The origin and early life of Henry Jaye, an Englishman and an exile, it would appear, for his faith, who died holding the post of official printer to the metropolitan city of Malines in Belgium, are unknown, except that he was born in London and that his father's name was Thomas. This much we learn from a register of burghers (1). It is likely that Nicholas and John Jaye,, who lived at Jdalines at the same time as Henry, were his brothers. The first recorded incident in Jaye's life occurs in 1606, at which date he is found at Antwerp, working for the notable Anglo–Flemish Catholic refugee Richard Verstegan. (2). On 26th July of that year, two English sergeants, Roger Marshall and Richard Pope, belonging to the regiment of Sir William Windsor, were at Antwerp in company with four or five other Englishmen. In their report of the incident (State Papers Foreign, Flanders, 1589–1659, bundle 8, no 151) they state “there came into our company one whose name was Henry a booke bynder as he sayde by his trad(e) and profession wch Henry belongeth as is publickly knowen unto on(e) Mr. Vestegen an Inglishe gente townedweller in the affore said Citty”. To them he used “scandalous” speeches against the King of England, saying amongst other things “I hope to see him hanged”, A few days later, on 6th. August, the English ambassador to the Archduke in Brussels, Sir Thomas Edmondes, wrote to the Secretary of State, Cecil, in England as follows “…having received information of certain very lewd and infamous words against His Majesty by one Henry Gay, an Englishman, a printer servant to Verstegan of Antwerp, he (Edmondes) complained to President Ricardott and desired the party might be sent for to answer his misdemeanour. The Archduke gave order to have him sent for, when he could not deny the words, but he has been merely dismissed with an admonition for his better carriage hereafter and to be forthcoming to answer anything that may be further objected against him. Edmondes has protested…” (Hist. MSS. Com.., Salisbury, pt. XVIII p.227). Prom a further note a little later in Edmondes’ correspondence it appears he got small satisfaction for his protest.

Father Garnet's works were written in England during the last decade of the sixteenth century when the persecution of priests was at its most intense and Catholic literature was systematically suppressed. They were written anonymously and those that were printed were printed secretly, without indication of place or date. The result has been that his bibliography has remained in a state of confusion to this day. The earliest printed list of his writings, in Alegambe’s Bibliotheca Scriptorum Societatis Iesu (1643), is inaccurate and incomplete, and little attempt has since been made to supplement it. Southwell’s revised edition of Alegambe (1676) reproduces the original list without alteration. Dodd, in The Church History of England (1737–42), also follows Alegambe. The first and only attempt to check Alegambe’s list in the light of original documents is to be found in Oliver’s Collections…S.J. (1845) which gives some corrections and fresh information based on the Stonyhurst MSS. Gillow combines the findings of Dodd and Oliver, adding some speculations of his own which do not stand the test of investigation. Sommervogel and D.N.B. follow Gillow. The extent to which bibliographers blindly copy one another is not always fully realized. Before any satisfactory study of Father Garnet’s life and work can be begun it is essential that his bibliography should be re-established, if possible, from documentary evidence.

Fr. Newdigate's pamphlet is such a valuable reference book that it is worth making it as accurate as possible. It is particularly important that the date of martyrdom should be correct. According to the official list, seven of the martyrs died on Sunday. This is extremely improbable. For six of these there is evidence for a different date. The following notes are concerned only with the sort of information that the pamphlet seeks to give.

JOHN ABBOT, who abroad used the alias of Ashton (C.R.S. XXX, 105) and in England called himself John, or Augustine, Rivers, was born of a London family in 1588. Our chief authority for his early life is entry 289 in the Registers of the English College at Valladolid (C.R.S. XXX). From this we learn that he was aged 21 in 1609, a Londoner born of respectable but non-Catholic parents. A passage taken by Foley (VII, 1152) from the Annual Letter of the English Jesuit College of St. Omer for 1609 adds to our knowledge of his family: “The fathers … received many Protestants into the Church; among whom was an Oxford student of great talent belonging to the Aobot family (a family most hostile to the Catholic faith, two members having been its bitterest foes, viz. a bishop and a dean)”. This can only refer to George Abbot (1562–1633) who at the time of writing was Bishop of Lichfield and Coventry, in 16l0 was made Bishop of London, and in 1611 became Archbishop of Canterbury (D.N.B. I, 5), and to his brother Robert Abbot (1560–1617) who in 1609, though not apparently a dean, was chaplain in ordinary to King James and in that year was made Master of Balliol College, and later became Bishop of Salisbury (D.N.B. I, 24). Both brothers published noted anti-Catholic controversial works, and George as bishop was an active persecutor of Catholics. Since the brothers were of a Guildford family, their relationship to John Abbot may not have been close, but it is perhaps significant that all three went to Balliol.

The two great moments of John Huddleston’s life have made the latter half of it stand out in high relief, while his earlier days have always been lost in obscurity. Everyone knows that he was instrumental in saving the life of Charles II after the battle of Worcester, and that he reconciled the dying King to the Faith; but concerning his childhood, College days and early priestly life the old biographers have little to say. New evidence which has come to light about his youth, and inaccuracies which are common even in the well-documented history of his dealings with the King, make it worth while to try to rewrite the story of his life.

