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Local Records

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 October 2016

Extract

Official action against recusancy and other religious offences involving Catholics has left numerous traces in county and municipal records, particularly those of Quarter Sessions, although for two decades near the start of our period that court was deprived of the power to convict persistent recusants. Such offenders may still, however, be found in Sessions’ records during those years, usually en route for the Assizes, perhaps having been first ordered by the Justices to confer with an Anglican divine, and Catholics continued to occupy the attention of the Bench on other grounds, both judicial and administrative, among them Mass-going and possession of popish books on the one hand, certifying their places of abode on the other. J.P.s might also find themselves serving, not always congenially, on special local commissions with widening terms of reference which by 1591 were concerned with both recusants and seminary priests; these bodies, and the religious leanings of their members, have to be taken into account in the regional study of Elizabethan Catholicism. Investigation may uncover evidence of their activities—and of non-co-operation with them—in a variety of sources: returns to the central government, commissioners’ own papers (not necessarily preserved in the county to which they appertain) and the records of parochial, county and municipal authorities revealing liaison with churchwardens and Justices of the Peace, with here a Lord-Lieutenant and elsewhere the city fathers.

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Copyright © Catholic Record Society 1983

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References

Notes

1 A good short survey, covering borough as well as county Sessions, is Moir, E., The Justice of the Peace (Harmondsworth, 1969)Google Scholar. Much fuller treatment will be found in S. and B. Webb, English Local Government: The Parish and the County (1906) and… The Manor and the Borough (1924). Some V.C.H. volumes contain valuable sections on local administration, e.g. Chester, 2; Shropshire, 3; Wilts., 5—of which the Tudor and early Stuart section, c. 1530-c. 1660, is reprinted in Hurstfield, J., Freedom, Corruption and Government in Elizabethan England (1973)Google Scholar, ch. 9.

2 29 Eliz. I, c. 6; 3 Ja. I, c. 4 (1587-1606).

3 Numerous Essex examples are printed in Essex Recusant, 19, pp. 75-88; 20, pp. 1-11, 39-49.

4 Staffs. Hist. Coll., 1929, pp. 134-42; North Riding R.S., 1, p. 6, respectively.

5 Essex Recusant, 20, pp. 1, 8, 10; Staffs. Hist. Coll., 1930, pp. 336-7, 359; N. Riding R.S., 1, loc. cit.

6 See R. B. Manning, ‘Elizabethan Recusancy Commissions’, in The Historical Journal, 15, pp. 23-36.

7 E.g. Sir Cuthbert Collingwood, ‘not noted for his fervent attachment to the state Church’: Watts, S. J., From Border to Middle Shire, Northumberland, 1586-1625 (Leicester, 1975), p. 79.Google Scholar

8 See Hilton, J. A. in Northern History, 13, pp. 5152.Google Scholar

9 Many cited in Manning, art. cit. The Warwickshire certificate there mentioned (pp. 32-33) was printed by MrHodgetts, Michael in Worcestershire Recusant, 5, pp. 1831;Google Scholar 6, pp. 7-20, and extracts from it are among the recusancy commission material in Dugdale Soc., 10, pp. 140, 148-9, 159-62, with comment on pp. xxxiv-xxxviii, xl (re John Shakespeare, the poet’s father, on whose inclusion, ostensibly as an absentee from church for fear of process for debt, many Shakespeare scholars have advanced various theories). See also the petition in C.R.S., 53, pp. 160-1.

10 Kent documents are among the Leveson papers in the Staffordshire Record Office, cited in R.H., 12, pp. 160-6. Other material includes: Warwick Castle MSS., now in the Worcester Record Office (cited in Dugdale Soc. 10, pp. xxxiv-xxxvii, 140, 148-9, and one item printed in full by Mr Tobias, J. in Worcs. Recusant, 36, pp. 827);Google Scholar Essex Record Office, D/DP 060 (papers relating to ‘Commission against Jesuits and Seminaries’, c. 1592) cited by Edwards, A. C., John Petre (1975), pp. 2425;Google Scholar Hassell Smith, A., County and Court: Government and Politics in Norfolk, 1558-1603 (1974), p. 107,Google Scholar re commissioners’ conference at Norwich, Jan. 1600, from the papers of Nathaniel Bacon of Stiffkey, of which a collection illustrating his rôle as J.P. and recusancy commissioner was printed in Camden Soc., 3rd series, 26 (esp. pp. 166-84 for the latter activity). These are now being massively supplemented by the edition of Bacon’s papers in Norfolk R.S., 46 et seq.

11 Illustrated in, inter alia, Chetham Soc., old series, 97, p. 54; Northants. R.S., 27, pp. 47-48; Stqffs. Hist. Coll., 1930, pp. 256, 292; ibid., 4th series, 9, pp. 15-17, 53-55, 56-59, 61-63; Hodgett, G. A. J., Tudor Lincolnshire (Lincoln, 1975), pp. 181–2;Google Scholar Bateson, M. (ed.), Records of the Borough of Leicester, 3, p. 378,Google Scholar re commissioners’ dealings with a Marian priest, Walter Barlow, on whom there is colourful detail in Thompson, J., History of Leicester… to the End of the Seventeenth Century (1849), pp. 305–06.Google Scholar See also C.R.S., 2, p. 240 and, for further (probable) mention of him, Stqffs. Hist. Coll., 1930, p. 256.

12 Reid, R. R., The King’s Council in the North (1921)Google Scholar remains valuable both for relevant references and for its Appendix on sources, to which should be added printed editions of the York House Books (to 1590) since published in Yorks. Arch. Soc. Record Series. See also Brooks, F. W., The Councilof the North (Historical Association, revised edn, 1966);Google Scholar Cross, C., The Puritan Earl (1966)Google Scholar and Dr Cross’s article in R.H., 8, pp. 136-46. On the Marcher Council, although largely superseded by Williams, P., The Council in the Marches of Wales under Elizabeth I (Cardiff, 1958)Google Scholar and ‘The Activity of the Council in the Marches under the Early Stuarts’, in The Welsh History Review, 1, pp. 133-60, Skeel, C. A. J., The Council in the Marches of Wales (1904)Google Scholar remains worth consulting on recusancy and relevant sources.

13 Affecting two groups of five English counties, in addition to Wales: viz. Yorkshire, Northumberland (on whose neglect, see Watts, op. cit., pp. 78, 99), Westmorland, Cumberland and Durham; Gloucestershire (excluding Bristol after 1652), Hereford, Monmouth, Shropshire and Worcestershire. (Cheshire ceased to be subject to the Marcher Council in 1569.) On relationships with the Assize-judges, see Cockburn, History of English Assizes, pp. 36-42; also M. Claridge, Margaret Clitherow (1966), chs 12 and 13.

14 E.g. an order of June 1585 among the Hereford city muniments; see Macray, W. D., et al., Catalogue of MS. Papers, Proclamations and other Documents… from the Municipal Archives of the City of Hereford (Hereford, 1894), pp. 24, 32;Google Scholar also H.M.C., 13th Rep., App. 4, pp. 332-3, 335-6, the latter correcting the version given in Johnson, R., The Ancient Customs of the City of Hereford (2nd edn, 1882), pp. 169–70.Google Scholar

15 See, respectively, C.R.S., 53, pp. 277-8; C.R.S., 65, p. 12; also, for the suggestion that the Marcher Council may be the source of certain recusancy-convictions not deriving from Quarter Sessions, Hodgetts, M. in Trans. Worcs. Arch. Soc., 3rd series, 1, p. 72.Google Scholar

16 For a nationwide list, to 1831, see P.R.O. Lists an d Indexes, 9 (amended edn, New York, 1963); also, in particular, Hassell Smith, op. cit., ch. 7; T. G. Barnes, Somerset, 1625-40: a County’s Government during the ‘Personal Rule’ (1961) ch. 5; Lines. R.S., 25, pp. xiv-xxi; Somerset R.S., 71, pp. 57-80.

