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The Bloody Questions Reconsidered1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 September 2015

Patrick McGrath
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Extract

The so-called ‘Bloody Questions’ were originally put to Edmund Campion and others who were charged with him in a mass trial of fourteen priests and one layman in 1581. Campion seems to have been the first to call them Bloody Questions. They have over the centuries been the subject of considerable controversy between Catholic and non-Catholic writers, and it is worthwhile looking at them again in some detail.

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Other
Information
British Catholic History , Volume 20 , Issue 3 , May 1991 , pp. 305 - 319
Copyright
Copyright © Catholic Record Society 1973

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Footnotes

1

The article is based on a paper read at a Conference on Post-Reformation Catholic History held in Plater College, Oxford in July 1989. I am grateful to Alison Houston for her help in collecting the material.

References

Notes

2 State Trials 24 Elizabeth, column 1062: ‘I said, indeed, they were bloody questions and very Pharisaical, undermining of my life.’

3 The version below is that given by Allen, William in Execution of Justice in England, pp. 119–120 Google Scholar. This varies a little from the version given in State Trials 24 Elizabeth columns 1078–1079. The main difference is in question 3 which in the State Trials version runs as follows: Whether the pope have, or had, power to authorize the earls of Northumberland and Westmorland, and other her majesty’s subjects, to rebel, or take up arms against her majesty, or to authorize Dr. Sanders, or any others, to invade Ireland, or any other her dominions, and to bear arms against her, and whether they did therein lawfully or no?

See also Cecil’s version of the questions in Execution of Justice in England, pp. 37ff.

4 The writers in question were Nicholas Sanders, De visibili monarchia Ecclesiae, 1571, and Richard Bristow, A Briefe Treatise of diverse plaine and sure wayes to find out the truthe… conteyning sundry worthy Motives unto the Catholike faith… 1574. These works were taken very seriously by the Elizabethan government and sparked off lengthy controversies. See Milward, Peter, Religious Controversies of the Elizabethan Age, 1977, pp. 11–15, 39–43.Google Scholar

5 The Tudor Constitution, edit. G. R. Elton, Cambridge, 1965, p. 418; ‘We charge and command all and singular the nobles, subjects, peoples and others aforesaid that they do not dare obey her orders mandates and laws. Those who shall act to the contrary we include in the like sentence of excommunication.’

6 A. 0. Meyer, England and the Catholic Church under Queen Elizabeth, translated by the Rev. J. R. McKee, 1916. pp. 138ff.

7 Milward, Peter, Religious Controversies of the Elizabethan Age, pp. 61ff.Google Scholar

8 ibidem, p. 63.

9 Tierney-Dodd, vol. iii, appendix iii, pp. v–xvi.

10 CRS 5, p. 151.

11 CRS 5, pp. 104–106.

12 See Execution of Justice in England, passim.

13 Publication of the replies might possibly provide other Catholics with examples of how to avoid a direct answer.

14 Execution of Justice in England, p. 120, where Allen wrote: “…Whereby let all princes and peoples Christian bear witness of our miseries and unjust afflictions, who are enforced to suffer death for our only cogitations and inward opinions, unduly sought out by force and fear… we having committed nothing by word or deed against our prince or laws…’.

15 infra, pp. 315–316.

16 The questions may well have been put to others not mentioned in this article, and I should be glad to receive information from any one who can add to the names given here.

17 CRS 2, p. 283.

18 CRS 5, p. 86.

19 Burton, E. H. and Pollen, J. H., Lives of the English Martyrs, second series, vol. i, 1914, pp. 65, 66.Google Scholar

20 CRS 5, p. 161.

21 CRS 5, p. 77.

22 CRS 5, p. 172.

23 CRS 5, p. 62.

24 State Trials 24 Elizabeth, column 1081, 1082.

25 CRS 60, pp. 54–55.

26 Pollen, J. H., Acts of the English Martyrs, p. 301.Google Scholar

27 Challoner, pp. 70–72.

28 CRS 5, p. 218.

29 CRS 2, p. 283. The twenty-seven people were Roger Astell, Robert Bellamy, Godfrey Burton, John Beckinsale, John Bradstock, Thomas Bristow, Bracian Brownell, Christopher Burton, Edward Chester, Lionel Edes alias Genynge, Ralph Emerson, John Gray, Nicholas Horner, Robert Jackson, Nicholas Marwood, Martin Rainbow, Richard Randall, John Launder, Peter Pencavel, Thomas Pencavel, Robert Standen, William Travers, Richard Wakefield, Richard Waldern, Richard Webster, John Williams, Robert Yardley.

30 CRS 5, p. 161.

31 CRS 5, p. 154; Burton, E. H. and Pollen, J. H., Lives of the English Martyrs, second series, vol. i, pp. 405–406.Google Scholar

32 CRS 5, p. 160.

33 CRS 5, p. 162.

34 CRS 60, pp. 68–69.

35 CRS 5, pp. 154–156. Robert Bellamy, John Bolton, William Clargenet, Thomas Haberley, Thomas Hall, John Hewett, David Kempe, Richard Lloyd alias Flower, John Marshe, Jonas Meredith, Robert Nutter, William Parry, James Taylor, John Weldon, John Vivion. People sometimes changed their minds. Robert Bellamy was prepared to fight for the queen in July 1588, refused to take her part in September 1588 but was willing to fight on her side in April 1593 (CRS 2, p. 283; CRS 5, p. 154; CRS p. 60, pp. 66–67).

