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The Contribution of 1639: Court and Country Catholicism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 October 2016

Caroline Hibbard
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Extract

Addressing the House of Commons in April 1640, Sir Benjamin Rudyerd looked back to the dissolution of the last Parliament in 1629. He blamed the English Catholics for what he saw as their role in it, ‘who now by the discontinuance of parliaments are come to that arrogancy and boldness that they intend [contend] who are the greatest subjects’. This warning would be repeated many times in the Parliamentary debates of 1640-42. The evidence most often cited in support of it was the Catholic or ‘Queen’s’ contribution of 1639, raised to help the King finance his expedition against the Scottish Covenanters.

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Articles
Information
British Catholic History , Volume 16 , Issue 1 , May 1982 , pp. 42 - 60
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Copyright © Catholic Record Society 1982

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References

Notes

1 Cope, Esther and Coates, W. H., ed., Proceedings of the Short Parliament of 1640, Camden Society, ser. 4, 19 (1977), pp. 138–40.Google Scholar

2 Albion, Gordon, Charles I and the Court of Rome (1935), p. 335 Google Scholar; Havran, Martin, Catholics in Caroline England (1962), pp. 155–6;Google Scholar Lindley, K. J., ‘Lay Catholics of England in the Reign of Charles I’, J. of Eccles. Hist. 22 (1971), 214 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Gardiner, 9, pp. 25-26.

3 John Rylands Library, Manchester: English MSS. 736, 737 (hereafter, Rylands 736, 737).

4 Sum of £14,000 from Anstruther, Godfrey, ‘Lancashire Clergy in 1639’, Recusant History 4 (1957), p. 38,CrossRefGoogle Scholar but no relevant source given there. It is generally accepted that £10,000 was paid in July, and more later (Gardiner, 9, p. 26), but as the money did not go through regular Exchequer channels, it has not been possible to substantiate literary estimates with financial records.

5 British Library, Additional MS. (hereafter, Add. MS.) 15,392, ff. 18-19, 20, 25, 55-56, 57-59.

6 Add. MS. 15,392, f. 4.

7 Add. MS. 27,962H (Salvetti transcripts), ff. 219-20, 222; Add. MS. 15,391, ff. 337, 340-1, 345; Add. MS. 15,392, f. 10. Cf. C.S.P.Ven. 1636-39, p. 477: ‘The Catholics make great offers upon this occasion’.

8 Bodleian Library, Oxford, Clarendon MS. (hereafter, Clar. MS.) 15, ff. 54-55: Champney’s letter in the hand of George Gage, endorsed and dated 12 December 1638 by Secretary Windebank. A copy in Rylands 737/32; ‘For Mr Sale, Mr Haughton, and Mr North’, dated at London, 30 November/10 December 1638.

9 C.S.P. 2, pp. 19-20, 21-22.

10 D’Ewes(N), pp. 291 n. 8, 295-6.

11 Add. MS. 15,392, ff. 18-19, 20, 25, 55-56, 57-59.

12 Ibid., and for letters to seculars, see Rylands 737/32, 33.

13 P.R.O. 31/9/124, f. 233. Copies of the laymen’s letter in Rylands 737/2, and printed in Rushworth, 2, pp. 822-3, and Coppy, pp. 3-4.

14 C.S.P. 2, p. 35; Add. MS. 15,392, ff. 61, 75, 81-82, 86.

15 For the superiors’ letters, see Add. MS. 15,392, ff. 104, 113-14, and the unsigned copy of it in ibid., ff. 97-99. Copies in RyIands 737/34, 34a. Printed versions in Rushworth, 2, p. 822, and Coppy, pp. 5-6.

16 Dig by and Brooke named as collectors in Rylands 737/1.

17 C.S.P.D. 1638-39, p. 623. MS. copies of the Queen’s letter in Rylands 737/3, 3a, 4; British Library, Sloane MS. 1470, ff. 37-38; A.A.W. A.29, ff. 25-27. Printed copies in Rushworth, 2, p. 820, and Coppy, p. 1-2.

18 C.S.P. 2, 19.

19 Rylands 737/33.

20 The Beast is Wounded, or Information from Scotland by John Bastwick’s Younger Brother (Richt Right Press, Amsterdam, 1638).