17 Miller, Popery and Politics, p. 220. For earlier sheriffs with Catholic connections, see Aveling, Northern Catholics, p. 210; Watts, op. cit., p. 65; Carter, C. H. (ed.), From Renaissance to Counter-Reformation (1966), pp. 272–3;Google Scholar C.R.S., 60, p. 36, note 1, and passim (Sir Francis Stonor, twice sheriff of Oxfordshire, on whom, see also Davidson, A. in Essex Recusant, 12, p. 94;Google Scholar 14, p. 90); Davidson in Bodleian Library Record, 8, pp. 254-6 and note 5 thereon, re Sir George Shirley (Northants.) and Sir Richard Fermor (Oxon.).

18 Watts, op. cit., p. 64.

19 Supra, pp. 367-72, 379-80.

20 Essex Record Office: QRS 103/49 (Jan. 1588), printed in Essex Recusant, 19, pp. 76-77.

21 North Riding R.S., 5, pp. 220-1.

22 Copnall, Notts. County Records: 17th Century, p. 135; see also supra, p. 338.

23 Birmingham Reference Library: MSS. 111767-70 (Warwickshire, 1691) printed in Worcs. Recusant, 33, pp. 10-15; 34, pp. 7-13; 35, pp. 24-32.

24 N. Riding Record Office: Hutton of Marske MSS. and Stapylton of Myton MSS., cited in C.R.S., 57, p. Ixv, note 247; Aveling, op. cit., pp. 326, 362, note 11, respectively. On sheriffs’ quittances among local records, see Emmison, F. G., Archives and Local History (1966), p. 31.Google Scholar

25 For one county, Kent, see R.H., 12, p. 159.

26 Bucks. R.S., 13, pp. 100–05,Google Scholar from the notebook of Richard Grenville (sheriff, 1641-42) broken down by parishes and mentioning recusants’ payments and surplusage (see supra, p. 383) but without particulars of individuals.

27 ‘… which each Sheriff… shall duiy pay to the discoverer, and have the same allowed to him upon his accompts; and the Barons of the Exchequer are to make allowance of the same’ (Firth and Rait, 2, p. 353). See also C.R.S. Monograph 1, p. 29 and procedures set out in relevant statutes; e.g. 11 Will. III, c. 4, sec. 2. Some rewards, however, were to be paid out of fines levied upon such offenders and to be thus shown in sheriffs’ accounts (3 Ja. I, c. 5, sec. 1).

28 Norfolk R.S., 30, p. 137. For writs of excommunication, see supra, p. 362. Lists of recusant- and priest-prisoners among Yorkshire shrievalty papers are printed in C.R.S., 53, pp. 277-8 and a memorandum concerning recusants, endorsed ‘these weare arested by the Sherefe’, is printed in Stoffs. Hist. Coll. 1929, p. 62. The somewhat inapprppriate spelling of gaol as ‘goal’ is quite commonplace.

29 E.g. H.M.C., Salisbury MSS., 10, pp. 283-5: Thomas Hesketh to Robert Cecil, expatiating on the martyrdoms of Robert Nutter and Edward Thwing at Lancaster, Aug. 1600. See also Anstruther, A Hundred Homeless Years, ch. 3. For excerpts from contemporary Catholic accounts of executions see Caraman, The Other Face, ch. 28.

30 7 and 8 Will. III, c. 27. For interesting data on an early Elizabethan election (Hants., 1566) see Fritze, R. H. in Historical Journal, 25, pp. 279–87.Google Scholar

31 7 and 8 Will. III, c. 27, sec. 18. See also supra, p. 345, note 87.

32 At Preston in 1768 (Trans. Hist. Soe. Lanes, and Cheshire, 111, p. 105). See also Hughes, E., North County Life in the Eighteenth Century: the North-East, 1700-1760 (1952), p. 260,Google Scholar note 3; Grant, R., The Parliamentary History of Glamorgan, 1542-1976 (Swansea, 1978), p. 119,Google Scholar citing a letter of 1744; ‘… beware that none of the Monmouthshire Roman Catholick Voters are suffered to pass which they did last time to the number of eight or nine for want of due examination’. Maitland concluded, ‘I dare say that Catholics did vote’ (Constitutional History, p. 366), though the compiler of a guide to the conduct of county elections, published in 1790, makes the fairly obvious point that ‘in general, it is in the interest of one side or other to exclude them’ and adds that, consequently, ‘they are almost always prevented from exercising this franchise’ (S. Heywood, A Digest of the Law respecting County Elections.…, p. 215). See also notes 35 and 36, below.

33 I.e. by indicating the oath-takers among those who voted.

34 Notably the London University Institute of Historical Research. See also History, 47, pp. 166-9, reprinted in Munby (ed.), Short Guides to Records, no. 2; Stephens, op. cit., pp. 66-67, 96 and note 114 and, for locations of Poll Books, 1694-1882, the two-volume typescript catalogue (comp. J. M. Sims, 1978) at the Institute.

35 For Catholic-owned ‘pocket boroughs’ in Sussex, see Abercrombie, N. in Studies in Sussex Church History (ed. M. J. Kitch, 1981), p. 133.Google Scholar At Preston, with its wide franchise, Catholics not only voted in 1768 (see p. 404 and note 32 above) but are also recorded as doing so subsequently, being marked with an asterisk in the Poll Book (An Alphabetical List of the Electors Polled for… the Borough of Preston, May 1807).

36 For the county of Wiltshire and the borough of York (with a note on London) see, respectively, C.R.S. Monographs 1 (pp. 48-49, 93-94) and 2 (pp. 111, 113-14 and note 9). Comparison of the minutes of a London Whig club (1714-17) with the 1713 Poll Book suggests that Richard Pierson, a goldsmith and one of a number of papists listed in the former, managed to vote (London R.S., 17, pp. 20,108).

37 See C.R.S., 53, pp. 298, 300-01; C.R.S. Monograph 1, pp. 24-25, 30-32.

38 See Scott Thompson, G., Lords Lieutenant in the Sixteenth Century (1923);Google Scholar ‘The Origin and Growth of the Office of Deputy Lieutenant’, in T.R.H.S., 4th series, 5, pp. 155-66. For the identities of Lords-Lieutenant, 1585-1642, see Sainty, J. R., Lieutenants of the Counties (B.I. H. R. Special Supplement, no. 8, 1979)Google Scholar and List and Index Soc., Special Series, 12 (Lords-Lieutenant from 1660).

39 For printed examples of Lieutenancy activity concerning Catholics, see H.M.C., 13th Rep. App. 4, passim; Kent Arch. Soc., Records Branch, 10, p. 110; Northants. R.S., 27, pp. 46-48; Chetham Soc., 49 and 50, passim; Trans. Hist. Soe. Lanes, and Cheshire, 119, pp. 57-64; Norfolk R.S., 30, pp. 95, 99, 116-17, 135; 45, p. 97; Barnes, Somerset…, pp. 106, 114. Eighteenth-century Lieutenancy documents affecting Catholics during Jacobite emergencies are printed by R. C. Jarvis in Cumberland County Council Record Series, 1, pp. 141-74, passim, 214-27. For further seventeenth-century documentation, see The Cheshire Sheaf, 1, pp. 273-4, 328; Chetham Soc., 3rd series, 5, pp. xi, xxv-xxvi, 148 (Sir Peter Leicester’s MS. Liber W reflecting his work as a deputy-lieutenant).

40 Essex, Herts, and Lines. (H.M.C., Salisbury MSS., 4, pp. 448-9). This letter, to Lords-Lieutenant in general, 31 Dec. 1593, is, however, recorded in B.L. Add MSS. 11402; see A.P.C., 1595-96, Prefaceand p. 515.

41 H.M.C., 13th Rep., App. 4, pp. 434-5; also Staffs. Hist. Coll., 4th series, 9, pp. 81-82 (to deputy-lieutenants, sheriffs and J.P.s, 28 Feb. 1613). A similar definition, the Register-entry of which does survive, was later incorporated in a letter to sheriffs and J.P.s, referring to the earlier communication (A.P.C., 1613-14, pp. 556-7, 14 Sept. 1614).

