Historians of early modern England benefit from a rich and varied array of contemporary accounts by individuals that shed light on the local, regional, and wider impact of religious and other policies of successive monarchs. These include the narrative of Robert Parkyn, a Yorkshire priest, of the years 1532–54, Rose Hickman's recollections of Protestant life during the reign of Mary Tudor, to the chronicle of Henry Machyn in 1550–1563, to name but a few. More broadly, too, the history of the book and its import in illuminating various aspects of medieval and early modern popular culture, devotion, piety, reading practices and other related topics has been widely recognised. They have been successfully mined in recent years by various scholars of medieval and early modern England, Ireland, and beyond, from Eamon Duffy to Salvador Ryan and Raymond Gillespie.

This essay adds to our existing understanding of what it meant to be a member of the English Catholic community during the late Elizabeth and early Stuart period by exploring Catholic musical culture in Lancashire. This was a uniquely Catholic village, which, like the majority of villages, towns and cities in early modern England, was filled with the singing of ballads. Ballads have almost exclusively been treated in scholarship as a ‘Protestant’ phenomenon and the ‘godly ballad’ associated with the very fabric of a distinctively Protestant Elizabethan and Stuart entertainment culture. By investigating the songs and ballads in two manuscript collections from the Catholic network surrounding the Blundell family this essay will show how Catholics both composed and ‘converted’ existing ballads to voice social, devotional, and political concerns. The ballads performed in Little Crosby highlight a vibrant Catholic community, where musical expression was fundamental. Performance widened the parochial religious divide, whilst enhancing Catholic integration. This essay uncovers the way Catholics used music to voice religious and exhort protest as much as prayer. Finally, by investigating the tunes and melodies preserved in the manuscripts, I demonstrate how priests serving this network used ballads as part of their missionary strategy.

A little over two weeks after the commencement of the First World War, the Catholic Church was left without its universal shepherd at a time of immense upheaval. Pope Pius X died on 20 August 1914 and immediately, the cardinals of the Catholic Church made their way to Rome to elect his successor. In the conclave, the choice fell on Giacomo della Chiesa, Cardinal Archbishop of Bologna, who took the name of Benedict XV. Della Chiesa had been a student of Cardinal Mariano Rampolla, the Secretary of State under Leo XIII. His essential training had been in diplomacy and this made him well qualified to cope with the war. Immediately upon his accession, Benedict adopted a policy of impartiality and advocated an immediate peace by negotiation. His various peace efforts were ignored, however, and many Catholics in various European countries gave only lukewarm support or made clear an outright rejection of the Pope’s pronouncements on diplomacy. This article concentrates on the reaction of British Catholics, in particular, to Benedict XV’s peace appeals during the war, including his Peace Note of 1917.

‘One must not wait for better times but create them’. Such was the message that the young Francis Tregian (1574–1617) received from the teaching of Dr William Allen, president of Douai. In such a way he lived his life, preserving his faith and later struggling, in adverse political conditions, to improve the fortunes of his family. Was he also able to copy several important music manuscripts, including the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book? This article is yet another examination of a problem much discussed for over a hundred years.

This paper is the final part of a trilogy dealing with Harvington Hall in Worcestershire from 1529 until 1923, when it passed into the ownership of the Archdiocese of Birmingham. The first part, ‘The Pakingtons of Harvington [1529–1631]’ by Lionel and Veronica Anderton Webster, appeared in Recusant History in April 1974; my sequel, ‘The Yates of Harvington, 1631–1696’, followed in October 1994.’ This third part appropriately appears in an issue of Recusant History to mark the ninetieth birthday of Fr. Geoffrey Holt, S.J., who over the years has published many studies of other country-house missions in the eighteenth century, and whose characteristic combination of scholarship, lucidity and human sympathy is a model of how such things ought to be done. He appreciates the problems and will, I hope, appreciate the result.

