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Elizabethan Priest-Holes: III—East Anglia, Baddesley Clinton, Hindlip

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 October 2016

Michael Hodgetts
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Extract

None of the priest-holes described in the last article show the ingenuity which indicates the craftsmanship of St Nicholas Owen. The earliest dateable examples of his work are in East Anglia, at Oxburgh (c. 1589), Braddocks (1592) and Sawston (1593?). All of these are in remarkably good trim, and all can be documented from Gerard's Autobiography. But since I have already discussed these three houses elsewhere, I shall deal with them fairly briefly here, and then consider in more detail two houses in the west Midlands, Baddesley Clinton and Hindlip, where the hides can be dated to the same five years. The advantage of this procedure is that the well-authenticated examples from East Anglia can furnish a context for the discussion of Baddesley Clinton (where the identification is disputed) and Hindlip (where the house was demolished in 1814 and must be reconstructed from surviving documents).

Type
Research Article
Information
British Catholic History , Volume 12 , Issue 2 , April 1973 , pp. 171 - 197
Copyright
Copyright © Catholic Record Society 1973

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References

For abbreviations see Recusant History, October 1972, p. 296.

1 ‘Nicholas Owen in East Anglia’, The Month, August 1962, pp. 69-81; ‘A House with Three Priest-Holes’ [Sawston], Country Life, 22 March 1962.

2 Gerard, 14-15.

3 Gerard, 18.

4 Gerard, 220; Norfolk Visitations (Harleian Society 32), p. 31.

5 Recusant History, October 1972, p. 289.

6 Gerard, 28.

7 Gerard, 51.

8 S.P. 12/243/95, cf. S.P. 12/244/7 and Colin, W. Field, The Province of Canterbury and the Elizabethan Settlement (1972), p. 215.Google Scholar

9 Gerard, 37.

10 Narrative, xl-xliv.

11 Gerard, 61.

12 Squiers, 203.

13 Gerard, 33.

14 C.R.S. 22, p. 56; Arthur Oswald, Country Life, 10-17-24, June 1954.

15 Gerard, 33.

16 Narrative, xliv.

17 Arthur, Oswald, Country Life, 9 April 1932, p. 414.Google Scholar

18 Burke's Peerage (1949), under Plymouth, Earl of; Burke's Landed Gentry (1906), under Ferrers; C.R.S. 21, p. 164; Troubles 2, passim.

19 Garnet 171; C.R.S. 2, p. 281.

20 Elizabeth, K. Berry, Henry Ferrers, Dugdale Soc. Occasional Papers (1965) 16, p. 17.Google Scholar

21 Berry, 5-6.

22 S.P. 12/167/21, printed in John, William Ryland, Records of Rowington (1896), pp. 162–8.Google Scholar

23 Ryland, 168.

24 S.P. 12/243/76, f. 242. I have published the full text in Worcestershire Recusant 5 and 6 (May and December 1965). This passage is Worcs. Rec. 6, p. 10.

25 Ibid., f. 241 (Worcs. Rec. 6, pp. 7-8); Anstruther 155.

26 Ibid., f. 242 (Worcs. Rec. 6, p. 10).

27 The documents on this search are in Gerard 40-43, Vaux 186-91, and Garnet 127-35. Since the story is so well known, I have not told it again.

28 Oliver Baker, Birmingham Arch. Soc. Trans. 17 (1891), pp. 74-79; Arthur Oswald, Country Life, 9-16 April 1932; Squiers 29-33; Squiers in Birmingham Weekly Post, 31 July, 11 September, 9 and 16 October, and 6 November 1936; V.C.H. Warwickshire 4 (1947), pp. 13-16.

29 Baker, pp. 98-99.

30 V.C.H. Warwks. 4, p. 15; Squiers 31.

31 Baker, p. 98.

32 Squiers, Birmingham Weekly Post, 9 October and 6 November 1936.

33 Salzman, L. F., Building in England down to 1540 (1952), p. 282.Google Scholar

34 Ibid.

35 Devlin 243.

36 For a description of the Eltham sewer, see Squiers 222-4; for a plan, Roy Brook, The Story of Eltham Palace (1960), pp. 40-41.

37 Squiers 32-33; Pevsner, Buildings of Warwickshire, 82.

38 Squiers, 32-33.

39 Squiers, 33.

40 Gerard, 41.

41 Gerard, 42.

42 Stonyhurst Anglia 1, no. 73, f. 1 verso.

43 Narrative, 282.

44 Gerard, 43.

45 Gerard, 41; Vaux, 188.

46 Squiers 71, 89, 148, 160; The Chronicle of St Monica's in Louvain (ed. Adam Hamilton, O.S.B., 1904), pp. 244–6.Google Scholar The hide at Sledwick was located by Squiers (p. 39) at Clopton House, Stratford-on-Avon, through a confusion of Anne Clopton of Sledwick with her sister Joyce Clopton of Clopton: of Foley 6, 326. At the time of the Gunpowder Plot Clopton was let to Ambrose Rookwood by Joyce's husband Sir George Carew, later Baron Carew of Clopton and Earl of Totnes: Hugh, Ross Williamson, The Gunpowder Plot (1951), p. 129;Google Scholar Spink, H. H., The Gunpowder Plot and Lord Mounteagle's Letter (1902), p. 303.Google Scholar

