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James I and his Catholic Subjects, 1606–1612: Some Financial Implications

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 September 2015

John J. La Rocca, S.J.
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Extract

MUCH recent research has examined Catholicism in early Stuart England and some has discussed the contribution of anti-Catholicism to the outbreak of the Civil War—but how well-founded were the fears underlying the rhetoric which surfaced in parliament? This paper1 addresses one aspect of that question by looking at certain financial features of Catholic non-conformity (as demonstrated by absence from Anglican services and/or refusal of the oath of allegiance) in the first half of James I’s reign, chiefly between 1606 and 1612. The significance of this period is that it begins just after the attempt to blow up king and parliament and ends with the death of Robert Cecil, Earl of Salisbury who, during his term of office as Lord Treasurer from 1608 onwards, was grappling with an intractable royal indebtedness which he managed to curtail but not to cure and whose own effectiveness waned following the failure of the Great Contract in 1610.2

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Articles
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British Catholic History , Volume 18 , Issue 3 , May 1987 , pp. 251 - 262
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© 1986 Trustees of the Catholic Record Society and individual contributors

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References

Notes

1 This article is based on a paper originally read at the Spring 1985 meeting of the American Catholic Historical Association. For wide—ranging bibliographical coverage, see Hibbard, C., ‘Early Stuart Catholicism: Revisions and Re—Revisions’ in the Journal of Modern History, 52 (Chicago, 1980) pp. 1–34.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Subsequently published relevant material includes A. Dures, English Catholicism, 1558–1642 (1983) esp. chaps. 3 & 4, the section ‘The Catholic Problem’ in the second edition of Kenyon, J. P., The Stuart Constitution (1986) pp. 185–8Google Scholar and four articles in The Journal of British Studies: La Rocca, J. J., ‘“Who Can't Pray with Me, Can't Love Me”: Toleration and Early Jacobean Recusancy Policy’ (in vol. 23, pp. 22–36);Google Scholar Wormald, J., ‘Gunpowder, Treason and Scots’ (vol. 24, pp. 141–168);Google Scholar Fincham, K.& Lake, P., ‘The Ecclesiastical Policy of King James I’ (ibid., pp. 169–207)Google Scholar and Peck, L. L., ‘“For a King not be be bountiful were a fault”: Perspectives on Court Patronage in Early Stuart England’ (vol. 25, pp. 31—61).Google Scholar

2 See Ashton, R., Reformation and Revolution, 1558–1660 (1984) pp. 198–205:Google Scholar ‘The Failure of Fiscal Reform’; also Smith, A. G. R., ‘The Great Contract of 1610’ in The English Commonwealth, 1547–1640 (ed P. Clark, A. G. R. Smith & N. Tyacke, 1979) pp. 111–127.Google Scholar

3 Hurstfield, J., Freedom, Corruption and Government in Elizabethan England (1973) p. 187.Google Scholar James himself acknowledged, ‘with all the spendthrift's genius for fair promises of reform’, ‘this continual haemorrhage of outletting’: Cecil, A., A Life of Robert Cecil, First Earl of Salisbury (1915) p. 290;Google Scholar C. Sal. MSS., 19, p. 285—a document of Oct. 1607 in which the king refers to the suit ‘anent that recusant's unknown debt’ of Sir Jarnes Sandilands, one of the ‘fairly numerous’ Scots who received grants from recusancy penalties; see also Mathew, D., James I (1967) p. 166 Google Scholar and, for Sandilands’ suit and grant, C.S.P.D., 1603–10, pp. 61, 301.

