³⁶⁴ Richard Smith.

³⁶⁵ John Mush.

³⁶⁶ For Mush's views on the oath of allegiance, see Letter, 18.Google Scholar

³⁶⁷ Birkhead was agitated because some of the priests imprisoned in the Clink were claiming Mush as ‘Of the same opinion with them’, AAW A X, no. 24 (p. 57). In April 1611 Birkhead noted that Mush was doing more harm in this respect than the more extreme and less reputable Richard Sheldon and Edward Collier, AAW A X, no. 37.

³⁶⁸ Abbot was officially nominated to Canterbury on 4 March 1611.

³⁶⁹ John Roberts OSB was executed on 10 December 1610 with Thomas Somers. Their execution had followed their attempt at escape from Newgate prison, Downshire MSS II, 407Google Scholar. The other two martyrs referred to are Roger Cadwallader and George Napper.

³⁷⁰ This may be the Hampshire recusant and former under-keeper of Winchester gaol David Ringsteed (or possibly his son) who in the early 1580s was living in the same parish in Winchester as the future priest Benjamin Norton, PRO, SP 12/160/26, fo. 56r. The under-keeper had been imprisoned in 1586, and was still in the Clink prison in the early 15908, Mott, fo. 333r. A Hampshire Catholic, and presumably relation, Edward Ringsteed, went surety for a priest arrested by the pursuivant John Wragge at Easter 1610, PRO, STAC 8/15/8, mem. 2a. A man named Ringsteed was the keeper of Montague House when it was searched in April 1606, PRO, SP 14/20/20.

³⁷¹ Benjamin Norton recounted that a monk had confirmed the story of ‘Nappers Well’, in which ‘many washt theire eyes & drunke of the water & gott good therebye’ till John King ‘caused [it] to bee rammed upp, and flunge the quarter of that saincte into the Theames’, AAW A X, no. 29 (p. 67). Within a month a new version of the facts was reported by Richard Broughton: ‘about the time one of his quarters was hanged on an old wall by Christchurch ther brook forth many litle springes under a wall hardby & one even under the hand wher it did hange, wherof the children made a litle well, but after the quarter was taken away by Cath. that spring did dry up’, AAW A X, no. 36 (p. 92). The day before his execution Napper had sent Birkhead his voice for bishops and his nomination of those he thought fit for such a dignity, AAW A IX, no. 88.

³⁷² Jerome Prestman. The high commission pursuivant Lewis Owen had arrested him in early 1610 for importing Catholic books. Prestman was imprisoned in Newgate but was swiftly released, PRO, STAC 8/15/8, mem. 2a. Birkhead noted on 17 March 1611 that Archbishop George Abbot had charged the secular priest George Fisher on Prestman's evidence that he ‘made an oration at doway’ in praise of Hugh O'Neill, third Earl of Tyrone, AAW A X, no. 24 (p. 57). Subsequently Prestman deserted Abbot's service, was reconciled to the Roman Church and travelled to Rome to join as a ‘lay brother … some howse reformed’, AAW A XII, no. 101 (p. 224). Abbot was furious at Prestman's defection and the priests who had been ‘tampering with him’. In May 1613 Abbot ordered William Trumbull to ruin Prestman's credit by spreading rumours that he was still spying for the regime, Downshire MSS IV, 114.Google Scholar

