Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-dlnhk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-30T15:14:54.519Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Escape of Thomas Tichborne

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 September 2015

David Rogers
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

The two documents here transcribed as the core of a fuller account than any hitherto compiled of the escape from Government custody of a future martyr, the priest Ven. Thomas Tichborne, have in fact been in print since 1897. But though their previous editor, J. C. Jeaffreson, noted that these papers afforded new information unknown to Challoner when the latter published his brief account of the escape, yet Catholic historians who have written since the documents were printed have not been aware of them. Accordingly, since they first appeared in a context which Catholic writers have, not surprisingly, overlooked, there are grounds for republishing both documents freshly transcribed from the original manuscripts (now in the present writer's possession) and for elucidating them with the aid of notes and two sketch-maps, to retell more vividly a small incident played out in the streets of Elizabethan London, which cost two Catholics their lives.

Type
Research Article
Information
British Catholic History , Volume 19 , Issue 4 , October 1989 , pp. 411 - 425
Copyright
Copyright © Catholic Record Society 1988

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Notes

1 See The Manuscripts of J. Eliot Hodgkin (Historical Manuscripts Commission, Fifteenth Report, Appendix part 2) pp. 270-2. John Eliot Hodgkin was an antiquary who was also a wealthy and keen collector. He described, with his own annotations, a selection from his very wideranging assemblage of antiquarian objects, in three thick illustrated volumes published in 1902 under the title of Rariora. His collections were dispersed in auctions held by Sothebys in April-May 1914. The two documents here to be described were not mentioned in Rariora and did not form a separate lot in any of his sales. Later they were in the collection of André de Coppet of New York; at part 4 of the latter's auction they were part of lot 986 (Sotheby's, 4 July 1955) and were bought by the present writer.

2 For example: Wainewright, J. B. in Catholic Encyclopaedia (1913) vol. 14, p. 721;Google Scholar Archbishop, J. H. King The Martyrs of Hampshire (Catholic Truth Society, 1945) p. 30;Google Scholar Godfrey, Anstruther The Seminary Priests vol. 1, p. 358.Google Scholar

3 Jeaffreson aptly describes Hodgkin's as a ‘made collection’, that is, one which had been put together by purchase from diverse sources by an individual with personal tastes and necessarily random opportunities for acquisition, in contrast to a genuine archive (such as the Cecil papers at Hatfield House) which arises from one source and preserves, even if incompletely, an historical unity of period and place. This explains why historians who would naturally search through Hatfield volumes covering their period, could easily miss stray documents even though printed elsewhere in the same series, viz., the Historical Manuscripts Commission Reports.

4 Unpublished Documents Relating to the English Martyrs (C.R.S. 5), pp. 8-17.

5 This is the “Chalcedon-More” list, No. 7 in Pollen's survey of the catalogues.

6 Allison & Rogers, A Catalogue of Catholic Books 1558-1640, No. 916; English Recusant Literature vol. 363. This catalogue is No. 5 in Pollen's survey.

7 Catalogus martyrum pro religione Catholica in Anglia occisorum … ad annum 1612 [no place] (1614). This catalogue (No. 11 in Pollen's survey) is described in Allison & Rogers, The Contemporary Printed Literature of the English Counter-Reformation between 1558 and 1640, vol. 1 (1989) No. 1417. This Latin catalogue is a revised and enlarged edition of an earlier version printed, but not published, in 1610, thought by Pollen and others not to have survived. A copy has, however, recently been found among the Barberini papers in the Vatican and is described in the work just cited (hereafter abbreviated as ARCR), No. 1416.

8 In 1615 a short printed account in Spanish, describing the martyrdom of the two men, was issued at Granada, from information sent by an unnamed priest of the English College, Seville, who had been an eyewitness. The only copy of it so far discovered is in the Biblioteca Nacional at Madrid, but it is too fragile to xerox and I have not managed to see the text of it. Described in ARCR, No. 624.

