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English Clerical Converts to Protestantism, 1580–1596

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 September 2015

Michael C. Questier
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Extract

It is proposed in this article to discuss the English Catholic seminarists who apostatised between 1582 and 1596—that is, after the date when Catholics in England were required unequivocally to separate themselves totally from the Established Church but before the beginning of the Appellant Controversy. P. McGrath in a recent article has set out the basic biographical details of a number of the Elizabethan apostates. T. H. Clancy has dealt with Jesuit defectors from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries and gives interesting and useful statistics on apostates in general. Neither of them, however, makes any extensive attempt to assess the development or significance of these apostates’ changes of religion. McGrath expressed the hope that his ‘survey… of an important section of the Elizabethan clergy’ would ‘draw attention to the variety of motives influencing these men’ and ‘the need for further examination of their strange careers’. It is the intention of this article to explore further the importance of apostasy among the Elizabethan seminarists (seminary priests and students for the priesthood who never got as far as being ordained). Instead of concentrating, as McGrath and Clancy do, upon establishing who the apostates were, a comparative approach over a shorter period will be employed, using a wider range of source material, including the books of ‘motives’. The aim is to challenge the view that all clerical apostates were basically of similar significance, distinguished mainly by whether they remained with the Established Church or not. It will be argued here that the phenomenon grew more serious between 1580 and 1596. It is not enough to say of these apostates merely that there were bound to be ‘deviationists’ from the Allen-Persons line, or that they had the example of the Marian priests before them.

Type
Research Article
Information
British Catholic History , Volume 20 , Issue 4 , October 1991 , pp. 455 - 477
Copyright
Copyright © Catholic Record Society 1973

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References

Notes

1 Apostasy, a ‘total falling away’ from the entire body of revelation contained in the Church, should be distinguished from heresy, A Catholic Dictionary of Theology (London, 1962), I, p. 122. Nevertheless, the word ‘apostate’ will be used here to describe the English seminarists who left the Catholic Church, either temporarily or permanently, first because contemporaries themselves used the term to describe these men, for example Gregory Martin in his Treatise of Schism (Douai, 1578), sig. Gviiiv; and also because it is a convenient term to denote them. Its use should not be taken to convey the opprobrium usually attached to the word ‘apostate’.

2 P. McGrath, ‘Apostate and Naughty Priests in England under Elizabeth I’, in Bellenger, D. A. (ed.), Opening the Scrolls (Bath, 1987), pp. 50–83 Google Scholar; Clancy, T. H., ‘Priestly Perseverance in the Old Society of Jesus: the Case of England’, Recusant History 19 (1989), pp. 286–312.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

3 McGrath, , ‘Apostate and Naughty Priests’, p. 79.Google Scholar

4 McGrath’s classification of apostates is made initially on the basis of whether apostates reverted to Rome or not.

5 McGrath, , ‘Apostate and Naughty Priests’, p. 51.Google Scholar

6 There had already been attempts to make prominent Catholic clerics conform, for instance John Feckenham in 1578, BL, Lansdowne MS. 27, no. 16, fo. 20.

7 Allen, sig. Aii–iiv.

8 Ibidem, fos. 28, 30.

9 PRO, SP 12/149/84, fo. 193.

10 Edwards, F. (ed.), The Elizabethan Jesuits (London, 1981), pp. 172, 169 Google Scholar; Aveling, J. C. H., The Catholic Recusants of the West Riding of Yorkshire 1558–1790, (Leeds, 1963), p. 219 Google Scholar: William Dean, one of the priests banished in January 1585 had turned Queen’s evidence. Another, Edmund Sykes, once attended a Protestant service while in prison.

11 Morris, J., The Troubles of Our Catholic Forefathers, Second Series, (London, 1875), p. 30.Google Scholar

12 Munday, Anthony, A Discoverie of Edmund Campion (London, 1582)Google Scholar, sigs. Bviv, Cviv; Cecil, William, The Execution of Justice in England (London, 1583)Google Scholar, sigs. Civ–ii.

13 The Summe of the Conference (London, 1584); PRO, SP 12/154/16, Reynolds reported to Walsingham that Hart was only taking part in the exercise in order to secure a pardon; Charnock, Robert, A Reply to a notorious libeli (1603), p. 70.Google Scholar

14 HMC Salisbury, 18, p. 239.

15 Anstruther, I, pp. 89–90.

16 Most of the livings received by the apostates in this study as rewards for their conversion had been valued at over £12 in the ‘Valor Ecclesiasticus’ of 1535.

