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The Imprisonment of Catholics for Religion under Elizabeth I1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 September 2015

Patrick McGrath  and
Joy Rowe
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Extract

A great deal of attention has rightly been given to those Catholics who were put to death under Elizabeth I, but imprisonment as distinct from execution has not received the attention it deserves. Catholics sometimes sing about ‘our fathers chained in prisons dark’, but they are not always aware of what imprisonment meant to their ancestors. It is the purpose of this article to consider some aspects of this large and neglected subject, since imprisonment and the threat of imprisonment made a big impact on the Elizabethan Catholic community and must have discouraged a great many people from persevering in their religion when they contemplated what could at best be an irritating deprivation of liberty and at worst a long ordeal which might end in death.

Type
Research Article
Information
British Catholic History , Volume 20 , Issue 4 , October 1991 , pp. 415 - 435
Copyright
Copyright © Catholic Record Society 1973

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Footnotes

1

This article is based on a paper read to the thirty-third Conference on Post-Reformation Catholic History held at Plater College, Oxford, 1990.

References

Notes

2 The late Fr. Godfrey Anstruther compiled two manuscript volumes with descriptions of the London prisons and references to a number of Catholic prisoners taken from the State Papers Domestic, the Acts of the Privy Council and other sources. These volumes are now in the Southwark Cathedral Archives, and we wish to express our thanks to Fr. M. Clifton for allowing us to see them.

3 See McGrath, Patrick and Rowe, Joy ‘The Marian Priests under Elizabeth 1’, Recusant History, vol. 17, no. 2, October 1984.Google Scholar

4 We have a card index of the names, but it is not possible to print it here.

5 See Foxe’s List of Catholics imprisoned in various prisons, printed in Strype, J., Annals of the Reformation, vol. 2, part 2, 1824, pp. 660–662 Google Scholar and in Dodd’s Church History of England, edit. M. A. Tierney, 1971 edition, 111.159–161.

6 We have a list of those who died in prison, the names of the prisons in which they died and the dates of their death but it is not possible to print it here.

7 Morris, Troubles, 111.61–96, 103–315. For a different view of the treatment of Catholics in the North, see Claire Cross, M., ‘The Third Earl of Huntingdon and the Trials of Catholics in the North’ Recusant History, vol. 8, no. 3, 1965, 136ff.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

8 Morris, Troubles, 111.321; Foley, III, 267.

9 Morris, Troubles, 111.315.

10 See Patrick McGrath and Joy Rowe, ‘Anstruther Analysed: The Elizabethan Seminary Priests’, Recusant History, vol. 18, no. 1, May 1986 in which we gave the figure of those captured as 294. A reexamination of the evidence shows that the figure is more likely to be 285. It is very difficult to give precise figures.

11 Foley 111.230. Anstruther, p. 79, said he died of the stench, but Foley says he was kept in prison ‘by wearisomeness thereof, as ‘tis thought, he fell sick’

12 Anstruther, p. 174.

13 Anstruther, p. 369.

14 Anstruther, pp. 228–9.

15 This is based on an examination of Anstruther: The Seminary Priests 1

16 See Gerard, Autobiography, passim.

17 See Weston, Autobiography, passim.

18 See Morris, Troubles, 111. pp. 105–219 for Fr. Richard Holtby’s account of the Persecution in the North.

19 We have excluded from these figures a number of seminary priests included in Anstruther who were not Jesuit-trained and who were admitted into the Society of Jesus after first acting as seminary priests. A number were admitted in prison, often shortly before their execution. The seven Jesuit priests included here are James Bosgrave, Edmund Campion, Jasper Hayward, John Gerard, Robert Southwell, Henry Walpole and William Weston. The four lay brothers were Ralph Emerson, John Lillie, Nicholas Owen and Richard Fulwood.

20 Parmiter, Geoffrey de C. ‘The Imprisonment of Papists in Private Castles’, Recusant History, vol. 19, no. 1, May 1988 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; ‘Sir Alexander Colepepper of Bedgbury,’ Recusant History vol. 19, no. 4, 1989.

21 de Parmiter, Geoffrey, ‘Sir Alexander Colepepper of Bedgbury’, Recusant History, vol. 19, no. 4, p. 376.Google Scholar

22 SP Eliz. 46/17, no. 2 Petition to the Bishop of London, 29 March 1581.

23 Morris, Troubles, 111, 31.

24 SP Elizabeth 12/146, no. 132, December 1591.

25 It is not possible to print here the names of all the laymen who died. The number may well have been greater than these figures indicate.

26 Trimble, William R., The Catholic Laity in Elizabethan England, 1558–1603, 1964, p. 81 Google Scholar, Pollen, J. H. The English Catholics in the Reign of Queen Elizabeth, 1920, p. 262.Google Scholar

27 For Pounde’s life, see Foley, 111.564–657. For Pounde’s brief account of his various imprisonments, ibid, pp. 614–615.

