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Introduction

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 October 2009

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Introduction
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Copyright © Royal Historical Society 1998

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References

1 Aveling, J.C.H., The Catholic Recusants of the West Riding of Yorkshire 1558–1790 (Proceedings of the Leeds Philosophical and Literary Society, Literary and Historical Section, X, pt 6, Leeds, 1963), 304.Google Scholar

2 TD; Allison, ‘Richard Smith’; Allison, ‘Later Life’; idem, ‘Richard Smith's Gallican Backers and Jesuit Opponents: some of the issues raised by Kellison's Treatise of the Hierarchie 1629’, part I, RH 18 (1987), 329401Google Scholar; Lunn, EB; Davidson.

3 Davidson, 12.

4 John Bennett, secular priest, who in 1621 went to Rome as agent for the secular clergy, Anstr. I, 32.

5 AAW A XIX, no. 83 (p. 252).

6 By a breve of 5 October 1602 (NS) Clement VIII had tried to settle the secular priests' main grievance (that the English Jesuits were surreptitiously asserting an uncanonical authority over them) by ordering Blackwell not to consult with SJ about the secular clergy's affairs in England.

7 For the best narrative of the controversy, see Pollen, J.H., The Institution of the Archpriest Blachjuell (1916).Google Scholar

8 Sutcliffe, Matthew, The Supplication of Certaine Masse-Priests falsely called Catholikes (1604)Google Scholar, sig. Q2v.

9 The archpriest had twelve assistants. They were an integral part of the archpriest's regime, but, as John Bossy describes them, they were also ‘an oligarchy of powerful individuals whose prestige often exceeded that of the archpriest himself’, Bossy, J., The English Catholic Community 1570–1850 (1975), 208, 210.Google Scholar

10 See Letter 1.

11 Peter Guilday suggests that Douai's debts were contracted primarily by the college's move back from Rheims to Douai in 1593, Guilday, P., The English Catholic Refugees on the Continent, 1558–1795 (1914), 106–7Google Scholar. For previous strife over the running of the seminary at Douai and Rheims, and the college in Rome, see CRS 58, pp. xvi–xvii, xxi–ii, and passim; Williams, M.E., The Venerable English College, Rome (1979), ch. 1.Google Scholar

12 Guilday, , English Catholic Refugees, 114.Google Scholar

13 CRS 41, 52–3; CRS 58, 146; CRS 51, 294, 301; Letter 19.

14 CRS 41, 53–4.

15 The priest Thomas Martin wrote in June 1611 that he had ‘scene a catholick gentilwoman…by her very iudgment to determyne an ordinary dowbt in leming, when a preist notably’ erred and ‘persisted in his error’. ‘Two years in Positive Divinity & cases of conscience’ did not make priests ‘compleate men & able warriers for god Almighties band’, AAW A X, no. 68 (p. 181).

16 TD V, 8–9.

17 Bossy, , English Catholic Community, 46.Google Scholar

18 Bossy, , English Catholic Community, 48.Google Scholar

19 For an authoritative introduction to the issues involved in the controversy over whether a bishop should be appointed for English Catholics, see Allison, , ‘Richard Smith’, 148–61.Google Scholar

20 AAW A XI, no. 149 (p. 409).

21 Edward Bennett reminded Richard Smith in 1608 that the Jesuits had no right to meddle with the seculars, but that ‘it is the superiors of the seculer [who] reforme and visitt the religious, and of this we have daylye presidentes in all Catholicke Countreys about us’, AAW A VIII, no. 72 (p. 385).

22 See Letter 5. In a petition to Pope Paul V of August 1611 Birkhead suggested that both religious and seculars should be bound to the pope under pain of excommunication to account to the archpriest and his assistants for the alms received by them, AAW A X, no. 107.

23 TD V, 12–13; Bossy, , English Catholic Community, 48.Google Scholar

24 AAW A VIII, no. 69 (printed in CRS 41, 33–7).

25 TD V, 14–16; Allison, ‘Richard Smith’, 166–7.

26 Allison, , ‘Richard Smith’, 166–7Google Scholar. Birkhead wrote to Smith on 11 October 1609 that Persons ‘writeth to me that the lords of the inquisition have resolved nihil innovandum esse, in the things that I have proposed’, i.e. without universal consent among the English secular clergy, TD V, p. lxxxii.