42 7 and 8 Will. III, c. 16; also 9 Will, III, c. 31; 10 Will. III, c. 18.

43 Who might at an earlier period include an occasional Catholic (apart from those appointed by James II), e.g. the uncooperative and belligerent Sir Francis Englefield, 1st bart.; see V.C.H., Wilts., 5, pp. 85, 86 (also Hurstfield, op. cit., pp. 245-6, 248); C.R.S. Monograph 1, p. 238 (and note 404).

44 E.g. the Norfolk Lieutenancy Journal, 1676-1701, in Norfolk R.S., 30, p. 144 (entry of 15 July 1696). J.P.s who were also deputy-lieutenants did not necessarily keep separate the paper-work of the two offices, hence some Lieutenancy material may be found among Quarter Sessions records.

45 The letter is printed in R.H., 9, p. 15 and must have been addressed to the Earl, not the Duke of Devonshire, as there stated; the latter title was not conferred until 1694 (‘G.E.C.’, Complete Peerage, 4, pp. 341-3).

46 C.R.S. Monograph 1, pp, 63-64. The letter implicating Sir John Webb may have been a forgery.

47 Morrill, J., The Revolt of the Provinces (1980 edn) pp. 6672 Google Scholar and passim. See also Mather, J., ‘The Parliamentary Committees and the Justices of the Peace, 1642-61’, in The American Journal of Legal History, 23, pp. 120–43.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

48 Aylmer and Morrill, The Civil War and Interregnum: Sources for Local Historians, Appendix 5; also Appendices 7 and 8 for local studies, to which may be added Essex Recusant, 9, pp. 1-18; 10, pp. 21-27, 111-16; 12, pp. 14-22 and, more recently, Smith, T. S., ‘The Persecution of Staffordshire Roman Catholics, 1625-60’, in The Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 30, pp. 327–51.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

49 Morrill, op. cit., p. 91. These documents are B.L. Add. MSS. 22084-5; many extracts printed in Wilts. Arch. Magazine, 26, pp. 343-91. See also V.C.H. Wilts., 5, p. 143, and, for further data, the B.L. Index to Additional MSS… . acquired 1783-1835, p. 410: ‘Sequestrations’.

50 Wilts. Arch. Mag., 26, p. 377.

51 E.g. Robert Lincoln, the State’s tenant of Capt. Buckland’s farm at Standlynch (see C.R.S. Monograph 1, pp. 226-7) and Mrs Barbara Skilling (mentioned supra, p. 393), tenant of her husband’s two farms (Wilts. Arch. Mag.. 26, p. 387).

52 See below, note 71, for an example.

53 E.g. Hull City Record Office: D. 863 B and C (July and Sept. 1658). Much information is given in Aylmer and Morrill, op. cit., section 2, passim.

54 See particularly the valuable discussion by Mr Michael Greenslade, introducing the Staffordshire returns, in Hist. Coll. Staffs., 4th series, 2, pp. 72-76 (also pp. 77-99 for a list of over a thousand papists).

55 A. Fletcher, A County Community in Peace and War: Sussex, 1600-1640(1975), p. 97, where a useful outline is given. For the Act and central (Recusant Roll) documentation, see supra, pp. 338, 372,

56 For London, see C.R.S., 34, pp. 115-43.

57 See below, note 75; also C.R.S. Monograph 1, p. 18.

58 See Miller, Popery and Politics, ch. 11, passim and Appendix 3; also, for the Catholic ascendancy in various localities, Hilton, J. A. in North-West Catholic History, 1, pp. 97110;Google Scholar 5, pp. 1-13; in Essex Recusant, 20, pp. 15-17; in London Recusant, 5, pp. 78-83; 7, pp. 68-72; in Staffs. Catholic History, 18, pp. 15-18; in Worcs. Recusant, no. 26, pp. 3-7; no. 30, pp. 3-8. For a recent study of one borough, Bury St Edmunds, see Murrell, P.E. in B.I.H.R., 54, pp. 188206,Google Scholar and, for another, Newcastle, Howell, R. in Archaelogia Aeliana, 5th series, 8, pp. 2630.Google Scholar For Lancs. J.P.s, see N. W. Catholic History, 8, pp. 315;Google Scholar for Warwicks., Warwick County Records, 8, pp. xxi-lx. For Catholic army officers as deputy-lieutenants and J.P.s, see Childs, J., The Army, James II and the Glorious Revolution (Manchester, 1980), pp. 108–11.Google Scholar On Catholics as officers and garrison-commanders, see also Miller, J. in E.H.R., 88, pp. 4553 Google Scholar and, for Catholic appointments to headships of old-established grammar schools, Beales, Education Under Penalty, pp. 237-9; C.R.S., 65, pp. 41-42.

59 Though some Catholics assumed that they were eligible (J. R. Jones, The Revolution of 1688, p. 168, note 61).

60 Kenyon, J. P., Robert Spencer, Earl of Sunderland ( 1958), p. 193.Google Scholar

61 Kenyon, The Nobility in the Revolution of 1688 (Hull, 1963), p. 14.

62 For the Elizabethan and early Stuart periods, see Gleason, Justices of the Peace, chs 4 and 5; Appendices A to F, passim, and, for clerical Justices in Northumberland and Durham, 1623-30 (when they constituted an exceptionally high percentage), Fraser, C. M. and Emsley, K. in Archaeologia Aeliana, 5th series, 2, pp. 189–99.Google Scholar For the interplay of various influences, not without repercussions on Catholicism, in one area, see Forster, East Riding Justices of the Peace (E. Yorks. Local History Soc., 1973) and, on sources for tracing J.P.s, Barnes, T. G. and Hassell Smith, A. in B.I.H.R., 32, pp. 221–42.Google Scholar More generally, see also works listed supra, note 1, to this section.

63 As examined, for York, by Mr AveIing in C.R.S. Monograph 2. Appendix 3.

64 A clear account of the various Middlesex sessions (and of those for Westminster) is given in pp. 12-15 of the Guide to the Middlesex Sessions Records issued by the Greater London Record Office, County Hall, SEI 7PB, where these documents are now kept. See also Dowdell, E. G., A Hundred Years of Quarter Sessions… Middlesex, 1660-1760( 1932); C.R.S., 34,Google Scholar p. x, note; Cockburn, History of English Assizes, pp. 29-31; Bulletin of the Society of Local Archivists (now Journal of Soc. of Archivists), 8, pp. 6-10. Printed Sessions material for Middlesex is of three kinds: (i) Middlesex County Records (ed. J. C. Jeaffreson, 1886-92), being 4 volumes of selections with numerous entries relating to Catholics from all parts of the kingdom indicted in the capital which, apart from the cities of London and Westminster, formed part of Middlesex (on ‘Catholics and their Recusancy’ see editorial note in vol. 1, pp. lvi-lvii; also criticism in Miller, Popery and Politics, p. 266); (ii) Middlesex Sessions Records calendared by W. Le Hardy (3 vols, 1935-37) covering all Sessions documents for the period 1612-16 only; (iii) Hardy, W. J., Calendar of Sessions Books, 1689-1709 (1905),Google Scholar covering that one category. Additional calendars (typewritten) are listed in the B.L. Catalogue of Printed Books, sub ‘Middlesex County Records’. For other major muniments relating to the capital, see Jones, P. E. and Smith, R., Guide to the Records in the Corporation of London Records Office and the Guildhall Library Muniment Room (1951).Google Scholar

65 E.g. in IW. and M., sess. 1, с. 17, Surrey, Kent and Essex (substituted for Sussex, erroneously included in the original Act, IW. and M., sess. 1, c. 9).

66 For proclamations, etc., of the ‘Popish Plot’ period, of which ‘no less than half… relate particularly to London and its immediate vicinity’, see C.R.S., 34, pp. lv-lix.