4 The Commons’ Protestation, 1610, in Kenyon, op. cit., pp. 126–8.

5 C.R.S. 57, p. cxi, & passim This figure is for the final four years of Elizabeth's reign; prior to this (1593–99) annual recusancy revenue remains in the six thousands. A budget-estimate of 1600 includes £7,000 from recusants and hints at a possible increase from that source: Elton, G. R., The Tudor Constitution (2nd ed., 1982) pp. 47–8.Google Scholar

6 e.g. a nominal £371,000 estreated into the Exchequer in 1611–12, but only c. £8,500 actually received: Lansd. 153, ff. 106, 188, 190; F. C. Deitz (somewhat different figures, from Exchequer sources), Receipts and Issues of the Exchequer … James I and Charles I (Smith College Studies in History, 13, no. 4, Northampton, Mass., 1928) pp. 137, 140. Lansd. 153 is also drawn—on in Gasquet, F. A., Hampshire Recusants (1895) pp. 34–6, 44,Google Scholar while f. 106 and ff. 188 & 190 are cited in, respectively, ‘A Glimpse of the Working of the Penal Laws under James I’ in The Rambler, n.s., 6 (1856) p. 417 and J. Gerard, What Was the Gunpowder Plot?, Appendix O (added to second edition, 1897). Gasquet's study, subsequently included in his The Old English Bible and Other Essays (1897), also illustrates discrepancies between Lansd. 153. ff. 188, 190 and Exchequer sources (Hants. Recusants, pp. 33, 36: 1601 figures). The Rambler article was probably by Richard Simpson (Altholz, J. L. in Recusant History, 6, p. 83)Google Scholar. On The Rambler and its contributors, 1848—64, see Altholz, The Liberal Catholic Movement in England (1962). See also Magee, B., The English Recusants (1938) pp. 79–80.Google Scholar

7 Gardiner, S.R., History of England from the Accession of James I to the Outbreak of the Civil War (1883–4) 2, p. 164.Google Scholar

8 The quotation is from Cecil, op. cit., p. 294. For Thomas Sackville, Earl of Dorset (formerly Lord Buckhurst), see D.N.B.; ‘G.E.C, Complete Peerage, 4, pp. 422–3; also, inter alia, V. SackvilleWest, Knole and the Sackvilles (4th edn., 1958) chap. 4; C.R.S., 2, pp. 1–11; Morris, J., Troubles of Our Catholic Forefathers, 1 (1872) p. 197,Google Scholar claiming his conversion to Catholicism shortly before his death.

9 For the king's wishes, see C.S.P.D., 1603–10, p. 463; after rising to £10,918 5s. 6d. in 1609 (from £6,861 8s. 7d. in 1608) and standing at £9,480 0s. 7d. in 1610, receipts fell back to c. £8,500 in the next two years and declined fairly steadily thereafter to £2,748 15s. 9d. by the end of the reign (Dietz, op. cit., pp. 137, 140–41, 144–5). From 1621 the figures are of fines of recusants and fugitives; from 1612 to 1620 the ‘lands of outlaws and fugitive recusants’ added a few pounds per annum (£16 at the earlier date, £2 5s. at the later and £4 10s. in between). See also note 11 re fines for oath-refusal.

10 Camden Soc, 1st series, 81 p. xx. In November 1609 Salisbury was himself said to be ‘commending the quiet behaviour of recusants and acquiting them frome being culpable of that monstruous gunpowther treason, [and] thought it was expedient that they should be more mildly delt withal then in former times’ (Hist. MSS. Comm., 12th Report, Appendix, pt. 4, p. 420).

11 Larkin, J. F. & Hughes, P. L., Stuart Royal Proclamations: James I (1973) pp. 264–5;Google Scholar 7 & 8 Jac. I, c. 6. Exchequer receipts for refusal of the oath of allegiance were £2,921 in 1612 and £250 in 1613, the only years with figures under that head in Dietz, op. cit., p. 140. A resolution of the judges concerning the tendering of the oath (7 Feb. 1612) was followed by something of a drive in that direction. The resolution is printed in C.R.S., 60, p. 207; see also the late Professor Petti's editorial note, p. 208. As well as sources there cited, documents from Lansd. 153 printed in The Rambler, n.s., 6, pp. 406–16 (some of them also cited in this article) illustrate this drive and Catholic reactions to it. Also boding ill for English Catholics at this time was the recent appointment of George Abbot as Archbishop of Canterbury (see Dures, op. cit., p. 49).

