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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 16 February 2015
Recent discussion about confessional divisions in England before the Civil War concerns questions of toleration, loyalty, and politics. While the historiography of early modern Catholicism concentrates on matters of persecution, Michael Questier has demonstrated that the Catholic community in England was not as powerless, leaderless and frustrated as some have suggested. In particular, he portrays Anthony Browne, first Viscount Montague, as an influential Catholic who successfully projected a public persona of loyalism to a Protestant monarch. Catholic aristocrats faced a perpetual dilemma. On one hand they existed in confessional opposition to their monarch and society, on the other they were often servants of the Crown in their county or at Court and great landowners who seldom suffered complete social ostracism, or experienced the full penalties the law prescribed for Catholics. How did individual peers attempt to reconcile this paradox?
This article is based on one of the chapters of a PhD thesis ‘English Catholic Peerage 1603– 1649’, for the competent supervision of which I am very grateful to Prof. R. G. Asch (University of Freiburg). I am deeply indebted for the reading of the draft of this article and helpful comments to Simon Healy, Dr. Michael Questier, Nicholas Neubauer, Dr. Hans Peterse and Dr. Inga Volmer.
2 Questier, M.C., Catholicism and Community in Early Modern England (Cambridge, 2006)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For examples of the earlier approach to the Catholic peerage, see Aveling, J. C. H., The Handle and the Axe. Catholic Recusants in England from the Reformation to Emancipation (London, 1976), pp. 125 Google Scholar et seq.; Reinmuth, H., ‘Lord William Howard (1563–1640) and his Catholic Associations’, Recusant History (12), 1974, pp. 226–237.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
3 For a biography of Cottington see Havran, M. J., Caroline Courtier. The Life of Lord Cottington (London and Basingstoke, 1973)Google Scholar.
4 For Portland see Alexander, M., Charles I’s Lord Treasurer. Sir Richard Weston Earl of Portland (1577–1635) (London and Basingstoke, 1975)Google Scholar.
5 Minet, W., ‘A Steward’s Accounts at Hadham Hall, 1628–1629’, Transactions of the Essex Archeological Society (New Series, 11, Colchester, 1921), pp. 138–147 Google Scholar; Devon Household Accounts, 1627–59 (Devon and Cornwall Record Society, New Series 38 and 39) ed. T. Gray (Exeter, 1995–6); Household Accounts and Disbursement Books of Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, 1558–1561, 1584–1586 (Camden Society, 5th Series 6) ed. S. Adams (Cambridge, 1995).
6 Essex Record Office, D/DP/A26, D/DP/A3 1, D/DP/A35. The accounts cover the dates 22 September 1606, 28 February 1607 to 20 September 1610, 30 April 1614 to 28 July 1615 and 4 November 1617 to 29 September 1619.
7 Essex Record Office D/DP/Z30/7A. For Lord John Petre see History of Parliament Trust, House of Commons 1558–1603 ed. P. W. Hasler (3 volumes, London, 1981), 3, pp. 209–10; Edwards, A. C., John Petre, Essays on the Life and Background of John, 1st Lord Petre, 1549–1613 (London and New York, 1975)Google Scholar.
8 Emerson, W. R., ‘The Economic development of the estates of the Petre family in Essex in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries’. (Oxford DPhil, 1951), p. 224.Google Scholar
9 Essex Record Office, D/DP/Z30/18. Parliament sometimes complained about this use of the royal prerogative, see Proceedings in Parliament 1628 ed. M. F. Keeler (New Haven and London, 1983), 4, pp. 143, 156. For Lord William Petre see Briggs, N., ‘William, 2nd Lord Petre (1575–1637)’, Essex Recusant 10 (1968), pp. 51–64.Google Scholar
10 Nicholas Waldegrave was accompanied twice by his son-in-law Sir Richard Weston, future Earl of Portland.
11 Elliott, N. C., ‘The Roman Catholic Community in Essex, 1625–1701’, Essex Recusant 27 (1985), p. 22.Google Scholar
12 For an account of the Waldegraves see: Foley, B., Notes on Some Catholic Confessors in the County of Essex (Essex Recusant Society, 1963), pp. 51–53.Google Scholar
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14 Ibidem.
15 Calendar of State Papers, Domestic, 1611–1618, p. 521.
16 Fitzgibbon, B., ‘George Talbot, Ninth Earl of Shrewsbury’, Biographical Studies 2(1953), p. 98.Google Scholar
17 Ibidem, p. 106.
18 Ibidem, p. 99; Newsletters from the Caroline Court, 1631–1638 (Camden Society, 5th series 26) ed. M. C. Questier (London, 2005), p. 42fn.
19 McClain, M., Beaufort. The Duke and his Duchess (1657–1715) (New Haven and London, 2001), p. 12 Google Scholar; Clark, A., The Story of Monmouthshire (Monmouth, 1980), 1, p. 159 Google Scholar.
20 For Worcester see The Travel Diary (1611–1612) of an English Catholic; Sir Charles Somerset ed. M. G. Brennan (Leeds, 1993), p. 8; Aveling, J. C. H., The Handle and the Axe, pp. 135–6.Google Scholar
21 Their son, John Winter, married a daughter of a prominent Catholic peer Lord William Howard and was appointed a private secretary and Master of Requests to Queen Henrietta Maria in 1638.