67 See Emmison, F. G. and Gray, I., County Records (Historical Association, 1973 edn);Google Scholar Record Repositories in Great Britain (H.M.S.O.); Foster and Sheppard, British Archives; P. Hepworth, Archives and Manuscripts in Libraries (Library Association); Martin and McIntyre, Bibliography of British and Irish Municipal History.

68 Compiled on various principles, these can considerably supplement the printed guides, etc., especially, of course, the older ones, as the York City Archives’ card-index does in relation to the Catalogue of Charters, House Books… etc., produced by W. Gibson in 1908 and published in the following year.

69 Also traceable through the National Register of Archives and, in some instances, detailed in N.R.A. lists.

70 Information on relevant sources for certain areas has appeared in the journals of local Catholic History societies (and more is promised): Staffs. Catholic History, 1, pp. 5-13; Worcs. Recusant, no. 1, pp. 5-9; no. 36, p. 33-41 (re Gloucs. and Herefs.); North-West Catholic History, 7, pp. 20-25 (re Cumbria Record Office, Carlisle); 8, p. 25 (Wigan R.O.).

71 E.g. Cromwell’s proclamation of 1655 against priests and recusants noted supra, p. 338 and cited, from a copy among the Sessions records, in Copnall, Notts. County Records, 17th Century, p. 134.

72 For Lieutenancy papers alluding to Quarter Sessions proceedings against papists and minuting instructions to J.P.s regarding them, see Norfolk R.S., 30, pp. 115-17 (re prisoners, including priests, at Great Yarmouth and King’s Lynn, 1690); p. 141 (re Norwich Sessions, 1696).

73 Greater London Record Office; MR/RRE. 1 (Middx.); Somerset R.S., 34, pp. 181-2. For this campaign, substituting two-thirds forfeitures for lunar-monthly fines and giving rise to lists both of local commissioners charged with levying them and of convicted recusants, see supra, pp. 348, 375, note 64.

74 See Hamilton, A. H. A., Quarter Sessions from Queen Elizabeth to Queen Anne (1878), pp. 258,Google Scholar 81, respectively—the latter (1612 and 1613) concerning rigorous exaction of the twelvepenny fine for each absence from church and liaison between the Clerks of Assize and of the Peace and the ecclesiastical authorities regarding inmates of Catholic houses and enforcement of the five-mile limit on travel.

75 E.g. a royal warrant, 24 Nov. 1666, during the anti-Catholic phase following the Great Fire of London, to the Lord-Lieutenant of Suffolk (as of other counties), calendared in H.M.C., 13th Rep., App. 4, p. 467; see also C.S.P.D., 1666-67, p. 287, for general entry.

76 For Commons’ orders to local officiais, see especially Vardon, T. and Erskine May, T., General Index to the Journals of the House of Commons, 1547-1714 (1852), pp. 796–8 andGoogle Scholar, for a few later references, the Indexes covering the periods 1714-74 and 1774-1800 (under ‘Papists’ and ‘Roman Catholics’ respectively). For one such order, Dec. 1640, and associated local documentation, see Cunnington, Records of the County of Wilts., pp. 129-30. Orders of the House of Lords touching Catholics in various ways, interspersed with much legislative matter, are traceable through the General Indexes (4 vols for the period 1509-1819) to the Lords’ Journals, supplemented by the printed Calendars of House of Lords MSS.—to be distinguished from the less useful (in this context) Calendar of the Journals of the House of Lords, of which the first vol., pub. 1810, covers the period 1509-1808. Original letters from the Lords (e.g. demanding returns of papist lodgers in the capital at the time of the ‘Popish Plot’) may be preserved, with related documentation, among local records; see Guide to Middx. Sessions Records, p. 71; also, for abstracts of City returns received by the Lords, H.M.C., Lords MSS. 1678-88, pp. 169-71. For further information on the Lords’ and Commons’ Journals, see, respectively, Bond, Guide to the Records of Parliament, pp. 31-32; Menhennet, D., The Journal of the House of Commons (House of Commons Library Document no. 7, 1971).Google Scholar

77 Barnes, Somerset.…, p. 14.

78 Sir Stephens, E. et al., The Clerks of the Counties, 1360-1960 (1961), p. 183,Google Scholar re Richard Harland (E. Riding); also, for an early Elizabethan recusant Clerk, p. 94 (Ralph Henslowe, Hants.). For the Clerk’s functions, see H. C. Johnson in ibid., pp. 29-47; also, of wider relevance than its title might suggest, Barnes, T. G., The Clerk of the Peace in Caroline Somerset (Leicester, 1961).Google Scholar

79 See Green, R. J., York City Archives (St Leonard’s Papers, no. 1, York, 1971), p. 7;Google Scholar Portsmouth Record Series, 1, pp. xi-xii of the valuable Introduction, and Professor R. S. Neale’s strictures in his Bath, 1680-1850, p. xii; also, for further examples, Hearnshaw, F. J. C., Municipal Records (1918), p. 22.Google Scholar

80 With contemporary printed snippets, some of them touching Catholics (e.g. during the ‘Popish Plot’ period), in The London Gazette and in other newspaper reports.

81 Many can be traced though the two guides (ed, E. L. C. Mullins) mentioned supra, pp. 334, 335. Selections of printed Sessions’ records are listed in the Acknowledgements (unpaginated) in B. Osborne, Justices of the Peace, 1361-1848 (Shaftesbury, 1960), in Emmison and Gray, County Records, pp. 27-28 and in West, J., Village Records (1962), pp. 8991.Google Scholar A new edition of this work is imminent, as is a companion-volume on Town Records. Some relevant borough material is listed in Aylmer and Morrill, op. cit., Appendix 4. Much original local documentation of Catholic interest is printed in the journals listed supra, p. 342, note 30, and invaluable guidance on Sessions’ records of Catholic relevance is given in the introduction (pt 3) to C.R.S., 34; this goes into greater detail than present space permits.

82 Though there are still considerable differences in the nature and extent of their holdings; comparative particulars of certain major records are tabulated in Emmison and Gray, op. cit., Appendix 2.

83 For specific information, see Emmison and Gray, loc. cit.

84 DrMorril’s, J. S. The Cheshire Grand Jury, 1625-1659 (Leicester, 1976),Google Scholar is valuable for more than the county it studies. A photograph (with transcript) of a constables’ presentment, including recusants, is included in West, Village Records, p. 86 and facing plate.

85 Thus in Worcestershire between 1591 and 1643 there were only some two dozen recusancy-indictments compared with hundreds of presentments for that offence (R. Halstead in Worcs. Recusant, 3, p. 30) and in the so-called ‘Indictment Book’ of Warwickshire Sessions, 1631-74, presentments far outnumber indictments (Warwick County Records, 6, passim).

86 See Cockburn, J. S. (ed.) Crime in England, pp. 129,Google Scholar 326, note 113, re certain Wiltshire Quarter Sessions indictments. See also infra., p. 423, note 138 (York) and supra, p. 350 (Assizes’ indictments).

87 Alleged to have been uttered by Patrick Young, 1611 (from Co. Durham Indictment Rolls, cited by Emsley, K. and Fraser, C. M. in The Justice of the Peace and Local Government Review, 135, p. 304)Google Scholar.

88 See illustrative data in Copnall, op. cit., pp. 133, 136, 156-62, and further analysis in C.R.S. Monograph 1, pp. 267-72.

89 And consequently being inadequate as a basis for framing indictments; for a presentment endorsed ‘insufficient in law’, see Essex Recusant, 20, p. 44.

90 C.R.S. Monograph 1, p. 84 (Hundred of Mere, Wilts., containing the major Catholic centre of Stourton).

91 Though deterrent alterations in the opposite vein are not unknown; both types of presentment are documented in C.R.S. Monograph 1, pp. 85-87, and further examples (Suffolk, 1674-81) occur in the East Anglian Miscellany (Ipswich, 1911), p. 58.

92 E.g. at West Riding Sessions, 1598, when persistent absentees from church were charged under the 1559 Uniformity Act only (Yorks. Arch. Record Series, 3, pp. 51-55).