17 CRS 4, p. 8.

18 Clarke, Thomas, The Recantation of Thomas Clarke (London, 1594)Google Scholar, sig. Bvv.

19 APC 30, p. 601.

20 PRO, SP 12/245/138, fo. 220, Topcliffe reports that Gray ‘renounced the pope and all his authority and so will he do to get loose and then work mischief as he did before’.

21 For example, Thomas Alfield and Thomas Webley, APC 13, p. 145; cf. James Bosgrave, the Jesuit, Allen, fos. 32v–34v.

22 For instance, J. H. Pollen thought Thomas Stanhope and Francis Tilletson were apostates, The Institution of the Archpriest Blackwell (London, 1916), pp. 9–10; J. C. H. Aveling regards James Younger as an apostate, Aveling, p. 143.

23 Anstruther, I, pp. 317–18; PRO, SP 14/23/21. The parish was rife with Catholic activity, O’Dwyer, M., ‘Catholic Recusants in Essex, c. 1580–c. 1600’ (unpublished M. A. thesis, London University, 1960), p. 137.Google Scholar

24 These men are to be distinguished from others whose apostasy is not clearly established, e.g., Thomas Nowell, who travelled to Rome with Anthony Munday; unlike Munday he was clearly a Catholic in Rome; Munday describes him as enthusing over the catacombs there, The English Romayne Lyfe (London, 1582), pp. 7, 45. Letters from Allen to Agazzari record anxiety over his anticipated apostasy, and Barret ultimately reported that he had joined up with Munday in England, Letters, p. 208; CRS 58, pp. 42–3. However, there is no clear evidence for any specific change of religious views.

25 His unfortunate temperament and desire to return home led him towards heresy, CRS 58, p. 49; Letters, pp. 128, 142. His confession is more of an apologia than a recantation, AAW, Series A, 3, no. 53. His apostasy was never fully certified, Aveling, pp. 56–7.

26 Letters, pp. III, 128, 188.

27 Their recantations appear in Allen’s True Report and John Bridgewater’s Concertatio, both of 1583.

28 Anstruther, I, pp. 261–2; Allen, fo. 30; Osborne arrived at Rheims in March 1583 and produced a recantation on 19 May.

29 Allen says that he planned to do ‘something which might be pleasing and acceptable to those in power in England’, Letters, pp. 13, 136; Allen, fo. 26. Baynes had just been appointed as a catechist, Foley, 7, pt. I, p. 61.

30 Letters, pp. 13, 14, 136, 139, 144, 188, 194, 410; Knox, T. F. (ed.). The First and Second Diaries of the English College Douai (London, 1878), p. 187.Google Scholar

31 Letters, p. 155.

32 PRO, SP 15/27/77.

33 CRS 4, pp. 10–11.

34 M. Maclure says that this was in 1583, The Paul’s Cross Sermons 1534–1642 (University of Toronto Press, 1975), p. 213; it would have to have been early in 1583 since he accompanied Nichols back across the Channel. Persons said that he made this public recantation unwillingly, CRS 4, p. 11.

35 CRS 58, p. 44.

36 Letters, p. 182.

37 Allen, fos. 24v, 29.

38 Nichols had held a curacy in the West of England before he converted in the late 1570’s, The Oration and Sermon (1581), sig. Bv.

39 He was reported to be a converted Jesuit rather than a failed seminary student, CRS 4, p. 7; Arber, E. (ed.) A Transcript of the Registers of the Company of Stationers of London; 1554–1640, 5 vols., (London, 1875–94), 2, p. 388 Google Scholar. His recantation was referred to as a noteworthy example for others to follow, Anstruther, G., ‘A Missing Martyr pamphlet’, London Recusant 5 (1975), pp. 67–74 Google Scholar, at p. 70.

40 He had written another confession in which he accused various Catholics of involvement with Campion, Allen, fo. Ilv.

41 The subject matter caused offence to the Privy Council, CRS 4, p. 8; APC 13, pp. 199–200.

42 Persons relied for some of his material on an anonymous attack on Nichols which does not now survive; a reply to Persons came from Fenner, Dudley in An Answer unto the Confutation of John Nichols his Recantation (London, 1583)Google Scholar.