28 Morris, Troubles. 111.322; Foley 111.802.

29 Morris, Troubles, 111.302.

30 ibid. 302.

31 Anstruther, p. 181.

32 CRS, 60, p. 51.

33 Foley, 111.230.

34 CRS, 60, pp. 47, 88.

35 Morris, Troubles, 111.323.

36 Anstruther, MS on prisons referring to British Library, Harley 6998, p. 87 and Lansdowne, 28, no. 97.

37 CRS 60, pp. 47–48.

38 CRS 2, p. 280.

39 Morris, Troubles 111.328.

40 CRS 2, pp. 237, 284.

41 Thomas, Christine, Blessed Thomas Belson, 1987, p. 75.Google Scholar

42 Morris, Troubles, 111.90, 310.

43 Essex Recusant, vol. 1, no. 1. April 1959, pp. 10, 15.

44 CRS 2, p. 284.

45 CRS 60, p. 51.

46 CRS 60, pp. 45, 85; CRS 2, pp. 283.

47 Fisher, R. M., ‘Privy Council Coercion and Religious Conformity at the Inns of Court 1569–1584’, Recusant History, vol. 15, no. 5, May 1981, p. 307.Google Scholar

48 CRS 60, pp. 53, 84.

49 For this information we are indebted to Miss Justine Stone, a former student at Bristol University, who made a study of the London prisons.

50 Gerard, Autobiography, p. 81.

51 ibid, 89–90.

52 ibid, Chapter xv. ‘The Tower and Torture’.

53 Weston, Autobiography, 219, 226–227.

54 Challoner, p. 139.

55 Challoner, p. 252.

56 Morris, Troubles, 111.318.

57 Morris, Troubles, 111.314.

58 Petti, Anthony, ‘Stephen Vallenger 1541–1591’, Recusant History, vol. 6, no. 6, October 1962, ‘pp. 256–261.Google Scholar

59 Anstruther, p. 176.

60 Morris, Troubles, 11.68.

61 The Other Face, edited Philip Caraman, 1960, p. 216 quoting a letter of Richard Vaughan, bishop of Chester to Thomas Hesketh, 29 January 1598.

62 Weston, Autobiography 167–168.

63 Strype, Annals of the Reformation iv.273, quoting Lord Keeper Puckering’s MS. 1595.

64 John Booth, The Prisoners of Framlingham, Catholic Truth Society, 1930, quoting a letter of Thomas Bluett to Rome, 4 March 1602, no reference given.

65 For an introduction to the troubles at Wisbech, see CRS, The Wisbech Stirs 1595–1598, edited P. Renold, 1958.

66 Challoner, p. 194.

67 Morris, Troubles 111.316.

68 Weston, Autobiography, p. 164.

69 British Library, Lansdowne 38, no. 57, 5 December 1583.

70 Salisbury XI. 363, 27 August 1601.

71 Foley 1.28, 2 April 1602.

72 Dodd’s Church History, edit. M. A. Tierney. 1971 edition, 111.109 ff.

73 Challoner, p. 191.

74 Challoner, p. 252; Anstruther, p. 274.

75 Weston, Autobiography, p. 117.

76 Gerard, Autobiography, p. 138.

77 Weston, Autobiography, p. 119.

78 A strenkle or strinkle was a brush used for sprinkling holy water.

79 Morris, Troubles 111.270–271.

80 Challoner, pp. 142ff.

81 Salisbury ix. 214, 25 June 1597; Anstruther, pp. 372 374.

82 Anstruther, pp. 33, 129, 328.

83 Anstruther, p. 85.

84 ibid 85.

85 Anstruther, p. 339.

86 ibid, 267–268.

87 Anstruther, pp. 267–268.

88 Anstruther, pp. 269–270.

89 Challoner, p. 74.

90 Anstruther, pp.371–372.

91 Anstruther, pp. 196–197.

92 Anstruther, p. 240.

93 Anstruther, pp. 170–171.

94 For some very interesting new evidence on the escape, see Rogers, David, ‘The Escape of Thomas Tichbourne’ Recusant History, vol. 19, no. 4, October 1989, pp. 411–421.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

95 Challoner pp. 191–192.

96 Weston, Autobiography, 118.

97 Foley, 42, 44; Anstruther, pp. 206–207.

98 For a long and detailed account of the escape, see Gerard, Autobiography, chapter 17.

99 Dodd’s Church History of England ed. M. A. Tierney, 1971 edition, 111.154.

100 Anstruther, p. 262.

101 Anstruther, pp. 317–318.

102 Anstruther, pp. 243.

103 Anstruther, pp. 246. For a study of Elizabethan priests who apostatised or who were suspected of apostatising, see Patrick McGrath, ‘Apostate and Naughty Priests in England under Elizabeth 1’ in Opening the Scrolls, ed. Dominic Aidan Bellenger, 1987.