93 A wise cautionary note is sounded by Mr Aveling in Studies in Church History, 4 (ed. G. J. Cuming, Leyden, 1967), pp. 108-10, substantiated, for Sussex, by A. Fletcher, A County Community.…, p. 95 (in both instances as regards churchwardens’ presentments also, for which see infra., pp. 428-30).

94 See, for example, V.C.H. Wilts., 3, p. 95.

95 E.g. no recusants presented at Cheshire Quarter Sessions between 1625 and 1640 (Morrill, op. cit., pp. 29, 50, note 59).

96 Willis Bund, J. W., Worcs. Quarter Sessions Papers, 1591-1643 (Worcester, 1899), pp. 237, 244;Google Scholar Warwick County Records, 9, pp. 2, 8, 23, 33, 71; N. Riding R.S., 2, p. 100: twenty-six constables (and two ministers) fined for not presenting recusants.

97 E.g. at Nunney, Som. (Somerset Record Office: Q.S. 164, Petitions ‘N’, as interpreted by Professor D. Underdown in T.R.H.S., 4th series, 31, p. 91). For this area, see also M. Hodgetts in R.H., 16, p. 186. Petitions complaining of fining or imprisonment on religious grounds may incorporate names which occur in Recusant Rolls and/or other records and may assist in establishing confessional allegiance, while other petitions may embody claims for payment of expenses incurred in activating anti-Catholic measures (illustrated in Cumberland County Council Record Series, 1, pp. 179-82).

98 I.e. bonds, backed by sureties, to secure the offender’s attendance at Sessions (see also note 101, below), not necessarily specifying the offence.

99 On which see E. M. Halcrow in The Amateur Historian, 1, pp. 337-9: also infra., pp. 415-6.

100 Cunnington, Records of the County of Wilts., p. 129.

101 For links between presentments of popish recusants, their recognisances and forfeitures for non-appearance, see Warwick County Records, 7, pp. xvi-xvii and references there cited and, for the varied pattern of oath-tendering and exaction of recognisances in several areas at the time of the ‘Popish Plot’, Miller, Popery and Politics, pp. 166-8.

102 A letter of protection in favour of Lord Petre, addressed to the Essex justices in 1629, is printed in Edwards, A.C., English History from Essex Sources, 1550-1750 (Chelmsford, 1952), pp. 1213.Google Scholar

103 C.R.S., 9, p. 133 (from Monmouthshire Quarter Sessions’ minute book, 1716). For these officials, see Lincoln R.S., 25, pp. xlvi-liii; Assoc. Arch. Soc. Reps, and Papers, 38, pp. 106-65; also Kent, J., ‘The English Village Constable, 1580-1642’ in Journal of British Studies, 20, pp. 2649.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

104 Somerset R.S., 24, pp. 262-3; 34, pp. 181-3.

105 Reflected respectively in Cumberland… Record Series, 1, p. 197 and in Somerset Record Office: Q.S. Minute Bk, 1740-47, p. 360 (‘Protestant’s Claim’, Bridgwater Sessions, 14 July 1747) printed in Goddard, W., An Extract from the Sessions Rolls of the County of Somerset (1765), pp. 6365.Google Scholar

106 Copnall, op. cit., p. 138, citing Sessions Bk, 1614-16.

107 N. Riding R.S., 2, p. 172.

108 Printed examples in, inter alia, Yorks. Arch. Soc. Record Series, 54, pp. 316-17, 359; N. Riding R.S., 2, p. 27; Shropshire County Records: Quarter Sessions Orders, 1, p. 90; 2, p. 22; Cox, Three Centuries of Derbys. Annals, pp. 300-01, 309. See also note 111, below, re alehouse licences.

109 Camden Soc., 4th series, 17, p. 224,

110 Herts. County Records, 6 (Sessions Bk, 1658-1700), p. 358; also C.S.P.D., 1682, p. 59, for a Middlesex Sessions’ order that absentees from church be denied poor-relief and that the twelvepenny fine be rigorously levied.

111 Herts. County Records, 6, p. 321. Further particulars of this case (during the ‘Popish Plot’ period) and of the landlord’s subsequent recusancy are given in Essex Recusant, 9, pp. 97-99 (reprinted in London Recusant, 2, pp. 119-20). At the Easter Sessions of 1746 the Lancashire Justices resolved to withhold alehouse-licences from papists (County Record Office, Preston: Order Bk, QSO/2/115, cited in Cumberland… Record Series, 1, p. 69, note 1) and ninety years earlier two Yorkshiremen were ordered 40 be suppressed from brewing, being Papists’ (N. Riding R.S., 5, p. 217). For similar restrictions in Elizabethan York, see C.R.S. Monograph 2, p. 54.

112 Cox, op. cit., p. 310.

113 Notably well represented in Middx. Sessions Records (Greater London Record Office): MR/RR. 6-28, but with traces in many local collections plus similarly orientated material among the centrally-preserved Forfeited Estate Papers, chiefly 1715-18 (see supra, pp. 385-6) which may mention the Sessions at which oaths were tendered and refused or at which reputed papists, although summoned, failed to appear. For the ‘Forty-five, see as well as his works cited in other footnotes, R. C. Jarvis, ‘The Forty-Five and the Local Records’, in Lanes. and Cheshire Antiq. Soc., 65, pp. 85-86. For a Justices’ warrant to constables to tender oaths (1701) and for documents associated with a Lancashire Catholic’s successful avoidance, see Trans. Hist. Soe. Lanes, and Cheshire, 88, pp. 143-57.

114 E.g. in London and Middlesex (C.R.S., 34, pp. 68, 73, 86; Middx. County Records, 2,p. 216).

115 E.g. for Middx. in Greater London R.O., MR/RR. 2-4 (and Acc. 932); for Notts, in Copnall, op. cit., pp. 136-8; for Westmorland in Trans. Cumberland and Westmorland Antiq. and Arch. Soc., 8, p. 25.

116 Copnail, op. cit., p. 135 (oath-refusers, 1656 and 1657, and Micheli case). Micheli is not mentioned in Beales, Education Under Penalty.

117 See Webb, Parish and County, p. 469, npte 2; also for Quarter Sessions’ lists (1716 to early 1720s), C.R.S., 7, pp. 246-54; 9, p. 133.

118 Examples in Cunnington, Records of the County of Wilts., pp. 275-6.

119 Herts. County Records: Sessions Rolls, 1581-1698,, pp. 394-5.

120 Much Quarter Sessions’ and other documentation from a front-line county where such precautions were taken is printed in Cumberland… Record Series J, passim. Elsewhere are to be found a constable ‘ whose affirmations on oath… betoken a slight regard for the alarm of the government in 1744’ (Lincoln R.S. y 25, p. exxx), little evidence of anti-Catholic measures in 1715 and 1745 (Wiltshire: C.R.S. Monograph I pp. 59, 64), and some indifference among Lords-Lieutenant (ibid., p. 59, note 433). On the North Riding (1715), see J. S. Cockburn in Yorks. Arch. Journal, 41, pp. 481-2.

121 See respectively ‘ A High Constable’s Register, 1681’, in Trans. Hist. Soe. Lanes, and Cheshire, 107, pp. 55-87 (esp. pp. 72, 74, 81-83) and the proceedings of Lanes. J.P.s at the Sheriff’s Table during Assize-week (initially closely related to Assizes’ business but developing a wider relevance from the 1620s) in vol. 121 of these Transactions.

122 See the comments in Sir Roger Twysden’s journal on orders from the House of Commons, 1640-41, for the listing, gaoling and disarming of Kent recusants (in Archaeologia Cantiana, 1, pp. 188-90).

123 As in Sir Peter Leicester’s charges to Cheshire grand juries between 1664 and 1667 (Chetham Soc., 3rd series, 5, pp. 9-93, passim) on which see the remarks in Morrill, Cheshire Grand Jury, pp. 22-24. For an Elizabethan charge directing particular attention to upholders of papal authority, see Wilts. Arch. Mag., 14, pp. 208-16, and, for John Harington’s notes for charges (Somerset Sessions, 1641-42), Somerset R.S., 94, pp. 7, 89, 101-02. See also Conyers Read (ed.) William Lombarde and Local Government (Ithaca, N.Y., 1962), pp. 101, 130, for anti-Catholic content of Kent Sessions’ charges, 1589 and 1596. How much heed was paid to these often prolix exordiums is doubtful.