43 Allen, fo. 22–2v; The College authorities engineered Nichols’s arrest in Rouen.

44 Letters, p. 177.

45 The First and Second Diaries, p. 352; Smith may be the seminarist of that name, Anstruther, I, p. 323.

46 de Mornay, Philippe, A Treatise of the Church (London, 1579)Google Scholar. Persons remarked that the book was proving influential in England, Persons, A Discoverie of J. Nichols minister (1581), sig. Ivv. Anthony Hungerford, a layman who apostatised in 1588, said he was converted in part by reading Mornay, , The Advise of a Sonne (1639), p. 61.Google Scholar

47 E.g., the sections of Nichols’s tract between sigs. Cvv–Diiiv, and sigs. Dvi–vii are a virtual transcription of Field’s translation of Mornay, pp. 53–61, and pp. 66–7 respectively (of the second edition of 1579).

48 Nichols qualified his claims in the Oration and Sermon, sigs. Cii–iiv. Persons states that the sermon before the Pope was nothing more than a signed abjuration, Persons, The Discoverie, sigs. Aviii–Biv; Allen confirmed his accusations, Allen, fos. 1–5; cf. Letters, p. 96.

49 Nichols, , A declaration (London, 1581), sigs. Biii–iiiv.Google Scholar

50 Ibid., sig. Bvv.

51 Ibid., sig. Biiiiv.

52 Armstrong, B. G., Calvinism and the Amyraut Heresy (Madison, 1969), p. 65 Google Scholar; cf. McGrath, A., Iustitia Dei, 2 vols., (Cambridge, 1986), 1, p. 27.Google Scholar Theophilus Higgons claimed concerning Purgatory that ‘my understanding (upon some defect) was convinced, rather than my conscience persuaded, in this point’, A Sermon (London, 1611), p. 44.

53 CRS 4, p. 8.

54 Letters, p. 144.

55 Ibidem, p. 195.

56 CRS 58, p. 49.

57 Letters, p. 196; Anstruther, I, p. 262.

58 Anstruther, I, pp. 108, 263.

59 Previously an enthusiastic missioner, Owen was still offering his services to the government in 1595, HMC Salisbury, 5, p. 368.

60 PRO, SP 15/29/102. He was arrested at Padua and taken to Rome, Edwards, (ed.), The Elizabethan Jesuits, p. 181 Google Scholar; he spent five years in the Inquisition’s prison, CRS 58, p. 111.

61 PRO, SP 12/187/9, 9. i, fo. 14v.

62 For Atkinson’s dual career, see HMC Salisbury, 4, p. 478, vol. 5, pp. 83, 484, vol. 6, pp. 67, 378, vol. 7, p. 300, vol. 20, pp. 146–9; he became virulently anti-Catholic as well as an efficient Crown servant, PRO, SP 15/32/89.

63 PRO, SP 12/217/30, though his recantation sermon states he had always been Catholic; more than one conversion would suggest a lack of integrity, Recantations, sig. A4.

64 Anstruther, I, p. 347.

65 Ibidem.

66 CRS 58, p. 42.

67 Ibidem, p. 91.

68 CRS 60, pp. 19–20.

69 Recantations.

70 PRO, SP 12/223/110.

71 Recantations, p. 9.

72 Ibidem, pp. 21–3.

73 Ibidem, p. 7.

74 Ibidem, pp. 7, 10.

75 PRO, SP 12/149/51, fo. 122.

76 The miracles accompanying the exorcisms had originally been written up by Tyrrell in a manuscript tract.

77 For the benefices he obtained, see Anstruther, I, p. 363.

78 He was preceded by Dr. John Reynolds; members of the Privy Council were present, Caraman, P. (ed.), William Weston (London, 1955), pp. 133, 137.Google Scholar The Tyrrell family was of high social rank, Emmison, F. G., Tudor Secretary (London, 1961)Google Scholar, passim.

79 Evidence suggests that his attempt to flee to the Continent in 1593 was connected with religious doubts, HMC Salisbury, 4, pp. 380–1, 392–4. Thus he made eight conversions rather than the six with which he is usually credited.

80 Kenny, A., ‘A Martyr Manqué: The Early Life of Anthony Tyrrell’, Clergy Review 42 (1957), pp. 651–8 Google Scholar, for Tyrrell’s career up to 1582; Devlin, C., ‘An Unwilling Apostate: The case of Anthony Tyrrell’, The Month (1951), pp. 346–58 Google Scholar; Tyrrell’s involvement with the Babington conspirators is covered by Read, C., Mr. Secretary Walsingham, 3 vols., (Oxford, 1925)Google Scholar, 3, ch. 1.

