FOR nearly four hundred years the story of the betrayal, in York Castle, of four laymen and two women by a criminous clerk pretending a desire to become a Catholic, has been known from recollections of Lady Babthorpe; the precise particulars, however, were unknown to her. The discovery of a very remarkable letter, giving many new details, suggests that the patient reading of the catalogues of our national collections of manuscripts might, even now, throw light into other dark corners of recusant history.

Twenty-five years ago two scholars working independently published the results of their researches on the origin and early history of the late sixteenth century mystical treatise known as Breve compendio intorno alla perfezione cristiana. Marcel Viller S. J., in an article in Revue d'ascétique et de mystique (1931), settled the question of authorship and provided an invaluable account of the circumstances in which the treatise was composed. Jean Dagens, writing in Revue d'histoire ecclésiastique (1931) on Bérulle’s Bref discour de l'abnégation intérieure, which is based on the Breve compendio, discussed the history of the work in France. These two studies aroused considerable interest at the time and led to the publication of further articles and notes. Dagens summarises the results of this research in his chapter on the Bref discours in his recent extensive study, Bérulle et les origines de la restauration catholique, 1575–1611 (1952). After such thorough investigation it may seem doubtful whether any further really important discoveries are likely to be made, but within certain limits there is still scope for enquiry, and in the present note I want to discuss briefly an English translation of the Breve compendio, first published in 1612, which was unknown to Viller and Dagens. First it will be necessary to summarise what they say about the early history of the original work.

Many years ago there was published an English translation of La Persecution des Catholiques en Angleterre sous Charles II by the Comtesse R. de’Courson: a work which remains the only one devoted wholly to English Catholicism during that reign. Unfortunately, however, the title is misleading and the book is given up almost entirely to the two and a half years of the Popish Plot—not, in other words, to the reign of Charles II as a whole but merely to one-tenth of it—with the result that the reader is presented with an unbalanced and unduly depressing picture. A more judicious appraisal has been provided by a number of “background” works such as Archbishop Mathew's Catholicism in England, Mr. E. I. Watkin's Roman Catholicism in England from the Reformation to 1950 and, most recently, Miss. M. D. R. Leys's fascinating Catholics in England, 1529-1829, while an article published in The Dublin Review (Autumn, 1959) suggested that the pecuniary laws, so ferocious on paper, to which Catholics were theoretically subject, were in fact enforced only very spasmodically during the reign of Charles II. Clearly, in order to judge how rigorously the penal laws were enforced in Charles Il’s reign, it is necessary first to consider what exactly were these laws; to establish what was the legal position of the English Catholics at the Restoration and to discover what fresh enactments were passed in the course of the next twenty-five years. It is such an examination of the legal position of the English Catholics between 1660 and 1685 which will be attempted in the pages that follow.

It is now not far short of thirty years since, in the pages of the present journal, Antony Allison made his survey of ‘Franciscan Books in English 1559–1640’. In the course of his article he describes the work entitled The Life and Death of Edmund Geninges priest which appeared at St. Omers in 1614. He cited the prime authority of Luke Wadding, the great Franciscan historian, whose Scriptores Ordinis Minorum was published in 1650, that this anonymous account was by the martyr’s brother, John Gennings, who became a Franciscan about 1616, restored the Second Province of the English Friars, and was in fact still alive when Wadding wrote. Further analysing the book, Allison identifies ‘I. G. P’, to whom it is dedicated, as John Gennings Priest, and ‘I. W. P.’ who writes the dedication, as John Wilson Priest, who in 1614 had already for several years been manager of the press operating in the English Jesuit College at St. Omers.

In an article by Fr. W. K. L. Webb, S.J. in Biographical Studies (Recusant History) vol. 2, pp. 216 ff, Roger Widdrington of Cartington, Northumberland, has been adequately cleared of the misconception which identified him as the author of works put out, under the alias of Roger Widdrington, by Thomas Preston. There is no need, therefore, to dwell further upon this point. The object of the present study is to present a picture of the real Roger Widdrington.