124 See, respectively, Warwick County Records, 9, p. xli (from the notebook of William Bromley, J.P.) and Surrey Arch Coll.., 9, pp. 196, 211 (from an early seventeenth-century Justice’s notebook). The original licences to travel, signed by J.P.s and/or others (e.g. Privy Councillors) may be preserved among family papers, like the one illustrated in C.R.S., 1, frontispiece (also p. 137); another licence, in favour of two Durham recusants, is printed and discussed in Proc. Soc. of Antiquaries of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, 3rd series, 6, pp. 92-94.

125 Staffs. Hist. ColL., 1931,, pp. 265-72. On Bagot’s ‘almost invariably friendly’ attitude towards Catholics, see Professor A. Petti in Staffs. Hist. Coll., 4th series, 9, p. xvi.

126 Hearnshaw, Ioc. cit. On urban history and records, C. Gross, A Bibliography of British Municipal History (New York, 1897; Leicester reprint, 1966), now supplemented by Martin and Mclntyre, op. cit., is still useful.

127 E.g. Corporation minutes may be found in House Books, Council Books, Assembly Books, Ledgers, etc.; financial officers may be known as Treasurers, Stewards, Chamberlains, etc. Introductions to such minutes (and accounts) are provided by Halcrow, E. M. in The Amateur Historian, 2, pp. 265-7, 293–6,Google Scholar and various problems posed by the latter are considered in Neale, Bath, p. 390.

128 Butler, Samuel, Hudibras (ed. Wilders, J., 1967), p. 135,Google Scholar viz. lines 311-12, of canto II of the Second Part (1663). The first of the relevant lines is cited by S. and Webb, B., English Local Government: Manor and Borough, p. 10.Google Scholar

129 Ibid., for a wealth of information. The books of Southampton’s court-leet—a declining survival with power to report and remind but not to punish—in conjunction with other records of that city pay some attention to papists; the guidelines of Manchester’s court-leet cover recusant copyholders; recusancy was among the matters considered at the lawdays of the manor-court of Taunton. To the proceedings of the mayor’s court at Oxford are appended returns of recusants in James I’s and Charles I’s reigns but these are not themselves records of that court (see Oxfordshire Arch. Soc. Reports, 69). For the other bodies here mentioned, see Southampton R.S. editions of court-leet books, assembly books, examinations and depositions (also Bk of Examinations, 1601-02, p. xxvii, in printed version, for cases of forgery of seals, signatures, etc., possibly to assist Catholics to leave the country); Chetham Soc., old series, 63, p. 57 (Manchester court-leet); Whitty, R. G. H., The Court of Taunton in the 16th and 17th Centuries (Taunton, 1934), p. 91;Google Scholar also, more generally, Hearnshaw, F. J. C., Leet Jurisdiction in England (Southampton, 1908).Google Scholar

130 Mayor, alderman, councillor, etc. For a borough Sessions’ hearing by non-J.P.s (concerning drinking the health of the Pope and Cardinal Mazarin and the theft of a goose after the outraged audience had left) see Portsmouth Record Series, 1, p. 23. ‘Catholicism and Corporation Officials’ at York forms Appendix 3 of C.R.S. Monograph 2; for Newcastle-on-Tyne, see C. H. Carter (ed.), From Renaissance to Counter-Reformation, pp. 272-3.

131 E.g. at Warwick to at least 1718 ( Worcs. Recusant, 18, pp. 4-6).

132 Or to have vanished for almost the whole of our period, as at Bath which has no Sessions records before the mid-1770s.

133 See remarks in D. M. Palliser, Tudor York (1979), p. 259. For the cases cited above, see Goulding, J. M. (ed.), Records of the Borough of Reading, 2 (1892), pp. 264–5;Google Scholar Horrocks, J. W. (ed.), The Assembly Books of Southampton, 4 (Southampton, 1925), p. 14;Google Scholar Twemlow, J. A. (ed.), Liverpool Town Books, 2 (Liverpool, 1935), p. 637;Google Scholar Oxford Hist. Soc., n.s. 10, p. 288. Further examples of relevant borough business will be found in, inter alia, H.M.C., 13th Rep. App. 4 (Hereford), p. 351; Records of… Reading, 4, p. 51; Records of the Borough of Leicester, 3, p. 378; 4, p. 22; 7, pp. 19, 21, 23-24, 44; Records of the Borough of Nottingham, 4, p. 384; 5, pp. 103-04, 192 (Wm. Allin, or Allen, also mentioned in Beales, op. cit., pp. 199, 265); Twemlow, op. cit., p. 187 (an ‘old priest, now papist׳, Feb. 1576). The York House Books are printed as York Civic Records in nine vols of the Yorks. Arch. Soc. Records Series, the latest, for 1588-90, being vol. 138 thereof. See also C.R.S. Monograph 2 and Morris, Troubles, 3, which, in Appendix 1 and pp. 234-95, respectively, print material from these House Books (the latter more copiously, the former more accurately). On the York Sessions Court and its minute book (1638-62) see J. W. Fowkes in Yorks. Arch. Journal, 41, pp. 449-54, and, for a breakdown of seventeenth-century indictments for ‘Catholic offences’ at London Sessions, C.R.S., 34, p. xxxv.

134 For one, the case of a servant with no money for fines and no possessions to forfeit in default, see Palliser, op. cit., p. 132.

135 York City Archives: E.61 (deeds and wills); E.62 (estate-enrolments); E.41 B (‘Minutes of Proceedings relating to the Defence of the City, 1745-46’), ff. 82, 84.

136 Records of the Borough of Leicester, 4, p. 549.

137 Corporation of London Record Office: Repertories of the Court of Aldermen, 94, pp. 49, 64, 73, 74; Journal, 50, pp. 354v; 355v; 358; Oxford Hist. Soc., new series, 2, p. 206.

138 E.g. at York Sessions re John Boste (July 1585) and Ferdinand Phangney, a French protestant (July 1590). See C.R.S. Monograph 2, pp. 204, 210 and notes thereto for further details; also supra, pp. 350, 421, note 86.

139 At Lincoln, for which see Sir F. Hill, Tudorand Stuart Lincoln (1956), p. 99; at Richmond, Yorks, (in the diocese of Chester); at York and at Scarborough: see Aveling, Northern Catholics, p. 17; C.R.S. Monograph 2, pp. 53-54. For Oxford‘s ’sliding scale’ applicable to the mayor and corporation with one- sixth as the reward of the presenting officer and the remainder going to charity, see Turner, W. H., Selections from the Records of the City of Oxford, 1509-83 (1880), p. 420.Google Scholar

140 Macray, W. D. et al., Catalogue of MS. Papers, Proclamations and other Documents…of the City of Hereford, p. 34;Google Scholar Oxford Hist. Soc., 95, p. 104; H.M.C., Various Collections, 4, p. 238; Newcastle… Record Series, 1, p. 49; Hill, op. cit., p. 66. The Hereford case is additionally documented in H.M.C., 13th Rep., App. 4, pp. 331, 334; the Oxford one in V.C.H., Oxfordshire, 4, p. 413, note 19.

141 ‘Lists of Householders, c. 1790, St George, Hanover Square’ (Greater London Record Office) printed by Mr Worrall, E. S. in London Recusant, 1, pp. 120–5.Google Scholar

142 E.g. Devon Record Office: Exeter City Archives, Ancient Letters G, 510 (from the Mayor of Exeter, Sept. 1745, re Catholic nonjurors), earlier cited, when in Exeter City Library, by Carne, G. P., et al., The Story of Catholic Exeter (Exeter, 1964), p. 37.Google Scholar

143 E.g. re Hereford, Privy Council entry of a directive not now among that city’s muniments (A.P.C., 1575-77, p. 197; V.C.H. Herefs., 1, p. 380, and information kindly provided by Hereford Record Office).

