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Warwickshire Catholics in the Civil War

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 October 2016

David F. Mosler
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Extract

Recent scholarship has challenged the Marxist and Whig-Liberal views which placed the Catholics solidly behind Charles I in the Civil War. Kieth Lindley, Martin J. Havran and others argue that they were hard hit by the taxation policies of Thorough in the 1630s, and that when the Civil Wars came they were too impoverished and politically alienated to risk life and property for the King. The story of Catholics in Warwickshire during the Civil War and Interregnum well illustrates these revisionist interpretations.

Type
Articles
Information
British Catholic History , Volume 15 , Issue 3 , May 1980 , pp. 259 - 264
Copyright
Copyright © Catholic Record Society 1980

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References

Notes

1 One scholar recently has shown that in the early and mid-1630s the Queen was engaged in political machinations which included some Protestant peers; see Smuts, R. M., ‘The Puritan Followers of Henrietta Maria in the 1630s’, E.H.R., 93 (January 1978), pp. 26–45.CrossRefGoogle Scholar This may also account for the doubts of some Catholics about Royalism in the Civil War.

2 There is some disagreement among scholars on the difficulties suffered by Catholics during the 1630s but unanimity on their general pattern of neutrality in the Civil War. Keith Lindley argues quite persuasively that the Catholics were hard hit in the 1630s and M. J. Havran concurs on this issue. However, J. T. Cliffe, in his study of Yorkshire, believes that they ‘fared reasonably well’ in the Caroline period. See Keith Lindley, ‘The Part Played by Catholics’, in Politics, Religion and the English Civil War, ed. Brian Manning (London, 1973), pp. 166, 169; Havran, M. J., The Catholics in Caroline England (London, 1962), p. 91;Google Scholar and Cliffe, J. T., The Yorkshire Gentry (London, 1969), p. 202.Google Scholar For the general pattern of Catholic neutrality in the Civil War see Lindley, op. cit., pp. 156, 157, 173; Cliffe, op. cit., p. 344; and Morrill, J. S., Cheshire, 1630-1660 (Oxford, 1974), p. 71.Google Scholar

See also Newman, P. R., ‘Catholic Royalist Activists in the North, 1642-46’, in Recusant History, 14 (May 1977), pp. 26–38,CrossRefGoogle Scholar who, although not persuasively challenging Lindley's general views on Catholic neutralism, does raise some doubts for the North and the data upon which Lindley's views rest; and Newman's note in Recusant History, 14 (October 1979), pp. 148–52.Google Scholar

3 Court, W. H. B., The Rise of the Midland Industries, 1600-1838 (London, 1938), p. 22.Google Scholar

4 Joan, Thirsk, ed., The Agrarian History of England and Wales, 1500-1640, vol. 4, general ed. H. P. R. Finberg (London, 1967), p. 92.Google Scholar

5 Quoted in V.C.H. (Warwickshire throughout), vol. 3, p. 280; see also the works of R. C. Richardson, who discusses the resistance of Catholicism in the Diocese of Chester, another ‘dark corner’: ‘Puritanism and the Ecclesiastical Authorities: the Case of the Diocese of Chester’, in Politics, Religion and the English Civil War, ed. Brian, Manning (London, 1973), pp. 3–33,Google Scholar and Puritanism in North-West England (Manchester, 1972), pp. 153-76, 183.Google Scholar

6 This was pointed out several years ago by John, Bossy ‘The Character of Elizabethan Catholicism’, in Past and Present, 21 (1962), pp. 39–59;Google Scholar see also Robin Clifton, ‘Fear of Popery’, in The Origins of the English Civil War, ed. Conrad Russell (London, 1973), pp. 144-67.

7 There were also a few isolated pockets in other market towns, such as Solihull where they huddled around the protective Catholic gentry.

8 V.C.H., vol. 3, pp. 24, 80, 81, 88, 93, 112, 190, 213; vol. 4, pp. 203, 219-20; vol. 5, p. 169.

9 Abrahams, R. G., The Gunpowder Plot in Warwickshire (paper read to the Birmingham Archaeological Society, typescript in the Birmingham Ref. Lib., 1955),Google Scholar passim; Barnard, E. A. B., A Seventeenth Century Country Gentleman, Sir Francis Throckmorton, 1640-1660 (Cambridge, 1948), p. 2;Google Scholar Alice, Fairfax-Lucy, Charlecote and the Lucys … (London, 1958), pp. 117-18; V.C.H., vol. 2, p. 37;Google Scholar vol. 3, p. 234.

10 P.R.O., E. 370/106, part 1, a copy of which is located in the Warwick County Record Office, Z.48; the oath is discussed in Dom, Hugh Bowler, ed., ‘London Sessions Records, 1605-1685’, Catholic Record Society, 34 (1934), pp. 45–51.Google Scholar For a discussion of many aspects of Warwickshire seventeenth-century society see Philip, Styles, Studies in Seventeenth Century West Midlands History, ed. H. A. Cronne (Kineton, 1978),Google Scholar especially the chapters on ‘The Social Structure of Kineton Hundred in the Reign ofCharles IV, and ‘The Heralds’ Visitation of Warwickshire, 1682-83’.

11 These figures are roughly similar to those of John Bossy, who estimates the Catholic population at about 1.8%: The English Catholic Community, 1570-1850 (London, 1975) p. 405.Google Scholar

12 Green, M. A. E., ‘Preface’, Calendar of the Proceedings of the Committee for Compounding, part 1 (London, 1889), pp. 11, 20.Google Scholar

13 Underhill paid a fine of £1,177 and Court £180: C.C.C., pp. 1804, 2844.

14 C.C.C., pp. 1913-16; V.C.H., vol. 3, pp. 6-7; Complete Peerage, vol. 3, pp. 66-67.

15 V.C.H., vol. 6, pp. 249, 252.

16 H.M.C., 4th Report, p. 272.

17 C.C.C., p. 3076; BM Add. MSS. 35098/11a. She was finally helped out of her financial difficulties by kinsmen.

18 Quoted in Barnard, E. A. B., The Sheldons (Cambridge, 1936), pp. 49–50.Google Scholar

19 In 1654, Edward Chamberlain, the Commissioner for compounding in the county, noted that theCatholics were barely surviving financially and warned London that not much increased revenue could beexpected from them: C.C.C, p. 674.

20 C.C.C, pp. 2923, 3229.

21 Barnard, Sheldons, op. cit., p. 54.