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’.

In 1850, during its first year of publication, Notes and Queries printed the enquiry of one ‘J.M.’, who asked for information about a treatise of equivocation to which he had found reference in a seventeenth-century book. A number of replies in subsequent issues provided bits of information about the treatise, and called attention to a manuscript copy in the Bodleian. This flurry of items in Notes and Queries seems to have prompted David Jardine (1794-1860), who later wrote a history of the Gunpowder Plot, to prepare an edition of the treatise, which was published in 1851. Jardine composed a preface, but since he could not establish who had written the work, and was not optimistic that the matter would ever be clarified, his account is far from complete. There did, however, exist documents that could identify the author, and exactly 100 years after the appearance of Jardine's edition, an article by A. F. Allison showed conclusively that the treatise had been written by Father Henry Garnet, S.J. Since the treatise played a significant part in the history of ‘equivocation’ in England, and was a subject of controversy at the time of the Gunpowder Plot, I believe it will be useful to provide an account of what is now known about the work.

Around the main actors in the drama of the Oxford Movement there was a supporting cast of secondary figures which have remained in relative darkness; the increasing glow of attention focused on the central characters, Newman in particular, appears to have relegated them even further into obscurity. Samuel Francis Wood belonged to this group of people, and he is perhaps the most attractive of the personalities among them: loyal, generous, warm, affectionate towards his friends and passionate in the promotion of the causes he espoused. He was destined to be on most intimate terms of friendship with both Newman and Manning, acting as a bridge—together with the Wilberforces—between these two extraordinary personalities.

Conformity Certificates are to be found among the Recorda of the King's Bench in the Public Record Office, London (Class K.B. 145). I have been asked by the Public Record Office to make it clear that these documents are not generally accessible to the public; indeed, they are not easy to consult, being dirty, crumpled and many torn, though in only one case was the name of a recusant completely lost, being torn off, without occurring again in the certificate. The greater part of the Recorda are writs to sheriffs or justices, but among them there are also to be found inquisitions, memoranda, some accounts for repairs to the King's Bench, recognizances of debts, copies of pleas coram Rege, depositions of witnesses, orders to commit the children of felons to the parish, accounts of misdemeanours, and Gaol Deliveries. Conformity Certificates form only a small part of the whole.

Bernard Burder, Abbot of the Cistercian Abbey of Mount St Bernard's, Leicestershire, from 1853 to 1858 is largely forgotten today; but for a few years in the middle of the last century his activities were important, and to a considerable extent, anticipated those of Archbishop Manning in the field of reformatory education. Burder's spiritual progress was similar to Newman's: he began life as a nonconformist, was then converted to Anglicanism and finally joined the Catholic Church one year after Newman. That same year, 1846, he entered Mount St Bernard's and on the death of its first Abbot, Dom Bernard Palmer, in 1853, was, in December of that year, elected to succeed him.

The English seminary of St. Alban Valladolid in Spain has an up to date theological library with books in both Spanish and English. As an establishment dating back to 1589 it also possesses many books of antiquarian interest. The older books belonging to the college owe their present arrangement to Edwin Henson. During World War II as Rector he was for several years the only permanent resident in the college and he spent much of his time cataloguing and indexing the archives and library. There are two rooms: the eighteenth century style Biblioteca or Big Library with 6765 volumes and the smaller enclosed repository known as the Pigskin Library (Biblioteca de Piel) containing 2881 volumes.