21 Foley 7, p. 3; Abernethie, Thomas, Abjuration of Popery (Edinburgh, 1638);Google Scholar another edition as A Worthy Speech by Mr Thomas Abernethie … (London, 1641).

22 Forbes Leith, William, ed., Memoirs of Scottish Catholics, 2 vols (1909), 1, pp. 189–90, 205-06n.Google Scholar

23 MS. copies of ‘Advices and Motives’ in Rylands 737/6, 7; Sloane MS. 1470, ff. 41-53; Bodleian, Rawlinson MS. D.720, ff. 27-34.

24 Rylands 737/35.

25 C.S.P.D. 1639, p. 34. See also Add. MS. 27, 962H, ff. 263, 265, 271, for Salvetti’s reflections.

26 Laymen’s letter: see n. 13 above.

27 Lists of collectors in Coppy, pp. 7-10 and Rushworth, 2, pp. 824-26. The Rushworth list includes (in the case of Lancashire, and probably for other counties) not only chief collectors but also some of their coadjutors or assistants.

28 Citations in Richardson, pp. 5, 156. A Lancashire secular priest referred on 26 April 1639 to the importance of the contribution, ‘perhaps especially [for] Lancashire, because of the general opinion of the great number of Catholics here compared with other parts’ (Rylands 737/52).

29 Lancashire Gentry, p. 28, and calculations from Table 15.

30 Names of collectors in Rylands 737/4, 14. Of the leading Catholic families who might have been represented in this list, the Irelands of Lydiate had a minor heir, the Prestons of Furness and Holker and William Blundell of Crosby were out of the county (Rylands 737/54, 55), and members of the Anderton, Scarisbricke, Hoghton and Hesketh families were active as coadjutor collectors. Response of other leading families is discussed below.

31 None have D.N.B, entries; only Molyneux is in Gillow; none are mentioned in C.S.P.Ven. 1636-41, nor in Albion, op. cit. None appear in C.S.P.D. index for 1635-40 volumes.

32 Lancashire Gentry, pp. 26-27. More than 75% of Catholic Lancashire gentry in 1640 had married within the county: Blackwood, B. G., ‘Marriages of the Lancashire Gentry on the Eve of the Civil War’, Genealogists’ Mag. 16 (1970), p. 321 Google Scholar, and fewer than 14% had looked farther than neighbouring counties for wives. Towneley himself married Mary, daughter of Bernard Trappes of Knaresborough, Yorkshire. Only ten of the Catholic gentry had Protestant wives (ibid., p. 327).

33 ‘Catholic and Protestant Gentry’, p. 5; of priests of Lancashire origin at this period, over 50% were of gentry status; and among the Benedictines, over 70% came of gentry families. For names of priests, see Rylands 737/9, 11, 12, 13.

34 On relations between Protestant and Catholic gentry, see ‘Catholic and Protestant Gentry’, pp. 16-17; 16-17; Bossy, John, English Catholic Community, 1570-1850, p. 93;Google Scholar Richardson, p. 171.

35 ‘Catholic and Protestant Gentry’, pp. 6-7; John Cosgrove, ‘The Position of the Rucusant Gentry in the Social Setting of Lancashire, 1570-1642’, M.A. thesis, Manchester, 1964.

36 On Catholics and local government, Richardson, pp. 172-3, and Haigh, ch. 17 passim for sixteenth century.

37 On Derby, see D.N.B.: ‘James Stanley’, Stanley Papers, Part III in 3 vols, ed. F. R. Raines, Chetham Society, O.S., vols 66, 67, 70 (1867). For the politics of the 1630s, Tupling, G. H., ‘Causes of the Civil War in Lancashire’, Trans. Lane. & Cheshire Antiq. Soc. 65 (1955)Google Scholar, passim. For the lieutenancy, Sainty, J. C., Lieutenants of Counties, 1585-1642 (1970), pp. 4, 13-14;Google Scholar and Carter, D. P., ‘The “Exact Militia” in Lancashire 1625-1640’, Northern Hisory 11 (1975).Google Scholar

38 Rushworth, 1, p. 394.

39 Foley, 1, pp. 668-9; C.R.S. 69 (1979), p. 266.

40 D.N.B.: ‘Richard Gerard’; Dodd, 3, p. 62.

41 Gillow, 1, pp. 286-8; Hawkes, A. J., ‘Sir Roger Bradshaigh of Haigh, Knight and Baronet, 1628-1684’, Chetham Misc. 8, ser. 2, v. 109 (1945)Google Scholar.

