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Plebeian Catholics in the 1640s and 1650s1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 September 2015

B. G. Blackwood
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Extract

Post-Reformation Catholicism in England is popularly associated with the gentry before the Industrial Revolution and with the Irish urban proletariat afterwards. I have insufficient knowledge to comment on the social structure of post-eighteenth century Catholicism, but in my opinion historians, such as Professor Bossy, Mr. Aveling and, to a lesser extent, Dr. Haigh, have rightly emphasised the part played by the gentry in the expansion, or at least survival, of Roman Catholicism during the early seventeenth century. The gentry were arguably the most important social group in England and were best able to provide the necessary shelter and finance for the Catholic priests who operated in an intermittently hostile Protestant state. Indeed, I am inclined to agree with Professor Bossy that without the gentry there would have been no Catholic community. But community there was, and the gentry formed only part of it. It is the other part—the plebeian element—which is considered in this paper.

Type
Articles
Information
British Catholic History , Volume 18 , Issue 1 , May 1986 , pp. 42 - 58
Copyright
Copyright © Catholic Record Society 1986

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References

Notes

1 This is a revised and expanded version of a paper read at the Catholic Record Society Conference at Oxford in July 1984.

2 Bossy, p. 181.

3 Finberg, H. P. R., ‘The Catholic Historian and his Theme’ in The Downside Review, Summer-Autumn 1959, p. 263.Google Scholar

4 He has shown that about 100 of the 300 Catholic households in Elizabethan Yorkshire were ‘plebeian’ and has referred to ‘small but solid pockets of poor Catholics’ in the North Riding: Aveling, J. C. H. ‘Catholic Households in Yorkshire, 1580–1603’ in Northern History, 16 (1980) pp. 85–6;CrossRefGoogle Scholar Northern Catholics (1966) p. 191. See also Aveling, The Handle and the Axe (1976) p. 162 and Scarisbrick, J. J., The Reformation and the English People (Oxford, 1984) pp. 156–9.Google Scholar

5 Hilton, pp. 3, 7.

6 There was of course much anti-Catholicism after the Gunpowder Plot of 1605, yet the numbers of convicted recusants appearing in the source-material are suprisingly small. For example, the recusant roll for 1606 gives only 1,009 names for the most Catholic county in England: Lancashire (E.377/15, ff. 23–26, 31). This figure is too small to be significant, so I have reluctantly decided to ignore lay Catholics in Lancashire and other counties in the reign of James I.

7 Lawrence Stone has said that early modern England was ‘a two-class society of those who were gentlemen and those who were not’ (The Crisis of the Aristocracy, 1558–1641 [Oxford, 1965] p. 49)Google Scholar and Richard, Mulcaster wrote in 1581 that ‘all the people which be in our contrie be either gentlemen or of the commonalty’ (Positions [1581] p. 198).Google Scholar The University of Oxford also recognised, and indeed emphasised, this fundamental distinction by classing all non-gentry matriculands, other than clergymen's sons, as plebeians (Clark, A., Register of the University of Oxford, 2: 1571–1622 [Oxford Hist. Soc. 11,Google Scholar 1887]; Bodleian Library: Oxford University Archives, Matriculation Register PP, 1615–47). For literary convenience, I have used the term ‘plebeians’ more often than ‘commoners’ to describe non-gentry Catholics.

8 Bossy, p. 187.

9 They do not cover the whole county, however. For details see Tables 1, 2, 5 and 6.

10 I have used E.377/49(1641); 63(1657); 64(1658).

11 Catholics who escaped conviction often appear in the papers of the Committee for Compounding as ‘recusants, though not convict’.

12 Bossy, p. 175.

13 Mosler, David F., ‘Warwickshire Catholics in the Civil War’ in Recusant History, 15, p. 261.Google Scholar

14 Though in some small market towns the recusants ‘huddled around the protective Catholic gentry’ (ibid.,p. 264, n. 7).

15 List of Staffordshire Recusants, ed. Greenslade, M., Staffs. Hist. Collections, 4th Series, 2 (1958) p. 75.Google Scholar

16 V.C.H. Oxon, 2, p. 43; 8, pp. 142, 155, 174–5; Stonor, R. J., Stonor (Newport, 1951) pp. 257–8, 271–7.Google Scholar For much valuable information, see Dr Alan Davidson's thesis (Ph.D., Bristol, 1970), ‘Roman Catholicism in Oxfordshire from the late Elizabethan period to the Civil War’.