36 William Cornwallis, a priest and brother of the prominent Catholic layman Sir Thomas Cornwallis, said that ‘if the pope should send an army into the realm to establish the Catholic Romish religion, he would in that case fight against such an army to the uttermost of his power on Her Majesty’s side.’ See Anstruther, p. 90.

37 Anstruther, p. 164, He said he would fight for the queen ‘against what pope or potentate so ever’, but he refused to acknowledge the royal supremacy and was executed.

38 Tierney-Dodd iii appendix iii pp, xvff.

39 Foley iii. p. 292; State Trials 24 Elizabeth column 1082; Homes, Peter, Resistance and Compromise, Cambridge 1982, p. 181.Google Scholar

40 For Bosgrave and Orton, see Tierney-Dodd iii appendix iii p. xv; Foley, iii. 279 ff., 770 ff.; State Trials 24 Elizabeth, column 1082; State Papers Domestic Elizabeth cliv nos. 53, 53(i), 53(ii). It is possible that the replies of Bosgrave and Orton were forged by the government, but it seems odd that the government should have picked only on these two. Bosgrave had blundered earlier by agreeing to attend the state church under the mistaken impression that this was acceptable to Catholics. See also Skwarczynski, Paul ‘Elsinore 1580: John Rogers and James Bosgrave’, Recusant History, vol. 16, no. 1, May 1982.Google Scholar

41 CRS 5, pp. 244f.

42 Burton, E. H. and Pollen, J. H., Lives of the English Martyrs, second series, i. p. 428.Google Scholar

43 CRS 60, p. 67.

44 They were the earl of Arundel, William Bennett, Robert Bickerdike, Alexander Briant, Thomas Cabell, Edmund Campion, William Cooke, John Cornelius, Thomas Cottam, Ralph Emerson, Robert Goldeborowe, Leonard Hide, Lawrence Johnson (alias Richardson), William Marsden, John Munden, John Nutter, Edward Shelley, John Shert, Ralph Sherwin, Christopher Tailby, John Thompson, Edward Thornbury, William Wiggs, Henry Webley.

45 CRS 60, pp. 59ff.

46 CRS 5, pp. 105–106. There is, however, evidence that Emerson also said that ‘he will never fight against her Majesty, nor against the religion he professeth.’ Foley, iii. 36.

47 Foley iii, 463.

48 Challoner, p. 45.

49 CRS 60, p. 53.

50 CRS 60, p. 48.

51 Challoner, p. 97.

52 CRS 60, p. 75.

53 Challoner, p. 120.

54 CRS 60, pp. 49–50.

55 Tierney-Dodd, appendix iii, pp. xi–xii.

56 Challoner, p. 98.

57 Ansthruther, p. 9.

58 CRS 5, p. 160.

59 Pritchard, Arnold, Catholic Loyalism in Elizabethan England, p. 42.Google Scholar

60 State Trials 24 Elizabeth column 1082.

61 CRS 5, p. 243.

62 State Trials 24 Elizabeth column 1079.

63 Challoner, p. 45.

64 Tierney-Dodd, appendix iii, pp. xiv, xv.

65 Challoner, p. 246.

66 ibidem, p. 45.

67 Burton, E. H. and Pollen, J. H., Lives of the English Martyrs, second series, vol. 1, p. 208.Google Scholar

68 CRS 5, p. 173.

69 Challoner, p. 140.

70 John Gerard: The Autobiography of an Elizabethan, edited Philip Caraman, 1956, p. 108.

71 Caraman, Philip, Henry Garnet and the Gunpowder Plot, 1984, p. 59.Google Scholar

72 Pollen, J. H., Acts of the English Martyrs, pp. 111ff.Google Scholar

73 CRS 60, pp. 61–62.

74 Execution of Justice in England, pp. 38, 47–48.

75 ibidem., pp. 90, 119–120.

76 CRS 5, pp. 321–328.

77 Trevor-Roper, H. R., Historical Essay, 1957, p. 116.Google Scholar Boots, the chemists, used to run a large circulating library.

78 Camm, Dom Bede, Lives of the English Martyrs, vol. 2, pp. xxxiv–xxxvi.Google Scholar

79 Burton, E. H. and Pollen, J. H., Lives of the English Martyrs, second series, vol. 1. pp. xvii and xix.Google Scholar

80 Hughes, Philip, The Reformation in England, iii. 358–361.Google Scholar

81 Caraman, Philip, Henry Garnet and the Gunpowder Plot, pp. 58, 59.Google Scholar

82 Edwards, Francis, The Jesuits in England, 1985, p. 22.Google Scholar