27 TD V, 18–20.

28 TD V, p. lvi. Of course it was still being actively considered how the petition for a bishop might be successfully presented, AAW A VIII, nos 120, 161.

29 As late as 15 February 1609 Birkhead reported that travel passes for Smith and More had not yet been obtained. Viscount Montague was trying to procure them, AAW A VIII, no. 92. More's pass was obtained from the privy council (signed by, among others, Archbishop Richard Bancroft) on 4 March 1609, AAW A VIII, no. 94. In May 1609 Richard Holtby SJ was already informing Persons that Bancroft ‘looketh dailie for newes of R.S. [Richard Smith] his negotiations’, AAW A VIII, no. 105 (p. 498).

30 TD V, p. lvi.

31 Edwards, F., Robert Persons (St Louis, Missouri, 1996), 376–7.Google Scholar

32 Edwards, , Robert Persons, 378.Google Scholar

33 Edwards, , Robert Persons, 378–9Google Scholar; Beales, A.C.F., Education tinder Penalty (1963), 139Google Scholar; CRS 41, 51–2. The modification of the rules about higher degrees did not satisfy priests like John Jackson, Letter 52. For the role of the cardinal protector and cardinal vice-protector in regulating English Catholicism, see McCoog, 62 n. 25. For the founding of the writers' college, with the assistance of the Benedictine Abbey of St Vaast at Arras, see Allison, A.F., ‘Richard Smith's Gallican Backers and Jesuit Opponents’, part II, RH 19 (1989), 234–85Google Scholar, at pp. 255–8.

34 AAW A VIII, no. 179. The priest Benjamin Norton had recently done a tour to visit the archpriest's assistants and elicit their opinion on the matter, Letter 5. For More's account of his journey from Rome, see AAW A VIII, no. 154; for his newsletters from England, see AAW A VIII, no. 164, Letters 6, 7. When he crossed to England, he ‘hardlie escaped’ at his ‘comming in’ because of ‘dyvers advertisments’ of his ‘being upon the way’, AAW A VIII, no. 164 (p. 649).

35 TD V, 24–6.

36 Edwards, , Robert Persons, 378–9Google Scholar. See AAW A IX, no. 72, a memorandum by Smith in 1610 to Paul V advising him (on the basis of information supplied by Birkhead) against depriving the oath-favourers of their faculties as missionary priests.

37 CRS 41, 122–3. The accuser was almost certainly Robert Persons, Allison, , ‘Richard Smith’, 167Google Scholar; Edwards, , Robert Persons, 382Google Scholar. The case was quite soon allowed to drop.

38 Edwards, , Robert Persons, 383.Google Scholar

39 Cardinal Bianchetti sharply admonished Birkhead for dismissing Fitzherbert as his agent, AAW A IX, no. 88.

40 In July 1612 Thomas Heath reported to Rome that Birkhead had fallen sick ‘of a burning feaver & [was] so consumed that his legges seemed as little as a mans wrest [i.e. wrist]’. He was ‘made so weake that being uphoulden by two, he could scarce set one legg before the other’, AAW A XI, no. 115 (p. 316).

41 See Letter 11.

42 John (Augustine) Bradshaw OSB, a friend of the seculars, wrote to Smith on 28 March 1610 (NS) that he should ‘procure a testimony from the inquisition what passed with you for your booke [Smith's Answer to Thomas Bels late Challenge] for it is reported here that you were meette weeping coming out of the inquisition’, AAW A IX, no. 29 (p. 73). When Smith came back to Paris in August 1611 from a short stay in England, Champney reported to More that Smith had just recovered from ‘some malencholie att his furst arrivall’, AAW A X, no. 109 (p. 319).

43 Persons died in April 1610. In September 1611 we find Smith taking satisfaction in the providential injuries and sudden deaths which had befallen those who opposed the agency: ‘perhaps if they looke abowt them they may find that God hath a stroke in our defence’ and ‘what meaneth it that amongst so many priests as are on this side of the sea both elder and weaker none are dead since this last opposition was made against the Archpr: demands but F. Persons and his three principal instruments in the opposition’, AAW A X, no. 126 (p. 363).

44 Birkhead reported to Smith on 2 July 1610 that their brethren were animated following Persons's death: ‘there heades be full of new petitions’, AAW A IX, no. 49 (p. 131).