He was born c. 1572, the second son of Edward Widdrington of Swinburne Castle, near Hexham, and Ursula Carnaby. His parents appear to have conformed, and it was as a Protestant that he visited Durham city one day in July 1594, to witness the execution of a seminary priest, now known to us as St John Boste.

‘When the hangman, pulling out Mr. Boast's heart, showed it to the crowd, with a “Behold the heart of a traitor”, a voice was heard to the effect: “No, the heart of a servant of God”. At which Mr. Widdrington of Cartington, who heard the voice, was so struck, that he was thereupon reconciled to the Church’. (Account of the Rev. Mr. Yaxley, which he received from Widdrington Castle.)

General Cadogan, who had succeeded the Duke of Marlborough as commander-in-chief of the Army asked for an increase of 10,000 men in the armed forces, after the discovery of the Atterbury Plot in 1722. Robert Walpole knew that additional taxation for the standing army was unpopular in Parliament and in the country at large. He, therefore, decided to impose a tax of £100,000 on Catholics to pay for it. This was over and above the double land tax which Catholics and Protestant Nonjurors had paid since 1689. The land tax at the time stood at 4s in the pound. The Atterbury Plot was a Tory Anglican plot, not a Catholic plot, as Walpole well knew. Walpole suspected, probably rightly, that Catholics were generous in sending money to the Stuart Court in Rome. He could not prove it and neither can we for the receipts of money in the Stuart papers in Windsor Castle do not reveal the names of the donors.

The foundation and fortunes of the English College at Bruges, and its contribution to Catholicism in this country, remains one of the least chronicled chapters in the development of seminary education in the nineteenth century. For fifteen years, from 1858 to 1873, the college, founded by Sir John Sutton (1820–1873), trained more than 120 priests for the Church in England, Wales and Scotland.

Manuscript sources. The Hassop muniments, part of the Bagshawe Collection in Sheffield City Libraries, have provided the chief source for this study. They consist very largely of deeds and related documents, but even these are not complete. A small bundle of some thirty miscellaneous papers, a number of them rough notes or mere domestic receipts, together with the parliamentary surveys of the estates, provide almost the only other estate papers in the muniments for the period covered. There are no letters, except for some half-a-dozen which have survived because the blank sheets have been used subsequently for business notes. The deeds are supplemented by two Hassop evidence books, compiled in the later 18th Century, now in the possession of Lady Stephens.on of Hassop Hall.

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:

In a list of influential persons of about the year 1574, in a section devoted to Catholics, occur the names of Sir Nicholas Poyntz and his wife. The name of Sir Nicholas Poyntz also occurs in a list, dated 1580, of Catholics who had been arrested or confined to their houses or to the houses of Protestants. Challoner, writing of James Fen, gives incidental information about Sir Nicholas: “James Fenn … having … lost his wife, betook himself to the service of Sir Nicholas Poyntz, an eminent Catholic gentleman, whom he served in quality of steward … A learned and pious priest, who used to frequent Sir Nicholas's house, taking notice of the excellent qualifications … of Mr. Fenn … advised him to quit that worldly employ and go over to Rheims to the English College … Mr. Fenn took the counsel … and went over to Rheims, where he was made priest … in 1580.” The College diary does not record the year of his arrival at Rheims, but his studies for the priesthood probably lasted some four years. Sir Nicholas was therefore entertaining, if not harbouring, a priest in about 1575.

Discussion of the dispersal of Catholic literature in post-Reformation England tends to focus on the tenacity of recusants and ‘church papists’ in perpetuating allegiance to Rome. Relatively little attention has been paid to the extent to which Catholic texts, either in their original form or modified for a Protestant readership, formed a part of the mainstream culture of the reformed Church. This paper attempts to demonstrate the significance of Catholic literature in the Protestant context by showing the range of Protestant adaptations, the extent of Protestant readership and the influences of Catholic literature on Protestant writers.

