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Tyrwhitt of Kettleby, Part II: Robert Tyrwhitt, A Main Benefactor of Fr John Gerard SJ, 1600–1605

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 September 2015

Patrick Martin  and
John Finnis
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Extract

Our earlier article discussed the family of Sir Robert Tyrwhitt (d. 1581) of Kettleby in Lincolnshire and the imprisonment of Sir Robert and several of his sons by the Privy Council in June 1580. The Council was acting on a report of Catholic activities associated with the wedding of Edmund, Lord Sheffield and Ursula Tyrwhitt at the Tyrwhitt family homes of Kettleby and Twigmore. Sir Robert’s son Goddard died in a London gaol, and Goddard’s elder brothers William and Robert were imprisoned for years in the Tower and elsewhere. We turn now to the next generation of the same family, and show that Sir Robert’s grandson and heir, Robert Tyrwhitt, became a strong supporter of John Gerard SJ and the Jesuits in England during the years c.1600 to early 1606. Fr Gerard’s autobiography strains to make this clear, within the necessary limits of discretion. But just as the identity of the Tyrwhitt martyr of 1580 was soon totally lost to view, so Gerard’s identification of ‘one of my main benefactors’ as a Tyrwhitt has remained undecoded—hidden, indeed, by loose translation, and inattention to the different ways one can be a ‘brother in law’.

Type
Research Article
Information
British Catholic History , Volume 26 , Issue 4 , October 2003 , pp. 556 - 569
Copyright
Copyright © Catholic Record Society 2003

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References

1 Martin, Patrick & Finnis, John, ‘Tyrwhitt of Kettleby, Part I: Goddard Tyrwhitt, Martyr, 1580, Recusant History, 26 (2002) pp. 301–313.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2 Public Record Office PROB 11/64, made 11 November 1581.

3 Middlesex County Records (Middlesex County Records Society, London, 1886) I, p. 144, 14 December 1583 (true bill against William Tyrewhet esq. of Islington, Middlesex for not going to church); p. 149, 11 April 1584 (true bill against William Tyrwhytt of Islington, Middlesex, esq., for not going to church); p. 156, 6 February 1585, (true bill against William Turrett of Islington, Middlesex, esq., for not going to church); p. 158 (true bill against William Tyrwhytt of Islington, Middlesex, esq., for not going to church); APC XIV, pp. 34–35, 19 March 1586 (William Tyrwyt, esq., confined to home of Mr. Horden in Kent and, after a fire at Mr. Horden’s home and a case of smallpox there, allowed [i] to go to any other home within 5 miles thereof, or [ii] to return for up to six weeks to his home in Lincolnshire); p. 192, 21 July 1586 (permission by Secretary Walsingham for a further two months’ stay at his home in Lincolnshire); APC XV, p. 119, 8 June 1587 (recording the confinement of William Tirwhite of Kettleby to a five-mile radius of Eridge, co. Sussex, but now allowed to repair to London or Westminster to enter into the Exchequer bonds required by the recent statute in respect of arrearages on debts to the Queen for recusancy); p. 151, 9 July 1587 (allowed to leave Eridge to return to Lincolnshire, ‘for the better ordering of his business until Michaelmas Term,’ ‘being diseased, and in arrearages to her Majesty in great sums …’); APC XVI, p. 389, 9 December 1588 (allowed out of the custody of the Archbishop of Canterbury to return home for a month, perhaps because of illness of his wife); APC XVII, p. 351, 7 July 1589 (temporary release under bond from house detention with Mistress Rutland in Mitcham co. Surrey)—cf. APC XXIII, pp. 121–2, 13/14 August 1592 (authorising payment to the keeper of St. Catherine’s prison for expenses of close imprisonment of Mr Tyrwhitt for 48 weeks from 12 August 1588 to 22 July 1589)—APC XVIII, pp. 414–5, 13 March 1590 (detention, as a recusant, by Richard Fynes esq. at Banbury or Broughton); APC XX, p. 142, 20 December 1590 (allowed out of the custody of the Archbishop of Canterbury to repair to the country to attend to his affairs until Candlemas next); p. 252, 1 February 1591 (allowed out of the custody of the Archbishop of Canterbury to return to Lincolnshire to conclude business arising from death of his mother intestate). Eridge was a property of the Nevilles (barons Bergavenny [Abergavenny]), a family closely related to the Manners (Earls of Rutland).

