of Catholicism in Scotland. He and two English friars, Anselm and Richard, got permission in the year 1633 to undertake missionary work in Scotland 123 • Neither Anselm nor Richard had his heart north of the English border. They lingered on at London until recalled to the continent on 20 July 1637 121 • Leslie resumed his work in Scotland, and though he was obliged to flee to Ireland in 1635 to lie low with the Capuchins in Dublin' 25 he continued doggedly at his missionary work until death claimed him about the year 1637 in his mother's house « against the. mill of Aboyne » by the river Dee 126 • 121 Cited in FREDEGAND CALLAEY, art. cit., in E.tudes Franc. 31(1914) 504. 1 22 The Register of the Privy Council of Scotland, ed. P. Hume Brown, 2nd ser. II,. Edinburgh 1900, 499. See also ibid., 498, 501, 502, 505, 508. 123 Decree of Propaganda, 13 Aug. 1633, cited in C. GIBLIN, The « Acta » of Propaganda: Archives and the Scottish Mission, 1623-70, in Innes Rev. 5(1954) 51. The publication of these· « Acta » is a valuable contribution to Scottish and Irish religious history. 121 Cited ibid., 52-53. See also Bull.Cap. VII, 331-332. 125 ARCHBOLD, Evangel.Fruict, 220. 1"" Fr. Christie to Fr. Gordon at Rome, Douai 29 Dec. 1653, in M.V. HAY, The Blait~ Papers, 1603-1664, London-Edinburgh 1929, 214.
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