9 No. 15 in Pollen's survey. Shortly after his appointment as Vicar Apostolic in 1625, Richard Smith received a letter from the recently constituted Congregation de Propaganda Fide notifying him that it was the wish of the Pope, Urban VIII, that the Acta of the English martyrs and confessors should be collected. He began at once but difficulties in tracing the birthplaces of martyrs delayed him and the finished catalogue was not sent to Rome until May 1628. See the article by S.J., C. A. Newdigate, ‘Quelques notes sur les Catalogues des martyrs anglais dits de Chalcédoine et de Paris’, Analecta Bollandiana tom. 56, pp. 308–333,Google Scholar which describes how Smith also caused search to be made in assize records, still existing in his day but now long since perished, to establish the official charges upon which various martyrs had been condemned.

10 Norton was Vicar for the counties of Kent, Surrey, Sussex, Hampshire and Berkshire (Pollen, op.cit., p. 393).

11 Pollen, op. cit., pp. 394-8.

12 Pollen, op. cit., p. 395. A comma omitted by Norton, which I have inserted after the word ‘executed’, would have made clear that Norton (who had himself been working on the English mission since 1591 or 1592) knew that it was the execution, not the escape, which took place on St.Bartholomew's Day. Pollen (p. 361) understood this sentence differently and thought Norton hadmistaken the date.

13 Worthington in ARCR No. 1417, p. 44: ‘Thomas [sic] Tichburnus Iuvenis Nobilis, & Thomas Hackshot Laicus, occisi sunt Londini, 24 Augusti’.

14 ‘Nicholas Tichburnus, laicus, ex nobili familia natus apud Hartley in comitatu Hantoniae, et Thomas Haukshei, laicus, natus apud Mursley in comitatu Buckinghamiae; [charge] ob liberatum sacerdotem e manibus Satellitum; [martyrdom] simul suspensi, Londini apud Tyburn, 24 Augusti. [Sources] Worthing[ton] in Catal[ogus, 1614]; Et relationes fide dignorum ex certa scientia’. Thus the 1628 Chalcedon catalogue (cf. note 9 above) under the year 1601. There are two copies of this unpublished manuscript catalogue in the Archives of the Archbishop of Westminster (B. XXVIII, pp. 73-121 and ibid 127-160, the latter incomplete). The copy submitted to the Congregation of Propaganda in 1628 is preserved in the Congregation's Archives (SOCG, 347, ff. 592-615).

15 This is No. 20 in Pollen's survey. Challoner was Vice-President from 1720 until he left for the English mission in 1730, so his catalogue dates from that period.

16 Memoirs of Missionary Priests, ed. Pollen, J. H. (1924) p. 260.Google Scholar

17 The author's holograph original Annates Elizabethae Reginae is preserved in the Archives of the Archbishop of Westminster (F.I, pp. 638-1047) and bears at the beginning the date ‘April 23, 1618’.

18 This is the phrase used in the Chalcedon catalogue quoted asbove, see note 14. The original Latinof Champney's narrative is as follows:—

Porro vigesimo quarto Augusti non absimili causa morte affectus est Londini laicus quidam dictus Thomas Hawkus. Is enim cum certo sustellexiset sacerdotem quemdam per talem vicum vel plateam Londini ab unico tantum custode ducendum fore, illorum adventum observans tantum capiti custodis ictum impegit ut attonitus pronus in terram cecidit [added in margin:] et dedit sacerdoti fugiendi commoditatem, quam ipse non neglexit. Thomas autem eodem loco expectans donee sacerdos in tuto esset et veritus hominem iterum percutere ne forte vel occideret vel graviter Iaederet (quod non cupiebat) tandem ab illo in terram adhuc iacente, sed in se iam utcumque reverso, dicessit, non tamen festinanter ne occasionem aliis se insequendi praeberet. Hie ergo qui percussus fuerat se erigens et videns ilium longius a se abscedentem clamavit: ‘proditorem! sistite proditorem!’ Qui statim ab occurrentibus comprehenditur, comprehensus autem ad carcerem, unde ductus fuerat sacerdos, trahitur et in specum coniectus cippis manibus pedibusque constringitur aliisque tormentis gravissimis torquetur; quae omnia fortiter et constanti animo pertulit. Tandem ad tribunal productus mortis sententiam quia sacerdotem liberasset in se prolatam audivit, mortemque ipsam quam tormentis prioribus leviorem aestimabat non minori constantia sustulit. Sacerdos autem quern vitae propriae iactura Iiberaverat, dictus Thomas Tichbornus, anno sequenti iterum captus martyrium quoque consummavit.