12 Devon, F., Issues of the Exchequer … James I (1836) p. 172;Google Scholar Bowler, H., ‘Sir Henry James of Smarden, Kent, and Clerkenwell, Recusant’ in Studies in London History (ed. Hollaender, A. E. J. & Kellaway, W., 1969) pp. 307–8; D. H.Google Scholar Willson, James VI and I (1956) p. 176. For Haddington, see also D.N.B., sub. Ramsay, Sir John, and ‘G.E.C, Complete Peerage, 6, p. 534 (Earldom of Holdernesse, his eventual title). For the king's payment of Haddington's debts, see L Stone, TheCrisis of the Aristocracy, 1558–1641 (1979 edn.) p. 417 and, for numerous grants to him, C.S.P.D., 1603–10, passim, indexed under 'Ramsay (or Ramsey) Sir John'; also 1611–18 (wrongly indexed as ‘Ramsay, Jas.’) and ibid., p. 12 for Wigmore.

13 In Lansd. 153; several of these items are printed in the Rambler article already cited (notes 6 & 11, above) quoting now—obsolete folio—numbers. These items are marked with an asterisk in subsequent notes, which give the present numbering.

14 Lansd. 153, ff. 46–47 v* For Vaux, see Anstruther, G., Vaux of Harrowden (Newport, 1953) pp. 399–407;Google Scholar for Vavasour, Cliffe, J. T., The Yorkshire Gentry from the Reformation to the CivilWar (1969) pp. 178–9, 217–8.Google Scholar

15 Lansd., cit.* Richard Towneley's son Charles, on entering the English College, Rome in 1620, stated that his parents were worth £1,700 p.a. (C.R.S., 54, p. 340). Richard was the son of John Towneley, one of the few Elizabethan recusants who regularly paid £260 p.a. (£20 per lunar month) for persistent absence from church—a fact for which one source is the inscription beneath a family portrait, corresponding to the evidence of Exchequer records; see also C.R.S., 57, pp. xxx-xxxi & note 96; Mary Elizabeth Towneley: A Memoir (1924) pedigree at end; C. Cross, The Puritan Earl (1966) p. 238 & illustration facing. For William Middleton, see Cliffe, op. cit., pp. 178–9, 215–6 (he had at first offered £400, then increased the figure to £500).

16 One case which illustrates this is described in detail in Ryan, G. H. & Redstone, L. J., Timperley of Hintlesham (1931) pp. 53–6.Google Scholar

17 Acts of the Privy Council, 1615–16, p. 583, showing him still in prison in June 1616 despite a pardon granted in February 1613: P.R.O., SO 3/5 (unpaginated), second page of entries for February 1612; also third page for June 1613.

18 Lansd. 153, f. 85*, from Holborn (also f. 79*: his application to compound).

19 P.R.O., SO 3/5, fourth page of entries for ‘January 1612’.

20 Lansd. 153, ff. 44–44 v*; also ff. 52–3: long list dated 18 July 1612, of persons to be required to take the oath. See also C.S.P.D., 1611–18, pp. 138 (list), 144 (letter).

21 See Gardiner's remark quoted in the third paragraph of this article; also P.R.O., SO 3/5, April 1613 (‘Peshall et al. Grant’); July 1613 (‘Wigmore & al. Grant’).