Just prior to their departure for England in the spring of 1580, Robert Persons and Edmund Campion received an explanatio from Pope Gregory XIII suspending the sentence of excommunication against Queen Elizabeth in the bull Regnans in Excelsis. The explanatio decreed that English Catholics were not bound to implement the sentence of deposition against Elizabeth rebus sic stantibus, that is, under the present circumstances. The two priests hoped that this faculty would allay the English government's fear that they had come to foment rebellion in England. But the explanatio produced the opposite result. Lord Burghley and the government seized upon the conditional nature of the decree to argue that any future profession of Catholic loyalty must be disregarded out of hand. Rome's strategy, therefore, had backfired. The rebus sic stantibus declaration had given the Persons/Campion mission a fatal taint of treachery and treason.

It is sometimes stated that Mount St Bernard’s Abbey in the Charnwood Forest, Leicestershire, was the first Cistercian monastery to be established in England after the Reformation. But this is not so, for from 1794 to 1817, a Cistercian monastery flourished at Lulworth in Dorset, These monks, who came originally from La Trappe in France, were at the French Revolution expelled and found refuge in Switzerland. In 1794, Dom Augustine, the superior, determined to found a Cistercian house in Canada, and for that purpose several monks set out from Switzerland to Canada, travelling via England. On their arrival in London, however, they were persuaded by Thomas Weld of Lulworth Castle to remain in this country. Weld gave them a home in his park at Lulworth, where a monastery was shortly afterwards built and placed under the patronage of St Susan. Over the next few years these French Cistercians were joined by many English and Irish novices, but in 1817, they received a command from the British Government either to cease to receive British subjects or to leave the country. They chose the latter alternative and left England on 10 July 1817, over sixty in number, bound for Melleray in Brittany, where they took over the former monastery, still standing after the Revolution.

William Allen is best remembered as the founder of those colleges at Douai and Rome which prepared men to go as missionary priests to England and so helped to preserve the faith there during the time of persecution. Because of his own personal qualities as a scholar, and his ability to work with others and meet the changing political situation, he became in his day the acknowledged leader of the English catholics. He maintained cordial relations with the Society of Jesus and was fully aware of the ecclesiastical scene on the continent of Europe. His resolute attitude towards heresy and insistence on the practice of the true faith even in the most difficult conditions, entitles him to be considered the father of recusancy. Yet Allen's reputation is not high outside Catholic circles. His involvement in the cause of Spain, especially at the time of the Armada, has led many to regard him as seriously misguided if not an outright traitor. This criticism has had its effect on Catholics since it has cast a shadow on his work and his claim that he never allowed his students to become engaged in politics has not always sounded totally convincing. Over a hundred years ago in his Introduction to the Douai Diaries T. F. Knox deliberately avoided any discussion of this matter saying, ‘his political action stands in no relation to his work for the seminary.’ This side of Allen's activity has often proved an embarrassment to his biographers who sometimes try and console themselves with the ungracious conclusion that Allen's political involvement was due to the machinations of Robert Persons. The fourth centenary of his death provides an opportunity to take another look at Allen's life and writings, paying particular attention to the context in which he lived before he went into exile, and from an appreciation of the situation under Mary Tudor to progress towards an understanding of his later work and activity on the continent, especially his relationship with Spain.

Even in a modern state with an efficient police force considerable use is made of informers. Indeed the most successful detective is often the one who has the best contacts with members of the underworld who are prepared to provide information in return for cash or for favours. The more primitive the machinery for preserving order in a state the greater the need for such informers. It is no wonder therefore that men of this kind proliferated in Elizabethan and Jacobean England.

Of the three major branches of the Yorkshire family of Constable, one, the Constables of Flamborough, was Parliamentarian and Puritan at the outbreak of the Civil War; the other two, those of Burton Constable and Everingham, were Royalist and Catholic. This article is concerned with the fortunes of the Everingham branch, who, by 1642, were owners of substantial amounts of landed property in both Yorkshire and Lincolnshire. Their house at Middle Rasen in Lincolnshire, where they spent most of their time before the War, was surrounded by an estate of 3000 acres, while the Yorkshire estate consisted of 3000 acres in and around Everingham in the East Riding, 1000 acres at Drax in the West Riding, land in Holderness and a house in York.