4 SPD 12/189/48. 31 May 1586. A document of April 1587 seems to indicate that he paid £75, SPD 12/200/61, April 1587.

5 McGrath, Patrick, Papists and Puritans Under Elizabeth I (London, Blandford Press, 1967), p. 199 Google Scholar, Walker, citing F. X., ’The Implementation of the Elizabethan Statutes against Recusants’, unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of London, 1961, p. 275.Google Scholar

6 29 Eliz. c. 6 s.3. See also APC XV, pp. 119–20 (note 3 above).

7 See Foley, VII p. 669.

8 Varying accounts of the Queen’s harsh treatment of Rookwood may be found. Foley, III pp. 786–7 prints a portion of a letter of Richard Topcliffe, the royal torturer, to the Earl of Shrewsbury, gleefully reporting the events; Foley, Ibidem, recites later accounts stating variously that Edward Rookwood died in prison in 1598, or was still alive in 1620 (see also Foley, I, pp. 198, 200). In Foley VII, p. 669, Edward is shown as dying on 19 January 1634, aet. 79, and this is confirmed, on the basis of various careful sources, by Augustus Jessop, One Generation of a Norfolk House (London, 1878, 3rd ed. 1913), p. 106. E. K. Chambers, The Elizabethan Stage, I, p. 114 provides several references to the royal visit and order of imprisonment. The Privy Council records, APC X, pp. 310, 312, 342, indicate that Rookwood was imprisoned in August 1578 but then released in October of the same year.

9 APC XXV, p. 118, 20 December 1595 (Whitehall).

10 [Tyrwhitt, R. P.], Notices and Remains of the Family of Tyrwhitt (a volume said on its title-page to have been ‘never published’, privately printed 1858, 1862, and with corrections 1872), p. 33.Google Scholar

11 Letter of Sir Thomas Heneage to Elizabeth Countess of Rutland, 20 November 1592, quoted in Rutland, p. 304, and Stopes, Charlotte C., The Life of Henry, Third Earl of Southampton (Cambridge and New York, 1922), p. 65 Google Scholar. See also Harrison, G. B., The Elizabethan Journals 1591–1603, I, pp. 180–1Google Scholar. The first three lines of the sonnet dedicated to ‘the beautiful lady the Lady Brigett Manners’ by the twenty-two year old Barnabe Barnes (‘your beauty’s most affectionate servant’) in his collection Parthenophil and Parthenophe (May 1593) convey the same message: ‘Rose of that garland, (fairest, and sweetest/Of all those sweet and fair flowers:/Pride of chaste Cynthia’s rich crowne,)/Receive this verse, thy matchless beauty meetest: …’

12 Rutland, p. 321, letter of Elizabeth Countess of Rutland, 18 July 1594.

13 ‘That magnificent Earl, who kept a house like a prince’s Court, and journeyed to London with his Countess accompanied by forty-one servants, including a chaplain, trumpeter, gardener, and apothecary’: Neale, J. E., The Elizabethan House of Commons (Yale, 1950), p. 62 Google Scholar. Neale adds, p. 203: ‘Both the second Earl, who died in 1563, and the third, who died in 1587, were men of ability, as well as right magnificoes. Their influence extended into two counties, Nottinghamshire and Lincolnshire.’

14 Rutland p. 320; Stopes, Life of Southampton, p. 65: Roger Manners of Uffington writes to Bridget’s mother on 19 June 1594 that he is ‘very glad of the conclusion you have made with the executors of Mr Tyrwhitt, for the wardship and marriage of the young gentleman’.