22 Dodd, C. (Hugh Tootell), The Church History of England, chiefly with Regard to Catholics (ed. M A. Tierney, 1861) 4, p. 62, note 1.Google Scholar

23 C.S.P.V., 1603–7, pp. 309–10; C.S.P.D., 1603–10, p. 333 &passim; C. Sal. MSS., 18, pp. 25–6. However, a document concerning such grants, printed in Tierney-Dodd, 4, p. lxxv, as though antedating Gunpowder Plot (i.e. ‘October 1605’) belongs in fact to the following year; this is pointed out by Gardiner, op. cit., 2, p. 19, note 1. The document is P.R.O., S.P. 14/35 (17 Oct. 1606).

24 C. Sal. MSS., 18, pp. 44–6; Notestein, W., The House of Commons, 1604–1610 (New Haven, 1971) pp. 152, 521, note 31.Google Scholar

25 History of England …, 2, p. 18, note 5; see also Aveling, H., Northern Catholics (1966) p. 215;Google Scholar P.R.O., SO 3/6, July 1618 (penultimate page: ‘Johnson, Grant’).

26 Dures, op. cit., p. 46.

27 Lansd. 153, f. 131* (12 July 1611, with information from Blackburn, Lanes).

28 Larkin & Hughes, op. cit., pp. 142–5; Tierney-Dodd, 4, pp. exxxii-exxxv.

29 Pope Paul V condemned the oath in September 1606; see Ryan, C. J., ‘The Jacobean Oath of Allegiance and English Lay Catholics’ in The Catholic Historical Review, 28 (Washington, 1942) pp. 159–183.Google Scholar See also C.S.P.D., 1630–10, p. 330; C. Sal. MSS., 18, pp. 419–20 and, for licences to travel abroad, P.R.O., SO 3/3 (26 Jan. 1605/6, 3 Aug. 1606, 6 Nov. 1606, 4 March 1606/7, 23 Nov. 1607); SO 3/4 (4 May 1608, 30 May 1608). See also Milward, P., Religious Controversies of the Jacobean Age (1978) pp. 89–119 Google Scholar passim

30 Foley, H., Records of the English Province of the Society of Jesus (1877–83) 1, p. 65.Google Scholar

31 Usher, R G., The Reconstruction of the English Church (1910) 2, pp. 186–91;Google Scholar Ryan, art. cit., pp. 176–82; Larkin & Hughes, op. cit., pp. 145, note 5; 184–5;

Aveling, J. C. H., Catholic Recusancy in the City of York, 1558–1791 (C.R.S. Monograph series, no. 2, 1970) p. 83;Google Scholar also Aveling, Northern Catholics, pp. 214–5 and his ‘Catholic Recusants of the West Riding, 1558–1790’, in Proceedings ofthe Leeds Philosophical and Literary Society: Literary & Historical Section 10 (Leeds, 1963) pp. 230–1. For the later drive, apart from instances cited in this article, see Tierney-Dodd, 4, notes to pp. 166, 170, 172. The document thus annotated, ‘Father Pollard's Recollections of the Yorkshire Mission’, is printed in extenso in Morris, J., Troubles of Our Catholic Forefathers, 3 (1877) pp. 445–70.Google Scholar For Pollard (vere Sharpe) see Foley, Records S.J., 2, pp. 617–625; 7, pp. 702–3.

32 P.R.O., SO 3/3 and SO 3/4 (1603–1612); these have yet to be correlated with the grants under the Signet, 1606–11, listed in British Library, Add. MS. 34765, which records 214 awards involving some seven hundred recusants, not all of them resolute (e.g. Lady Booth of Bath, for whom see C.R.S., 65, pp. 28–9) and which contains many misspellings or misleading renderings of personal and place- names. The Essex entries are printed and discussed by Dr. Alan Davidson in the Essex Recusant journal, 11 (Brentwood, 1969) pp. 42–51. For the Privy Council's opinion as to how the king might distribute recusancy penalties, see C.S.P.D., Addenda, 1580–1625, pp. 452–3 (referring to the statutory fine as ‘2,600 1 yearly’, instead of £260 p.a.). Numerous such grants are calendared in C.S.P.D., 1603–10; 1611–18, and attention is drawn to ‘many mistakes touching the grants of recusants’ fines, several being twice granted’ (C.S.P.D., 1603–10, p. 377).