This paper deals with six documents concerning plans for the invasion of England which were put forward by Dr. Morys Clynnog in 1575 and 1576. First noted by Arnold Oscar Meyer, they have never been studied in detail. This is due in part to the lack of background material, for it is still possible to uphold Meyer’s verdict of half-a-century ago that “the diplomatic history of these plans of invasion is still far from being complete”. The Elizabethan exiles had no concerted plan of action, and each group pursued its own policies. Those that come within the scope of this survey are those of: Dr. William Allen and Sir Francis Englefield; Dr. Nicholas Sander; Thomas Goldwell Bishop of St. Asaph and Dr. Nicholas Morton; Prior Shelley, and Dr. Morys Clynnog together with Dr. Owen Lewis. The point may be illustrated by a document of 1572. Soon after the election of Pope Gregory XIII, Allen and twelve other English exiles wrote from Louvain to Cardinal Morone, the Protector of England, enclosing a memorial for the Pope, asking for Papal intervention to help English Catholics. They asked Morone to discuss the matter with Thomas Goldwell, Bishop of St. Asaph, Nicholas Sander and Nicholas Morton. Goldwell and Morton had been active in English affairs in the pontificate of Pius V. On the part of the exiles in the Low Countries, no mention was made of Dr. Owen Lewis, who as a canon lawyer was at this time pursuing a highly successful career in the diocese of Cambrai; nor did Allen suggest that Cardinal Morone should take the advice of Morys Clynnog, a Welsh exile in Rome who was high in his favour. These omissions suggest that the two Welsh exiles stood somewhat apart from Allen and his co-signatories in 1572. Clynnog, after the death of his patron Cardinal Pole in 1558, had attached himself to Cardinal Morone. He became involved in a violent quarrel in Rome with Morton in 1565, in which Morone’s support had enabled him to gain a victory over Morton and his followers in the English Hospice. There is evidence that this feud was still vigorous in 1579, and that Morton had as an ally Thomas Goldwell, Bishop of St. Asaph: and by that date Owen Lewis had ranged himself with Morys Clynnog. Lewis arrived in Rome in the summer of 1574, on legal business from Cambrai. In less than a year he had become a Papal Referendary, an office which gave him direct access to the Pope. He was thus well placed to play a leading part in the politics of the English exiles. The documents discussed in this paper lend support to the view that he embarked on his first essay in statecraft very soon after his arrival in Rome, and that the invasion-projects which now exist in the handwriting of Morys Clynnog were, in effect, proposals which had the backing of Owen Lewis, and which had among their objectives the conferring on him of a Cardinal’s hat.

The title of this paper is taken from a work written in 434 A.D.: the Commonitorium of Vincent of Lerins. Leech considered this a ‘golden book’; we will see later the significance of Vincent for Leech, while Leech's life will perhaps illuminate his own age. Calling himself ‘Peregrinus’, Vincent wrote: ‘whereas I was at one time involved in the manifold and deplorable tempests of secular warfare, I have now at length, under Christ's auspices, cast anchor in the harbour of religion’. His aim was to pass on the teaching of the Fathers and to give guidance ‘for distinguishing the truth of the catholic faith from the falsehood of heretical pravity.’

Dennis Flynn has written convincingly of the Catholic sympathies of Donne's middle years. But anyone who reads through the sermons, particularly those composed after 1618, cannot fail to be convinced that in the end Donne's Anglicanism was a mature and heartfelt commitment. To understand how a man with such rooted Catholic sympathies could find his spiritual home in the English Church, we must recognise how much he needed to be engaged with others in worship, in friendship and in love.

‘In this embassy’, Antonio Foscarini reported to the Doge in Venice in 1611 from London, ‘there has always been an Englishman as interpreter, a Catholic, who has regularly attended the church without anyone hindering him. The same goes on in the French and Spanish embassies, to his Majesty's entire satisfaction.’ Little is known about this type of employment, aside from James's atypical toleration of an Englishman's public non-conformity. It can be of interest to see what sort of Englishman could be selected by a foreign power to serve in its embassy in seventeenth-century London. There can be more curiosity to learn what type of work he could in fact be called upon to do. Fortunately, sufficient evidence has survived in the case of at least one Englishman of clear recusant connections, Francis Fowler II, to make an attempt. Curiously, in preparing this study an unexpected problem emerged in the discovery of another Englishman of an identical name who lived in Madrid with some of the same duties to perform. This surprising career of a Francis Fowler I is also described here. From this pair of biographies it is hoped that fresh clues have been found about the family of the distinguished printer of early recusant books, John Fowler.

