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Did Creswell Write the Answer to the Proclamation of 1610? A Note on A&R 265
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 October 2016
Extract
A work commonly attributed in bibliographies to Joseph Creswell S.J. (1556–1623) is a reply, written under the pseudonym B. D. de Clerimond, to King James I’s proclamation of 2 June 1610 ‘for the due execution of all former laws against Recusants’. The reply, published in 1611, is A&R 265: A proclamation published vnder the name of lames King of Great Britanny. With a brief & moderate answere therunto. Whereto are added the penall statutes, made in the same kingdome, against Catholikes. Togeather with a letter which sheweth the said Catholikes piety: and diuers aduertisements also, for better vnderstanding of the whole matter. Translated out of Latin into English.
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References
Notes
1 For Creswell see Loomie, A. J. The Spanish Elizabethans, 1963, ch. 6, pp. 182–229 Google Scholar. See also A. F. Allison, ‘The Later Life and Writings of Joseph Creswell, S.J.’, Recusant History, October 1979, pp. 79–144.
2 STC 8447. Larkin, J. F. & Hughes, P. L., Stuart Royal Proclamations, vol. 1, 1968, no. III, pp. 245–50.Google Scholar
3 The document is undated but internal evidence shows that it was drawn up in 1632. (The notice of John Sweet says he died on 26 February ‘of the present year, 1632’. The Library, December 1926, p. 313.) It is still preserved in the College archives: Scritture, vol. 30, no. 2. There is a copy at PRO among the Roman Transcripts: PRO 31/9. no. 13. An English translation, not always accurate, is printed in Foley, vol. 6, pp. 521–32.
4 Types and ornaments used by the press are illustrated by C. A. Newdigate, ‘Notes on the Seventeenth Century Printing Press of the English College at Saint Omers’, The Library, ser. 3, vol. 10, 1919, pp. 179–90, 223–42. A&R 265 uses the 58mm, 46mm and 35mm types shown by Newdigate; initial T on p. 1 is from the 28mm set (Newdigate figures 1,1a); the tailpiece on pp. 6, 126, 178 is Newdigate figure 4. The 1632 catalogue includes over eighty books which it says were printed at S. Omer; none of these bears any imprint but the types and ornaments used confirm that they were printed at the College press.
5 Shelf-mark: C. 26. k. 1(1).
6 The origins of the collection are obscure. The books, most of which were printed at S. Omer, were evidently sent to Rome and deposited in the library of the professed house sometime around the middle of the seventeenth century. The collection contains nothing printed later than 1638. All the books bear manuscript notes, undoubtedly based on information sent from S. Omer, identifying the English Jesuit author or translator. As these notes sometimes supplement information given by Alegambe in his Bibliotheca scriptorum Societatis Iesu, 1643, it seems probable that at least some of them had not arrived in Rome when that work went to press. At the suppression of the Jesuits in 1773 the library of the professed house was dispersed and we have no knowledge of what then became of this collection: all we know is that in 1924 it was offered for sale, in pristine condition, by the Edinburgh bookseller, the late George Johnston. All attempts to discover where Johnston acquired it have so far failed. About half the collection (33 items) is now in the British Library (shelf-marks: C. 26. k–1.); the remainder (35 items) is in the Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington (shelf-marks: between HH 5 and HH 220).
7 There is a short account of Wilson in Newdigate, art. cit. Note 4, pp. 184–89. See also Anstruther, vol. 2, p. 358, and P. R. Harris, ‘The Reports of William Udall, Informer’, Recusant History, January 1966, p. 219 n. 9 and p. 237 n. 3.
8 In this and other passages quoted from the text the spelling is modernised.
9 The letter as here printed bears no signature of any kind. In the Spanish translation made from this English version (See note 14) the translator has added at the end the words: ‘Vuestra muy leal, y aficionada muger. A.A.’ The initials A.A. are a conventional formula and unlikely to have any significance.