15 See Ibidem, pp. 65–7; Harrison, , Elizabethan Journals 1591–1603, I, pp. 314, 323, 326, 334.Google Scholar

16 Rutland, p. 322. Screven had presented to the Lord Chamberlain (Hunsdon) and the Vice-Chamberlain (Heneage) the self-exculpating letters of the countess, which had subsequently been read also by the Queen.

17 The surviving evidence suggests that both bride and groom were extravagant and given to self-indulgence. On the basis of the house-books of the Countess of Rutland, Stopes comments: ‘Her mother allowed her at Court as much money as she allowed her son Roger at Cambridge; yet Bridget left debts in London [in 1594] to the amount of £125’: Stopes, Life of Southampton, p. 67. A letter to Jegon, John, former director of studies of Bridget’s brother, Manners, Roger, fifth Earl of Rutland, informed his erstwhile student—then in France-that ‘The Lady Bridget your Lordship’s sister is with us in Cambridge, and her goodly boy [born 1596]Google Scholar. She telleth me that Mr Tyrwhit runneth far in debt, that she hath yet no assurance of her jointure, and that whereas he promised your Lordship to allow her £400 per annum maintenance, he doth allow her but £200. Wherewith notwithstanding she is well contented and they live very well and agree together most lovingly.’ Rutland, p. 339, letter of John Jegon, Corpus Christi College Cambridge, to the Earl of Rutland, 23 May 1597.

18 Colour photographs of these tombs are in Brian Harrison, A., A Tudor Journal (London, 2000), after p. 128 Google Scholar. Bridget Tyrwhitt’s statue lacks the head, lost perhaps in the Civil War.

19 Hatfield iv, p. 596 (letter of Roger Manners, 29 August 1594). Cecil’s professed concern to help out the Manners may have something to do with the fact that Uffington is less than two miles from Stamford and Burghley House.

20 Bridget too had eventually returned to Court service: Wall, Alison, ‘For Love, Money, or Politics? A Clandestine Marriage and the Elizabethan Court of Arches’, Historical Journal 38 (1995) pp. 511–33, at p. 519 n. 33.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

21 APC XXIX, p. 592, 24 February 1599 (Richmond: Whitgift, Essex, Howard, North, Buckhurst, Knollys, Cecil, Fortescue). For the possible influence of Essex on Robert Tyrwhitt’s restoration to favour, see text at n. 26 below. Of that restoration, the return of the weapons etc. is better evidence than the appointment as sheriff is: see n. 23 below.

22 Patent by the Queen at Westminster, countersigned by [Sir Thomas] Egerton (Lord Keeper of the Great Seal), 2 December 1599 (42 Elizabeth), Lansdowne MSS 207a, fo. 359. (These folios of the Lansdowne MSS are transcripts (made around 1639) from the archives of William Tyrwhitt of Kettleby (d. 1642), son and heir of our Robert Tyrwhitt: see fos. 333, 289, 290, 347.) In Notices and Remains of the Family of Tyrwhitt, this patent of appointment as sheriff is miscited and mistaken for an appointment as Lieutenant of the county; in fact it is in the standard form set out e.g. in Dalton, Michael, Officium Vicecomitum: The Office and Authority of Sherifs (London, 1623), f. 3 V.Google Scholar

23 In 1616, Chief Justice Coke declared in King’s Bench, in Chune v Pyot 1 Rolle’s Reports 237, that the sheriff of a county, as great keeper of the peace, ranks ahead of any nobleman in the county; citing this case, Impey, John, The Officer of Sheriff (1786), p. 53 Google Scholar, calls the sheriff ‘first man in the county’. Sir Edward Coke, Institutes of the Laws of England vol. 1 (1628), f. 168a, says the sheriff, as ‘chief officer to the King within the shire’, is ‘principalis conservator pads within the county’; also Dalton, Officium Vicecomitum, f. 2r: ‘the keeper or governor of the county’. Barnes, Thomas G., Somerset 1625–1640 (Harvard University Press, 1961), pp. 124–142 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, stresses that by 1600 the office of sheriff had lost much of its practical status and political significance, and might well be committed to subjects scarcely in political favour, as a way of keeping them in their county for a year and imposing on them vexatious expenses and other burdens while the politically significant government of the county was committed to Lieutenants or their deputies, or to commissioners. It is not possible to say what was the position in this respect in Lincolnshire in 1599–1600.

