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INTRODUCTION
From the fact that this document in Persons's own hand is to befound among the Carte Farnesiane at Naples, it may be inferred that it was sent to Cardinal Farnese in order that he might urge the matter with the Pope. Later, when Sixtus V himself, after he had received a petition for the promotion from Philip , still delayed in effecting it , Persons suggested to Olivares that it might be well to advocate Allen's being appointed Archbishop of Canterbury a suggestion wisely discountenanced by the Ambassador on the ground that " the Pope would be diverted by it from the subject of the hat. " (193 ) A few months later, on August the 7th, 1587 , Allen was created cardinal . In a letter to Thomas Bailey, Vice-President of the seminary at Rheims, soon after the reception of the new dignity, Allen wrote " You are all glad and rejoice for my promotion. God grant it be , as I trust it is, to his more honour and good of our country, for else I had rather have kept my black cape still. But how much soever you have to rejoice in this behalf, so much more, all you that love me so dearly, are bound by a new obligation to love and be grateful to the whole Society , and namely to our own special good father and chief co -operator . For next under heaven F. Persons made me Cardinal."(194) From a letter to the Prince of Parma of the 20th of August, 1587 , thanking him for the great part the Prince had played in obtaining the promotion, it appears that Persons had previously, probably when he was in Flanders, engaged the Prince to support it. And in this matter," he writes, " just as perhaps no one else of our nation will have had better opportunity than myself of knowing how much we owe to your Highness, so I would desire in the name of all of them to thank you for it and show the gratitude that is due. (195) The elevation of Allen to the purple so far as Philip was concerned, though not altogether so in the mind of Persons, was effected in view of the Armada . With the defeat of the Spanish fleet in the encounter that followed, a definite period in Persons's life may be said to have ended. A little less than a month after the definitive news of that defeat had reached Rome, he set out for Spain, where he was to pass the next eight or nine years in the foundation and management of English seminaries there.
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(193) Olivares to Philip II , 16 March, 1587 (Spanish Calendar , p. 40; Knox, Allen , p. 272). (194) Cited by Thomas Worthington in his Relation of Sixteen Martyrs , Douay, 1601, p. 77. (195) Persons to the Prince of Parma, 20 August, 1588.