81 PRO, SP 12/108/65.

82 His father was on papal and Spanish pension lists but it is evident that the sums involved were insufficient, Pollen, J. H., The English Catholics in the Reign of Queen Elizabeth (London, 1920), p. 249 Google Scholar; cf. PRO, SP 12/105/9, fo. 24; SP 12/105/10, fo. 26.

83 See the letters seeking financial aid from relatives, PRO, SP 12/98/20 iii–vi, xiii, xvii, xix–xx, xxii–xxiii.

84 Morris, Troubles, Second Series, p. 316; Anstruther, I, pp. 362–3; Devlin, ‘An Unwilling Apostate’.

85 BL, Lansdowne MS. 51, no. 66, fo. 154.

86 E.g., Theophilus Higgons, A Sermon, p. 43.

87 PRO, SP 12/98/20. xxi.

88 Devlin, , ‘An Unwilling Apostate’, pp. 353–4.Google Scholar

89 Recantations, pp. 32–3.

90 Ibidem, p. 40.

91 Ibidem, pp. 34–5, referring to St. Matthew 12: 43–5.

92 Tyrrell, , A Fruitfull Sermon (London. 1589)Google Scholar, sig. Biiv. This, however, is Richard Smith’s interpretation, An Answer to Thomas Bels Late Challeng (Douai, 1605), sig. c8.

93 Tyrrell, A FruitfulI Sermon, sig. Bviiv.

94 Morris, Troubles, Second Series, p. 476.

95 Cross, C., The Puritan Earl (London, 1966), p. 245.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

96 Walker, F. X., ‘The Implementation of the Elizabethan Statutes against Recusants. 1581–1603’ (unpublished Ph. D. thesis, London University, 1961)Google Scholar, chs. 7 and 8.

97 PRO, SP 12/245/138, fo. 220; SP 12/249/13.

98 BL. Lansdowne MS. 75, no. 21, fo. 42; Jessopp, A. (ed.) Letters of Fa. Henry Walpole (Norwich, 1873), p. 19.Google Scholar

99 Anstruther, I, pp. 317–18, 246. Nelson apostatised twice and reverted twice, Aveling, p. 152; Anstruther, I, p. 246.

100 PRO, SP 12/244/5: his purpose for travelling to Kent was for ‘conference with Mr. Tedder vicar of Westwell, how he might best submit himself unto her Majesty’s Clemency’, fo. 6v.

101 The First and Second Diaries, pp. 100–1; Aveling, pp. 28–9.

102 Kenny, , ‘A Martyr Manqué’, p. 664.Google Scholar

103 The plan was not entirely successful, PRO, SP 12/243/71.

104 APC 23, p. 164.

105 PRO, SP 12/243/51.

106 PRO, SP 12/193/13.

107 Foley, 6, p. xxi.

108 Richard Smith, replying to Bell’s Downfall of Popery, stated as a general rule that ‘no water… waxes so cold, as that which has been once hot’, An Answer, sig. c7v.

109 CRS 58, p. 232. Cf. Allison, A. F., ‘The Writings of Fr. Henry Garnet, S. J.’, Biographical Studies I (1951), pp. 7–21 Google Scholar, at pp. 11–12. Bell had already written against strict recusancy, Holmes, P. J., Resistance and Compromise (Cambridge, 1982), pp. 95–8.Google Scholar It is possible that these were the ‘writings’ which the Council requested the earl of Derby to send to London with Bell, APC 23, p. 164. The ‘alternative’ view had been polemically expressed by Alban Langdale in 1580, CRS 2, pp. 28–9, 178–80, the danger evidenced by prominent lay apostasies as a result of it. Robert Gray, who finally conformed in 1614, had a copy of Langdale’s book on him when he was arrested in 1593; according to Topcliffe, it was Langdale’s own copy which Gray had obtained at Cowdray where Langdale had once been chaplain to Lord Montague, PRO, SP 12/245/138, fo. 222v. Casuists might argue that church attendance by hard-pressed English Catholics should be de facto tolerated in the confessional, but the elevation of the idea to a principle remained anathema: Stonyhurst MSS, Anglia 3, no. 66, fo. 145–5v.

110 Walsingham, Francis, A Search Made into Matters of Religion (1609), pp. 58–9 Google Scholar. Walsingham concluded that his irascible temperament was the reason for his conversion.