It is understandable that study of Southwell’s life should have had priority over the study of his poetry. This biographical bias is evident in the gaps and weaknesses of existing accounts of his poetry: shortcomings which, I would argue, are regrettable because his poetry could provide a better commentary on his life than the conventional assumptions of hagiography. His Latin poetry, which forms a substantial portion of his poetic output, has been overlooked both in Leicester Bradner’s history of Anglo-Latin poetry, and the more recent upsurge in Neo-Latin studies. A different kind of ignorance surrounds his English poetry. In his poetic masterpiece, ‘Saint Peters Complaint’, Southwell describes Christ’s glance as ‘In cyphred words, his misteries disclosing’. (The words are cyphered because they are zeroes, circles projected from Christ’s eyes. They are also cyphered in being encoded in an image.) The description may be aptly applied to the poem which also consists of ‘cyphered words’. The poem’s code is not difficult to penetrate, but nevertheless this essay represents the first attempt to give an account of the ‘high mysteries’ that it at once conceals and discloses; that is, to elucidate the cryptic aspect of the poem. This gap in the secondary literature exemplifies a more general charge that can be levelled against writers on Southwell: that they have tended to deprecate the mannerism or artifice of his work as somehow detracting from his sanctity, Typically, they present it as an external trapping or disguise which must be discarded in order to reveal the true, natural Southwell. I would maintain, however, that artifice is central to Southwell’s poetry, his conception of religion, and his life.

CHRISTOPHER HILL'S Economic Problems of the Church from Archbishop Whitgift to the Long parliament’ has long been the standard work on the financial composition of the post-Reformation English church. Over the past fifteen years, however, historians have taken a second look at the material covered by Hill and have begun to formulate new questions about it. Historians such as Felicity Heal and Rosemary O'Day have led new investigations into the economic conditions of the English church. Despite this renewed interest, no one has tackled the more difficult subject of recusant finances. Here is a world hidden behind aliases and secret trusts and one that remains almost totally unexplored. In a series of articles to appear in this journal, I shall venture ‘where angels fear to tread’ and attempt to make sense out of the complicated and confusing records of Jesuit financial activity. This article, which will serve as an introduction to the series, will be concerned with the constitutional development of the Society of Jesus, the spiritual exhortations to poverty as an evangelical counsel and a religious vow, and the legal entanglements of the penal laws in England. It is essential to remember that, first and foremost, the English Jesuits were religious bound by vows, specifically the vow of poverty. All financial activities and investments were restricted by that vow as it was then understood throughout the Society. Future articles will examine the income and the investments of the early Jesuit mission and its eventual subdivision into colleges and residences.

The Archpriest Controversy, a dispute that took place from 1598 to 1602 over the necessity for an archpriest to enforce moral discipline among the English Catholic clergy, has been traditionally seen either as a struggle for hierarchical order within the Catholic Church or a serious ideological breach between the Jesuit faction and the Appellants. In contrast to recent historiography, this paper argues that the Appellants, secular clergy that opposed the archpriest, represented views of conservative English Catholics who believed they could reconcile their political loyalty to their monarch with their Catholicism. The Archpriest Controversy should be reconsidered as a critical moment in a chain of important events from the English Mission of 1580–81 to the Gunpowder Plot of 1605 that reaffirmed the inherently traditionalist nature of the Catholic community in England.

‘I acknowledge this Doctrine is not commonly received by Protestants, who (I humbly conceive) might reject it chiefly in opposition to the See of Rome, wherein such a multitude of monsters do swim…’ This is how the Congregationalist divine, Robert Dingley (1619-1660) summarized the characteristic Protestant attitude to the Roman Catholic belief in guardian angels in the preface to The Deputation of Angels, or The Angel-Guardian (1654, Wing D 1496).

