Laurence Vaux

Pius V commissioned two of the exiles at Louvain, Doctors Sanders and Harding, to publish his decision, informing the Catholics that to frequent the Established services was a mortal sin.

Vaux was in Rome in 1566; in a private audience the pope instructed him more fully as to the scope of his decision, and finally the task of making known the papal sentence in England was delegated to him.

This activity drew down the anger of the Government on his head, and in February 1568, a queen's writ was issued for his arrest; this document mentions also Cardinal Allen, though he was not in the country at the time.

Some, however, apparently feared that he would use his position to introduce a large number of his fellow-countrymen with a view to training them for the English Mission; a marginal note in the "Priory Chronicle" records, "Caenobium nostrum in seminarium pene erectum Anglorum."

Three years later at the instance of Allen, he was summoned to Reims by papal authority to take up once more the perilous missionary work in England; the Chronicle notes his departure "with the blessing and leave of his Prior", 24 June 1580.

Vaux left Reims on 1 August, and Boulogne on the 12th, arriving that day at Dover in company with a Catholic soldier named Tichborne and a Frenchman, who turned traitor.

The catechism is practically formed on the same lines as its successor of today, explaining in sequence the Apostles' Creed, the Pater and Ave (but the latter has not the second half, Holy Mary), the Commandments (these at considerable length), the sacraments, and the offices of Christian justice.