The Colepepers were a prolific and moderately distinguished family that had been settled in Kent and Sussex since the thirteenth century. The name is spelt variously as Colepeper, Colepepyr, Culpeper and Culpepper, but as Sir Alexander, the subject of this essay, signed his name ‘Colepeper’ or ‘Colepepyr’ and used the first spelling in his record of his troubles, the first spelling has been adopted.

In Richard Simpson's biography of Edmund Campion (1867) there is an account of conditions in England in 1580-1 which includes the following sentence:

The 2nd. Viscount Montague, like his grandfather before him, was the recipient of several literary dedications. His material circumstances as a wealthy Sussex landowner, and his spiritual significance as one of the foremost Catholic peers, made him an appropriate patron for a number of writers at the beginning of the seventeenth century. At the same time, Montague was a well-known distributor of Catholic books, and a benefactor of ‘three score and six costly great volumes in folio all bought of set purpose and fayrly bound with his Armes’ to that ‘bulwark of extreme Protestantism’ the Bodleian Library.

The two documents here transcribed as the core of a fuller account than any hitherto compiled of the escape from Government custody of a future martyr, the priest Ven. Thomas Tichborne, have in fact been in print since 1897. But though their previous editor, J. C. Jeaffreson, noted that these papers afforded new information unknown to Challoner when the latter published his brief account of the escape, yet Catholic historians who have written since the documents were printed have not been aware of them. Accordingly, since they first appeared in a context which Catholic writers have, not surprisingly, overlooked, there are grounds for republishing both documents freshly transcribed from the original manuscripts (now in the present writer's possession) and for elucidating them with the aid of notes and two sketch-maps, to retell more vividly a small incident played out in the streets of Elizabethan London, which cost two Catholics their lives.

In assemblies of scholars the remark is often heard, ‘what we need is an English Bremond.’ The reference is to Henri Bremond's Histoire de Sentiment Religieux en France which issued forth in eleven stout volumes from 1916 to 1933 and has since achieved a well-deserved reputation as a classic. There is no question here even of a beginning of an English Bremond. He limited himself to Catholic writers, but even so he was able to touch most of the high points of the French spiritual tradition. Our goal is to trace but one stream in the Recusant/ Catholic tradition, namely, the literature of the English Jesuits. By this we mean spiritual books in English written or translated by members of the English province of the Society of Jesus and published under Catholic auspices in the twenty-six years from 1615 to 1640.

In the biography of Sir Edward Hyde, his visit to Madrid between November 1649 and March 1651 has usually been neglected for the little that is known about it is largely found in the episodes recalled nearly two decades later in Book XIII of his History of the Rebellion. Yet his sojourn, for close to a year and a half, at the court of Philip IV deserves attention since during it he published anonymously in Spanish an eloquent short pamphlet defending the legitimacy of Charles II’s right to the English throne, while he denounced the Commonwealth as a tyrannical usurpation of authority without a basis in English law or the law of nations. The occasion was the unexpected murder of Anthony Ascham, the diplomatic agent of the English régime, early in June 1650 in the capital by six young English royalists. While writing in their defence Hyde presented one of the earliest examples of his case to earn diplomatic support for the exiled Charles II by the Catholic kings of western Europe and the papacy during the coming decade.

A search for information concerning Dodding Green, the historic chapel in Cumbria, has lately brought to light some papers of a ‘riding’ priest. The CRS has published numerous registers of the eighteenth century but not, I think, one kept by a priest who served what was termed a ‘Circuit’. One such priest was Thomas Roydon who travelled for some twenty years between house-chapels in Westmorland and less frequently into north Lancashire and to Brough in Yorkshire. The papers of his which have been recovered consist of a composite register of deaths, baptisms, marriages and ‘reconciliations’. Together with this were found two catalogues of deaths and baptisms which are based on the register but extend beyond it and make additions to it. Two notebooks of his were also found. One of these was kept by the priest, as he writes: ‘during the time when the Gentry were dispersed or in prison’. The other notebook contains his accounts of the administration of funds for a priest who was an uncle of his. Finally, a few long letters of Roydon's were found which are mainly concerned with fees due to Douai college and also the fund on which he was maintained as a travelling priest.

In a previous article in Recusant History (Jan. 1958), passing reference was made to two substantial documents by William Leslie (about 20,000 words in all) in Public Record Office: ‘A Relation of the Cardinals of the Court of Rome’ and ‘Concerning the affairs of Rome in relation to England’ (PRO SP 9/203/7, 8 and 9). They are part of the archives of Henry Bennet, Lord Arlington, Secretary of State 1662-74, and have been endorsed by Arlington's secretary, Joseph Williamson, in the form: ‘This was a copy of a paper written to Mr Henry Howard of Norfolk 1667 by one Leslie, a Scottish priest at Rome, and by him for his own discharge communicated to my Lord Arlington, with renunciation of all such correspondences for the future.’

‘Upon information given to this House that at Holbeck in Nottinghamshire is a settled College of Jesuits and a library of Books belonging to them worth about a Thousand Pounds, which is not fit to remain there: It is Ordered by the Lords Spiritual and Temporal in Parliament assembled that the Lords with White Staves do attend His Majesty humbly to desire him from this House “that His Majesty will be pleased to give Orders that One or more of the Messengers … may be sent to seize and bring away the said Books to be disposed of as His Majesty shall think fit”! (Die Jovis, 27 die Martii, 1679, 31 Car II)’. And a day or two later ‘Ordered by the Lords Spiritual and Temporal in Parliament assembled that the Messenger appointed by His Majesty to seize and bring away the Books which are secured at Holbeck in Nottinghamshire be, and is hereby, authorized and required to bring away also the Trunks which remain there under seizure and sealed up …’ (Die Sabbati, 29 die Martii).

Late in February of 1677/8, Edward Petre wrote about the approaching provincial congregation to his fellow Jesuit William Tunstall. He reminded Tunstall that, as one of the senior professed fathers of the English province, Tunstall ought to be present at the meeting and he relayed the provincial's instructions that the individual Jesuits be in London on 21 April so that the actual congregation could convene on the 24th. ‘Lest occasion should be given to suspect the designe,’ no one should either appear in London before 21 April or travel publicly around the city. If Tunstall were unable to attend, he was to inform the provincial as soon as possible so that another could be named in his stead.

Thomas Seddon was born in Liverpool a decade before the impact of the great immigration of Irish families, fleeing before the famine blights of 1845 to 1849, had begun to pose insuperable difficulties upon the small remnant of native-born Roman Catholics. In the 1841 census, the Irish were estimated at some 2.2% of the total population of England, Wales and Scotland; ten years later the census recorded the number as having almost doubled. Edward St. John described graphically the condition of the Irish poor, depicting them as being ‘crowded into the wretched slums of our cities’ where they tried to keep body and soul together ‘on the starvation wages of casual labourers, under conditions that are past description’. Workhouses ‘were crowded with orphans and deserted children, who were therein more like animals than human creatures’.