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State Papers, Etc.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 October 2016
Extract
The State Papers (Domestic) at the P.R.O. are not an organic archive but a ‘voluminous conglomeration’ chiefly associated with the Secretaries of State: mainly letters, papers, etc., received by them. This huge collection, much of it calendared in a hundred volumes to the start of Anne’s reign, plus four of ‘Home Office papers’ for the beginning of George III’s, contains an abundance of essential source-material for the study of Catholicism in England from Elizabeth I’s reign onwards, so vast and varied that it is almost impossible to classify. It includes statements by spies and informers, petitions from papists, intercepted Catholic correspondence, prison and other lists, reports and queries from various officials, evidences of conformity (not necessarily the last word), details of travel-passes issued, for example, to Catholics anxious to go abroad during the ‘Popish Plot’ crisis, and of awards of recusancy-penalties to grantees; numerical and financial data; papers relating to Assizes, Sessions and ecclesiastical administration; tantalising items of unknown origin and relevance.
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References
Notes
1 Cockburn, , History of English Assizes, p. 339.Google Scholar
2 The actual documents (to 1639 and 1714-82) may be consulted on microfilm (Harvester Press).
3 E.g. church-attendance and reception of the sacrament by Mrs Gawen of Norrington, Wilts. (P.R.O. 12/188/10, with ‘Northington’ for Norrington) and oath-taking, and subsequent disavowal, by Philip and John James of East Harptree, Somerset (S.P. 36/84/200, 202). For the first, see my ‘Katherine Gawen, Papist’, in The Month, new series, 29, pp. 169-75; for the Jameses, my ‘No Ordinary Residence: Bishop York and the ’Forty-five’, in R.H., 16, pp. 217-19. On oath-taking there are some telling points in Kenyon, J., The Popish Plot (1972), pp. 219, 229-34.Google Scholar
4 Ibid., pp. 224-5. It cannot be assumed that every such pass was actually used (see R.H., 9, p. 9).
5 Including P.R.O., S.P. 28 (‘Commonwealth Exchequer Papers’) for which see supra, p. 394, and S.P. 46 (State Papers, Domestic, Supplementary) calendared in List and Index Soc., 28 (Elizabethan), 143 and 154 (Interregnum sequestrations, compositions, etc., and post-Restoration papers connected therewith, chiefly relating to Yorkshire). A later item, S.P. 45/152, is a box of Declared Accounts, temp. Charles II, giving half-yearly totals (only) of recusancy-revenue; this is among the sources used by Professor Chandaman, op. cit.
6 See the discussion in Elton, England, 1200-1640, pp. 66-73.
7 H. P. R. Finberg in Finberg and Skipp, Local History: Objective and Pursuit (Newton Abbot, 1967), p. 55.
8 However, the contents of uncalendared State Papers (various classes) for most of Anne’s reign are at present ascertainable only via a handwritten ‘calendar’ at the P.R.O.
9 Notably in Foley and in Tierney-Dodd, a work ‘valued more for its documents than for its historical narrative’ (A. F. Allison, Introduction to indexed reprint, 1971). Both collections also include other classes of MSS.
10 Inter alia: Cartwright, J. J., Chapters of Yorkshire History (1872)Google Scholar, ch. 3; Gibson, T. E., Lydiate Hall and Its Associations (1876), pp, 193–267 Google Scholar (re Lancashire); Trans. Bristol and Gloucs. Arch. Soc., 5, pp. 222-36; Staffs. Hist. Coll., 1915, Appendix 2; Cox, J. C., Three Centuries of Derbyshire Annals (1890), 1, pp. 251–316Google Scholar.
11 See supra, p. 338 (and C.S.P.D., 1655, pp. 252, 286-7, 313; 1655-56, pp. 66-67, 251, 371).
12 See Calendars’ indexes. A minute-book of the Commissioners for Discoveries (very briefly described in H.M.C., 3rd Rep. Appendix, p. 212; now B.L. Add. MS. 54198) contains entries relating to papist delinquents.