It was in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries that colleges were first established in the Iberian Peninsula for the provision of Catholic priests to serve on the English mission. The first to be opened was at Valladolid in 1589; this ‘was followed by Seville in 1592 and Madrid in 1611. They were supported by the alms of the faithful, taken under the protection of the Spanish Crown, and administered by the Society of Jesus. Smaller establishments, residences, were in existence at Lisbon and San Lucar de Barrameda (near Cadiz) serving as points of entry and departure for students and priests on their journeys between Spain and England. Eventually, in 1622, a College was established at Lisbon but from the beginning, this college differed from the others in that it was always administered by the English secular clergy and not by the Jesuits. The golden age of the Spanish colleges was in the first fifty or sixty years of their existence when they not only provided many missioners, including martyrs, but also exercised a political influence on the English Catholic scene by reason of their Jesuit administration and their situation in Spain. However, by the eighteenth century a decline had set in. There were complaints about the administration, and the recruitment of students was low so that few missioners returned to work in England. In fact, between 1739 and 1756 the College at Valladolid was closed to students while rebuilding took place. Partly because of the poor recruitment and partly because of their antipathy to the Jesuits, the Vicars Aṕostolic were dissatisfied and almost lost interest in these three colleges, relying on the establishments at Douai and Lisbon which were under the direction of the seculars.

‘Ireland was the only country where the Counter-Reformation succeeded against the will of the head of state.’ Why was this? Obviously, the English Government's neglect of education and the Catholic clergy's awareness of its importance was one reason. Obviously, too, the Counter-Reformation got under way in Ireland before the Reformation made a religious impact. Again, the quality of the reformed clergy sent to Ireland was poor and they made little effort to learn Gaelic or to translate the scriptures into the national language until very late in the century. But perhaps most important of all is the fact that in Gaelic Ireland the Reformation was inextricably linked with the expropriation of lands and the abolition of traditional rights and customs. Hence, defence of one's land and of one's religion became so intertwined as to be almost inseparable; and this, I suspect, rather than any appreciation of theological distinctions, was decisive. A number of the clergy of the Counter-Reformation, most of them educated in the Irish colleges on the Continent, were at pains not only to underline the ‘heresies’ in the new teaching and to instruct the people in the spirit of Tridentine Catholicism, but also to link the struggle against the ‘gall’, the English conqueror, with the European religious struggle.

In the Royal Library of Belgium in Brussels is a manuscript which consists of over two hundred closely-written folios of English translations of Jesuit letters from Japan, or Japonia as it was then called, introduced with a prologue by the compiler ‘G.C.’, hinting fairly heavily that the translations were made in prison. Until recently rebound, the manuscript bore a Latin inscription on the pastedown, stating: ‘This book belongs to the English Benedictine Monastery of the Assumption of Our Lady in Brussels’. Although the contents of the volume are of interest in their own right, the concern of this article is with two men, Gabriel Colford and George Cotton, who have little in common except the initials ‘G.C.’ and the experience of imprisonment for religion.

Among the most prominent Lincolnshire families in Tudor and Jacobean times were the Tyrwhitts of Kettleby and Twigmore. Other Lincolnshire branches of the family were seated at Scotter, Cammeringham and Stainfield. The Victoria County History of Lincolnshire says, ‘To follow various members of the Tyrwhitt family, whose names re-appear from first to last in connexion with Romanist sympathy, is to trace the history of recusancy in the county.’ But some important parts of the history of the Kettleby Tyrwhitts have been confused or overlooked by historians, and the record should be corrected. Here we shall focus on one of the sons of Sir Robert Tyrwhitt of Kettleby, a son who died in prison in 1580. In a further article we will identify a grandson of Sir Robert who gave John Gerard SJ much financial support from about 1598 until Gerard left England in 1606.

Robin Clifton has explored the ‘nature, extent and causes of the Protestant fear of Catholics’, and Dr Wiener has traced how ‘hatred of Catholics, once the private obsession of religious extremists, developed into a part of the national ideology’. But what was the attitude in Monmouthshire, which in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was culturally and ethnically a part of Wales? Attempts have been made to compare Catholicism in eighteenth-century Monmouthshire with that in other parts of the Western Vicariate, and to suggest a parallel with Lancashire. There may be some valid comparisons but for a variety of reasons Monmouthshire sits uneasily with any close identification with the English scene.

