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Blessed George Errington and Companions: Fresh Evidence

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 September 2015

Katharine M. Longley
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Extract

FOR nearly four hundred years the story of the betrayal, in York Castle, of four laymen and two women by a criminous clerk pretending a desire to become a Catholic, has been known from recollections of Lady Babthorpe; the precise particulars, however, were unknown to her. The discovery of a very remarkable letter, giving many new details, suggests that the patient reading of the catalogues of our national collections of manuscripts might, even now, throw light into other dark corners of recusant history.

Type
Research Article
Information
British Catholic History , Volume 19 , Issue 1 , May 1988 , pp. 39 - 46
Copyright
Copyright © Catholic Record Society 1988

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References

Notes

1 Morris, J. S.J. ed., The Troubles of our Catholic forefathers, 1 (1872), p. 243;Google Scholar Challoner, R. Memoirs of missionary priests, new edn. rev. by Pollen, J. H. S.J. (1924), pp. 229–30Google Scholar (mostly based on Lady Babthorpe's recollections).

2 British Library: Add. MS. 30,262. E.2 (acquired 1877-8).

3 R. Connelly, S.M. No greater love: the Martyrs of the Middles brough diocese (1987), p. 118.Google Scholar

4 BIHR: HCAB 13, f. 46r.

5 Yorks. Par. Reg. Soc. 26(1906), The Parish registers of Ledsham … 1539-1812, p. 37. Crosedayle was instituted as vicar in 1579.

6 BIHR: HCAB 13, f.59r.

7 BIHR: V. 1595-6, Court Book 1, f. 30r. Every entry in this volume, covering the whole diocese, has been examined, in case Lowther had migrated from Ledsham, but his case has not been found. The two volumes covering the diocese of Chester (CB 2-3) have not been searched, since at the time of visitation there in Sept. 1595, Lowther was presumably still at Ledsham.

8 BIHR: HCAB 13, f. 59r

8a A little more than three years later, on 8 Jan. 1600, the newly-appointed Lord President of the Council in the North, Thomas Cecil, Lord Burghley, wrote as follows to his half-brother, Sir Robert Cecil: ‘I have admitted the young man who, you signified, offered to be employed, and committed him these three weeks, to the Castle, to get credit amongst the recusants; within these two or three days I have given him leave to break out; he promises to give me notice where I shall take him with a seminary. He is a little young to be trusted, but he has a good crafty wit.’ (Cal. S.P. Dom. 1598-1601, p. 379.)

9 This contemporary evidence throws light on the attitude of St. Margaret Clitherow, who in 1586 had refused to plead when arraigned, partly in order to spare the consciences of the jury.

10 Stanhope's will (PCC 16 Harte) refers to his belief in the ‘company of the heavenly angels and blessed saints’. Perhaps modern scholars have overstressed the significance of such wording in the preambles of wills.

11 Acts of the Privy Council, new ser., 27, p. 85.

12 Aveling, J.C.H. ‘The Catholic recusants of the West Riding of Yorkshire, 1558-1790’, in Procs of the Leeds Phil. & Lit. Soc. (1963), p. 290.Google Scholar

13 If her husband did in fact survive until e.1614 (Foster, J.. Pedigrees of the county families of Yorkshire [1874] 2:Google Scholar Stapleton of Carlton etc.) this marriage, possibly clandestine, must have been annulled, for she made two further marriages, in 1600 and 1604. There is much confusion about this lady's activities.

14 A draft of this order survives, dated 11 Oct. 1596 (Cal. S.P. Dom. 1595-1597, p. 293).

15 No entry for Lowther's case had been found in BIHR: HCAB 13 (commencing 20 April 1596)before 28 Sept. 1596.

16 There is no evidence whatsoever of this. See note 24 below.

17 i.e. Errington. (The sentence is disjointed.)