33 See p. 295 of Mr. Aveling's important Introduction to the final section of C.R.S. 53. But although insistence on the two-thirds forfeiture may not have brought more profit to the Crown, it could prove so repugnant to fine-paying recusants as to drive them into conformity; e.g. Sir William Roper, mentioned in this paper, and Jane Shelley, instanced in Dures, op. cit., p. 45.

34 Goodman, G., The Court of King James I (ed. J. S. Brewer, 1839) 1, p. 174.Google Scholar

35 An example of this, documented from family papers, is given in Wake, J., The Brudenells of Deene (1953) p. 100.Google Scholar By one of the 1606 ‘grants’ (P.R.O., SO 3, 6 Aug.) the indebtedness of one recusant to the Crown was to be offset by penalties levied on another, his creditor. For those involved, Thomas Hoord and Ralph Sheldon respectively, see also A. Davidson in the Worcestershire Recusant journal, no. 12 (1968) p. 5.

36 Quotations from, respectively, Goodman, loc. cit,, and Cecil, A., Life of Robert Cecil, p. 251.Google Scholar

37 Davidson in Essex Recusant, 11, p. 42.

38 Two such cases involving Yorkshiremen, Thomas Crathorne and Richard Cholmley, are mentioned in Aveling, Northern Catholics, pp. 268, 277 respectively. Like those of Middlesex, the London Sessions documents have a nationwide relevance; for these, see C.R.S., 34. In the Recusant Rolls, London and Middlesex convictions are entered on common rotulets headed London’ Midd’.

39 The material here is found in Jeaffreson, J. C., Middlesex County Records, vol. 2 (1887; 1974 reprint),Google Scholar in Le Hardy, W., County of Middlesex: Calendar to the Sessions Records, 1612–14, (1935)Google Scholar and in Greater London Record Office series MJ: SR 564–582, 584; SBR 2/499, 515; 3/25, 35, 43,65, 78, 91, 99, 105, 117, 123, 131, 153, 177, 191; SBP 1/125, 126; GBR 2/143–164, 168, 171, 175,177, 179, 181, 183, 186, 188, 192, 194, 197.

40 P.R.O., E 376/12, 15, 18, (1603, 1607, 1610); E 377/12–21 (1603–12). The former, or Chancellor's, series is inferior to the latter, kept by the Clerk of the Pipe, on which my remarks are based. Differences in amounts recorded in the two sets of Rolls are minor. An indispensable guide to these documents is given in the Introduction to C.R.S., 57.

41 The convicted recusant was listed in the Roll and the amount of the fine and arrears were noted in the entry; if, however, the Exchequer clerk omitted to insert deb[et] next to the recusant's name, this indicated that the Exchequer was tallying the debt from year to year and not initiating the process necessary to confiscate lands or goods. See also C.R.S., 18, pp. xv, xvi; C.R.S., 57, p. xcix.

42 P.R.O., E 368/522/208; 521/29. The total of only two Exchequer actions in 1606 is not surprising because it took about two years for the Exchequer to take action against a recusant whose name had been estreated to that department; any increase in enforcement should be expected in 1608 or 1609 but, as is indicated in the text, this is not evident in Exchequer records.

43 P R O., E 368/523/126, 128, 143,147; /525/183, 241; /526/185, 294; C.R.S., 57, p. lxxxiv (Roper).

44 C.R.S., 68, p. 89; there is a Roper pedigree at the end of A. Hamilton, The Chronicle of the English Augustinian Canoness Regular of the Lateran, at St. Monica's in Louvain: A Continuation, 1625–44 (1906). In Mathew, D., Catholicism in England (3rd edn., 1955) pp. 77–8,Google Scholar the ‘Chronicle’ of St. Monica's is cited thus: ‘Sir William Roper and his wife came into these parts (Louvain) that he might escape taking the oath and also to be reconciled, for he had gone to church’.