19 Champney himself was sent to the English mission in September 1597 and by December 1599 had been captured and lodged in the Marshalsea, before being moved to Wisbech (Anstruther, 1, pp. 70-1) so he was well placed to learn what was happening in other London prisons. Some of the details he recounts could, of course, have been revealed during Hackshot's trial, but we lack details of this. The action of rescuing a priest was treated as a felony, which carried the death penalty of hanging; it is very possible that the two laymen suffered following a gaol-delivery, along with a batch of common criminal prisoners, from whom the same penalty was exacted for a variety of offences, even down to petty theft.

20 His baptism is not to be found in the registers of Mursley, Bucks. But is it perhaps worth notethat one Robert Hawkshaw was presented to the living of Little Horwood in 1534 (Lipscomb, G. History and Antiquities of the County of Buckingham (1841–7), vol. 3, p. 390).Google Scholar This is the next parish to the north of Mursley in the same hundred of Cotteslowe, and some family presence in the area two generations back may be indicated.

21 ‘Admissus est Joannes Hawkshee (hie dictus Hammond) Londinensis, an. 15. filius Thomae Hawkshee, nobilis, qui dicitur martyrio affectus Londini’. The Douay College Diaries (C.R.S. 10, p. 131).

22 John Hammond (as he was known on the mission) was ordained and sent into England in 1625. He was one of the seven priests condemned to death in 1641 but reprieved by the King (see Biographical Studies, I, pp. 27-28). He was eventually released and died in 1663. (Anstruther, 2, p. 141; Bellenger, D. A. English and Welsh Priests 1558-1800 (1984), p. 67,Google Scholar giving him the code reference HACK02).

23 Cf. note 13 above.

24 Anstruther, 1, p. 358.

25 Archbishop King, op. cit., p. 29; Pollen, quoting Grene's Collectanea M, says 1587 (C.R.S. 5,p. 361) but cf. Hampshire Registers I (C.R.S. 42) pp. 145-9.

26 Hist. Mss. Commission, Calendar of the Manuscripts … at Hatfield House, part 4, p. 270.

27 Pollen, op. cit., p. 361.

28 Printed in Acts of the Privy Council of England (ed. Dasent, J. R.), vol. 29, p. 263.Google Scholar An earliervolume of the Acts (vol. 27, p. 15) records a payment on 3 April 1597 to Hugh Parlor ‘nowe Keeper’ of the Gatehouse since 21 January, the date he took over from Morris Pickering; he is again called Hugh, not John, on 23 October 1598 (vol. 29, p. 231) so that is evidently his correct name (cf. C.R.S. 53, pp. 249, 251). For the site of the Gatehouse Prison, part of the medieval buildings of Westminster Abbey, see Map 1, A.

29 It was possibly about 20 March 1601, when a Clerkenwell glover, George Baylie and his wife Mary, both recusants, were accused of harbouring him (Anstruther, 1, p. 358) that Thomas was recaptured. He was tried on 17 April 1602 and executed three days later. No information has been found about where and when Nicholas was arrested on this second occasion, nor anything about him from the day of the escape, 3 November 1598, until this examination dated 16 June 1599, except what he himself discloses therein.

30 Capitalization is original; only the commonest abbreviations (said, which, with) have been silently expanded. The word ‘Examinate’, which occurs so often, is generally written here with a contraction line somewhere about the middle of it. Jeaffreson prints ‘Examinant’, but the participle form required is surely ‘Examinate’, which is how it is now transcribed. (But see note 38 below).