13 See also P.R.O., IND. 8876-8889; P.R.O. Listsand Indexes, 43, pp. 29-32.
14 For documentation duplicated in Chancery certificates, see supra, p. 362.
15 With Introductions in vols 1, 2 and 5 (pp. xxxii-xxxiv re recusants). In R.H., 8, p. 73, note 120, attention is drawn to a calendaring error.
16 See infra., p. 406.
17 Especially in vol. 4.
18 P.R.O., S.P. 23/142; see also C.R.S. Monograph 1, pp. 231-2.
19 Supplemented by occasionally corrective MS. indexes at the P.R.O. (OBS. 626-8, 631).
20 See Cliffe, J. T. in Northern History, 14, p. 165 Google Scholar, for summary of sources used by him for calculating royalists’ landed income.
21 Aylmer and Morrill, The Civil War and Interregnum: Sources for Local Historians. On Catholic implications, see also Hardacre, The Royalists during the Puritan Revolution; (J. C.) Aveling, H., ‘Catholics and Parliamentary Sequestrations’, in The Ampleforth Journal, June 1959, pp. 103–12Google Scholar, The Handle and the Axe, ch. 7, and data in Northern Catholics and ‘Catholic Recusants of the West Riding’ in Proc. Leeds Phil, and Lit. Soc. (Literary and Historical Section), 10, pp. 191-306; also P. Roebuck, Yorkshire Baronets, 1640-1760 (1980), ch. 4, esp. pp. 155-61. Composition papers, chiefly in the P.R.O., are printed in Lanes, and Cheshire R.S., 24, 26, 29, 36, 72, 95, 96 (with additional recusant material); in Surtees Soc., 111, and in Yorks. Arch. Soc. Record Series, 15, 18, 20. See also Wilts. Arch… . Magazine, 23, pp. 314-46; 24, pp. 58-103, 308-344, for that county’s compounders, Catholics among them.
22 P.R.O. leaflet no. 54 (Dec. 1980).
23 See respectively P.R.O. Lists and Indexes, 43, p. 32 and Supplementary Lists and Indexes, 10, pp. 184-98. Many documents in these two classes—but not the Catholic material referred to in notes 27 to 30, below—are available on microfilm in Part 1 of M. Hawkins (ed.), Unpublished State Papers of the English Civil Warand Interregnum (5 parts, 1977, accompanied by valuable notes, those to pts 1 and 5 being of recusant relevance).
24 P.R.O., S.P. 20/8 and IND. 8890 (formerly S.P. 20/9) respectively.
25 On the open shelves at the P.R.O.
26 In S.P. 20/1 to 8.
27 S.P. 20/7.
28 S.P. 28/217A, 217B (the latter somewhat damaged and damp-stained, but still largely readable). For the order to inventory such books, see Firth and Rait, 1, p. 344.
29 S.P. 28/217A, pt 3 (unfoliated, containing much Lancashire material). This inventory amplifies the record of the sequestration cited from family papers in Gibson, T. E. (ed.), Crosby Records: A Cavalier’s Notebook (1880), pp. 28–29 Google Scholar, and in M. Blundell, Cavalier, p. 53. There is an illustrated description of Hall, Crosby in Trans. Hist. Soe. Lanes, and Cheshire, 81, pp. 1–35.Google Scholar
30 P.R.O., S.P. 28/291.
31 See Thirsk, J., ‘Sales of Royalist Land during the Interregnum’, in Economic History Review, 2nd series, 5, pp. 190–1,Google Scholar and the works by Aveling, Hardacre and Roebuck mentioned in note 21, above. On Catholic royalism see Newman, P. R. in Northern History, 15, pp. 88–95 CrossRefGoogle Scholar and studies referred to therein, and, on the Restoration land-settlement (yet to be researched as regards Catholics), Thirsk, in Journal of Modern History, 26, pp. 315–28;CrossRefGoogle Scholar Habakkuk, H. J. in T.R.H.S., 5th series, 28, pp. 201–22.Google Scholar
32 Cal. Home Office Papers, 1760-1775 (4 vols); also handwritten descriptive lists of classes S.P. 37 and H. O. 2, going into the 1780s (at P.R.O.).
