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Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner? Social Networks and Religious Allegiances at Lord Petre’s Dinner Table, 1606–16191
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 16 February 2015
Extract
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?
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- Copyright © Catholic Record Society 2009
Footnotes
1
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.
References
Notes
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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.
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27 PRO, S.P. 77/7, Part 2, f. 228v.
28 Newsletters from the Caroline Court, 1631–1638 ed. Questier, p. 122.
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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.
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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).
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46 BL, Add. MS 48,081. Brudenell was raised to the peerage in 1628.
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