45 See Letter 14.

46 TD V, 28.

47 See e.g. Letter 16.

48 Letter 10.

49 AAW A X, nos 50, 64 (printed in TD IV, pp. clxxiii–xxv).

50 AAW A XII, no. 218 (p. 486). In 1615 Jackson still fumed that the ‘court of R[ome] was the cause of continuance of all our miseries’, AAW A XIV, no. 6 (p. 15).

51 Letters 1, 32, 23, 25, 27, 31, 44, 46.

52 Letter 11.

53 Letters 16, 35.

54 Letter 21.

55 Letter 29.

56 TD V, 27–8; AAW A VIII, no. 162.

57 Letter 11.

58 For the conference at Douai, see TD V, 53–4; AAW A XI, no. 85; Belvederi, 214.

59 AAW A XI, no. 183.

60 AAW A XI, nos 138, 141. Cardinal Scipio [Caffarelli] Borghese, the papal secretary of state, had little confidence in the May conference's proceedings and distrusted William Bishop, Conway AH 23, 109–10, 112Google Scholar; cf. Belvederi, , 243.Google Scholar

61 TD V, 32–4.

62 It was carried out by Caesar Clement and Robert Chambers, two clerics reckoned by some as hostile to the seculars' cause. Their report was devastating in its condemnation of the Douai establishment, and of the incompetence of Worthington, TD V, 34–44. Worthington was led to believe that the visitation was Jesuit-inspired, Belvederi, 271. For a different reading of the origins of the visitation, see Beales, , Education, 140.Google Scholar

63 After the imposition of the rules laid down by the visitors in November 1612, Worthington seemed to gravitate back to SJ and the secular clergy's opponents, AAW A XII, no. 1, cf. nos 106, 179; Belvederi, 309.

64 For William Bishop's, Richard Smith's and Anthony Champney's petitions against the visitation, addressed to Cardinal Millini and Cardinal Borghese, see AAW A XII, no. 10 (pp. 24–5) (15 January 1613 (NS)). For the favourable response from Borghese over the college's rules, see AAW A XII, no. 73.

65 AAW A XII, no. 93.

66 Belvederi, 291.

67 TD V, 45; Guilday, , English Catholic Refugees, 117–19.Google Scholar

68 Allison, , ‘Later Life’, 103.Google Scholar

69 AAW A XII, no. 180.

70 William Bishop noted, however, that Walpole's busy-headed young Jesuit replacement, Thomas Rand, was suborning John Knatchbull to get Kellison's assurances that Kellison would cease collaborating with the anti-Jesuit secular priests, AAW A XII, no. 198 (p. 441).

71 Letters 4, 7. Birkhead himself conceded in April 1611 that some people thought that so long as the king were ‘secured from all practises’ by Catholics he would not care ‘though 200 masses were said upon a day in London’, AAW A X, no. 31 (p. 73). For John Bavant, see Bossy, , English Catholic Community, 206, 208nGoogle Scholar; Caraman, P. (ed.), John Gerard (1951), 23.Google Scholar

72 See Letter 17. The petition and lists of signatures were sent in separate packets, AAW A X, nos 128, 136, 142; TD V, 51–2. Even though Birkhead claimed in July that he and Smith had sent a list of 100 names, AAW A X, no. 93 (a letter which More noted was received with the ‘great pacquet’ only on 27 December 1611 (NS)), in August he was saying that he still retained ‘One or two packettes…about the suit’ and dared not send them ‘unies I have securitie’, AAW A X, no. 99 (pp. 277–8). Champney was still forwarding lists of names from Paris during December, TD V, 51–2.

73 AAW A XI, nos 46 (p. 123), 74. On 15 July 1612, however, Birkhead remarked to More that ‘yt comforteth me exceedinge much that yow have but insinuated our suite’ to the pope, AAW A XI, no. 119 (p. 325).

74 The seculars also had the support of the nuncio in Paris, Robert Ubaldini, AAW A XI, no. 148.

73 Letter 31. In fact Millini consistently advised against the appointment of a bishop. The seculars soon realised he was as unsympathetic to them as Bianchetti had been, Allison, ‘Richard Smith’, 160–1; AAW A XI, no. 183.

76 AAW A XI, nos 144, 175.

77 AAW A XI, no. 185 (p. 537).

78 AAW A XI, no. 192 (p. 555).

79 AAW A XI, no. 201 (p. 577). For Birkhead's reply to Bellarmine, AAW A XI, no. 212 (not sent until January 1613, AAW A XII, no. 4).