31 The correct form of the martyr's surname as Hawkshaw is here finally established from his own mouth (cf. note 21 above for a variant pronounciation of the second syllable); here, too, his profession is disclosed for the first time.

32 William Waad (1546-1623) was Clerk of the Privy Council from 1583-1613. He was knighted in 1603.

33 i.e., disclosed.

34 For this lane, see Map 1, H.

35 The area occupied by the royal palace of Whitehall stretched from about the modern Downing Street (where the King Street Gate stood, see Map 1, D) up to where the present Northumberland Avenue joins the Strand.

36 Waad occupied a house facing into what was then the north end of King Street, later called Charing Cross and now part of the street called Whitehall. His house was on the east side of this street, a few doors southward from a narrow entrance which led to a space developed in the eighteenth century as Craig's Court. (Map 1, G.) Letters from Waad written to Cecil in 1598 are among the Hatfield papers and are dated from ‘Moor [More] Lane’, perhaps an alley running at a right angle from the main road and giving access to his house. See the London County Council Survey of London, vol. 16 (1935) pp. 227–9Google Scholar for the history of the property, acquired by Waad at some period after 1593 and still his at his death in 1623.

37 John Grange, who also signed the examination of Nicholas Tichborne in 1599 (Document II), wasa Justice of the Peace for the county of Middlesex. Letters from him to be found in the State Papers Domestic and in the Hatfield papers show him writing from the parish of St. Giles in the Fields.

38 In Document II, written by a different scribe, this word is here spelt thus (see note 30 above) andtherefore has now been expanded into that form in the many places where it occurs as an abbreviation.

39 Now Canon Row (Map 1, J). It ran roughly parallel to King Street and to the Thames.

40 The nearest access to the ‘waterside’ would have been the busy landing jetty for boats, named ‘Kinges Bridge’ (bridge here and elsewhere meant also a wooden platform built out into the stream; there were no bridges other than Old London Bridge, (Map 2, OLB), spanning the river prior to the middle of the eighteenth century). ‘Kinges Bridge’ is prominently marked on Norden's 1593 map of Westminster, but under the Commonwealth in 1658 Newc'ourt gives it its alternative name of ‘Westminster stayre’ (Map 1, L). The jetty was reached via the large open space in front of Westminster Hall called Old Palace Yard (K) and was situated on its eastern edge, now under the Houses of Parliament (W) near the Big Ben clock tower.

41 Paris Garden Stairs (Map 2, P) was the name of a landing stage on the south bank of the Thames, situated just east of the present Blackfriars railway bridge. It takes its name from the medieval manor of Paris Garden, which occupied the northwest corner of the Borough of Southwark. Being privately owned, it lay outside the jurisdiction of the City and became a resort for various forms of popular entertainment; hereabouts were to be found bear- and bull-baiting rings, the earliest purpose-built playhouses (the Rose, 1587, the Swan, c. 1595, and the Globe, 1599) and the notorious Bankside stews.

42 In 1905 the ancient medieval church of the Augustinian Canons at St. Mary Overy (Map 2, SMO) standing on the Surrey bank of the Thames just southeast of London Bridge, and later known as St.Saviour's, became the present Cathedral of the Anglican diocese of Southwark.

43 Winchester House (Map 2, WH) was still at this date the London palace of the bishops of Winchester. It stood close to the river, just west of St. Mary Overy (see note 42 above). Lancelot Andrewes was the last bishop to live in the house; he died there in 1626.

44 An inn called the Bear is mentioned in several places in the Borough's published volumes entitled Reading Records (1895).

45 Melcott is Milcott, about three miles downstream from Stratford upon Avon in Warwickshire (not, as Nicholas thought, in Worcestershire). It had long been the seat of the senior branch of the Grevilles, but Sir Edward Greville was the last of that line and after his death the property passed to a daughter Mary and was sold to Lionel Cranfield in 1622, the year he was created Earl of Middlesex (V.C.H., Warwickshire, vol. 5, p. 200). As Nicholas Tichborne is not known to have married, Williams wasperhaps the husband of a sister of Nicholas.