17 Fletcher, A. A County Community in Peace and War: Sussex 1600–1660 (1975) pp. 98–99.Google Scholar

18 Ibid., p. 99.

19 Caplan, N., ‘The Sussex Catholics c. 1660–1800’, Sussex Archaeological Collections, 116 (1978) p. 26.Google Scholar

20 Elliott, N. C., ‘The Roman Catholic Community in Essex, 1625–1701’, Essex Recusant 25/26 (1983/4) pp. 4–5.Google Scholar

21 The gentry apparently provided all the mass-centres in early Stuart Norfolk. See Brigadier Trappes-Lomax, T. B., ‘Roman Catholicism in Norfolk, 1559–1780’, Norfolk Archaeology, 32 (1961) pp. 32–39.Google Scholar Unfortunately the late Brigadier gave no other information on Norfolk Catholics during our period and seriously overestimated their numbers in 1603 and 1676 (ibid., pp. 41–42, 45–46).

22 E.377/49, f. 129.

23 E.377/49, ff. 146–7; 63, ff. 65–72.

24 Christopher, Haigh, Reformation and Resistance in Tudor Lancashire, (Cambridge, 1975) p. 283.Google Scholar

25 Blackwood, B. G., ‘The Catholic and Protestant Gentry of Lancashire during the Civil War Period’, Trans. Hist. Soc. Lanes & Cheshire, 126 (1977) pp. 3–4.Google Scholar

26 The epistle dedicatory to Three Sermons preached at the collegiate Church in Manchester, 1641.

27 Blundell, M., Cavalier: Letters of William Blundell to his friends, 1620–1698 (1933) p. 251.Google Scholar

28 One hundred and twenty-two people in Little Crosby were convicted of recusancy in that year (E.377/49, f. 93).

29 Sixty-six people in Formby were convicted of recusancy in an unspecified year in Charles I's reign (E. 179/269/18). For the Catholicism of the Formbys see V.C.H. Lanes., 3, pp. 48–49; Edith, Kelly, Viking Village: The Story of Formby (Formby, 1973) pp. 34, 53.Google Scholar

30 E.179/131/335; 132/336.

31 E.377/49, ff. 95–96; E. 179/269/18; ‘Recusant Roll’ for West Derby Hundred, 1641, ed. Gregson, W. E., Trans. Hist. Soc. Lanes & Cheshire, 50 (1898) p. 234.Google Scholar The latter is not a recusant roll but a poll tax on papists. For Sir Thomas Stanley, Gilbert Ireland and the Earl of Derby see V.C.H.Lanes., 3, pp. 146, 251, 279.

32 Haigh, Reformation & Resistance, p. 284.

33 Keith, Wrightson, English Society, 1580–1680 (1982) p. 24.Google Scholar

34 The gentry formed just 2.3 per cent of the total population of Lancashire in 1642 (Blackwood, B. G., The Lancashire Gentry and the Great Rebellion, 1640–60, Chetham Society, 3rd Series, 25 [1978] PP. 5, 7).Google Scholar

35 Except in Essex in 1657. But these figures are too small to be representative (see Table 1 for 1641 data).

36 John, Gerard, The Autobiography of an Elizabethan (ed. Caraman, P., 1951) pp. 32–33.Google Scholar Gerard was referring to the 1590s but his remarks are just as apposite for the early Stuart period.

37 Compare Tables 1 and 3.

38 In this and other tables all identifiable adult male and female members of a family have been assigned to the same status and occupational category as the head of the household.

39 Hilton, p. 8.

40 Bossy, pp. 153. 158; Rowlands, Marie B., ‘Recusant women, 1560–1640’ in Women in English Society, 1500–1800 (ed. Mary, Prior, 1985), pp. 160–6.Google Scholar Aveling showed that 200 of the 300 Catholic households in Yorkshire were ‘matriarchal’ (Aveling, ‘Catholic Households in Yorks’, pp. 85, 88). See also Sister Hanlon, J. D., ‘These Be But Women’ in From the Renaissance to the Counter-Reformation (ed. Carter, C. H., 1966), pp. 371–400.Google Scholar

41 Contemporaries did likewise. Although sometimes treated as a separate social order, women were generally subsumed under their husbands’ or masters’ identity.