After 1571 Catholic sacred objects were outlawed in England, and the possession of such objects could be prosecuted under the statute of praemunire. Despite this prohibition sacred objects including rosaries, blessed beads, and the agnus dei (wax pendants blessed by the pope) remained a critical part of Catholic devotion. This article examines the role of the agnus dei in English Catholic communities and the unique political connotations it acquired during the reign of Elizabeth I. It assesses the uses of these sacramentals in Catholic missions to England, their reception amongst Catholics, and the political significance of the agnus dei in light of the papal excommunication of Elizabeth I in 1570.

In the summer of 1601 the English ambassador in France, Sir Ralph Winwood, warned Sir Robert Cecil against a merchant named Thomas James, who was ‘a hard and desperate Ruffian, who hath lived in great inwardness with Persons the Jesuit’. To assist in his capture, should he arrive in England, Winwood identified him to be of ‘a convenient stature, red beard, of the age of forty-five years’, born in Staffordshire ‘in a town called Noyall’ but subsequently raised in London where he had been a merchant’s apprentice.

The ‘inwardness’ between this Englishman and the Jesuit excites curiosity in itself, but Thomas James deserves investigation in his own right since he exemplifies the major contribution of the resourceful English layman to the survival of the Catholic mission during the late Elizabethan and early Jacobean period. The access of Catholics to the Continent was contingent on the well-placed merchant who facilitated the arrivals and departures of students, priests and other persons in search of asylum. As will be seen, the full confidence of the highly respected Duke of Medina Sidonia in the ability of Thomas James was to provide the Englishman with a unique status in Andalucia.

In 1598 Philip II, King of Spain since 1559 and ruler of many other dominions, granted the ‘Burgundian’ segment of his inheritance (the Low Countries and the County of Burgundy) to his daughter Isabella as a dowry, and gave her in marriage to her cousin Albert, Archduke of Austria. The couple governed that part of the territory effectively under their control — the northern provinces having formed the Dutch Republic — as ‘sovereign princes’, essentially enjoying domestic autonomy under the protection of the Spanish army. They were responsible for the ‘northern’ policy of the Spanish monarchy, including day-to-day relations with England and the protection of the British Catholics. As sovereign princes they rebuilt the Church in the Southern Netherlands, patronised the reformed religious orders, and did much to establish the particular South Netherlandish identity which was eventually to lead to an independent Belgian state. In 1621 Albert died, and his childless widow's dowry reverted to her nephew Philip IV. Isabella remained in Brussels as Governess-General, enjoying greater independence than the title might suggest, both from her long career as co-sovereign and from the trust and admiration of her nephew the king. She died in 1633, the governship passing to another of her nephews, the Cardinal-Infant Don Ferdinand (1635–1641).

For some Roman Catholic clergymen, the nineteenth century was an exciting age. On its very eve, Cardinal Ruffo led a pious bandit band in a crusade of slaughter through the southern Italian Parthenopean republic. In 1810, another priest, Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla, under the banner of Our Lady of Guadalupe, began the revolution in Mexico. Luigi Menichini led the 1830 insurrection in Naples. Father Piotr Sćiegienny’s revolutionary activities in Poland earned him a quarter of a century’s exile in Siberia. Father Patrick Lavelle founded an Irish society which was a front for the revolutionary Fenians. The secular or ecclesiastical politician has a job to do, and in some places, the priesthood was forced into political roles, as in nineteenth-century Italy, Mexico, Poland and Ireland. But in spite of the international conflict between Catholicism and anticlericalism in Europe and South America, the ordinary Catholic priest was not primarily a political animal. Unless he served in the Curia or was a martyr-missionary in the South Seas or Central Africa, the priest’s life was the old hidden life of caring for the souls of the people of his parish and of preaching the gospel and administering the sacraments. Amid the tumult of the nations, this inner work continued on its quiet path, and in riches and poverty, and beside the allurements and excitements and man-made manipulations of secular and ecclesiastical politics, the priesthood was concerned with the essential tasks of the comfort of the stricken and the salvation of sinners, laid upon them by their Lord and Master.