42 C.R.S. Misc. 4, p. 218; Aveling, J. H., ‘Catholic Recusancy of the Yorkshire Fairfaxes, Part II’, Recusant History 4 (1958), pp. 62–63.Google Scholar

43 Towneley’s chaplain was John Hartley (Rylands 737/10). For an account of the missionaries, see Anstruther, ‘Lancashire Clergy’, based on a document (Rylands 737/13) that includes no information for Lonsdale. Other lists of priests in Rylands 737/9, 10, 11. Foley, 7, p. lxxiii, cites twenty Jesuits in Lancashire and Staffordshire together in 1633, so it seems unlikely that more than a few are missing from these lists. The collectors appear to have been chosen with a view to their contacts among different groups of clergy; Bradshaigh and Gerard had Jesuit confessors, Towneley and Molyneux seculars; in Salford hundred the lay coadjutors were assisted by a secular priest, a Jesuit, a Benedictine and another, unidentified regular (Rylands 737/13).

44 Rylands 737/52, 54; on Redman, see Seminary Priests, I.

45 Richardson, p. 5; Haigh, p. 91. However, letters (presumably carried by messenger) took no more than a day or two between Redman in Lonsdale and Towneley in Burnley.

46 Haigh, p. 281; although he does find what appears to be a communication network operating in 1618 (p. 293).

47 Rylands 737/40, 59, 60. For the military preparations, see C.S.P.D. 1638-39, pp. 387-8; 1639, p. 103; for Trafford’s role in them, Farington Papers, ed. S. M. ffarington, Chetham Society, O.S. 29 (1856), pp. 57-70.

48 Rylands 737/41-3, 46, 59, 60.

49 Rylands 737/54, 57, 63.

50 Rylands 737/47, for the collectors’ letter of 10 June 1639. Copies of the Recusant Rolls in 737/15, 15a; list of coadjutors 737/14. The receipt book (736) shows that other laymen were informally involved in the collection.

51 Account book is Rylands 736; see especially ff. 10-13, which detail small sums received by Robert Molyneux from priests. Champney’s letter of 1 June 1639 to John Sale (Rylands 737/36) had directed the seculars to approach the poor Catholics for contributions.

52 The sums listed in 736, under the date 28 August, are pledges and total £840 85. 3d. The sub-total of Towneley’s own collection (737/28) is very close to the figure of £312 9s. 2d. on the receipt given him by Brooke and Digby, 30 November 1639, suggesting that each collector received a separate receipt. The only other such receipt I have located is made out to Robert Molyneux by Brooke and Digby, for £38 6s. 4d. (Harl. MS. 2112, f. 65), exactly the sum recorded by Towneley for Molyneux’s receipts (Rylands 737/18, 28). Accordingly, the total of £760 8s. 3d. given in Rylands 737/28, dated only ‘1639’, would appear to be the sum collected after ‘abatements’. How the money was transmitted remains unclear, but it did not follow any regular path through the Exchequer (see instructions for remittance to Juxon in 737/38).

53 Rylands 737/39; cf. 737/31, for the reduction (£80) in the gifts promised.

54 Gardiner, 9, p. 25, estimates the cost of the 1639 campaign at £52,000 per month; a similar sum for the army of 1640 was cited in the Grand Remonstrance (para. 149). For anticipated receipts of the collection, see C.S.P.D. 1639, p. 74; Add. MS. 11,045, ff. 5-6; Add. MS. 27.962H, f. 284 (Salvetti’s 3 May estimate and the lowest, at 100,000 scudi or £25,000).

55 Add. MS. 15,392, ff. 144, 151, 164.

56 C.S.P. 2, pp. 46-47; Add. MS. 15,392, f. 153.

57 On Rossetti’s activities, P.R.O. 31/9/18, ff. 46-51, 55-56, 59-62, 67-71. On the total sum, see n. 4 above.

58 Redman to Towneley, 24 June 1639: Ryland 737/55. The Lonsdale families with stiff compositions were Middleton of Leighton and North of Docker (‘Catholic and Protestant Gentry’, pp. 6-7); neither seems to have given a sizeable sum to the contribution (Harl. MS. 2112, f. 60, for Middleton’s contribution of £5, and Rylands 737/56 for his excuses).