80 AAW A XII, no. 4 (p. 9).

81 Rome was also acting on advice from other observers of the English scene, for example the Minim friar, Bartholomew Teles, who recommended against the appointment of a bishop for England, Letter 40.

82 AAW A XII, no. 80 (p. 171).

83 AAW A XII, no. 201.

84 AAW A XII, no. 151, cf. XIII, no. 8; TD V, p. clviii–ix.

85 AAW A XII, nos 121, 157.

86 AAW A XII, no. 132.

87 AAW A XII, no. 213 (p. 475).

88 Birkhead was succeeded, after some delay, by William Harrison, AAW A XIV, nos 127, 132, 139, 164, 181.

89 CRS 41, 1.

90 The annotation of Hicks's volume often takes the form of polemical mini-essays about Tierney's failings as a historian. Hicks expressed his thoughts further in the margins of his own transcripts (at ABSI) of Robert Persons's letters: for example on one of 26 November 1608 (NS) – ‘If I acted as T[ierney] has done I should consider myself dishonest. – and that was the adjective Bishop [John Henry] King [of Portsmouth] used when I read the original to him whilst he checked from Tierney's printed edition’. On the transcript of one of Matthew Kellison's letters to Thomas More (AAW A XII, no. 137) the transcriber, Edwin Chadwick, noted ‘This seems a really sensible letter’ and Hicks added underneath ‘One of the few’.

91 CRS 41, 4, 14–16, 53–4, 70–1.

92 CRS 41, 48–9.

93 CRS 41, 9–10, 75–101.

94 CRS 41, 59.

95 Letter 17.

96 Letters 18, 21.

97 See Questier, M., ‘Religion, Loyalism and State Power in Early Modern England: English Romanists and the Jacobean Oath of Allegiance’, Historical Journal 40 (1997), 311–29, at p. 314.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

98 Letter 10.

99 Larkin and Hughes, 249.

100 AAW A IX, no. 49 (p. 131) [part printed in TD IV, p. clxv]. The English Jesuits claimed to be the principal Catholic opponents of the oath, and ‘sole maintainers and defenders of the deposing power’, Foley VII, 1059.

101 AAW A IX, no. 31 (p. 78) [part printed in TD IV, p. clxxx]; Questier, ‘Loyalty’, 316.

102 Anthony Champney wrote to Thomas More on 31 July 1612 (NS) that he and William Bishop had been told by Robert Ubaldini, the nuncio in Paris, that accusations were made against them to Paul V that they favoured the oath, though Champney could allege that he had always counselled Catholics against it, and had two brothers who had been condemned in praemunire for refusing it and who had died in prison, AAW A XI, no. 128; Peacock, E. (ed.), A List of the Raman Catholics in the County of York in 1604 (1872), 24.Google Scholar

103 Montague paid a fine of £6000, imposed in Star Chamber, for refusal of the oath (on condition, however, that it would not be offered again), Letter 15. Smith said Montague would have willingly lost all had he not been threatened with his son and heir being taken from him and drawn into heresy. Still, there was speculation that Montague had paid the fine in return for complete immunity from prosecution and that he had revealed information about the priests, AAW A X, nos 126, 142. In early 1612 Birkhead assured More that Montague's fine ‘protecteth him nothinge for receyving of preistes. in so much that the other day comminge to London, [William] atkinson and another pursivant tooke a man of his one lohn bennett from his heeles for suspicion of being a preist’, AAW A XI, no. 13 (p. 36).

106 See e.g. Letter 55.

105 AAW A XII, no. 86 (p. 187). See Letter 40.

106 AAW A IX, no. 88, X, nos 9, 10.

107 Larkin and Hughes, no. 118.

108 In addition, the clergy were learning how to put these trials to good polemical use in Rome. They represented their martyrs as dying exclusively for refusing to take the oath. And when Cornelius O'Devany, Bishop of Down and Connor (also refusing the oath of allegiance) was executed for treason in Dublin at the beginning of 1612, Letter 34, this was represented as typical of the courage which a newly appointed English bishop might show if he came into conflict with the State: Champney wrote to More on 5 May 1612 (NS) that the execution had been attended by various miracles and ‘the good bishope hadd his life offered him yf he would goe once to churchef.] what glorie would be to oar countrie yf the lyke hadd happened there but alas we are farr from that happiness. I hope this will forwarde and facilitate your suite [for the appointment of a bishop], the sufferinge of one Bishope dothe exceede the deathe of manie prestes for lustre and edificatione’, AAW A XI, no. 73 (p. 211). (The enemies of the English secular clergy tended to use Ireland as an instance of a Protestant-dominated country where the papal policy of continuing to appoint bishops had been counter-productive, Conway AH 24, 41.)