24 William Cecil, Lord Burghley, was Lord Lieutenant of Lincolnshire until his death in 1598; he had governed through deputies. In mid-1601 the county is named as being under commissioner(s) rather than a Lieutenant: Gladys Thomson, S., Lords Lieutenants in the Sixteenth Century (London, 1923), p. 73.Google Scholar

25 Hatfield vii, p. 300 (letter of Anthony Atkinson to Sir Robert Cecil, 12 July 1597); also Gerald Hodgett, A. J., Tudor Lincolnshire (Lincoln, 1975), p. 182 Google Scholar; Hill, J. W. F., Tudor and Stuart Lincoln (Cambridge, 1956), p. 107.Google Scholar

26 A short time later, Rutland was back in England but avoiding the Court because he had gone to Ireland without permission: ‘George Fenner’ [William Sterrell] to ‘Guilio Piccioli [William Baldwin, SJ], or Bernardo Edlyno [Hugh Owen], Venice [Brussels],’ SPD 12/271/33 (30 June 1599).

27 Emphasis added. Translated by Kingdon, Fr SJ, in Morris, John SJ, The Life of Father John Gerard (3rd ed., London, 1881), pp. 358–9Google Scholar. We think that this translation-while less than fully precise—is significantly more exact, at virtually every point, than that (based on the same Latin text) in Caraman, Philip, John Gerard: The Autobiography of an Elizabethan (London & New York, 1951), pp. 179–80Google Scholar. We have consulted the ‘Narratio P. Ioannis Gerardi de rebus a se in Anglia gestis Authentica apud S. Andream in manibus P. Francisci Sacchini Societatis Jesu Historici,’ in a copy (held in the Jesuit Archive at Mount Street, London) made by Canon Tierney from the copy by the Rev. G. Oliver of the original (which occupies 266 quarto pages) at Stonyhurst: see pp. 312–4 of Tierney’s copy, pp. 181–2 of the original. The last line or two of this passage in the Kingdon translation are, however, more a paraphrase than a translation of ‘post paucos dies, Catholicum reddidi, futuram, si Deo placet, magnam Dei columnam.’

28 Emphasis added. Ille etiam ad me adduxit fratrem uxoris suae, qui filius erat et frater Comitis, ipse etiam futurus Comes: he also brought to me his wife’s brother, who was son and brother of an earl, and himself earl-to-be.

29 Caraman, Autobiography of Gerard, pp. 180, 250: in giving this clearly correct answer, Caraman says it is a matter of difficulty. His difficulty is that he cannot find an X who fits Gerard’s account of the relationship between X and Y.

30 If, as Gerard seems to imply, Tyrwhitt was actually sheriff at the time of his meeting with Gerard, his absence from Lincolnshire was unlawful (unless specially licensed by the Queen) by statute of 1445: 23 Henry VI c. 10; Impey, Office of Sheriff, pp. 50–51. This may be one reason why he met Gerard on horseback on the outskirts of London, presumably incognito.

31 Not all contexts: thus the author of Newes from Spayne and Holland ([Antwerp], 1593), probably Robert Persons SJ, says (f. 17v): ‘I do not comprehend those only by this name [Catholics] which are recusants and discover themselves unto the world … but much more do I understand by this people those also who go not so far forwards as to discover their religion (at least wise to put themselves within danger of laws) and yet in mind, will, and judgement are they nothing behind the rest, yea so much the more fervent inwardly, against the state, by how much more they are forced by fear to dissemble outwardly their judgments, and keep in their affections …’ This is not to say that before he met Gerard, Robert Tyrwhitt belonged to the second of these two categories, viz., persons presupposed to be as enthusiastic as the recusants but covertly.

