No CrossRef data available.
Article contents
18. John Ratcliffe (Mush) to Thomas More (19 August 1611. The date is taken from the endorsement) (AAWA X, no. 105, pp. 307–8.)
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 13 October 2009
Extract
And my muche respected frend. I received yours written Anno d: 1611 [altered from ‘1610’] feb. the Kal of luly. 1610 [sic for ‘1611’]. since which I received none from you to my selfe. yett have I scene some of yours to other our frends. we suffer greate difficultie in sending to you & receiving from you. And verie often our watchefull frends intercept bothe yours and ours for they ar more vigilant in this evil office than the heretiks. they have their hierlings for this purpose in france, flanders Italy & Rome. I wrote to you about Michelmas 1610 touching what I had conselled in the oathe but I knowe not whether our frends sent it, or not, or whether you received it or no. my desire was to certifie you of the whole matter that you might knowe how to answere for me against the calumniations of our adversaries, which I doubted not would be most diligent to slander & calumniate me, wher they had fair worse deserved them selves, for their cheefest meane to hinder oar good desires & petitions, is by defayming us here but principally wher you ar. In that business I neither knowe nor heare as yett but that I did which may easely be iusdfied which was this, for perhaps you received not my formar. Aboute Michaelmass 1610 ther was terrible a doe about the oath every wher, but this persecution (as it ever haith bene) was more hote in yorkeshire & the northe, than elswhere[.] And even so it is at this present by reason of a new proclamation to tender the oath most diligently to all catho: without exception or delay.
- Type
- The Newsletters
- Information
- Copyright
- Copyright © Royal Historical Society 1998
References
505 For John Mush's explanation of his views about whether a Catholic might take the oath of allegiance, see AAW A IX, no. 71 (18 September 1610), a letter to Paul V enclosing a formula which he says is approved by many Jesuits and Benedictines. John Jackson said that Mush had written to him that ‘diverse gentlemen proposed unto him a maner of swearing and asked his advise thearin which he delivered to some of them verbatim’ but Richard Holtby SJ and others, to stir up trouble, have censured him ‘after their old fashion’ and ‘mr Holtby hath written 10 reasons against it’, AAW A DC, no. 125 (p. 395); AAW A X, no. 16. On 30 May 1611 Birkhead wrote to More that although Cardinal Pompeo Arrigoni, ‘the secretarie as yow terme him of the holy office’, had instructed that all English Catholics must absolutely reject the oath of allegiance, Birkhead had sent More ‘Of late by the way of Bruxels a longe Letter [AAW A X, no. 56] from mr Mush’ to Arrigoni to be delivered at More's discretion, AAW A X, no. 51 (p. 125). (Arrigoni had been a friend to the appellants in Rome in 1602, AAW A VIII, no. 88; Law II, 10. In 1612 he favoured the appointment of bishops for England, Conway AH 23. 41.)
506 Larkin and Hughes, no. 118 (proclamation of 31 May 1611).
507 See Anstr. I, 335; Foley I, 471–5. Stevenson had expressed extreme views (written in a manuscript tract for Robert Catesby) on the allowability of the deposition of monarchs, Sommerville, J.P., Politics and Ideology in England, 1603–1640 (1986), 71.Google Scholar
508 George Birkhead.
509 Samuel (Bartholomew) Kennett OSB.
510 See Letter 15. By 20 August 1612, when Mush penned an impassioned letter to Birkhead defending himself, Trollop had attacked Mush for being of the same mind concerning the oath as George Blackwell (though Mush claimed that he had never expressly declared his opinion in the matter) and for lenity towards his penitents who were not prepared to affirm Rome's line on the oath. Mush admitted he knew them ‘resolved to yeld the state satisfaction of theire alleadgeance to his Maiestie even in the question of deposition, which the[y] held but an opinion, & yet undecyded by tha Church’; nevertheless he felt able to give them the sacraments ‘upon theire extrinsicall principels, albeit theire opinion weare repugnant to the intrinsicall whereon I might settle my selfe’. In any case, he knew that, if he rejected them, they would simply find another priest, AAW A XI, no. 139 (p. 385).
511 In October 1611 Champney told More that Mush recommended people not to ‘take the oathe proposed but only by occasione of the oathe offered to sweare a temporall and civil obedience to our kinge as dothe evidently appeare by the thinge yt self’, AAW A X, no. 132 (p. 379).
512 John Jackson.
513 See Letter 16.
514 John Knatchbull.
515 Richard Smith.
516 See AAW A IX, no. 71 (Mush's letter of 18 September 1610 to Paul V).
517 Cardinals Farnese and Bianchetti. AAW A X, no. 106 (endorsed ‘Redditae Novemb. 1611’) is Mush's letter of 26 August concerning the oath directed to the vice-protector Bianchetti. On 26 February 1612 Birkhead wrote to More that ‘mr mush hath don verie well’, i.e. in opposing the oath, ‘ever since mr farinton [Edward Bennett] and I gott him to write that Letter’ to Bianchetti, AAW A XI, no. 25 (p. 64).
518 AAW A X, no. 56 is Mush's letter to Cardinal Arrigoni of 30 May 1611.
519 Nicholas Smith SJ.
520 This paragraph was presumably intended as an addition to the preceding text, perhaps within the passage on Thomas Stevenson SJ, but no precise indication is given.
521 George Birkhead.
522 Richard Smith (?).
523 By May 1612 Mush was instructing More ‘to lett that busines of my opinion touching the oath…die rather then further to stirr in it’, AAW A XI, no. 71 (p. 207).