18 Probably a sarcastic remark, reflecting the good account that these two men were able to give of their faith.

19 Anne Tesh (wife of Edward Tesh, attorney, of York), recusant from 1576, committed to York Castle, 1577, 1583; shared a room there with St. Margaret Clitherow before the latter's arraignment, March 1586; indicted at Whitsun 1586 for harbouring priests, but acquitted; transferred as a prisoner from Hull to York Castle, June 1594.

20 Bridget Maskew (wife of Thomas Maskew, merchant, who died 1594, and sister-in-law of Robert Maskew, grocer, Lord Mayor of York 1574), recusant from 1589; indicted at Quarter Sessions, 1592; outlawed. 1593.

21 i.e. urge.

22 On 3 Feb. 1596/7 Sir John Stanhope, the recipient of this letter, reminded Sir Robert Cecil to ask the Bishop of Carlisle to admit, induct and institute ‘Mr. Lowther, minister, to the parsonage of Greystock’, to which the Queen had already presented him by Letters Patent (Historical MSS. Commission Cal. of Hatfield MSS., 7, p. 55). This was Leonard Lowther, holding the living in plurality with that of Lowther, co. Westmorland, where he was to be buried in 1609 (Venn, Alumni Cantabrigienses). William Lowther is claiming kinship with this Westmorland family.

23 MS. has ‘He was’, in error.

24 In 1585 Errington had said that although his conscience would not permit him to go to the church, ‘he would pray for and serve her Highness with his body and life …’ (Quoted by Forster, A.M.C. in Biographical Studies, 3, p. 325).Google Scholar When arraigned, all these prisoners admitted that they had explained the Catholic religion to Lowther in prison and exhorted him to amend his life, ‘but in no other way did they attempt to persuade him to become a Catholic, and they had certainly never suggested that he should withdraw his allegiance from the Queen.’ (Connelly, op. cit, p. 319, quoting Dr. Anthony Champney, Annates Elizabethae Reginae (c. 1618), in Westminster archives, FL, p. 937.)

25 Probably Thomas Atkinson (executed at York 11 March 1616; beatified 1987).

26 The Visitation of Yorkshire by Richard St. George, Norroy King of Arms, in 1612 confirms this marriage, which has escaped the notice of historians, and even of contemporaries. Elizabeth Pierrepont, a granddaughter of Bess of Hardwick, had been brought up by Mary Queen of Scots from the age of four years.

27 Old ways of thought die hard!

28 John Feme of the Inner Temple, whose appointment as Deputy Secretary to the Council in the North in August 1595 had been secured by Sir Robert Cecil (Reid, R.R. The King's Council in the North [1921], p. 228).Google Scholar

29 i.e. a senior legal member of the Council in the North.

30 The gaoler of York Castle.

31 Errington, Knight, Gibson and the two women were condemned for ‘persuading to Popery’; for Abbot and Fulthrop, see next note.

32 A letter from the Privy Council dated 5 May 1597 stated that ‘her Majesty having been moved herein is pleased, according to her usual clemency and merciful disposition, that the execution of the … women Tesh and Maskew shall as yet be forborne until you shall receive further direction in that behalf’ (A.P.C., new ser., 27, pp. 91-2) They remained in prison until the accession of King James I in 1603, when friends obtained their release. The cases of Fulthrop and Abbot were referred back to the Council and to the Justices at the Lammas Assizes; both were executed on 4 July 1597, and were beatified in 1929. Although the official list of Martyrs of England and Wales states that Abbot was condemned for ‘persuading to Popery’, he was in fact, like Fulthrop, condemned for being reconciled (C.A. Newdigate, S.J., ‘Quelques notes sur les Catalogues des Martyrs anglais dits de Chalcedoine et de Paris’ in Analecta Bollandiana, 56, p. 331).

33 All three were beatified in 1987.

34 Sir Robert Cecil.

35 William Cecil, Lord Burghley.

36 Henry Hastings, 3rd Earl of Huntingdon, Lord President of the Council in the North 1572-1595.

37 To hold ‘the wolf by the ears’ (a Latin proverb).