Father Baldwin, S.J.—The career of this Jesuit[1] was peculiarly romantic, and he was more than once imprisoned in the Tower of London. Born in Cornwall (1563), he was educated at Exeter College, Oxford, and was then presumably a Protestant. Like his Superior, Parsons, he seems to have become a Roman Catholic on leaving the University. Studying next at Douai, he eventually entered the Society of Jesus in 1590. Five years later he was captured by an English ship off Dunkirk, when sailing for Spain, and taken to London, where he was thrown into the Tower. Nothing, however, being proved against him, he was released, and went in the course of a few months to reside at the English College at Rome. From 1599 to 1609 he was at Brussels, when he met Faukes and Winter, and his intimacy with them caused the British Government to accuse him of complicity in the Gunpowder Plot. His extradition was demanded by Salisbury, but refused. In 1610, however, whilst travelling through the Palatinate, he was arrested by the Elector, and sent a prisoner to England. He was submitted to great indignities and hardships, en route, and is said to have been bound with a chaine more than long enough to secure 'an African lion.' Arrived in London, nothing again could he proved definitely against him, yet he was kept in the Tower till 1618. On
- ↑ His real name seems to have been 'Bawden,' but he has been generally called Baldwin.