109 AAW A XI, no. 121 (p. 329).

110 See Letter 33.

111 Letter 33. Cf., however, Croft, P., ‘Robert Cecil, Catholics and the Creation of the Baronets of 1611’, in P. Lake and M. Questier (eds), Conformity and Orthodoxy in the English Church, c. 1560–1660 (forthcoming).Google Scholar

112 See Questier, M., ‘Sir Henry Spiller, Recusancy and the Efficiency of the Jacobean Exchequer’, Historical Research 66 (1993), 251–66CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at p. 262; AAW A XI, nos 1, 19.

113 James I, An Apologie for the Oath of Allegiance.… Together with a Premonition of his Majesties, to all most Mightie Monarches, Kings, free Princes and States of Christendom (1609).Google Scholar

114 AAW A VIII, no. 138 (pp. 577–8); Milward II, 92.

115 Letter 19; AAW A XI, no. 49; Letter 27.

116 Letter 9.

117 Letters 22, 23. Simon Adams shows that the Vorstius controversy was used by English diplomats like Sir Ralph Winwood as a way of reasserting Protestant Galvinisi links between England and the United Provinces against the presumed dangers from Johan van Oldenbarnevelt's pro-French and anti-Calvinist tendencies, Adams, 195–9. But the English Catholic commentators concentrated primarily on James's own announcement that his concern was to uphold religious orthodoxy (which did not have to be seen as simply a Protestant orthodoxy). See also Shriver, F., ‘Orthodoxy and Diplomacy: James I and the Vorstius Affair’, English Historical Review 85 (1970), 449–74.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

118 Letters 24, 25, 26.

119 AAW A XI, nos 48 (p. 127), 49; Milward II, 34–5.

120 Letter 15.

121 Adams, 192.

122 For the Florentine marriage project, see Strong, R., ‘England and Italy: The Marriage of Henry Prince of Wales’, in R. Ollard and P. Tudor-Craig (eds), For Veronica Wedffimd These (1986), 5987, at pp. 6375.Google Scholar

123 Smith, , Life, I, 113, 467–8, 484, 487Google Scholar; Strong, R., Henry, Prince of Wales and England's Last Renaissance (1986), 81.Google Scholar

124 Smith, , Life, I, 119–20, II, 1Google Scholar; Strong, , Henry, Prince of Wales, 80–3.Google Scholar

125 Andrew Thrush, following Roy Strong, has argued that the Stuart regime was taking seriously the Savoyard match for Prince Henry up until the prince's death, ‘The French Marriage and the Origins of the 1614 Parliament’. I am grateful to Andrew Thrush for showing me a draft of this forthcoming article. See also Strong, , Henry, Prince of Wales, 82–3.Google Scholar

126 Thrush, , ‘French Marriage’.Google Scholar

127 A new Savoyard proposal offering another infanta, Catherine, for Prince Charles never made much progress, despite James's initial willingness to negotiate, CSPV 1610–13, 456.Google Scholar

128 AAW A XI, no. 228 (p. 657); cf. CSPV 1610–13, p. xi; AAW A XI, nos 195, 201, XII, no. 103. Cf. Smith, , Life, I, 123–5Google Scholar; Adams, , 214Google Scholar; Strong, , Henry, Prince of Wales, 82–4Google Scholar; AAW A XI, nos 116, 192; Letter 37.

