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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 13 October 2009
Molto Illre Signor. Since my last letters which were of the last of October or ther aboutes I have little to write of but that I purpose whiles I live and am at libertie (which can not be long) to write to you as oft as I can, I wold not have written yet this weeke at the least but soe it is good Sr that I may now wel fear that every letter wil be my last, and therfore take this one as my last unies things fal out better then I have reason to expect. About the time of my last letters your coosen Sr francis Hastings dyed, and dyed a beggar too, and about that time your frend Mr [name obscured: possibly ‘Hore’] had a yong sonn Francis. The cowntesse of Kildare in Ireland dyed about that time; but al your poor frendes nere or about us live as yet dailie expecting such hazardes, and miseries as wold make a Christians heart even bleed to thinke of them. In the beginning of this month the Catholiks of our parish were summoned to appear at the Shirtowne, and for as much as they feared that the oath wold be tendred unto them they appeared not, and streight upon that contempt they were excommunicated in the church, and the names of above threescore in the parish wher I live were set upon the Church doors amongst which your two sisters with ther Coosins, and Companie were the first. The knaves that went then away out of the cowntrie have since that time renewed ther commission and are to come shortlie downe again.
337 Hastings was buried at North Cadbury on 22 September 1610, Hasler, II, 272Google Scholar. A manuscript petition of 1606 addressed to Sir Francis Hastings, concerning toleration for recusants, was signed ‘your well beloved countrymen, kinsmen, clients and friends the Catholic Recusants of this realm of England’, Downshire MSS II, 444–6.Google Scholar
338 Francis Hore (?).
339 Gerald FitzGerald, eleventh Earl of Kildare, had in May 1554 married Mabel, the sister of Anthony Browne, first Viscount Montague. She died on 25 August 1610, Cokayne VII, 236–9. (Sir Anthony Browne, father of the first Viscount Montague, who helped restore the future eleventh earl to his estates after the death of Henry VIII, had taken as his second wife, Elizabeth FitzGerald, daughter of Gerald FitzGerald, ninth Earl of Kildare; cf. Foley, VI, 712.Google Scholar) Francis Barnaby, one of the appellant priests, became Mabel Browne's chaplain and trusted confidant, Russell, C.W. and Prendergast, J.P. (eds), Calendar of State Papers, relating to Ireland…1606–8 (1874), 393Google Scholar; Anstr. I, 23.
340 Chichester.
341 Midhurst.
342 Mary and Martha Pole, resident in Midhurst, were both excommunicated in November 1610 by the Chichester consistory court, WSRO, Ep. I/17/13, fos 103v, 106r, 106v.
343 The Lambe family.
344 In March 1611 Birkhead informed More that John Loane had had his ‘ground driven by the officers and pursivantes, and 40 fatt oxen taken from him under pretense of some arrerages dew to the kinge’ although he had already compounded for the same; the fact that he had taken the oath of allegiance was no benefit to him, AAW A X, no. 27 (p. 63); cf. Letter 14. Thomas Heath said Loane had lost property to the ‘valew of 600li’, AAW A X, no. 39 (p. 97). Richard Broughton noted in April 1611 that the commissioners' rapacity had led them since Easter to take from Loane at ‘Battell in Sussex forty fyve Oxen worth eight pounds at the least a peace, & Henry Smith of Chinting [Chyngton] no Cath having thre & twentie bullockes neare to Mr Loanes ground, are allso taken away from him by force’, AAW A X, no. 36 (p. 91); see also Letter 14. In a letter to More of 3 March 1611, Norton said that Loane, who had just married a rich widow, ‘was ever a fairespoken man yett I ever tooke him to bee more lesuited than preestifyedd’, implying that he had taken the oath under the influence of lax Jesuit casuistry, AAW A X, no. 19 (p. 45). There was a Kentish recusant family called Loane at Sevenoaks, but this man is probably to be identified with the wealthy East Sussex recusant called John Loane/Lone (written ‘Love’ in some records), whose immediate family came from Goudhurst in Kent. His wife had died very recently. His property was assessed by an exchequer commission in February 1611, PRO, E 368/541, mem. 114s, 124b. See also WSRO, Ep. II/9/12, fo. 8v.
345 Thomas Middlemore, the youngest son of John Middlemore of Hawkesley, Worcestershire. Thomas now resided in Sussex, W.P.W. Phillimore, assisted by Carter, W.F., Some Account of the Family of Middlemore of Warwickshire and Worcestershire (1901), 238–40Google Scholar; BL, Additional MS 34765, fo. 43r. This individual may be identified with a servant of Jane Sackville, wife of Anthony Maria Browne, second viscount Montague, CRS 60, 145. ‘Thomas Middlemore, gent’ was one of the group of recusants at Battle (including Edward Wyborne, David Lomer, Edward Goldwyer, and Richard Vincent) who were indicted at the Sussex assizes in July 1605, Cockburn, , Calendar of Assize Records: Sussex Indictments: James I, 18.Google Scholar
346 i.e. Jesuits.
347 St Omer.
348 Identity uncertain. However, since in August 1611 Anthony Champney referred to William (Maurus) Taylor OSB by using the alias of Palmer, and Taylor was involved in the project for setting up a convent for English Benedictine nuns in Paris with which the seculars assisted, the reference here may be to him, AAW A X, no. 61; Lunn, ‘English Cassinese’, 63. But the secular priests John Bosvile and Richard Cooper also used the alias of Palmer.
349 This may indicate Elizabeth Somerset, Countess of Worcester, a relation of Katherine Pole. (The countess was a daughter of Francis Hastings, second Earl of Huntingdon by Catherine, daughter of Henry Pole, first Baron Montague, first son of Margaret Pole, Countess of Salisbury.) See also Letter 39.
350 Viscount Montague's London residence in Southwark, on land which formerly belonged to the priory of St Mary Overie.
351 Richard Lambe.
352 Birkhead told Smith in October 1609 to direct his letters ‘to Mathew Woodw. at S marie overies’, AAW A VIII, no. 161 (p. 643). Elizabeth, the wife of Matthew Woodward of Lodsworth parish in West Sussex, near to Midhurst, was denounced excommunicate in January 1601, CRS 60, 117, and was a convicted recusant, Cockburn, J. (ed.), Calendar of Assize Records: Sussex Indictments: Elizabeth I (1975), 334.Google Scholar
353 For the most comprehensive account of the arrest and execution of Napper, see Davidson, , 463–77.Google Scholar
354 At the beginning of January 1611 Birkhead sent More ‘for [Cardinal] Farnese a peec of mr Nappers shert dipped in his blood, and a straw moistened with the blood of those two last [martyrs] mr [John] Roberts and mr [Thomas] Sommers’, AAW A X, no. 2 (p. 3), the retrieval of whose remains by London Catholics is well documented, Challoner, Memoirs, 321Google Scholar; Downshire MSS II, 407.Google Scholar
355 Robert (Gregory) Hungate entered OSB in 1610; William Estmond, whose name in religion was also Gregory, had left the English College in Rome in 1606 for Venice to enter OSB. But neither was in England at this date. The correct identification may be Thomas Law jnr, a son of the bursar at Douai, and brother of William Law, Lunn, ‘English Cassinese’, 65Google Scholar; cf. Letter 6.
356 John Roberts OSB.
357 Walter Robert (Vincent) Sadler OSB; cf. Letter 10.
358 Not identified.
359 Thomas More.
360 Constance Lambe.
361 Anthony Lambe entered the English College in Rome on 7 October 1612 (NS), Anstr. II, 181.
362 Cardinal Edward Farnese.
363 Nicholas Fitzherbert.