The family of Vaux of Harrowden, which has kept the Faith to this day, has received less than its due in Catholic reference books. G-illow devotes six lines to Thomas, 2nd Lord Vaux, but makes no allusion to the rest. William, the 3rd Lord, was a friend of Edmund Campion, S.J., and suffered imprisonment on his behalf. His daughters, Eleanor and Anne, were the devoted friends of Henry Garnet, S.J.: his eldest son, Henry, resigned the title to become a Jesuit, but died early. His daughter-in-law, Elizabeth, was the host of John Gerard, S.J., at Harrowden. Seven members of the family suffered imprisonment for the Faith at various times. Nothing more is here attempted than a list of the members of the family with the dates (where known) of their births, marriages and deaths.

On the Great Staircase and in the Little Drawing Room at Coughton Court in Warwickshire hangs a family group of portraits which came from Harvington Hall in Worcestershire. The earliest, of Humphrey Pakington (1555-1631), is dated 1599 and shows him in an oval frame, with receding hair, goatee beard and dark, slightly protruding eyes. He is wearing a ruff and black doublet, and the long fingers of his left hand lightly grasp a pendent jewel. His lips are set in a straight line, and the general effect is one of woodensolemnity. Close by is the portrait by Cornelius Jansen of Humphrey’s second wife, Abigail Sacheverell, a much more vivid character. She is a podgy woman with a double chin, in a magnificently padded and slashed dress of blue and silver and an enormous lace collar set off by jewellery. Here, beyond doubt, was a capable and masterful woman, an impression which is confirmed by her surviving letters. The portrait is signed by Jansen above theleft sleeve, and is dated 1630, the year before Humphrey’s death. The series continues with two portraits of their elder daughter Mary Yate (one by the school of Jansen); with one of their younger daughter Anne Audley (also attributed to Jansen); with one of Sir John Yate, who married Mary; and with one by Adriaen van der Werff of Sir Charles Yate, son of Sir John and Mary. Finally, there is a portrait (school of Lely) of Sir Charles’s daughter, another Mary Yate, whose marriage to Sir Robert Throckmorton took the Harvington estates to the Throckmortons in 1696.

The eighteenth century abounds with colourful, eccentric figures, some famous and others known by but few readers. Sir John Dalrymple of Cranston, was such a person, curious in his interests and controversial in his activities even for his time. Historians of modern Roman Catholicism have long recognized that he played a part in the negotiations which led to the English Roman Catholic Relief Act of 1778, but they have mentioned him only in passing. Their sketchy references to his role usually derive in one way or another from Fr. James Stother’s account of the abortive negotiations for Scottish relief, which paralleled the more successful discussions on behalf of English and Irish Catholics. Stother’s chronicle, published over a century ago, remains by far the most extensive account of Sir John’s activities in print, although it is itself brief and discreet. Advancing projects for Catholic relief required caution at the very least, and the project for the Scots, beyond this, demanded secrecy, in so far as relief in the northern kingdom involved concessions to Catholics in return for their encouragement of troop enlistment in the controversial American war. Concealment by Sir John and his associates of the role he played at the time has led to neglect of that role by historians ever since.

ON 6 November 1605, the earl of Salisbury wrote jubilantly to the English Ambassador in France, Sir Thomas Parry, that it had ‘pleased Almighty God, out of his singular goodness, to bring to light the most cruel and detestable practise against the person of his Majesty and the whole estate of the Realm that ever was conceived by the heart of man, at any time, or in any place whatsoever’. But, when he wrote this, Salisbury was fully aware that, though the Lord might have revealed the bare existence of the Gunpowder plot, it would be left to men to discover the details and the ramifications of a complex treason that had been long in the planning.