33 Ibid., 1760-65, p. 73; 1766-69, pp. 174, 178; 1770-72, p. 379. For the school, see Husenbeth, F. C., History of Sedgley Park School (1856)Google Scholar and Roberts, F., ‘The Early History of Sedgley Park’, in Staffordshire Catholic History, 1, pp. 32–36.Google Scholar For the 1767 return, see pp. 397-8, 432 and for Maloney, supra, p. 354, note 13; also Kirk, Biographies of English Catholics, 1700-1800 (ed. Pollen and Burton), p. 156.
34 P.R.O., S.P. 37/20, 21.
35 De Castro, J. P., The Gordon Riots (1926);Google Scholar C. Hibbert, King Mob (1958); Rudé, G., ‘The Gordon Riots: a Study of the Rioters and their Victims’, in T.R.H.S., 5th series, 6, pp. 93–114;Google Scholar reprinted in Rudé, Paris and London in the Eighteenth Century (1970).
36 E.g. P.R.O., S.P. 37/20/153 (Essex: threat to Lord Petre’s property); S.P. 37/21/83 (Bristol); S.P. 37/21/121-3, 176 (Gloucester).
37 The Bath documents in the P.R.O. are printed in C.R.S., 65, pp. 184-99; other sources for the events in and near that city are cited ibid., notes to pp. 68-69.
38 These, and the Caesar papers (see next note) and other Lansdowne MSS., are available on microfilm (ed. M. Hawkins, Harvester Press, with accompanying Notes).
39 Part 2 covers, inter alia, the papers of Sir Julius Caesar, James I’s Chancellor of the Exchequer, many of which (including all those in vol. 153 of the Lansdowne collection) relate to recusancy. See also p. 388, note 64. Recusancy-papers of another Jacobean minister, Lord Chancellor Ellesmere (in the Henry E. Huntingdon Library, San Marino, California) are among the documents printed in C.R.S., 60. See also Knafla, L. A., Law and Politics in Jacobean England: the Tracts of Lord Chancellor Ellesmere (1977).Google Scholar
40 Ref. nos. M. 485/1-127, listed in List and Index Soc., Special Series, 9.
41 Nickson, M. A. E., The British Library: Guide to Catalogues and Indexes of the Department of Manuscripts (2nd edn, revised, 1982).Google Scholar
42 See infra., p. 439, note 81; supra, p. 381 and note 63 on p. 388.
43 Add. MSS. 19516, 34011-7.
44 E.g. the Catholics Sir John Thimelby (to move from London to Irnham, Lines.); Lord Aston (to return to Tixall, Staffs.) in Add. MS. 19516, ff. 86, 118 v.
45 7 vols (index in vol. 7). See also Craster, H. H. E., The Western Manuscripts in the Bodleian Library (1921)Google Scholar and Davies, G., A Student’s Guide to MSS. relating to English History in the 17th Century in the Bodleian Library (1922),Google Scholar updated by information in the booklet, General Notes for Readers, obtainable at the Library.
46 MS. Rawlinson Q. b. 7, ff. 8-47.
47 Both listed, with other recusant items in the Bodleian index to the Rawlinson MSS.
48 See infra., p. 432.
49 See Professor Havran’s article on these in R.H., 5, pp. 246-55.
50 Ed. F. J. Routledge (index in vol. 5).
51 Peacock, E. (ed.) A List of the Roman Catholics in the County of York in 1604 (1872); see also infra., p. 438,Google Scholar note 61.
52 2 vols, 1882, 1883. See also the separately published county and municipal data in Beds. Hist. R.S., 20; Trans. Bristol and Gloucs. Arch. Soc., 61; Trans. Cumberland and Westmorland Antiq. and Arch. Soc., n.s., 38; Trans. Essex Arch. Soc., n.s., 23; Sussex Arch. Coll., 31; Staffs. Hist. Coll., 1939; Wilts. Arch, Magazine, 18; Trans. Worcs. Arch. Soc., 1939; Yorks. Arch. Journal, 5, pp. 433-73.