129 Adams, 188–9.

130 Adams, ch. 6. Bouillon had as early as spring 1611 proposed a French match for Prince Henry, which, as Adams describes it, would have been a ‘“protestant” French marriage’, allowing for the extension of English influence into France rather than viceversa, Adams, 191. As Richard Smith informed Thomas More from Paris in early February 1613, ‘D. Bullion told a principal Gentleman who told it me that our late Prince was to have maried the second daughter of France and that he concluded that manage at his last being in England. And that he assureth him self he shall returne thither to make the same mach with this new Prince. Here is saied that if our Prince had lived he wold have bene Captarne of the Hugenots in France and have made warr in thes partes’, AAW A XII, no. 30 (p. 69). For Bouillon there was the possibility even of breaking the French-Spanish double match by this means (or at least of protecting French Huguenots from the potential effects of it) and bringing off a coup d'état in the French court by removing the leading minister Villeroi, Adams, , 203, 211–12.Google Scholar

131 In September 1612 the seculars were encouraged by attempts in the University of Paris to ensure the continued exclusion of SJ from it. Champney proudly reported that ‘the advocate of the universitie’ had argued against SJ by citing the facts of the Appellant controversy, AAW A XI, no. 148 (p. 405).

132 Adams, , 216–17.Google Scholar

133 The secular clergy watched the rise of Ker with interest. Admittedly in June 1611 Champney thought it ‘badd tydinges’ that Ker ‘whoe ys alreadie knight of the garter and as some say Earle of Devonshire and expecteth or hopethe to be Duke of Buckinghame’ was rumoured to ‘have begged my lord montacute’ [i.e. Viscount Montague's forfeiture for refusing the oath of allegiance], but he noted that it displeased the ‘haeretikes’ as well, AAW A X, no. 63 (p. 171). And, in fact, Ker told Northampton that he refused to accept Montague's forfeiture, CSPD 1611–18, 151Google Scholar. In September 1613 the Spanish ambassador was reported to have informed the Spanish court that Ker was ‘no persecutor’ of English Catholics, CSPD 1611–18, 199.Google Scholar

134 Adams, , 236.Google Scholar

135 AAW A XI, no. 208 (p. 597).

136 AAW A XI, no. 215 (p. 615).

137 AAW A XI, no. 226 (p. 653). See Woodward, J., The Theatre of Death (Woodbridge, Suffolk, 1997), 139–40.Google Scholar

138 Adams, , 241.Google Scholar

139 Thrush, , ‘French Marriage’.Google Scholar

140 Adams, , 243Google Scholar. Thrush shows that Thomas Howard, Earl of Suffolk, urged the calling of parliament in 1614, rather than making a dynastic treaty with the French, as a solution to the crown's debt problems, Thrush, ‘French Marriage’.

141 AAW A XII, no. 35 (p. 78).

142 Wickes, G., ‘Henry Constable, Poet and Courtier, 1562–1613’, Biographical Studies 2 (19531954), 272300, at p. 293.Google Scholar

143 Questier, , ‘Crypto-Catholicism’, 49.Google Scholar

144 Letter 48.

145 There was a brief attempt to revive the French project in 1616.

146 Adams, , 256, 261–72Google Scholar; Allison, , ‘Richard Smith’.Google Scholar

147 The priests sometimes ripped covers off books in order to reduce their weight and thus save money when sending the books around Europe, AAW A XI, no. 116.

148 See e.g. AAW A X, no. 110 (Latin summary of aspects of the persecution of English Catholics in letters of July and August 1611); AAW A XI, no. 229 (summary in Latin of some of Birkhead's newsletters, incorporating inter alia the story about George Abbot, the goldsmiths' company and St Dunstan, for which see Questier, M., Conversion, Politics and Religion in England, 1580–1623 (Cambridge, 1996), 24n).Google Scholar

149 AAW A VIII, no. 167 (pp. 657–8).

150 AAW A XII, no. 190. See also Letters 45, 49, 52, 53.

151 After the executions of priests such as Roger Cadwallader, George Napper, William (Maurus) Scott OSB and Richard Newport, a flurry of accounts of how they died were directed towards Rome. Anthony Champney replied to More's letter to him of 8 August 1612 (NS), ‘wherein you wishe a more particuler and ample narratione of our brethrens sufferances’, by saying that he had ‘a letter writen by a frenche gentleman out of Ingland to his frend here in parise contayninge almost the whole manner of the deathes of the two last martyrs [Newport and Scott] which beinge writen by a stranger will beare more credit’. He would send it as soon as he could, though he understood there was already an Italian version of it doing the rounds in Rome, AAW A XI, no. 141 (p. 391).

152 For an account of John Almond's execution which shows how the tradition around a martyr was constructed, see Letter 38.

153 Anstr. I, 237; Letter 12.

154 A True Report of the Araignment, Tryall, Conviction and Condemnation of…Robert Drewrie (1607)Google Scholar, sig. B4r–v.