10 See note 4.
11 The Martyrs of England and Wales. A complete list of the canonised and beatified martyrs, 1979 (CTS H 469), p. 29.
12 See Loomie, op. cit. Note 1, pp. 221–23.
13 Under favourable conditions the journeys could be a little quicker. Charles and Buckingham, taking the land route via Calais, Paris and Irun, reached Madrid in nineteen days (17 February n.s. to 7 March n.s., 1623) but it demanded hard riding; their return journey, by land from Madrid to Santander and thence by sea to Portsmouth took them, allowing for delays caused by adverse winds, thirty-two days (3 September to 5 October, 1623).
14 The translator has introduced several small changes in the Spanish. The following are the most noteworthy:— 1. The words with which the English title ends, ‘Translated out of Latin into English’, are replaced by ‘… traduzidas de Latin en varias leuguas [sic] por el D. B. de Cleremond [sic]’. This is misleading; the Spanish is, in fact, a translation made from John Wilson’s English version which was itself made from a Latin original written under the pseudonym B. D. de Clerimond. 2. In the Spanish, the pseudonym, with the initials transposed (D.B. instead of B.D.) appears on the titlepage, at the end of the preface and at the end of the text. In the English, the pseudonym appears only at the end of the preface. 3. The letter of the Catholic gentlewoman (Section 3), unsigned in the English, is signed in the Spanish with the initials A.A. See note 9. 4. Wilson’s introductory note to section 7, saying that English Catholics hardly needed to be told about the execution of the penal laws, is omitted in the Spanish. 5. The table of sections or chapters at the end of the English is replaced in the Spanish by a subject-index.
15 Ornamental initial V, with two breaks in the r.h. margin, on sig. A1r (f. 1r), is found, with the same breaks, on sig. 4r of Petrus de Cabrera, De sacrament is in genere, printed at the press of Luis Sanchez, Madrid, in 1611. Ornamental initial S, with breaks in several places, on sig. D2 (f. 14r), occurs with the same breaks on sig. A1r (p. 1) of the same edition of Cabrera’s work. Small ornamental initial A on sig. Dd2r is the same as that on sig. E3r (p. 62) of Definiciones y establecimiento de la orden y cavalleria d’Alcantara, printed at the press of Luis Sanchez in 1609.
16 The manuscript of every book printed at the press was submitted before printing to the Bishop of S. Omer for his approval. This was an informal arrangement replacing the normal censorship procedure. See the letter of 7 March 1615 from the Nuncio at Brussels, Guido Bentivoglio, to the Papal Secretary of State (R. Belvederi, Guido Bentivoglio diplomatico, 1948, vol. 2, p. 345). Books by Jesuit authors, which formed the great majority of those printed at the press, had also to be approved by censors appointed by the General.
17 For example, Creswell’s account of the life and martyrdom of St. Henry Walpole which he wrote in Spanish and published at Madrid in 1596.
18 Loomie, op. cit. Note 1, pp. 221–26. When he published his book in 1963 Fr. Loomie accepted the traditional attribution of A&R 265 to Creswell.
19 See Loomie, A. J., ‘Guy Fawkes in Spain’, Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research, Special Supplement no. 9, 1971, pp. 47–51.Google Scholar Fr. Loomie is currently preparing an edition of the English original of this work which is preserved in manuscript at BL Cotton Vespasian C XII, ff. 342–71. He has now established that the Spanish was printed in late 1606 and not early 1607 as stated in ‘Guy Fawkes in Spain’.
20 Shelf-mark: Varios 3–6463.
21 Michael Walpole S.J., who in 1610 also published at the College press, S. Omer, an answer to King James’s proclamation of 2 June, is far more discreet in his handling of the Oath of Allegiance and shows much greater deference to the King than does the author of A&R 265. Walpole’s work, published under the initials M.C.P., is A&R 871: A briefe admonition to all English Catholikes concerning a late proclamation.