1. D.N.B., I (1908), 1041-3.

2. These include histories of grants of monopolies and patents, names of chartered companies centred especially in London, and comments on various taxes paid to the Crown by crafts and guilds.

3. The trials of Prynne, Burton and Bastwick in 1637.

4. These are records of fines paid for violation of enclosure, deforestation, and residence laws.

5. Bankes MSS. 44/7-9, 48, 56-7; 72/3-4; 6/24; and 9/8-9.

6. I have recently published in the American Ecclesiastical Review (May 1960) a study on the pursuivants in Charles Ts reign.

7. For examples see, P.R.O., Privy Council Registers MSS. P.C. 2/43 (15 September 1633), p.241; P.C. 2/38 (19 September 1628), p.470; P.C. 2/44 (22 February 1634), pp.420-1; P.C. 2/48, 26 January 1637, p.271.

8. Bankes MSS. 44/7-9, and 44/56-7.

9. C.S.P. Dotn., 1635-6, p.326. Only John Wragg, John Cook, Francis Newton, John Gray and [Francis?] Griffin actually appeared. The others could not be found.

10. See especially C.S.P. Dom., 1635-6, pp.326-9.

11. e.g. Bankes MSS. 41/56-7 which are notes of an early case against an Elizabethan pursuivant named John Crapnell. They are dated 24 November 1598, but have marginalia in Bankes' hand made in 1637.

12. Bankes MS. 44/7. During Sutton's trial, in which he himself appears to have pleaded the Crown's case, Bankes spoke the following words:

[Sutton is] … a common Informer who hath taken it up for a trade having beene practised in it above 7 yeares as he confesseth. He intrudes himself into all publique business, intermedies in matters of State, infumes in all courtes … for all [matter] of offences against the com law, [and] Statute lawes … How he hath behaved himself in this imployment Your Lopps have had by his examination. He confesseth that in divers pointes wherein he served … in some causes … he received compensations having no licenc to compound …”

Against him Bankes cited the statute 18 Eliz. I, c.5: “If an Informer shall willinglie … make anie composition or take any monie reward … for himselfe or to the use of anie other … [he shall be prosecuted].”

13. The approximate income taken in recusancy fines from 1625 to 1640 is summarized in Frederick Dietz's, C. “The Receipts and Issues of the Exchequer During the Reigns of James I and Charles I,” Smith College Studies in History, XIII (no.4, 1927–8),117–71 Google Scholar. During the last five years of Charles's personal government, when the Crown was badly in need of money, annual recusant revenues tripled in comparison to 1625-30 when they never exceeded £4,200 a year. In 1638, for example, the Crown collected about £19,700 from recusants.

14. Bankes MS. 44/7. This MS. is also dated Michaelmas, 1635.

15. (Bodleian) Clarendon MS. XVI, April, 1639, f.92.

16. Bankes MSS. 55/99 and 55/112.

17. This is a subject on which careful study is needed, involving a careful analysis of presentments and convictions in the court records, with follow-up work in the Recusant Rolls.

18. A strong case for this thesis is made by Dr. Jean Dorothy Ross in an unpublished doctoral dissertion entitled “The Country Justice in English Local Government during the first half of the Seventeenth Century” (McGill University, 1939) pp.292-3, 295-8, and 339. John Rushworth, Historical Collections, II. 11 also speaks of this problem.

19. Cf. George E. Dodds, “The Rural Constable in Early Seventeenth Century England”(unpublished PH.D. dissertation, Yale University, 1939) pp.103-4 and 104, note 1.

20. The role of the parliamentary Committee for Religion, one of the most powerful policy-making groups in the lower House, exercising wide authority in religious matters, deserves considerable study. During the first three parliaments of Charles I it framed bills, presentments, and remonstrances to be debated in the Commons, created sub-committees to examine special problems, inquired into the recusancy of even sickly and imprisoned Catholics, censured “popish” books, and employed pursuivants. John Pym chaired this influential committee between 1626 and 1629 and sat on it again in the early 1640's; scarcely a week passed that he did not report on measures which his committee had drawn up to curb recusancy. For a survey of this committee's activities under Pym see my “Parliament and Catholicism in England 1626-1629” in The Catholic Historical Review, XLIV (no.3, October, 1958), 273-89. There are, in addition, a few notes of Sir Edward Dering's Committee for Religion dated November through January 1640/1 in the B.M. Add. MS. 26, 786, ff. 1-18.