59 Rylands 737/27 (collectors’ agreement); 737/23-6, 30 (complaints against the sheriff and the dean).

60 C.S.P.D. 1639-40, pp. 141-2.

61 Rylands 737/36.

62 C.S.P.D. 1637-38, p. 11; 1638-39, p. 335; 1640-41, pp. 518-19; Add. MS. 15,392, ff. 63-64, 69, 75; Add. MS. 11,045, ff. 20-22.

63 C.S.P. 2, pp. 38, 68; Clar. MS. 16, no. 1339, f. 7r; C.S.P.D. 1639, pp. 261-2; Add. MS. 11,045, ff. 20-21.

64 P.R.O. 31/9/18, ff. 27, 40-44; C.S.P. 2, pp. 46-47; C.S.P.D. 1639, pp. 387-8, 427-8; 1639-40, pp. 2, 215; 1640, pp. 594-5. The King later explained that he had suspended Pulford’s commission so that ‘the Papists should not be diverted from their contribution which they were then making for me’. (C.S.P.D. 1640-41, pp. 518-20)

65 Copies in Clar. MS. 16, ff. 106-07, with Rushworth, 2, p. 821. Con forwarded a copy to Rome: P.R.O. 31/9/124, f. 342.

66 Rylands 737/38

67 Gardiner, 9, p. 25.

68 Rylands 737/36.

69 P.R.O, 31/9/124, f. 241.

70 See Rylands 737/50, 54, 63; references on Trafford in n. 47 above. Farington Papers pp. 59-60, lists a number of Leyland gentry, including Catholics who were asked to accompany Lord Strange to York (Ralph Standish, Thomas Hesketh, Richard Ashton of Croston, James Anderton of Clayton, William Anderton of the Ford, and William Hoghton of Park Hall).

71 Add. MS. 15,392, ff. 183, 198.

72 Judging by Ship Money assessments of 1636, Lancashire was regarded as the second poorest county in England (Lancashire Gentry, p. 3).

73 C.S.P. Ven. 1636-39, p. 52.

74 The Scottish Scouts’ Discoveries by their London Intelligencer (London, 1642), p. 28; internal evidence dates the composition of this pamphlet in 1639.

75 Carol Z. Weiner, ‘The Beleaguered Isle. A Study of Elizabethan and Early Jacobean anti-Catholicism’, Past and Present, no. 51 (May 1971), passim; Robin Clifton, ‘Popular Fear of Catholics during the English Revolution’, Past and Present, no. 52 (August 1971), esp. pp. 39-43. For the estimate of Catholics in the population at large, based on possible communicants, see Bossy, op. cit., pp. 187-8, 406.

76 C.S.P.D. 1639, pp. 525-6.

77 For a more general treatment of Catholicism in the politics of this period, see my forthcoming study, ‘Charles I and the Popish Plot’.

78 D’Ewes(N), pp. 8-11 for Pym’s speech.

79 Ibid., pp. 24-25 and nn. 8, II. On Rigby, see Lancashire Gentry, pp. 16, 46, 51, 61, 63, 73, 102, n. 11; and D.N.B. Rigby was active in 1641-43 in anti-Catholic motions, but little is known of his relations with opposition leaders; see M. F. Keeler, ‘Some Opposition Committees’, in W. H. Aiken and B. D. Henning, Conflict in Stuart England (1960), p. 142.

80 Blackwood, B. G., ‘Social and Religious Aspects of the History of Lancashire, 1635-55’, B. Litt, thesis, Oxford, 1956, p. 30.Google Scholar

81 D’Ewes(N), pp. 289-91; Commons Journals (1742- ), 2, p. 74. Glynne claimed to have been given the document by Robert Reynolds, M.P. for Hindon, Wiltshire, and one of Pembroke’s clients.