111 Anstruther, I, p. 185–6.

112 Anstruther, I, pp. 135–6.

113 McGrath, , ‘Apostate and Naughty Priests’, pp. 52–3 Google Scholar. Christopher Perkins, it was claimed, left Rome because he was disillusioned by Spanish influence in English Catholic politics, HMC Salisbury, 3, p. 411.

114 William Watson temporarily conformed but he was hardly typical of the Appellants, Copley, Anthony, Another Letter of Mr. A. C. (1602), pp. 32–3 Google Scholar. Ithell and Wood were involved in the dispute but there is no evidence that it influenced their change of religion. The connection between the Appellants and apostasy existed only in Persons’s mind; in his Briefe Apologie (1601), p. 211, he compares Bluet’s negotiations with the Council to the machinations of Tyrrell and Bell.

115 PRO, SP 12/243/38, 50, 88; SP 12/244/16, 32, 40, 45, Younger to Lord Keeper Puckering complaining of his prolonged imprisonment.

116 Hardesty was sent back to the North from London to inform on priests, Anstruther, I, p. 148. He was later rewarded by being allowed to enter Emmanuel College, Cambridge; Bell, who entered Jesus College in the same year, wrote letters to his own patron, Egerton, recommending Hardesty as ‘very learned and well affected’, BL, Lansdowne MS. 75, no. 21, fo. 42.

117 For Bell’s lists of Catholics see Cecil Papers 168/142, (calendared in HMC Salisbury, 4, pp. 240–2); see also AAW, Anglia 9, nos. 41 and 42 for Bell’s advice on the recusant problem; and for an earlier list of houses in Lancashire where priests resided, AAW, Series A, 4, no. 38. Bell was important. About 1588 he was being given the unofficial title of ‘bishop of Chester’, Haigh, C. A., Reformation and Resistance in Tudor Lancashire (Cambridge, 1975), p. 289 Google Scholar; for the way in which Bell’s information was used, see Walker, , ‘The Implementation of the Elizabethan Statutes against Recusants’, pp. 319–21 Google Scholar; BL, Lansdowne MS. 72, no. 44, fo. 125. Bell’s principal function was to assist the operation of the special commissioners for recusants. He also cooperated in 1594 in the uncovering of the Hesketh plot, HMC Salisbury, 4, pp. 407–8, 428.

118 Foley, 3, pp. 762, 767–8.

119 HMC Salisbury, 6, p. 339; vol. 7, p. 404.

120 Bailey, J. E., ‘Thomas Bell’, Notes and Queries, Sixth Series, 2 (1880), p. 430.Google Scholar

121 Strype, J., Annals (Oxford, 1824), 4, pp. 210–11.Google Scholar

122 Bell writes that he has been patronised by Whitgift, , Hutton, , Egerton, and Mathew, Tobie, The Survey of Popery (London, 1596)Google Scholar, sigs. A2v–3; Bell, , The Catholique Triumph (London, 1610)Google Scholar, sig. A3.

123 AAW, Series A, 9, no. 115.

124 Clarke, , The Recantation, sigs. Bii–iiv.Google Scholar

125 Ibidem, sig. A3V.

126 Ibidem, sig. A4V.

127 See, e.g., Theophilus Higgons, a temporary convert to Catholicism who claimed that his change of religion was based principally on the truth of the existence of Purgatory, , The First Motive (Douai, 1609)Google Scholar.

128 Clarke, , The Recantation, sig. A6V.Google Scholar

129 Ibidem, sig. Cvii.

130 In the July sermon Clarke writes that God ‘at the last… caused me absolutely to resolve to come forth of Babylon’, ibidem, sig. Bv.

131 Woodward, Philip, Bels Trial Examined (1608), sigs. a4 v–5.Google Scholar

132 Bell, , Thomas Bels Motives (London, 1593), p. 12.Google Scholar

133 Allison, A. F., ‘Who was John Brereley? The Identity of a Seventeenth-Century Controversialist’, Recusant History 13 (1982), p. 17.Google Scholar

134 Bell, Thomas Bets Motives, sig. g2; BL, Lansdowne MS. 75, no. 20, fo. 40: he has used ‘evident demonstrations, even by the plain testimony of the… most famous, and renowned doctors in the Church of Rome, more forcible than which… [nothing] can be brought against the pope or his religion, a thing to my knowledge never yet attempted by any man’.

135 Walsingham, A Search, pp. 116, 119.