Published online by Cambridge University Press: 16 September 2015
In the Royal Library of Belgium in Brussels is a manuscript which consists of over two hundred closely-written folios of English translations of Jesuit letters from Japan, or Japonia as it was then called, introduced with a prologue by the compiler ‘G.C.’, hinting fairly heavily that the translations were made in prison. Until recently rebound, the manuscript bore a Latin inscription on the pastedown, stating: ‘This book belongs to the English Benedictine Monastery of the Assumption of Our Lady in Brussels’. Although the contents of the volume are of interest in their own right, the concern of this article is with two men, Gabriel Colford and George Cotton, who have little in common except the initials ‘G.C.’ and the experience of imprisonment for religion.
With thanks to Nigel Danby, Ian Gadd, Steven Gunn, Joe Munitiz and Alison Shell. Based on a paper delivered at the annual conference of the Catholic Record Society at Plater College, Oxford, July 2002, adapted from shorter papers delivered as ‘work in progress’ to the July 2001 CRS conference and as a communication to the Second International Conference of the Tudor Symposium, at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne, 7–9 September 2000.
2 ‘Hic liber pertinet ad monasterium Benedictarum Anglarum Assumptioni B. V. M. dicatum Bruxelli’, Van den Gheyn, J., Catalogue des Manuscrits de la Bibliotheque Royale de Belgique, vol. 6 (Brussels, 1906), p. 452.Google Scholar
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6 13 January 1596/97, Essex Record Office, Calendar of Quarter Session Records, cited in O'Leary, J. G., ‘Gabriel Colford, Smuggler of Books’, Essex Recusant 8: 2 (1966), p. 78.Google Scholar
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10 Baetens, Roland, De nazomer van Antwerpens welvaart. De diaspora en het handelshuis De Groote tijdens de eerste helft der 17de eeuw (2 vols, Gemeentekrediet, 1976), vol. 1, pp. 231, 118.Google Scholar
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18 VCH Shropshire, vol. 8, p. 20.
19 VCH Hampshire & Wight, vol. 3 (1908, repr. 1973), p. 135.
20 VCH Hampshire & Wight, vol. 2 (1903, repr. 1973), p. 76.
21 PRO SP 12/154/129.
22 CSP Domestic 1581–1590, p. 140.
23 ARCR II, no. 160.
24 ARCR II, p. 38.
25 CSP Domestic 1581–1590, p. 609; APC, vol. 17, A.D. 1588–9, ed. John Roche Dasent (Norwich, 1898), p. 357.
26 Recusant Roll no. 2 (1593–1594). An Abstract in English, edited by Hugh Bowler, Dom (CRS 57, 1965), p. xxx;Google Scholar Aidan Gasquet, Francis, ‘Hampshire Recusants, a Story of Their Troubles in the Time of Queen Elizabeth’, in The Old English Bible and Other Essays (London, 1908), p. 304.Google Scholar
27 Recusant Roll no. 2, p. lxxxiv.
28 CSP Domestic 1581–1590, p. 276.
29 VCH Hampshire & Wight, vol. 3, p. 136.
30 CSP Foreign 1588, p. 452.
31 CSP Domestic 1591–1594, p. 176.
32 APC, vol. 24, A.D. 1592–3, ed. Dasent (London, 1901), p. 475.
33 APC, vol. 25, A.D. 1595–6, ed. Dasent (London, 1901), p. 208.
34 APC, vol. 25, p. 234.
35 APC, vol. 26, A.D. 1596–7, ed. Dasent (London, 1902), p. 362.
36 APC, vol. 28, A.D. 1597–8, ed. Dasent (London, 1904), p. 589.
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40 CSP Domestic 1611–1618, pp. 431, 442.
41 fol. 2–2v.
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44 fol. 172r-v.
45 fol. 2v.
46 fol. 10.
47 Lettere del Giapone de gli anni 74, 75 & 76. (Naples, 1580), also as Lettres du Jappon (Paris, 1580); Alcune lettere delle cose del Giappone dell'anno 1579 insino al 1581 (Rome, 1584; Milan, 1584), also as Lettres nouvelles du Jappon (Paris, 1584).