Every student of Catholic history in the 18th century owes a debt to the Reverend John Kirk, D. D. His Biographies of English Catholics is a mine of information and, though it undoubtedly has to be used with care and criticism, it frequently points the way to further information, One of Kirk’s more serious errors is his confusion of the Leckonbys and Whites.

The struggle of the English Catholics during the reigns of Queen Elizabeth and King James I to achieve toleration has already proved itself a challenging feature of Renaissance culture. It is surprising, therefore, that few of the personalities in this conflict have been studied in detail, especially the Catholic leaders who facilitated rather than resisted the submission of the Catholic population to the government. Perhaps a study of these men, who were subject to correction by the forces at either extreme, would lend to our comprehension of the period a degree of objectivity not to be found among the deluge of partisan accounts. At least their careers can complement, as biography always does history, the existing surveys (1), giving them continuity and human significance.

William Seymour (1588–1660), the husband of the unfortunate Lady Arabella Stuart, first Marquis and second Earl of Hertford and second Duke of Somerset, was received into the Church at St Omer in the late months of 1611. He was the second son of Lord Beauchamp, (1561–1612), who inherited the Suffolk claim to the throne through his mother, Catherine Grey, (1538–1568), the sister of Lady Jane Grey, who according to the will of their grandfather, Henry VIII stood next in the succession to Elizabeth.

“It has been said that Dr. Hawarden left Douay in 1707. He then came on the Mission, and was placed at Aldcliffe, near Lancaster, where the Daltons then resided … Such, however, was the high opinion that Dr. Smith, Bishop of the North District, had of him, that, wishing to have him nearer to his own person, he placed him at Gilligate in Durham, and when he made his will in 1709 appointed him one of his trustees, and left him £10 for life on condition of his continuing to reside in the North. Soon after his arrival in England he was chosen a member of the Chapter, and in 1710 an Archdeaon, and also the Catholic Controversy Writer. On this latter account it probably was found necessary that he should reside in London in order to have an eye to the works written against us, and that he might have the convenience of books necessary to answer them. He therefore quitted Durham sometime after 1719, and repaired to London.” (Kirk. 115).

Since the appearance of my article on John Huddleston in the last issue of “Biographical Studies” (168–188), Mr. Granville Squiers has called my attention to some notes of Pepys which he has discovered together with an unpublished MS in which Fr Huddleston describes his share in the escape of King Charles II after the battle of Worcester. These papers are now bound in the Boscobel book in the Pepys Library. I am indebted to Mr. Squiers for permission to print relevant extracts from these notes and also for several helpful suggestions in connexion with them.

In an article contributed to “The Month” for November 1951 the present writer expressed doubt about the genuineness of the confessions which Henry Walpole is said to have written during his imprisonment in the Tower in 1594. These enigmatical confessions, which are in the Public Record Office, were published by Father Pollen in volume V of the Catholic Record Society Publication. In the article in “The Month” the present writer based his argument on the government’s failure to use such compromising confessions, on the absence in Walpole”s subsequent conduct and correspondence of any sign of such a moral collapse as these pages represent, and lastly on Walpole's apparent admission in the confessions that he translated and augmented “Philopater”, a remark so fantastic that Walpole could not have made it. For the development of these arguments I must refer my readers to the pages of “The Month”. What is here aimed at is to show that the book which Walpole really did “translate and augment” is the anonymous work, entitled “News from Spayne and Holland”.

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.

Rowland Berkeley, who bought Spetohley in 1606, was a Protestant, as was his son, Sir Robert, who died in 1656. Sir Robert Berkeley disinherited his only son, Thomas, because he became a Catholic and married a Catholic wife (c. 1649); and he left his property to Thomas's elder son, Robert, who was born in 1650, provided that when he reached the age of twenty-one he was a Protestant.

Fr. John Rogers S.J., on entering as a young man of twenty the English College, Rome, stated that whilst in the service of Lady Stourton he had chanced to meet “a very aged priest named Father Richard Bray, who had lived for ten years at Douay”, by whose means he had become a Catholic (Foley. IV, 419). This would have occurred at some date not far distant from 1604, the date of John Rogers’ statement. Beyond the fact that a certain Richard Bray, of Herefordshire, entered the English College, Douay, on 28 April, 1583, and received the first tonsure in the following September (Knox. 1st & 2nd Douai Diaries, 195, 198) – he may or may not have been the same man – one knows no more of Fr.Richard Bray.

Thomas Wright was given access to Guy Fawkes soon after his arrest in the vault of the House of Lords. The authority for this interesting incident in his career is a statement of the priest Richard Broughton in his book “English Protestant Plea for English Priests and Papists” of 1621. “The Lords of the Council requested that a priest should be appointed to perswade and assure Fauxe (a chief agent in it) that he was bound in conscience to utter what he could of the conspiracie, and Mr Tho. Write a learned priest did hereupon come to the Councell and offer his best service herein, and had a warrant subsigned with 12 Privie Councellors hands, which he showed unto me, and I am witnesse of his having such a Warrant. (p. 59. cit. Dom Raymund Webster. The Downside Review. Oct. 1936. p. 503.)