144 E.g. local preservation of an order dating from a period when there is a gap in the Council’s Registers (see supra, p. 348 and note 17 on p. 355).

145 E.g. The Book of John Fisher, Town Clerk and Deputy Recorder of Warwick, 1580-88 (ed. T. Kemp, Warwick, 1900), of which pp. xiv, 111-15 are relevant.

146 For examples, see Cumberland Record Series, 1, pp. 175-85, 375.

147 Also relevant are churchwardens’ accounts and financial entries in Vestry books, both relating to civil as well as to church matters, but here treated as ecclesiastical sources (infra., pp. 433-4). Constables’ accounts likewise (on which see G. H. Tupling in The Amateur Historian, 1, pp. 335-8) may well be preserved among parish records, and may be in the same books as churchwardens’ accounts. See also J. C. Cox, Churchwardens’ Accounts (1913), ch. 22.

148 York City Archives: C.16 (chamberlain’s account-book, 1617-19), p. 99.

149 Abbot Feckenham; see Somerset R.S., 38, p. 32; C.R.S., 65, pp. 17-18.

150 For printed instances of the above, see, inter alia, Earwaker, J. P., Manchester Constables’Accounts, 3 (Manchester, 1892), pp. 4,Google Scholar 56, 165, 230; Cox, op. cit., 342-4; Stocks, H. and Stevenson, W. H., Records of the Borough of Leicester, 4 (1923), pp. 32,Google Scholar 46, 323, 398, 551, 552; Beds. Hist. R.S., 20, pp. 203-04; Baker, W. T. (ed.), Records of the Borough of Nottingham, 5 (1900), p. 121;Google Scholar Banbury Hist. Soc., 11, pp. 57, 59; Somerset R.S., 38, p. 52; Leader, J. D., Records of the Burgery of Sheffield (1897), p. 76;Google Scholar Jarvis, R. C., Collected Papers on the Jacobite Risings 1 (Manchester, 1971), pp. 263–4;Google Scholar Purvis, J. S., Bridlington Charters, Court Rolls and Papers (1926), pp. 154, 155;Google Scholar Oxf Hist. Soc., 87, p. 361 (also comment, p. xli); J. C. Cox, Records of the Borough of Northampton, 2 (1898), p. 47; Assoc. Arch. Soc. Reps, and Papers, 38, p. 147 (re 1705-06 return, for which see also supra, p. 397); F. Tyer, The Great DiurnalofNicholas Blundell, 3 (Lanes, and Cheshire R.S., 1972), p. 118, note 1 (citing Sefton registers and accounts re 1723 levy).

151 Seldom, perhaps, very revealingly (Cockburn, History of English Assizes, p. 348, sub. Cox) but the Bath City Chamberlain’s accounts do confirm the holding in that city, not a regular Assize-centre, of the 1681 Assizes when popery and Jesuit activity were drawn to the judges’ attention (P.R.O., S.P. 29/416/90; London Gazette, no. 1647; Bath City Chamberlains’ Accounts, 1681: relevant disbursements kindly extracted and communicated by the City Archivist, Mr R. Bryant). See also Somerset R.S., 71, p. xii.

152 See also supra, p. 380.

153 See F. G. Emmison, Guide to Essex Record Office (revised edn, 1969), pp. 6, 9, re recusancy presentments, indictments and estreat-lists of the early 1640s; also Essex Recusant, 1, pp. 25-32, for names recorded in estreats of six Sessions (Jan. 1641-April 1642) and correlation with the schedule of convictions and penalties (P.R.O., E.377/57) mentioned supra, p. 367.

154 See Warwick County Records, 6, p. xvii, for a tabulated comparison between that county’s drafts and the surviving estreats (King’s Remembrancer’s series, E.137) at the P.R.O.; also pp. 202-40 for the contents of these documents, covering the period 1661-74 and, perhaps significantly, containing nothing relating to the £20 lunar-monthly fine. See also, for a city’s estreats, C.R.S., 34, pp. li-liii.

155 See Bristol R.S., 25.

156 see also supra, pp. 382-4.

157 Aylmer and Morrill, Civil War and Interregnum; Sources… p. 15. Bucks. R.S., 13, pp. 106-08, prints some county assessments, subdivided into Hundreds but without personal particulars.

158 Yorks. Arch. Soc. Record Series, 118, p. 12 (also C.R.S. Monograph 2, p. 242), re Lords Fauconberg and Dunbar. The Hull City Record Office holds many assessment books and rolls shedding light on the population of the city and on county ‘townships’ under its jurisdiction but without specific references to papists, though surnames with Catholic connotations (Bacon and Dalton) occur in these documents without further remark—the former, many years later, the name of one of only two ‘considerable papists’ in the area: Hull City R.O.: CAT 25, 26, 28, 29 (Assessments, 1645-46: Ferriby); L.986 (Sir Michael Wharton to the Mayor of Hull, 28 Dec. 1680); Aveling, H., Post-Reformation Catholicism in E. Yorks., 1559-1790 (York, 1960), p. 65.Google Scholar For individuals, but without special mention of recusants, see Baker, Records of the Borough of Nottingham, 5, pp. 212-19. Stocks and Stevenson, Records of the Borough of Leicester, 4, p. 333, is even less informative.

159 E.g. Hull City R.O., CAT. 3A and 3B (undated Subsidy Rolls, temp. Charles I, listing recusants at Willerby and Ferriby). For relevant printed examples, see Lanes, and Cheshire R.S., 12, pp. 164-72 (Subsidy, including recusants); pp. 173-89 (Poll, recusants and non-communicants); Trans. Hist. Soc. Lanes, and Cheshire, 50, pp. 231-46; Hist. Coll. Stqffs., 1941, pp. 156-68; C.R.S. Monograph 2, pp. 237-8, 241-2 (all Subsidy and Poll); Devon and Cornwall R.S., n.s., 2, p. 9 (Subsidy, Exeter, one recusant only).

160 E.g. City of Bristol Record Office: 04278, ‘Aids to the Crown, 1689-1698’ (Commissioners’ Minute Bk), f. 57 (St James parish: ‘Peter Cunningham charged as a Papist… double’, 20 March 1693) and reference to others originally ‘rated double who have since taken the oaths’ (f. 79, 1696); also Chetham Soc., 57, section 7, p. 3 (‘Roman Catholicks’ mentioned in Manchester ‘Pole Book’, i.e. Poll-tax Book, 1690, not to be confused with Poll Books recording votes). For other printed assessments, among which specialised knowledge may perhaps discern papists, see G. Marshall (ed.) Nottinghamshire Subsidies, 1689 (Worksop, 1895, with 1693 assessments for Sarnesfield, Herefs.—some enigmatically marked ‘Double’—in its Preface).

161 Salisbury Borough Records: Z.224 (Minute Book: papists refusing oaths, which the Commissioners were enjoined by 4 W. and M., c. 1, sec. 28, to tender ‘upon information given or upon any cause of suspicion in that behalfe’). On Land Tax, see also supra, pp. 384-5.

162 20 Geo. III, c. 17, strengthening 18 Geo. II, c. 18, which had the same objective.

163 Information on various pre-1780 assessments is tabulated in Emmison and Gray, County Records, pp. 29-31, col. 5a.

164 Assessments for Standon (Herts. Record Office) and Burton (West Sussex R.O.: QDE 2/1) kindly communicated by Mr E. S. Worrall and Mr T. J. McCann respectively; also, for Leicestershire (1774-93), Lesourd, Les Catholiques dans la Société Anglaise, p. 224.

165 See Stephens, W. B., Sources for English Local History (1981 edn), pp. 187–90Google Scholar for valuable comment and further references; also, for discussion of a strongly Catholic area, Wilson, G. J., ‘The Land Tax in West Derby Hundred, 1780-1831’, in Trans. Hist. Soe. Lanes, and Cheshire, 129, pp. 6391,Google Scholar esp. pp. 64-66.