47 Robert Julian Stonor, O.S.B., Liverpool's Hidden Story (1957), p. 91.

48 Gerard, 42.

49 Vaux, 188.

50 The Chronicle of St Monica's, 246.

51 S.P. 12/243/76, f. 239.

52 Ibid., f. 241.

53 Ibid., f. 243v.

54 Vaux, 255, 283-5, 345, 383; Narrative 181-2; Camm, Forgotten Shrines (1910), 320-4.

55 Vaux, 384; C.R.S. 18, 348.

56 V.C.H. Warwickshire 2, 38.

57 Cox, J. C., ‘An Elizabethan Clergy List of the Diocese of Lichfield’, Derbyshire Arch. Soc. Journal 6 (1884), p. 177 Google Scholar

58 In 1821, there were still only eighteen scattered houses in the parish: West's History, Topography and Directory of Warwickshire (1830), 596.

59 S.P. 12/229/78.

60 Vaux, 188.

61 Foley 4, 213-16. Foley's attribution of this MS (Stonyhurst Anglia 6, 54) to Fr Thomas Lister (1559-1626) is questionable.

62 British Museum, Harleian MS. 360, ff. 100-01.

63 Society of Antiquaries, Prattinton Collection, Box 2/15, nos. 1-6, and Worcestershire Parishes 18, pp. 73, 71, 78, 67-69, 79, 76. The leaves of this volume are bound in the wrong order with some upside down: the order given above makes reasonably continuous sense. For Grafton, see John Humphreys, Birmingham Arch. Soc. Trans. 44 (1918), pp. 1-125.

64 Gerard, 202.

65 Narrative, 153.

66 Prattinton, as in note 63.

67 Prattinton, pp. 73, 71. For the Queen's visit to Hindlip in 1575, see Nichols, , Progresses of Queen Elizabeth 1, 540.Google Scholar

68 Prattinton, p. 79.

69 V.C.H. Worcestershire 3, 399.

70 S.P. 12/151/10. This document is bound and catalogued in the Calendar with a volume belonging to 1581, but should be 1592 or 1593. Thomas Habington, who is mentioned as being in prison at Worcester Castle, was not transferred there from the Tower until 1592, and was released in 1593: Athenae Oxonienses 3, 222.

71 Prattinton, Worcestershire Parishes 18, p. 48.

72 Ibid., 76.

73 Nash, Worcestershire 1 (1784), p. 585.Google Scholar

74 Harleian MS. 360, f. 101. According to John, Britton and Laird, F. C., The Beauties of England and Wales 15 (1814), p. 186,Google Scholar ‘Four of the last conspirators, Owen and Chambers, Garnet and Hill [sic], were concealed in pairs in two of the recesses, which are still pointed out’ [my italics]. But no details are given, and Prattinton does not mention these places.

75 Foley 4, 216.

76 Narrative, 153.

77 Harleian MS 360, f. 100v.

78 Ibid., 100v-101v.

79 Vaux, 356-7.

80 Henry, Foulis, Romish Treasons and Usurpations (1671), p. 698.Google Scholar

81 Josephus Juvencus, S.J., Historia Societatis Jesu, Pars 5, Tomus 2 (1591-1616), Rome, 1710, p. 162.Google Scholar I owe this reference to Mr Patrick Barry.

82 Allan, Fea, Secret Chambers and Hiding Places (1908), p. 36.Google Scholar

83 Squiers 89, 125-6.

84 Ralph, Dutton, The English Country House (1962), pp. 69–70.Google Scholar

85 Sir, Gyles Isham, Rushton Triangular Lodge (HMSO, 1970), p. 16.Google Scholar

86 Foley, 4, 74.

87 MS. Harleian 360, f. 101.

88 Foley, 4, 73.

89 Foley, 4, pp. 222, 259-60.

90 George Snape's deposition (note 59 above), which mentions the ‘very safe and close places of conveyance’ in Anne Vaux's house ‘for [priests] to lurke in’, also mentions a priest named Hopton who lived with Mr Yate at Buckland in Berkshire, where ‘lyeth all Hopton's Stuffe and Bookes, hidden in a secrete Corner’. Similarly, John Mush speaks of the ‘privy conveyance for safety’ in St Margaret Clitherow's house in the Shambles at York: ‘The entry was painful to him that was not acquainted with the door, by reason of the straitness thereof: Troubles 3, 401.

91 Recusant History, October 1973, 287.

92 Anstruther, 345-6.

93 Foley, 4, 213-16; Gerard 44-45.

94 Foley, 4, 203-11.

95 Foley, 4, 223.

96 Foley, 4, 215, 271-5.

97 Foley, 4, 219.

98 Gerard, 161.

99 Garnet, 91-92, 204-05.

100 Ibid.

101 Gerard, 144.

102 Hugh, Ross Williamson, The Gunpowder Plot (1951), 138–9.Google Scholar

103 Ibid., 139.

104 Garnet, 222-3, 233-4; Foley 4, 271-5 and 7, 462.

105 Garnet, 296.

106 Foley, 4, pp. 154, 220; Ross Williamson, 178; Gerard, 173; C.R.S. 54, no. 353.

107 Gerard, 202-03, 264.

108 Gerard, 45.

109 Ibid.

110 Ibid.

111 Ibid., 44.

112 S.P. 12/246/18.

113 L. T. C. Rolt, Worcestershire (1949), 264.