53 Jones, J. R., The Revolution of 1688…, p. 134,Google Scholar note 5 (see also whole of ch. 6); C.R.S. Monograph 1, pp. 39-41; Miller, Popery and Politics.…, Appendix 3; Glassey, L. J. K., Politics and the Appointment of Justices of the Peace, 1675-1720 (1979), ch. 3, and pp. 274–7.Google Scholar Replies to the questions were not necessarily recorded verbatim; see Sir Bramston’s, John autobiography (Camden Soc., 32), p. 307.Google Scholar
54 Described in the handsome Guide to the Records of Parliament by M. F. Bond (1971).
55 Supra, pp. 397-8.
56 See Bond, op. cit., pp. 154-5, and the useful checklist of printed and other (chiefly Parish Register) copies in Leaflet no. 8 of the Society of Genealogists: The Protestation Returns of 1641-42 (1977), to which should be added Webster, W. F., Protestation Returns, 1641-42: Notts and Derbys. (Nottingham, 1980,Google Scholar predominantly of the former county).
57 E.g. Matthew Pocock, a reputed ‘Anabaptist’ in Somerset. For this and the two instances cited above, see Howard, A. J. and Stoate, T. L., Somerset Protestation Returns and Subsidy Rolls (Bristol, 1975), p. 120;Google Scholar Wilts. N. and Q., 7, p. 203; Stoate, Cornwall Protestation Returns (Bristol, 1974), p. 87.
58 Howard and Stoate, op. cit., p. 125; Oxfordshire R.S., 36, p. 99, 75, respectively.
59 Sussex R.S., 5, pp. 75-76; also pp. xi-xiv of the informative Introduction.
60 Oxfordshire R.S., 36, pp. 99-100; Wilts. N. and Q., 7, passim.
61 See, respectively, Stoate, op. cit.; Howard and Stoate, op. cit.
62 McCann, Timothy J., ‘Midhurst Catholics and the Protestation Returns of 1642’, R.H. 16, pp. 319–23.Google Scholar
63 For such variations, see Surtees Soc., 135 (returns for Co. Durham and part of Northumberland) and, for discussion based on the Durham Protestations, R.H., 15, pp. 149-52, 370-1. There is interesting material in Cressy, D., Literacy and the Social Order (1980), pp. 62–78,Google Scholar passim, and in the same author’s contribution to The Local Historian, 14, pp. 133-41, passim.
64 House of Lords Record Office: Main Papers, 321. An earlier list (of papists in London, 1678) is Main Paper 40.
65 H.M.C., 11th Rep., App. 2, pp. 225-37. See also Reps. 1, 3-8, 12 (App. 6); 13 (App. 5); 14 (App. 6); Cal. Lords MSS., 1-12, for other material.
66 The full return for Staffordshire (2 lists, conflated) is printed in Staffs. Catholic History, 18, pp. 12-14; that for Wiltshire in V.C.H., Wilts., 3, p. 94, note 90 (with the surname Knipe misspelt ‘Kulpe’); that for Essex in Essex Recusant, 2, pp. 11-12; that for the city of Worcester in Worcs. Recusant, 1, pp. 33-34.
67 For comparison of the Essex list with a 1681 Archdeaconry return, see Essex Recusant, 16, pp. 66-68.
68 House of Lords Main Papers 2249 (A); H.M.C., Cal. Lords MSS., 6, pp. 417-21.
69 Compare the ‘nil’ return for Devon (ibid., p. 419) with the equivalent part of the contemporaneous Exeter diocesan return, enumerating over 200 papists: House of Lords Record Office: Parchment Collection, Box 191, item 2249 (C) 7/1.
70 See, however, the lengthy lament, omitting names and personal data, from the south of the county, printed in H.M.C., Cal. Lords MSS., 6, pp. 416-17.
