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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 October 2016
Robert Sutton is a name that occurs quite often in sixteenth century records. It was borne by two of the English martyrs under Elizabeth I, the only two, among the three hundred and sixty martyrs at present officially listed, to bear identical names. One of these was a layman, a school-master, hanged at Clerkenwell in October 1588 for being reconciled to the Catholic faith (1). The other was a secular priest hanged, drawn and quartered at Stafford a year earlier (2). The present note concerns the priest, but since further contemporaries of these two martyrs also had the same name, others, too, will be mentioned in the course of investigating the early years of the Ven. Robert Sutton, the priest martyr of 1587.
(1) Challoner, MMP. p.151.
(2) Challoner, MMP. pp.122–123. Foley several times confuses the dates of their martyrdoms; e.g. his references to the priest in vole VI. p.135 and vol. VII. p.750 give Clerkenwell, 5 October, 1588 instead of Stafford, 27 July, 1587 as the date of his death.
(3) Douai Diaries, p.117.
(4) This manuscript is preserved in the archives of the Venerable English College, Rome. The notice here quoted is printed by Foley (vol.III. pp.231–2) from a transcript made by Fr. Joseph Stevenson.
(5) A misprint for Forton, which is a parish near the Shropshire border of Staffordshire, about one mile NNE of Newport, Salop.
(6) A simple syllogism, of the form: A is not B, but B is C, therefore A is not C.
(7) A bachelor of arts “determined” by going through the disputations which were obligatory in the Lent following his admissiono Persons supplicating for the degree of M.A. were licensed subject to their “incepting” within a year. Cf. Register II (1) p.82.
(8) Register II (1) p.114. This is the source of Foster’s “S(tudent) C(ivil) L(aw) 30 years” in the notice already quoted.
(9) Published by the William Salt Archaeological Society, 1915.
(10) Staffs. Incumbents p. 103. The editor writes “In all cases where it is absolutely certain from contemporary evidence that an incumbent had taken a degree, such degree is placed after his name without any query sign”, (p. XXXVII). The B.C.L. degree here is not queried. In footnote 1 on the same page the editor further adds “the compiler takes the responsibility for all suggested identifications of Staffordshire incumbents”.
(11) Staffs. Incumbents p.243.
(12) Ibid. p.246 note 37.
(13) See note 10 above.
(14) Namely that he was M.A. in 1567 and rector of Lutterworth in 1571. Since these statements are derived from Foster's notice, they have no independent value if we can show Foster was mistaken.
(15) In saying goodbye to the Canon, it may be worth noting that the fact that he once presented on behalf of the patron of Himley, Sir Edward Sutton, eighth baron Dudley (Staffs. Incumbents p.127) suggests the possibility that he was some relation of that peer.
(16) Edited by Foster, C.W. (Lincolnshire Record Society, vol.2) 1912.Google Scholar
(17) Thomas Bentham who became bishop in 1560. Stubbs, Registrum Sacrum Anglicanum, 1858, p.83.
(18) The word is has been omitted after now. The bishop in 1576 was Thomas Cooper (Cowper), who became bishop of Lincoln in 1571. Stubbs, op.cit. p. 84.
(19) This survey is printed in The State of the Church in the reigns of Elizabeth and James I as illustrated by documents relating to the diocese of Lincoln. vol.1, ed. by C.W. Foster (Lincoln Record Society, vol.23) 1926. The quotation is from p.39.
(20) See the above-quoted Lincoln Record Society vol. 2, p. 319. Costerdine was still rector of Lutterworth in 1585 (same series, vol.23, p. 102).
(21) This batch of material was furnished to Wood by Richard Washbourne, chaplain of Christ Church in 1665, as the manuscript itself informs us.
(22) See “some notes on the families of the English martyrs”, Biographical Studies vol.1, p. 231.
(23) History of Burton upon Trent. Burton, 1941. See pp. 101–103.
(24) I have not succeeded in locating a copy of this article but through the kindness of the Borough Librarian of Burton, Mr. K.F. Stanesby, I was able to see a small leaflet based on the article. I desire to thank him and Mr. Underbill for their help.
(25) The marriage register containing this entry was printed in the Burton-on-Trent Natural History and Archaeological Society's Proceedings vol.III p. 124.
(26) The Suttons may have been a local family. Among the religious from Burton Abbey dispossessed at the suppression of the monasteries was a “Sir William Sutton”, and the second son of James was to bear the name William. See Underbill, op.cit. p. 95.
(27) His life is briefly given in Foley's Records, vol.VII, pp.750–751.
(28) On this episode see John Cerard, the autobiography of an Elizabethan, tr. Caraman, 1951, pp.1 and 262–3.
(29) Alumni Ox. p. 1444.
(30) Bodleian MS. Wood F 28, folio 214. The list of fellows begins on folio 212. It continues down to the year 1600, and was drawn up for Wood in August 1666 by Joseph Taylor. The same page that bears William Sutton's name also bears the names of two future martyrs, Thomas Forde and Christopher Wharton, and of the future archpriest George Blackwell.
(31) Alumni Ox. p.1443.
(32) See the short account of the departure of Robert and Abraham from Lutterworth quoted from a Stonyhurst manuscript in Lives of the English Martyrs (1583-1588) vol.1, pp.303–4.
(33) p. 73 of Caraman's translation of Gerard, already quoted in note 28 above.
(34) Neither Challoner nor the official life by Rev. Francis E. Ross in the Lives of the English Martyrs, adds anything concerning his origins to what Fr. Grene writes in his account of the martyr.