³⁷³ Theophilus Higgons's sermon (published as A Sermon preached at Pauls Crosse (1611Google Scholar)) lasted ‘4 hours long at the least’, Dozmshire MSS III, 31–2Google Scholar. On 9 April 1611 (NS) Francis Hore wrote from Venice to More in Rome, that ‘M’ Higgins (our Oxford minister) you may please to tell mr [Humphrey] leech is fallen back againe' and ‘become an arrant relaps’, AAW A X, no. 32 (p. 78). Edward Bennett wrote to More on 26 October 1611 that Sir Edward Hoby had engineered Higgons's recantation of Catholicism through the bribe of a ‘fatt benefice’ and that on ‘the same day that’ Higgons ‘made his sermon’ Hoby ‘made also a great feast ‘at the enstallm[ent]’ of the ‘Bushop of Canterbury’ [George Abbot] and ‘there lik another Baltassar bibens vinum…contending his own religion, crieing owt against catholickes, & exclaiminge that the lawes weer not with mor diligence putt in execution against them, especially] abowt the oath, at last as it showld seem half drunck (an humor wherewith he is often trubled) he began to brag of his own forwardnes in setting fowrth the gospell, & saied that the same day he had two sonnes born, on to the spirite & the other to the fleshe, [‘for that’ deleted] he meant Higgins which that morninge had made his recanting sermon, & a sonne of his own wherof that morninge alsoe his lady was delivered…for before he had never had any’ [he had, in fact, fathered an illegitimate son, Peregrine, by Katherine Pinckney]; yet ‘behowld the iudgmentes of god, as he was thus railinge & bragginge at the Archbushop tabl ther cometh on of hi[s m]en in great hast sweating & towld hym his sonne was dead’, AAW A X, no. 139 (p. 396). Cf. Birch, T., The Court and Times of James the First (2 vols, 1849), I, 110–11Google Scholar; McClure, , 306Google Scholar. For Hoby's assisting Higgons to his benefice, AAW A X, no. 26 (reputedly worth £126 a year) and procuring of his pardon for going abroad, see PRO, SO 3/5 July 1611. Richard Broughton said Higgons, in his sermon, held ‘some Catholique pointes’, AAW A X, no. 36 (p. 91), while John Sanford said that he ‘gave ample satisfaction to all that were well affected’ with ‘abundance of tears in his contrition’. Catholics planned to distribute his Catholic published works near Paul's Cross, but Abbot prevented this, Birch, Court and Times of James I, I, 108.Google Scholar

³⁷⁴ Lancelot Andrewes.

³⁷⁵ John Overall.

³⁷⁶ Isaac Casaubon. Cf. Milton, A., Catholic and Reformed (Cambridge, 1995), 265.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

³⁷⁷ George Home, first Earl of Dunbar, who died on 20 January 1611.

³⁷⁸ Edward Bruce, first Baron Kinloss, who died on 14 January 1611.

³⁷⁹ Cardinal Edward Farnese.

³⁸⁰ AAW A IX, no. 98 (copy of Birkhead's letter of 6 December 1610 to Bianchetti). For Bianchetti's answer, see AAW A IX, no. 99.

³⁸¹ Robert Persons SJ.

³⁸² Thomas Fitzherbert.

³⁸³ Anthony and Robert Dormer. See Letter 17. They were conducted on the grand tour in 1610–11 by Francis Hore, a fellow of Exeter College, who had met Smith in Oxford when Smith journeyed there to visit Elizabeth Dacres, AAW A IX, no. 26. Hore was closely acquainted with several of the correspondents whose letters are in AAW A, notably Smith, Thomas More, John Bosvile and Anthony Champney. The Dormers were financially assisted by More, and also Sir Edmund Lenthall, an Oxfordshire connection (cf. CRS 60, 210), because their parents kept them very short of cash, AAW A IX, no. 26, X, no. 6 and pasam. They returned in March–April 1611 from Rome via Florence, Venice (where Hore was assisted by Sir Dudley Carleton's secretary, and was courteously treated by Carleton himself on the grounds that they were both Oxford men), Milan and then through France, AAW A X, nos 32, 38. Hore told Carleton that he and the Dormers had visited Cardinal Bellarmine, Stoye, J., English Travellers Abroad 1604–1667 (1989), 80–1Google Scholar. They were with Champney at Paris in mid-May 1611, AAW A X, no. 47. In March 1615 Edward Bennett noted that Hore had made hostile remarks about him and ‘fawneth upon the padri [Jesuits], when he is with them’, AAW A XIV, no. 46 (p. 133), something which in a letter to More of January 1615 Hore seems to confess to have been true (in the past), AAW A XIV, no. 10.

³⁸⁴ Geoffrey Pole.

³⁸⁵ Richard Smith.

³⁸⁶ See Letter 23.

³⁸⁷ John (Augustine) Bradshaw OSB. In August 1607 he had thrown his weight behind the anti-Jesuits in the selection procedure for a new archpriest to replace Blackwell, Lunn, EB, 75–6.Google Scholar

³⁸⁸ For the efforts to unify the English Benedictines of the Spanish and Cassinese congregations, see Lunn, EB, ch. 4.