32 See e.g. Garnet, Henry [SJ], An Apology against the Defense of Schisme [1593] (STC 711), pp. 54–5Google Scholar; Holmes, P. J. (ed.), Elizabethan Casuistry (CRS 67, [London], 1981), pp. 120–121 (attributed to William Allen and Robert Persons, c. 1583).Google Scholar

33 Cf. n. 17 above.

34 The Historical Manuscripts Commission’s editor of Rutland remarked, p. xviii, that Francis ‘is known to have been a zealous Roman Catholic, and this no doubt accounts for the number of documents at Belvoir relating to the professors of that religion.’ Among these are a letter of November 1592 from a prisoner in the Fleet, and narrative of December 1596 recounting a Catholic’s examination by the Mayor of Rye, the Archbishop of Canterbury, and others, and an important, apparently contemporaneous account of the execution of Ann Line, Mark Barkworth and Roger Filcock at Tyburn on 27 February 1601. The presence of pre-1600 Catholic documents at Belvoir can be explained without presupposing that any of the Manners brothers were Catholic before 1600: for example, the document of 1596 concerns the examination of Thomas Dalton of Sutton in Holderness who, being one of Sir Robert Tyrwhitt’s sons in law, is an uncle by marriage of Bridget Manners of Belvoir and her brothers.

35 After payment of a fine of a thousand marks, he was released into the custody of Roger Manners of Uffington, who became for a time virtual head of the Manners family: Hasler, P. W., ed., The House of Commons 1558–1603 (London, HMSO, 1981), I, p. 196.Google Scholar

36 Willson, D. H., King James VI and I (London, 1956), p. 405 Google Scholar. Manners, Francis is also known to history as a minor patron of ‘Mr Shakespeare’ and Shakespeare, William’s colleague Richard Burbage in March 1613 Google Scholar: see Chambers, E. K., William Shakespeare: A Study of Facts and Problems (Oxford, 1930), I, p. 87.Google Scholar

37 Morris, Life of Gerard, pp. 366–7; Caraman, Autobiography of Gerard, pp. 185–6.

38 Hasler, , House of Commons 1558–1603, I, 196; III, p. 8.Google Scholar

39 Morris, Life of Gerard, p. 370.

40 Worth up to £1,000 per annum, according to Gerard: Morris, Life of Gerard, p. 368; Caraman, Autobiography of Gerard, p. 187.

41 Morris, Life of Gerard, pp. 367–8. Some eye-witness, it seems, has described the scene to Gerard.

42 Tierney, M. A., Dodd’s Church History of England, vol. IV (London, 1840), pp. lxxv–vi Google Scholar. On this odious system, in place by late May 1605, see also Ibidem p. 39; Jardine, David, Criminal Trials, vol. II, The Gunpowder Plot (London, 1835), p. 23.Google Scholar