71 Main Papers 2249 (C), calendared in H.M.C., Lords MSS., 6, pp. 421-23. The Devon and Cornwall returns are printed and annotated in The Buckfast Chronicle, 32, pp. 21-36, and part of a Durham return is reproduced in Bond, M. F., The Records of Parliament: a Guide for Genealogists and Local Historians (Canterbury, 1964), p. 28.Google Scholar
72 As illustrated in Mr Michael Greenslade’s edition of two sets of Staffordshire returns, with a valuable Introduction (Staffs. Catholic History, 13); also Sister Winefride Sturman’s, Mary Catholicism in Chester (Chester, 1975), pp. 17–18.Google Scholar
73 For diocesan documentation, see infra., p. 432 and, for detailed discussion of these returns, Lesourd, Les Catholiques dans la Société Anglaise, 1765-1865, 1, pp. 74-208, 298-304. Since the completion of that work in 1974, the House of Lords returns (1767) for the diocese of Chester have appeared as C.R.S. Occasional Publication no. 1 (those for the city of Chester being analysed in Sturman, op. cit., pp. 20-25) and those for part of the diocese of Bath and Wells have been published in C.R.S., 65, pp. 101-05.
74 For which, however, some locally-preserved versions may provide names (see p. 432 and notes).
75 See C.R.S. Occ. Pub. 1 and (more sketchily) Ushaw Magazine, no. 215, pp. 68-92, respectively.
76 See infra., p. 440, note 93.
77 On Bath society in general, see the comprehensive revisionist account of Neale, R. S., Bath: a Social History, 1680-1850 (1981).Google Scholar Other relevant works are referred to in C.R.S., 65, p. 1, note 1, plus J. Haddon, Bath (1973). An analysis by occupations, trades, etc. of the York portion of the House of Lords’ return is given in C.R.S. Monograph 2, pp. 136-38. These York Catholics of 1767 included a much smaller proportion of very recent arrivals than did their Bath coreligionists (ibid., pp. 279-87 for residence-data).
78 Worrall, E. S. in Essex Recusant, 3, pp. 46–50,Google Scholar where that county’s figures are given.
79 See infra., pp. 432, 440, note 94.
80 P.R.O., S.P. 68-99, described, to the early 1590s, in Calendars and Lists and Analyses of State Papers, Foreign; thereafter in MS. at the P.R.O. For further particulars, see Guide to the P.R.O., 2, pp. 11-13.
81 The P.R.O. contains numerous finding-aids, lists, etc., relating to its Foreign Transcripts.
82 Cal. State Papers and Manuscripts relating to English Affairs existing in the Archives and Collections of Venice and other Libraries of Northern Italy (titled on spine, Calendar of State Papers, Venetian). These are drawn-on in a recusant context by Trimble, W. R., ‘The Embassy Chapel Question, 1625-1660’, in the Journal of Modern History, 18, pp. 97–107.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
83 Cal. State Papers, Rome (1558-78). See Macfarlane, L., ‘The Vatican Archives’, in Archives, 4, pp. 29–44,Google Scholar 84-101 (also reprinted separately, British Records Association, 1959); Boyle, L. E., A Surveyof the Vatican Archives and of its Medieval Holdings (Toronto, 1972),Google Scholar Introduction and part 1; also the important lectures (and bibliography) comprising Chadwick, O., Catholicism and History (1978).Google Scholar
84 See Guide to’the P.R.O., 2, pp. 253-4; Macfarlane, art. cit., p. 99 and reports at the P.R.O. on materials for English history at Rome, on the projected continuation of Cal. S.P., Rome, and on Roman archives (covering English material in other repositories as well as the Vatican).
85 P.R.O., class P.R.O. 31/14/151, nos 95, 98, 100, 102, 103, 106.
86 ‘The London populace insults the Catholics and wishes to destroy the churches… (P.R.O. 31/9/100B, no. 217; also 229 and 233). I am grateful to Mr Stephen Weetman for a translation of the whole of this and another document. Another report among the Roman Transcripts, addressed by the Portuguese ambassador to the papal Secretary of State, has been printed in translation in The Catholic Historical Review, 49, pp. 20-46, as ‘Da Cunha’s Account of the Condition of Catholics in the British Isles in 1710’ (ed. W. L. Sachse); it contains a little on England but dwells mainly in Ireland. For an excerpt, see Williams, E. N., The Eighteenth-Century Constitution (1960), pp. 340–41.Google Scholar
87 Cal. S.P., Spanish, 1580-86, pp. 608-10 (1586).
88 Cal. S.P., Venetian, 1673-75, p. 418 (14 June 1675).