45 P R O., E 368/528/191.

46 P R O., E 368/530/165; /531/99, 102, 104, 133; /532/196, 198.

47 P R O. E 368/534/2,57; /535/165; /536/94.

48 P R O. E 368/537/1; /538/174, 178; /539/121, 138, 139; /540/48, 54, 112, 113, 198.

49 P R O., E 368/541/115; /543/106, 239.

50 This paragraph draws on: Hodgson, A. M., ‘Sir Henry Spiller of Eldersfield’ in the Worcestershire Recusant journal, no. 1 (1963) pp. 25–9;Google Scholar Magee, English Recusants pp. 65–6, 70–1 & passim: Roberts, C., The Growth of Representative Government in Stuart England (1966) pp. 1, 11–14;Google Scholar Foster, E. R., Proceedings in Parliament, 1610 (1966) 2, pp. 129–31Google Scholar & passim (index in vol. 1); Tite, C.G.C., Impeachment and Parliamentary Judicature in Early Stuart England (1974) pp. 72–3,Google Scholar & note 54. Lansd. 153 includes various papers to and from Spiller (some of the former already cited) as well as accusations against him in 1606 and 1610; see also the printed Catalogue of the Lansdowne MSS. in the British Museum (1819) pt. 2, pp. 27–9. For Felton, see also Trimble, W. R., The Catholic Laity in Elizabethan England (Cambridge, Mass., 1964) pp. 244–8Google Scholar and references given in Recusant History, 16, p. 387, notes 31 & 32.

51 C. Sal. MSS., 19, pp. 119, 419, 495; C.R.S., 64, p. 95.

52 Lansd. 153, f. 240. For Dorset, see note 8; for Sir Thomas, Fleming, Foss, E., The Judges of England, 6 (1857) pp. 153–6.Google Scholar The operation of such arrangements in regard to one family, the Chichesters of Arlington, Devon, is illustrated by Leys, M. D. R., Catholics in England, 1559–1829 (1961) p. 61.Google Scholar

53 Lansd. 153, f. 239 v.

54 Lansd. 153, ff. 102, 169–70, 245, 262. The continued leasing back to recusants of the seized two-thirds of their lands is reflected four years later in a document in C.S.P.D., Addenda, 1580–1625, pp. 523–4.

55 C. Sal. MSS., 19, p. 145; for John, Thornborough, see Aveling. Northern Catholics, pp. 208–9Google Scholar & passim. Documents in Lansd. 153 reflecting his anti-recusant attitude are listed in the Lansdowne Catalogue. 2, pp. 28–9 and are drawn-on quite extensively in an article on Thornborough in The Rambler, n.s., 7 f/857) pp. 348–64.

56 C. Sal. MSS., 19, p. 213.

57 The Rambler, n.s., 6, p. 404. It was pointed out in 1610 that recusants would ‘less repine if it [i.e. collection of their penalties] comes to the Exchequer, than if it be left to the courtesy of private men’ (C.S.P.D., Addenda, 1580–1625, p. 524).

58 See note 9.

59 See, for example, Fincham & Lake, art. cit., (Journal of British Studies, 24) pp. 182–6.

60 Tawney, R. H., Business and Politics under James I (1958) p. 300,Google Scholar also cited by Mr. Aveling in C.R.S.,53, p. 295.

61 Lansd. 213, ff. 1–6: ‘An Excellent Treatise against Papists written by the Ld. Treasurer Burleigh [sic ] Afterwards Earl of Salisbury, Address'd by him unto Queen Elizabeth’. Some of the wording of this document is reproduced by Cecil, A., Life of Robert Cecil, pp, 232–3Google Scholar from another MS., for which see Hist. MSS. Comm., First Report, Appendix, p. 62.