42 See Houston, R. A., ‘The Development of Literacy: Northern England, 1640–1750’, EconomicHistory Review, 2nd Series, 35 (1982) pp. 205,Google Scholar 206 & n. 33, 211; Cressy, D., Literacy & the Social Order (Cambridge, 1980) pp. 104–41;CrossRefGoogle Scholar and especially Cressy, ‘Describing the Social Order of Elizabethan and Stuart England’, Literature & History, 3 (March 1976) pp. 29–44.Google Scholar

43 This was also the case outside Lancashire.

44 Oxford English Dictionary, 10, p. 611.Google Scholar

45 Scarisbrick, Reformation, p. 151, n. 43.

46 Barbara, J. Todd, ‘The remarrying widow: a stereotype reconsidered’, Women in English Society, pp. 79, 82, 91, n. 58.Google Scholar

47 The Papist returns for the diocese of Chester, 1706, describe many Lancashire widows as ‘poor’ (House of Lords Record Office, Main Papers 2249 (A), ff. 75–87). It is doubtful if widows were better off under the early Stuarts.

48 E.377/49, ff. 62–74, 106–8.

49 E. 179/132/338.

50 Palliser, D. M., The Age of Elizabeth: England under the later Tudors, 1547–1603 (1983) p. 159;Google Scholar Donald, Woodward, ‘Wage Rates and Living Standards in Pre-Industrial England’, Past & Present, 91 (November 1981) p. 45.Google Scholar

51 By contrast the proportion of labourers was ‘a good deal higher in fertile corn-growing districts’ (Alan, Everitt, ‘Farm Labourers’, The Agrarian History of England & Wales, 1540–1640 [ed. Joan Thirsk, Cambridge, 1967] p. 398).Google Scholar

52 Richard, Baxter, The Poor Husbandman's Advocate (London n.d.) pp. 26–27 Google Scholar and Reliquiae Baxterianae, 1 (1696) p. 89.Google Scholar

53 Four of the professionals were medical doctors and the fifth was the wife of one (E.377/49, ff. 62, 76, 94). The small number of professionals among the Catholic community can hardly be explained by the Act of 1606 which forbade papists to practise law or medicine (3 Jac. I, cap. v) for the Act was frequently unenforced.

54 See Dom, F. O. Blundell, Old Catholic Lancashire, 2 (1938) p. 235,Google Scholar also next note re differences in definition.

55 Hilton, p. 7. But in the Jacobean north-east the term ‘yeoman’ had a rather wide usage (Cressy, D., ‘Social Status and Literacy in North-East England, 1560–1630’, Local Population Studies, 21 [Autumn 1978) pp. 21–23).Google Scholar

56 Craftsmen apparently formed a similar proportion of Durham male Catholics in 1615 (Hilton, P 7).

57 Salford hundred has been chosen since it was the main Presbyterian stronghold in Lancashire after the Civil War.

58 Christopher Hill, Society and Puritanism in Pre-Revolutionary England (1964) p. 133.Google Scholar

59 certainly the wood-pasture region of Suffolk was characterised by a large class of yeomen. See Nesta, Evans, ‘Farming and Land-Holding in Wood-Pasture East Anglia, 1550–1650’, Proceedings ofthe Suffolk Institute of Archaeology and History, 35 (1984) pp. 303, 313;Google Scholar also n. 55 above.

60 Acts of the Privy Council, New Series, 8, p. 277.

61 Anstruther, G., ‘Lancashire Clergy in 1639’ in Recusant History, 4, pp. 40–46.Google Scholar

62 There are fewer clergy in this table than in Table 2 in Blackwood, ‘Catholic and Protestant Gentry’, p. 5; this is partly because of a more critical analysis of the evidence and partly because the earlier table included priests ordained before 1603. Dates of ordination, especially for alumni of the colleges of Lisbon and Seville and for most religious, are not always available. However, if there is a very strong probability of ordination, individuals have been included in Table 7.

63 Bossy, p. 200.

64 The numbers were higher in Blackwood, ‘Catholic and Protestant Gentry’, p. 5, because I (mistakenly) counted lay as well as choir sisters. For Lancashire nuns, see Hamilton, A., Chronicles of the English Augustinian Canonesses of St. Monica's at Louvain, 1548–1644 (2 vols., Edinburgh, 1904–6);Google Scholar Blundell, F. O., Old Catholic Lancashire, 3 (1941) pp. 195–232;Google Scholar C.R.S., 13, 14, 19, 24.

65 These do not include two Venerable Dilati: Laurence Bailey (plebeian) and Brian Cansfield (gentry). For the sixteen Lancashire martyrs, see The Martyrs of England & Wales, 1535–1680 (C.T.S. pamphlet, 1979); Richard, Challoner, Memoirs of Missionary Priests (1924 edition);Google Scholar Myerscough, J. A., A procession of Lancashire martyrs and confessors, (Glasgow, 1958).Google Scholar Challoner and Myerscough are not always reliable on the social origins of the martyrs.