22 B.L., Add. MS 38, 170, f. 117.
23 Ibidem, ff. 129v–30.
24 Wiltshire and Swindon Record Office, 2667/8/2.
25 The daughter of the second Lord Petre, Mary, married Sir John Roper, whose family was famous for harbouring Jesuits in their house in Kent. Lord William Petre’s son-in-law, Sir John Roper, visited the Petres at least twenty-nine times. Another son-in-law from a Catholic family was Mr. William Sheldon of Bely, who married Elizabeth Petre. He visited seven times, two of them, on 20–21 May 1619 with Sir Francis Smith, who was married to his aunt from the Markham family, Anne. His son was the Catholic Sir Charles Smith, later Viscount Carrington.
26 For Arundell’s mission in Flanders see: PRO, S.P. 77/7, Part 2, ff. 228v, 230–4, 248, 252, 254r–v, 256–8, 261–2; S.P. 77/8, Part I, ff. 27, 82, 110, 129; BL, Stowe 168, f. 107f., 127f., 166f., 221f.
27 PRO, S.P. 77/7, Part 2, f. 228v.
28 Newsletters from the Caroline Court, 1631–1638 ed. Questier, p. 122.
29 G. E. C[okayne], Complete Peerage (14 volumes, London, 1910–1959), 7, pp. 484–5; 12, 2, pp. 851–5; Visitation of Suffolk, 1561 ed. J. Gorder (London, 1981), p. 152.
30 Sir Richard Lumley, who later married Elizabeth, the daughter of Sir William Cornwallis, visited the Petres on 17 May 1619. The Catholic Sir Thomas Savage, later Viscount Savage, visited the same day. From 1619 onwards Sir Thomas Savage pursued an impressive career holding many important offices, such as Commissioner for the Sale of Crown Lands, first Commissioner for Trade and Queen’s Chancellor and Keeper of the Great Seal. See: Savage Fortune. An Aristocratic Family in the Early Seventeenth Century (Suffolk Records Society, 49) ed. L. Boothman (Woodbridge, 2006). Savage, Smith and Maynard were clients of the Duke of Buckingham in the 1620s.
31 ODNB Cornwallis, Sir Charles.
32 Visitations of Essex ed. W. Metcalfe (London, 1878–79), 1, p. 397.
33 Proceedings in the Parliaments of Elizabeth I ed. T. E. Hartley (London and New York, 1995), 3, p. 260.
34 Visitations of Essex ed. Metcalfe, 1, pp. 164, 264–5, 302.
35 The Autobiography of Sir John Bramston (Camden Society, original series 32) ed. Lord Braybrooke (London, 1845), pp. 97, 99.
36 For Warwick see Hunt, W., The Puritan Moment. The Coming of Revolution in an English County (Cambridge, MA/London, 1983)Google Scholar, Beatty, J. L., Warwick and Holland, being the Lives of Robert and Henry Rich (Denver, 1965)Google Scholar.
37 I am very grateful to Mr. John Matthew for information about Sir Alexander Temple’s religious background.
38 ODNB Bramston, Sir John (the elder).
39 Walter, J., Understanding Popular Violence in the English Revolution. The Colchester Plunderers (Cambridge, 1999), p. 214.Google Scholar
40 Still Weston was presented as a suspected recusant bearing an office. See H.M.C., Portland MSS 1., p. 1 and Proceedings in Parliament 1628, ed. Keeler, 4, p. 319.
41 Alexander, , Charles I’s Lord Treasurer, p. 30.Google Scholar
42 Calendar of State Papers, Domestic 1628–9, pp. 295–6.
43 Russell, C., ‘Arguments for Religious Unity in England, 1530–1650’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 18 (1967), p. 204 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
44 BL, Add. MS 61, 481, f. 18.
45 For relations between Lord Brudenell and Sir Christopher Hatton, information can be found in the Northamptonshire Record Office, FH4252, FH4255, FH4257, FH4260, FH4262, FH4281–2, FH4226.
46 BL, Add. MS 48,081. Brudenell was raised to the peerage in 1628.
47 BL, Add. MS 38,139, f. 233; Mathias, R., Whitsun Riot (London, 1963)Google Scholar.
48 BL, Stowe 177, ff. 131–135; for further information about Wotton see Loomie, A. J., ‘A Jacobean Crypto-Catholic: Lord Wotton’, The Catholic Historical Review, 53 (1967), pp. 328–45.Google Scholar
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50 Russell, C., Parliaments and English Politics 1621–1629 (Oxford, 1979) p. 312 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Anstruther, G., Vaux of Harrowden. A recusant family (Newport, Mon, 1953), p. 403.Google Scholar
51 Elliott, N. C., ‘The Roman Catholic Community in Essex (1625–1701)’, Essex Recusant 25 (1983), p. 47 Google Scholar. For the assault on Countess Rivers see A message sent to the Parliament from the Members of House of Commons at Colchester… (London, 1642).