21. There are many examples of government action to curtail theft by those who collected recusant money. James Conyers, a churchwarden of Gisbrough Parish, Yorkshire, in 1629, was presented for “collectinge monie of the Recusantes within the same parish, divers sommes of monie, and made no acct. for the same; three others of the same place for the like.” (The North Riding Record Society, “Quarter Sessions Records,” ed. J. C. Atkinson, III, 311); Bishop Bridgman of Chester was ordered to investigate the inadequate returns from Catholics in his diocese. (C.S.P. Dom., 1629-31, p.218); the Privy Council also considered measures to prevent fraud in composition with recusants, and ordered the interrogation of several sheriffs who were suspected of theft (C.S.P. Dom., 1631-3, p.494, and Ibid., 1639, p.542).

22. Bankes MS. 16/66 is a case history of Sir John Thimbleby of Irneham, Lincolnshire, 1629-32, with a commission from the crown naming the Commissioners for Compounding in the North and the counties under their jurisdiction. Included with this MS. is a record of the composition of one William Ross of Hemingby Manor, Lincolnshire. These are both extracted from Exchequer records and were made June 10, 1637. MS. 37/59 has further information on Thimbleby. See also the recusancy history of Francis Matthews, of Dorset, in MS. 71/4-5.

23. Bankes MSS. 71/1-3, “Particulars of Suffolk lands of Henry Foster, recusant, to be leased to him by the Crown, Nov. 1634, with extracts from Recusant Roll and from minutes of the Commissioners for Recusants, Nov. and Dec. 1634.”

24. Even the expedient of making composition did not insure that recusants escaped further penalties. King Charles continued the system of composition not because he was concerned for the welfare of his Catholic subjects, nor because of sympathy with their beliefs as has sometimes been suggested, but rather as a means of raising badly-needed revenue. Few persons could afford to pay the £20 monthly fine, and as Dom Hugh Bowler rightly points out in Recusant History, IV, 183, the Statutes of 1581 and 1586 began “the long-term policy of treating recusancy as a source of State revenue.” Just as the Elizabethan Poor Laws were enacted partly to avoid the support of sturdy beggars out of parish funds, so also was Charles's composition system designed in part to prevent reducing Catholics to such poverty that they would become a burdensome charge on parish finances. In a royal proclamation of 16 February 1627, Charles suggested that the strict enforcement of the Penal Laws would ruin many a Catholic, and that he was desirous of permitting them to earn their own keep “so that in the course of time they would [not] become mendicants and … be supported by the Parishes …” (Hist. MSS. Comm. Reports, Skrine MSS., pp.108-9; Cal. S.P. Dom. 1627-8 pp.57, 166 and 230). It was more rewarding financially for the Crown to take money in rents on two-thirds of a recusant's land until his fines were paid, or to make composition, thus assuring some income from him, than to attempt the collection of fines which recusants probably could not pay, or to imprison them partly at government expense.

25. 29/1: County of Essex, various names, 1632-4; 29/2: John Witham Esq., of Cliffe, Yorks, 1632-4; 29/3: Henry Wilford of Quendon, Essex, 1640; 29/4-4a: James and John Digby, Rutland, 1627-34; 29/5: Edward Scare-bricke Esq., of Scarebricke, Lanes., 1635, 1640; 29/6: Anthony Roper of Farmington, Kent, and Sir Thomas Roper, Middlesex, 1640.

26. Bankes MS. 29/4.

27. Bankes MS. 29/3.

28. Bankes MS. 51/46.

29. Many prisoners had to pay for their food and lodgings in gaol either from private funds, or if they had no money, by begging coins from passers-by. This MS. points up a fine example of this practice. Fitzharris is described as “a poore distressed prisoner Remayning a Closse prisoner in ye common wards of ye ffleete, hee being a very poore man and farre from his friends & Country: And to our knowledges hee have had no mayntenance since his comeing heither …nor any Releife, nor food to live upon, but only upon ye benevolences, & ye charities of good & well disposed people And begging his bread at ye hole. And ye charitie is not worth above two pence a weeke [i.e. the cost of about two days' bread] whereby hee hath lived in greate want & misery both wth want of food, clothes & lodging …”1 December 1639; Fitzharris was pardoned March 27, 1640.

30. Bankes MS. 51/23, dated 2 December 1637.

31. Bankes MS. 17/41, dated 31 July 1635.

32. Bankes MS. 17/49, dated 8 November 1637.

33. Bankes MS. 62/1-27, and 62/29-31.

34. Of interest to some may be three MSS. about the life of Fr. John Brown who testified against his fellow-priests in 1640-1. Bankes MS. 23/16 is a copy of the license to Anthony Metcalfe to arrest Fr. Brown “accused of embezzling funds collected from Catholics for building a college.” Herein are the names of a few recusants who allegedly helped in this enterprise. The other two MSS., 63/22-3, tell of Brown's case in Star Chamber. See also pamphlet by Brown entitled A Discovery of the Notorious Proceedings of William Laud … Confessed by John Browne a Prisoner in the Gatehouse … London, Henry Walker, 1641, a copy of which is in the British Museum.