166 C.R.S., 65, pp. 50-51.

167 3 Geo. I, c. 18.

168 C.R.S. Monograph 2, pp. 260-1, cites York examples from city and county Record Offices. See also Cox, Three Centuries of Derbyshire Annals, 1, pp. 312-13, and, for P.R.O. documentation, supra, pp. 362-3.

169 On which see the works mentioned supra, p. 366, note 56.

170 See supra, pp. 385-6.

171 9 Geo. I, c. 24.

172 For Northumberland and Durham examples, see Surtees Soc., 131, 173 and 175 (pt 1), passim; for Lancashire, Lanes, and Cheshire R.S., 117, pp. 103-06. Some such registrations, of course, could not have been made earlier, e.g. that by Mary Salvin whose husband died in February 1723 and who registered her inherited property in July of the same year (Surtees Soc., 175, pp. 15-16).

173 See also Estcourt and Payne, p. vii.

174 On community-forming influences, see Dr Haigh’s remarks in Historical Journal, 21, p. 185.Google ScholarPubMed Although the statute (1 Geo. I, c. 55) did not exempt the recusant’s ‘chiefe Mansion Howse’ or property in his own occupation, such exemption came to be accepted by the government; Carteret, writing in 1722, stated that by 1719 it was ‘understood that those registered contained only the lands farmed out…’ (D. B. Horn and M. Ransome, English Historical Documents, 1714-83, p. 399), also cited in the tellingly documented discussion of this matter by Mr Brian Magee, English Recusants, pp. 180-1.

175 E.g. the Benedictine-run ‘Bell Tree’ lodging-house, containing a virtually public chapel, in Bath and the Bar Convent at York. See, respectively, C.R.S., 65, pp. 98-99 and passim; C.R.S. Monograph 2, p. 258.

176 E.g. the secular priests William Gildon and Thomas Towneley; Dom Bede Potts, O.S.B.; Charles Crosland, S.J.; John Martin, O.P.; Catherine and Elizabeth Radcliffe, both nuns at Louvain. All occur in Estcourt and Payne, passim, and further information will be found in Anstruther, 3, pp. 77, 232; Foley, 7, p. 184, and C.R.S. Monograph 1, pp. 150-1 (Crosland); C.R.S. Monograph 2, p. 259, note 47 (Towneley); Yorks. Arch. Soc. Records Series, 136, passim (Potts); Gumbley, Obituary Notices of the English Dominicans, pp. 70-71 (Martin); SurteesSoc., 131, pp. 58-59 (Radcliffe sisters). On Gildon, alias Byfleet, see also my article ‘Who was William Byfleet?’, in The Downside Review (Winter 1960-61), pp. 46-49.

177 For printed editions, abstracts etc., of local enrolments, see, as well as those mentioned in note 172, above: C.R.S., 27, Addendum, pp. 224-35, passim (Monmouthshire); C.R.S., 65, pp. 98-100 (Bath); C.R.S. Monograph 2, pp. 257-9 (York, plus York material from E. N. and W. Ridings); N. Riding R.S., 7-9; W. Le Hardy (ed.) Bucks. Quarter Sessions Records, 6; Herts. County Records, 7; A. Gibbons, Ely Episcopal Records (Lincoln, 1891), pp. 49-50; S. Glover, History of the County of Derby (ed. T. Noble), 1, Appendix, pp. 85-87 (also Cox, loc. cit.); Lanes, and Cheshire R.S., 94, pp. 27-30 (Cheshire) and vols 98 and 108 (Lanes., as well as vol. 117, already cited); Essex Recusant, 6, p. 49-56.

178 E. Moir, Local Government in Gloucestershire, 1776-1800 (Bristol and Gloucs. Arch. Soc., Records Section, 8, 1969), p. 27.

179 Estcourt and Payne, under Berks., Bucks., Dorset, Gloucs., Hants. (‘Southampton’), Hereford, Middlesex, Somerset. Of those registering estates in other counties, less than half occur also in the Wiltshire enrolments. I hope to include the latter, with other material on eighteenth-century Catholicism in that county, in a forthcoming Wiltshire Record Society volume.

180 By Estcourt and Payne, but their abstracts are no substitute for the full registrations.

181 For the complications attending one such letter, on behalf of the widowed Mrs Fetyplace who had become a nun in Brabant, see Mrs B. Stapleton, A History of the Post-Reformation Catholic Missions in Oxfordshire (1906), p. 273.

182 For centrally preserved documentation in the P.R.O., see supra, pp. 349, 355, note 30. The locations of many records of the 1791 oath are tabulated in Lesourd, op. cit., pp. 373-4.

183 Oath-list, 12 Jan. 1792, printed in M. Craven, A New and Complete History of the Borough of Hedon (Driffield, 1972), p. 71.

184 C.R.S., 65, pp. 108-09.

185 C.R.S. Monograph 1, p. 248: Ann and William Hippisly and John Beaumont; also John Brewer, S.J., then at Shepton Mallet (Foley, 7, p. 82).

186 Hull City Record Office: CQ. 5 (1766-86).

187 University of York, Borthwick Institute of Historical Research: Recusant Returns, 1780: Hull, Holy Trmity (43, including children): St Mary’s (‘the number… does not amount to more than sixteen, whether real or reputed’); Sculcoates (‘in all eleven, besides children’) and, somewhat further afield, though now within the city, Marfleet (3) and Sutton-on-Hull (15).

188 Borthwick Institute: 1780 returns for Aldborough, Hedon, Preston, Skeckling-with-Burstwick; also Humberside Record Office, Beverley: QDR. 1/19 (1791 oath taken by Thomas Owst of Halsham, who had taken the 1778 oath in Hull, as had James Winship of Burstwick, traceable in Nuthill and Hedon Catholic register: C.R.S., 35, p. 331).

189 Humberside Record Office, Beverley: QDR. 1/18 (fourteen oath-takers 14 July 1778, plus another eight on 6 Oct.).

190 C.R.S., 7, p. 293 (note by John Placid Bennet, O.S.B., of Everingham). Few, however, of the Everingham congregation were among these fourteen oath-takers; most, with their priest John Fisher, O.S.B., were from the adjoining mission of Holme-on-Spalding-Moor, for which see C.R.S., 4, pp. 272-318, and Longley, K. M., Heir of Two Traditions (York, 1966).Google Scholar

191 C.R.S., 50, p. 127. For the other two types of document, see C.R.S., 65, pp. 65, 199 respectively.

192 E.g. fewer than fifty in and near Bath in 1791 although that city contained some 400 adult Catholics six years earlier (C.R.S., 65, pp. 107-09; C.R.S., 66, pp. 28-33) and, in Wiltshire, no recorded oath-takers from the heavily Catholic Stourton area (C.R.S. Monograph 1, pp. 248-52, 259). For printed documentation, other than that already cited, see, inter alia, C.R.S. Monograph 2, pp. 288-9, 291-2; N. Riding R.S., 8, pp. 148-55; Herts. County Records, 8, pp. 417-18, 452; C.R.S., 9, pp. 133-7. For Essex, there are Mr Worrall’s, E. S. contributions (including the texts of both oaths) to Essex Recusant, 6, pp. 1727,Google Scholar 57-64; for Devon (1791 oath), Mr MacGrath, K. M. in The Buckfast Chronicle, 32, pp. 1617.Google Scholar

193 There is a lengthy, though not complete list of such registrations in Lesourd, op. cit., 1, pp. 397-402 (with a mistranscription on p. 401: ‘Heyding’ for Ryding, and no mention of the Hull chapel, whose registration in 1793 is in Hull City Record Office: CQ 6).

194 Although in need of revision, Kelly, B. W., Historical Notes on English Catholic Missions (1907)Google Scholar provides useful ‘leads’ on such developments, and may be supplemented by subsequently-produced parish histories, by outlines in some V.C.H. volumes and by information in Catholic institutional archives and in diocesan directories, year-books, etc. Valuable guidance is provided by the journal and other publications of the Catholic Archives Society.