155 AAW A VIII, no. 85 (pp. 432–3); J.H. Pollen (ed.), Acts of English Martyrs (1891), 149.Google Scholar

156 See Letter 38.

157 The fact that both John Roberts OSB and William (Maurus) Scott OSB were executed with a secular priest was a visible symbol of the perfect accord and union which ought to and could exist between the secular clergy and the best intentioned of the religious. (Roberts and Scott were both Benedictines of the Spanish congregation which supported the secular clergy's petitions for ordinary jurisdiction, whereas the Cassinese congregation of OSB generally did not.)

158 See Letter 20.

159 AAW A XI, no. 192 (p. 555).

160 AAW A XI, no. 228 (p. 657).

161 See e.g. AAW A IX, no. 88 (p.293) (Birkhead's note of 15 November 1610 that George Napper, the day before his execution, sent his Voice for bb under his owne hand' and his nomination of those he thought ‘fitt for such a dignitie’). See also AAW A XI, no. 164.

162 AAW A VIII, no. 188 (p. 705).

163 Letter 12.

164 Richard Challoner, ed. Pollen, J.H., Memoirs of Missionary Priests (1924), 320–1.Google Scholar

165 The secular priests continued to enthuse about Andrewes because of his offensiveness to Calvinists and moderate puritans. In December 1621 William Bishop reported that King James ‘did countenance’ Andrewes ‘seeming to say masse’ and that the chapel royal should be decorated ‘after thold maner’ and a ‘crucifix of gold…sett in it’, AAW A XVI, no. 72 (p. 248).

166 AAW A XII, no. 179 (p. 395); Letter 47.

167 AAW A XII, no. 224 (p. 501); Fincham, K.C., Prelate as Pastor (Oxford, 1990), 44–5.Google Scholar

168 AAW A XI, no. 115 (p. 315).

169 AAW A XII, no. 43 (p. 93).

170 AAW A X, no. 29 (p. 67).

171 TD V, 22, 29.

172 CRS 41, 9–10.

173 See Rylands, W.H. (ed.), The Four Visitations of Berkshire (2 vols, 19071908), I, 76Google Scholar. Cf. Page, W., Ditchfield, P.M. and Cope, J.H., The Victoria County History of Berkshire IV (1924), 239.Google Scholar

174 PRO, SP 14/19/111; Bannerman, W. Bruce (ed.), The Visitations of the County of Sussex (1905), 84Google Scholar; Letter 53.

175 Haigh, C., ‘From Monopoly to Minority: Catholicism in Early Modern England’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, fifth series, 31 (1981), 129–47, at p. 142.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

176 Rather unconvincingly Robert Persons assured Birkhead that his appointment was essentially fortuitous, TD V, pp. xxxii–iii.

177 PRO, SP 12/240/144.

178 Also written ‘Lambe’.

179 PRO, SP 14/19/111; Salisbury MSS XVII, 500.Google Scholar

180 AAW A X, no. 115; Anstr. I, 37.

181 Anstr. I, 84.

182 Letter 31; Anstr. I, 357–8.

183 alias or vere Dawson. His name in religion was Simon Stock.

184 Anstr. II, 83.

185 Anstr. I, 287; AAW A VIII, nos 102, 183, IX, no. 3.

186 AAW A XII, nos 109, 147; Shanahan, D., ‘The Family of St. Thomas More in Essex 1581–1640’, Essex Recusant 7 (1966), 105–14, at p. 107Google Scholar; Loomie, A.J., ‘A Grandniece of Thomas More: Catherine Bentley ca. 1565-ca. 1625’, Moreana 8 (1971) 1315CrossRefGoogle Scholar; McCann, T.J., ‘Catherine Bentley, Great Grand-Daughter of St. Thomas More, and her Catholic Connections in Sussex’, Moreana 11 (1974), 41–5.Google Scholar

187 AAW A XII, no. 205 (p. 460).

188 Letter 6. In 1613 Benjamin Norton was discussing the possibility of a marriage between Katherine Pole (Geoffrey's sister) and Thomas More's brother, AAW A XII, no 126; Letter 46.

189 Letters 1, 6.

190 Letter 22.

191 Letters 12, 24.

192 Letter 12. Francis Barnaby came from the same Yorkshire parish, Cawthorne, as Anthony Champney.

193 See e.g. Letter 54.