The final identification of what is known as the ‘Birthplace’ of Guy Fawkes has not only settled a question much disputed in York, but has led to the discovery of a number of small facts of wider significance.

It has been generally known since 1933 that Edward Fawkes, father of Guy, was a tenant of the Dean and Chapter, and that his house stood in Stonegate, for in that year the late Rev. Angelo Raine published a complete transcript of a lease made on 8 July 1579 by the Dean and Chapter to Edith Fawkes, widow, of a dwelling house in Stonegate late in her husband's tenure and occupation. Mr Raine was confident that further research would enable this house to be identified. The research has now been undertaken, and the house is found to have been on the northwest side of the street, and to be represented today by nos. 32-34 Stonegate (currently occupied by Mearas, carpet specialists, A. Simpson-East, tailor, and the Hong Kong Chinese Restaurant). All the premises appear to have been entirely rebuilt from the ground level since the sixteenth century.

Beginning suddenly in late November 1878, George Frederick Samuel Robinson, first Marquess of Ripon, decided to keep a diary. Neither in the diary itself nor in his private papers does he give a reason for this action so typical of the Victorians. Ripon maintained his diary faithfully for over sixteen months until involvement in the General Election of 1880 forced him to suspend his daily entries. He renewed the diary briefly in April 1880 following the election and kept it until just before his appointment as Viceroy of India on 29 April 1880.

Heard that Parl, is to meet on 5th Dec This right but I suspect Govt. has come to this decision in consequence of legal questions connected with the act of ’58 as regards payment of the expenses of the Afghan war rather than on constitutional grounds. Left Nocton for Studley— began Rawlinson's Eng & Russia in the East 2nd Edition—arrived at Studley—some weeks of real hard work before me I suspect.

Among the archives of the Archbishop of Westminster is a four-page list of ‘Persons of Quality’ and their chaplains and of other Mass-centres, riding-missions, etc. marked in pencil ‘between 1695 and 1710—c. 1701’ possibly because the latter was the year when the Catholic eighth Duke of Norfolk, who heads the list, succeeded to the title. It is, however, possible to assign a more accurate date to this document, i.e. between 14 September 1704 when Sir Henry Arundell Bedingfield—born in 1689 and marked ‘yet minor’ in the list—succeeded to the baronetcy and 11 May 1706 when Lord Carrington died without issue. It may be that further investigation can narrow down the date still further. The document gives no indication of the purpose for which it was compiled though the tenor of its final page suggests that it was drawn up by a secular priest, probably a member of the Old Chapter. The contents of the document are summed-up in a note added in a later hand at the end: ‘This paper tells whether the family was served by a clergyman, that is a secular priest or by a regular viz. a Jesuit (underlined) or a Monk or a Friar’.

The most insistent theme in Donne's writings is his sometimes trivial obsession with suicide and martyrdom. From his ‘Paradoxes’ to his last sermon this theme runs through his prose, and it is no less a constant preoccupation of his verse. That the Jacobeans in their melancholy were obsessed with death has often been observed; but Donne's obsession was a special one, a quintessence of Jacobean melancholy, distilled in him by a special circumstance of his life: he had been born a Catholic. Donne's personal rebellion against the trend of religion in his society was a lifelong struggle within him, though the seed of his rebelliousness grew in his words and deeds to be a trifling thing. This seed had been nurtured by his mother, who lived all her long life a stubborn Catholic, almost outliving her apostate son. She reared him to be a soldier for the Old Faith, bringing him into association with hunted and martyred priests, as if by their example he might learn to savour death. Somehow, this strange education led Donne not into the path of righteous fidelity, but to a bemused fascination with death by self-murder, a cavalier irony that is one of the hallmarks of his style.

‘In this embassy’, Antonio Foscarini reported to the Doge in Venice in 1611 from London, ‘there has always been an Englishman as interpreter, a Catholic, who has regularly attended the church without anyone hindering him. The same goes on in the French and Spanish embassies, to his Majesty's entire satisfaction.’ Little is known about this type of employment, aside from James's atypical toleration of an Englishman's public non-conformity. It can be of interest to see what sort of Englishman could be selected by a foreign power to serve in its embassy in seventeenth-century London. There can be more curiosity to learn what type of work he could in fact be called upon to do. Fortunately, sufficient evidence has survived in the case of at least one Englishman of clear recusant connections, Francis Fowler II, to make an attempt. Curiously, in preparing this study an unexpected problem emerged in the discovery of another Englishman of an identical name who lived in Madrid with some of the same duties to perform. This surprising career of a Francis Fowler I is also described here. From this pair of biographies it is hoped that fresh clues have been found about the family of the distinguished printer of early recusant books, John Fowler.

Anthony Tyrrell, born in 1552 of an Essex family, was ordained priest in Rome about 1580 and returned to England soon afterwards. In April 1581, he was imprisoned in the Gatehouse prison in London, but he soon escaped and went back to the Continent. He came to England again at the end of 1584, and was imprisoned again, in the Counter prison, Wood Street, London, in July 1586. He now made many disclosures regarding Catholics, and in September he was moved to the Clink prison in order that he might have more scope to act as an informer amongst the many Catholics confined there. Shortly afterwards he was released. He continued for a while to act outwardly as a Catholic, while in reality being a spy for the Government; then he openly announced his conversion to Protestantism. Soon, however, he repented of his behaviour, fled to the Continent once more, and wrote his ‘lamentable confession’, as he called it, exposing in detail the duplicity of his former life.

Harvington Hall, the moated red-brick manor-house near Chaddesley Corbett in Worcestershire, is well known for the exceptional number and ingenuity of its hiding-holes; and it is not unreasonable to deduce from the fortunes and religious adherence of the Pakingtons (who owned it during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries) some explanation of the unusual plan of the Hall itself. But until recently it was stated categorically that the Pakingtons were all, in Foley's phrase, 'rigid protestant' Opinion as to the date and design of the building was misled by this false premise; some confusion of ideas ensued, and doubt was even cast on the authenticity of the hides. The story was further complicated by the infiltration of legend and of inaccurate information copied by one writer from another, as well as by a reluctance, until modern times, to record Catholic connections. The Worcestershire historian Nash, for instance, omits this branch from the family tree, no doubt in deference to the Pakingtons of Westwood, who were among his patrons and who by then were protestant.