ALTHOUGH THE LETTER which follows was printed in the very year in which it was written, and has been reprinted twice since, I do not hesitate to make it available again, seeing that the writer was the proto-matyr of the English Reformation, John Houghton, the last Prior of the London Charterhouse, canonized in 1970. The text of Houghton's letter and of the answer to it from his correspondent, a fellow-Carthusian at Cologne named Dietrich Loher (Loer), are preserved in a book by the latter, a small octavo volume issued at Cologne in 1532. Following its titlepage, which reads D. Dionysii Carthusiani, Doctoris extatici vita, simul & operum eius fidissimus catalogus. Coloniae excudebat Iaspar Gennepius. MDXXXII, there are seven pages containing the original Latin text of both letters. Today it has become a rare book, which is hardly to be found outside a few great libraries and therefore cannot be widely known or easily read. This is obviously the source from which, almost a century ago, Dom Lawrence Hendriks reprinted Houghton's letter as Appendix VI to his pioneer study, The London Charterhouse, its monks and its martyrs.’ Even this work is no longer within everyone's reach today. Hendriks, moreover, printed only the Latin text, without any indication where it came from, and devoted but a few lines in his Chapter VII to its general contents, remarking that this and a short letter written when Houghton was Prior of Beauvale ‘are the only authentic writings of Blessed John Houghton that have come down to us.’ Wishing to make once more available this precious evidence concerning the personality and preoccupations of the martyr-made all the more poignant for us by the realization that little more than two years and a half after the penning of this gracious and affectionate exchange of letters, Houghton in May 1535 was to undergo King Henry's specially savage butchery at Tyburn-I offer an English version of both letters, with some notes to place the correspondence in its historical setting. The Latin originals are reprinted as an Appendix to this article.

IN AN ARTICLE on Joseph Creswell S. J. published in this periodical in 1979,’ I referred, in the section dealing with Creswell's activities as editor of books intended for the English mission, to a group of anonymous tracts which I said were written by the Catholic layman, Richard Verstegan. As these tracts had never before been claimed for Verstegan, such a statement clearly required justification. The article had already grown very long, however, and the question of the authorship of the tracts was only incidental to my main theme. I decided to publish the evidence for Verstegan in a separate article rather than try to cram it into an extended note. My object now is to redeem the pledge made in Note 202 of my earlier article.

FATHER JOHN MUSH, biographer of Saint Margaret Clitherow, the quater-centenary of whose martyrdom has been commemorated this year, recorded within three months of her death that after her condemnation her kinsfolk and friends ‘laboured much’ to persuade her to claim a respite on account of a pregnancy of which she was uncertain. He had no need to identify these anxious and distressed persons, for his earliest readers in York and its neighbourhood would be aware of their identity. When, however, his True Report began to spread secretly in manuscript to other parts of the country where its subject was unknown, the circumstances of the saint's life and the almost unique nature of her constancy were less well understood and appreciated. Fr. Mush tells us that Margaret, whose mother was ‘a rich widow’, had ‘many worldly friends’; her maternal kinsfolk, it has now been discovered, were among the élite of York at a time when the Queen's Council in the North Parts, which had its headquarters in that city, was one of the most active instruments in the country for the suppression of the ‘old religion’.

This Chronicle opens in 1702, the first year of the long rule of Abbess Mary of the Holy Cross, elected the previous December by 42 votes out of 64. She proved an outstanding superior whose works (printed and MS.) gain her a niche in Gillow's Bibliographical Dictionary, whose life drew a written tribute from Bishop Bonaventure Giffard and whose teachings inspired a book by Alban Butler. After the dissensions of the previous decade she restored spiritual health and harmony to the community and placed it on a more flourishing footing than for many years, receiving to profession thirty-four religious in 25 years (1707–32). Abbess Howard—if that was indeed her surname— entered into association with other religious houses by mutual agreement to participate in good works, prayers and merits: with the Benedictine Abbey of St. Amand at Rouen, whose Abbess was a great friend; with that of Val de Grace in Paris where she herself had lived and been converted; in 1711 with the Carmelites and in 1714 (a renewal of a former association) with the Capuchins. In addition the community's friend and benefactor M. de Tot had in 1703 founded a confraternity in honour of Our Lady and St. Joseph which some of the English nobility joined, including Lady Middleton and Lady Strickland.

WHEN THE BISHOPS of the French Church were confronted with the final form of the Civil Constitution of the Clergy in 1790 they presented an almost united front of opposition to the new order. Their ideological and social solidarity remained substantially intact in the protracted exile which, with the victory of the revolutionary party, was the almost inevitable consequence of their shared refusal. This was nowhere more apparent than in London where the largest single concentration of exiled bishops gathered. But, given the general concord, there was a subtle variety of response, a continuation of the debate leading up to the Civil Constitution in which many of the bishops had taken part, to the events beginning with the Civil Constitution and ending with the Napoleonic Concordat, which throws some light on the attitudes of these men to their office of bishop. This paper focuses attention on four of the London bishops: La Marche, Dillon, Thémines and Boisgelin; and suggests, from their example, four possible views of, or approaches to, the episcopate.

THE SUPPRESSION of the Society of Jesus by Clement XIV in 1773 brought an abrupt end to Jesuit activity in many parts of the world. However, after 1773 many ex-Jesuits of the former English Province stationed in England, Wales, Maryland and Pennsylvania continued their work as chaplains and missionaries. On the continent the English ex-Jesuits, having been obliged to transfer their college from Saint-Omer first to Bruges and later to Liège, were protected by the prince bishop of the latter city in their work of educating boys. Even after the college's final migration to Stonyhurst in 1794 as a result of the upheaval of the French Revolution, the English ex-Jesuits continued operating without total loss of their pre-Suppression way of life.’

WHEN COSMAS NEVILL II died on 1 June 1829 at the ripe old age of 81’ the family were within striking distance of having to quit their traditional home of Nevill Holt in the East Midlands, for only two more generations of Nevills were to reside there. The first of these was Cosmas II'S second son, Charles, the eldest son, Cosmas III, having predeceased him. While his father was alive, Charles Nevill seems to have preferred living in London to residence at Holt. In 1821 he married Lady Georgiana Bingham, youngest daughter of the second Earl of Lucan, and the couple then spent some time in Paris where their first child, Lavinia Elizabeth, was born on 23 January 1824. Subsequently she was conditionally baptised by a Catholic priest at Holt. Their next child, another daughter, Charlotte, was born in London on 10 March 1827 and the Register of Nevill Holt chapel does not mention her baptism. Though Cosmas II died in June 1829, Charles and Georgiana were in no great hurry to settle in the Leicestershire countryside, for their third child and heir, Cosmo George, was born in London on 3 June 1830 and was baptised by the Rev. Mr. Fryer. Their fourth child, Louisa, was also born there, on 21 September 1831, as was their fifth, Richard, on 15 December 1832. Their sixth and last child, William, was likewise born in London, on 21 April 1834.2