82 D’Ewes(N), p. 291.

83 Gardiner, 9, p. 412.

84 D’Ewes(N), p. 291. On Moore (c. 1599-1650) of Bank Hall, Lancashire, see M. F. Keeler, Long Parliament (1954); and Lancashire Gentry, pp. 51, 62n., 73.

85 The Recusant Roll is P.R.O. E. 377/49; the figures are discussed in Brian Magee, The English Recusants (1938), pp. 91-93, 98, who gives a figure of 9,000 convictions for Lancashire and 15,000 for all the counties that reported.

86 HMC Fourteenth Rep., App. 4, p. 59, for the county sessions of 1641; D’Ewes(N), p. 292 for Kirkby’s speech. Amounderness was heavily Catholic; a tax list of 1641 named 1,884 Catholics too poor to be taxed (P.R.O. E. 179/132/338; see on this Magee, op. cit., pp. 108-10,212-13). But the population of the entire county has been estimated as c. 150,000 at this time (Lancashire Gentry, p. 3). Repetition of Kirkby’s figures in Vicars, John, Magnolia Dei Anglicana, or England’s Parliamentary Chronicle (London, 1646)Google Scholar and Kingdom’s Weekly Intelligencer (23-30 May 1643).

87 Commons Journals, 2, p. 74; Rushworth, 3, 1327-9; D’Ewes(N), pp. 291-2, 295-6.

88 D’Ewes(N), pp. 323-5.

89 W. E. Rhodes, ‘The Apostolical Life of Ambrose Barlow, O.S.B.,’ Chetham Misc. II (ser. 2, v. 63, 1908), passim for his local connections and work in Lancashire.

90 The former pamphlet reprinted in Tracts Relating to the Civil War in Cheshire, 1641-1659, ed. Atkinson, J. A., Chetham Society, ser. 2, v. 65 (1909), pp. 2–4Google Scholar; the latter is British Library Thomason Tract E. 149 (15).

91 Commons Journals, 2, p. 476; the petition is printed in Civil War Tracts, ed. George Ormerod, Chetham Society, O.S., 2 (1844), pp. 2-5.

92 VCH Lancashire, 8 vols. (1906-14), 2, p. 234; G. F. T. Jones, Saw-Pit Wharton (1967), pp. 42-45.

93 A. J. Hawkes, ‘Wigan’s Part in the Civil War, 1639-1641’, Trans. Lane. & Cheshire Antiq. Soc. 47 (1930-31), p. 110, citing from Anderton of Euxton Deeds and Papers in Wigan Central Library. Hugh Anderton of Euxton, one of the coadjutor collectors, served as aide-de-camp to Lord Derby in the war; ibid., p. 85. He became lieutenant-colonel of foot in the regiment of Sir Thomas TiIdesley; see Blackwood, B. G., ‘The Lancashire Gentry, 1625-1660’, D.Phil, thesis, Oxford, 1973, App. IV, p. 344.Google Scholar

94 The petition and the King’s reply are reprinted in Ormerod, Civil War Tracts, pp. 38-40.

95 Hawkes, ‘Bradshaigh’, p. 7; P. R. Newman, ‘Royalist Armies in Northern England, 1642-45’, 2 vols, D.Phil, thesis, York, 1978, 2, p. 22.

96 Ormerod, Civil War Tracts, pp. 13-18, 23-24; Beaumont, William, ed., A Discourse of the War in Lancashire, Chetham Society, O.S., 62 (1864), pp. 6–19;Google Scholar Harland, John, ed., Lancashire Lieutenancy, 2 vols, Chetham Society, O.S., 49, 50 (1859)Google Scholar, v. 2, pp. 278-80.

97 Lancashire Gentry, p. 64. Of the 272 active Royalists, 157 were Catholic; of the forty-two Royalists killed in the wars, thirty were Catholic.

98 Blundell, F. O., Old Catholic Lancashire, 3 vols. (1925–41), 2, pp. 25–26, 93Google Scholar; Blackwood, D.Phil, thesis, App. IV, p. 346 on Gerard’s military activity.

99 Gillow, 5, p. 68; Blackwood, D.Phil, thesis, App. IV, pp. 348, 354.

100 Foley, 1, p. 669; Blackwood, D.Phil, thesis, App. IV, pp. 349, 354; Newman, D.Phil, thesis, 2, p. 444.