43 SPD 14/13/7, Waad to Cecil 4 Aug. 1603, forwarding Copley’s answers on four points, including reasons for suspecting the Jesuits to have a plot on foot. The Bye plotters Copley and Watson maintained that there was a Jesuit ‘Bye’ plot in train at about the same time as theirs (in particular, May/ June 1603), and though the truth of this has never been established, it seems to us likely that a more definitive exploration of the ‘Spanish Treason’ of 1603 than is made in existing treatments—e.g. in the preamble to 3 James 1 c. 2 (An Act for the Attainder of divers Offenders in the late most barbarous monstrous detestable and damnable Treason); Jardine, Gunpowder Plot, pp. 273–5; Tierney-Dodd, , Church History vol. IV pp. 6–9, liii-vGoogle Scholar; Loomie, Albert J., Toleration and Diplomacy: the religious issue in Anglo-Spanish Relations 1603–1605, (Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, n.s. vol. 53 part 6 (Philadelphia, 1963), pp. 17–18 Google Scholar; and Loomie, , Guy Fawkes in Spain: the ’Spanish Treason’ in Spanish Documents (University of London, Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research, Special Supplement No. 9, 1971 Google Scholar)—will disclose that beneath the smoke of Copley’s and Watson’s allegations there was fire. If so, it would not be surprising if Robert Tyrwhitt’s reported restlessness and readiness for ‘instant action’ in Lincolnshire in the spring and early summer of 1603 turned out to signify his active involvement in what Tierney (IV, p. 7) calls, not without simplification, ‘the expiring effort of the Spanish party’ (scil. to secure a different successor to Elizabeth). This whole question must be left to another occasion.

44 ‘I knew (audiverim) absolutely nothing (nullo unquam modo) of the Plot from anyone whatsoever (a quopiam mortali), not even under the seal of confession, as the other two [Frs. Garnet and Tesimond] did; nor had I the slightest notion (nee aliquid … sciverim) that any such scheme was entertained by any Catholic gentleman (ab illis nobilibus), until by public rumour news was brought us of its discovery, as it was to others dwelling in that part of the country (in eodem mecum Comitatu degentes).” Morris, Life of Gerard, p. 408; Caraman, Autobiography of Gerard, p. 203.

45 She appears as a woman of faith, affection, and presence of mind, in the account transmitted by Frs. Gerard and Tesimond of her husband’s way along the Strand from the Tower to Palace Yard to his execution: John Gerard, A Narrative of the Gunpowder Plot [1606] in Morris, John (ed.), The Condition of Catholics under James I (2nd ed., London, 1872), pp. 219–220 Google Scholar; Edwards, Francis, ed., The Gunpowder Plot: The Narrative of Oswald Tesimond alias Greenway (London, The Folio Society, 1973), p. 228.Google Scholar

46 Pollen, J. H. SJ, MacMahon, William SJ, Philip Howard Earl of Arundel 1557–1595 (CRS 21, London, 1919), p. 45 Google Scholar: ‘Viscount Montague’s daughters-in-law were: Mary, daughter of Sir William Dormer; Mary, daughter of Sir Robert Tyrwhitt [married to Sir George Browne]; Anne, daughter of Sir William Catesby [married to Sir Henry Browne].’ See also Burke, John, A Genealogical and Heraldic History of the Extinct and Dormant Baronetcies of England, Ireland, and Scotland (London, 1844), p. 89 (under Browne of Kiddington).Google Scholar

47 Stone, Lawrence, ‘The Anatomy of the Elizabethan Aristocracy,’ Economic History Review, 18 (1948), pp. 1–53 at p. 37, n. 1, citing PRO Lord Chamberlain’s Office, Recognizances for Debt, pp. 192–5.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

48 Printed in Birch, Thomas, ed., The Court and Times of James the First (London, 1849) I, p. 39.Google Scholar

49 6 November 1605, CSP 1603–1610, p. 240, SPD 14/16/16.

50 8–9 November 1605, CSP 1603–1610, p. 248 (Gunpowder Plot Book, No. 59A, No. 52).

51 10 November 1605, CSP 1603–1610, p. 249 (Gunpowder Plot Book, No. 63).

52 But see text and note 39 above.

53 10 February 1606, in Birch, Court and Times of James, I, pp. 49–50.

54 SP 77/7/329 [1605].

55 PROB 11/64; PROB 11/78. Roger Tyrwhitt was buried at Bigby on 26 September 1610.

56 CSP Dom. 1619–23, p. 419, July 3, 1622. This William Tyrwhitt made a good marriage, to Katherine Browne, daughter of Anthony Maria Browne, second Viscount Montague. The families had long been connected: see n. 46 above.