From Henry's divorce to Elizabeth's accession, the most striking religious changes at the Inns of Court were external. As the Reformation progressed, church and chapel were stripped of their medieval ornamentation, in form as in fabric. Despite this outward transformation, there was remarkable continuity in personnel. Change occurred more by the natural process of admission, promotion, retirement and death than by compulsion. This did not mean that there was no regulation whatsoever. Members of the Inns were among those expected to obey the law—whether renouncing the Pope, acknowledging the Supremacy or maintaining uniformity. Nevertheless it is difficult to establish the extent to which religious observance was actually practised at the Inns. Bartlett Green of the Middle Temple, who was burnt for heresy in 1556, testified that he had not heard Mass during Mary's reign. Richard Allington, a barrister of Lincoln's Inn, was so engrossed in the worship of mammon that he fearfully confessed before his deathbed audience in 1561 to have ‘never wentte to churche atte tyme of commone prayere'. In 1569, several other members of the legal societies admitted they had rarely attended church since Elizabeth's accession, including Walter Norton of Gray's Inn, ‘by reason of his busines and clientes causes’. Despite the legal requirement, there is no sign of any campaign to enforce religious observance at the Inns or to coerce the legal profession as a whole.

When the Gunpowder Plot came to light in November, 1605, the Government tried to implicate the leading Jesuits on the mission, among them John Gerard who was known to have been on friendly terms with several of the plotters. He was publicly named as a traitor, the hue and cry was raised, but through the kindness of friends he remained safely in hiding and was well looked after until, in May, 1606, he escaped to the continent. He never returned to England but spent the rest of his life teaching and performing spiritual duties at English colleges abroad. He was in charge of the Jesuit novices at Louvain from 1609 to 1614 and when the novitiate was transferred to Liège in 1614 he accompanied it, becoming the first rector of the new house. In 1627 he was made spiritual director of the English College at Rome, a post which he held until his death in 1637.

Anti-Catholicism and its most popular expression, anti-Popery, was a common phenomenon in an otherwise tolerant Victorian age. To the average Englishman this distrust of Catholicism merged into broader feelings of xenophobia — Catholicism was considered un-English, the faith of the immoral French, the corrupt Italians and the indolent Spanish. The fact that the Irish, who were currently flooding into England, were Catholic made it easier for normally tolerant and liberal Englishmen to maintain their religious prejudice. This anti-Catholicism was not confined to the lower classes, but rather was a truly popular phenomenon shared by individuals as diverse as Lord John Russell, Lord Palmerston and Lord Derby. Indeed the Queen herself was not above expressing anti-Catholic views. Twice during her long reign there were outbreaks of violence against the Catholics: in 1850 following the restoration of the Roman Catholic hierarchy in England, and a generation later over William E. Gladstone's pamphlets attacking the Vatican decrees.

A year after the First Vatican Council of 1870 a five-volume edition of George Hay's works was published, and the opening words of Bishop John Strain's introduction left no doubt as to Hay's significance: ‘Since the religious revolution of the sixteenth century, to no man has the Catholic Church in Scotland been so much indebted as to Bishop Hay. He is preeminently her bishop of the last three hundred years.’ In 1874 James Stothert's Life of Bishop Hay was brought before the public by the Rev. J. F. S. Gordon, who felt moved to comment: ‘It is most dishonourable, not only to the Memory of this great Bishop, but to the Catholic Religion in Scotland, which he may be said to have kept alive during a dismal period, that not so much as a simple Stone marks his grave.’

IN THE CHANCEL of Dumbleton Church, Gloucestershire, there is a monument bearing the following inscription:

During Penal times there took place three executions of seminary priests in Newcastle-upon-Tyne and one in Gateshead. Three of these were in successive years, 1592, 1593 and 1594, and Tyneside is fortunate in the wealth of documentation it possesses for these Elizabethan martyrs. The jewel of this collection is still among the City Archives in Newcastle, in the 1590- 1596 (Payments) volume of Chamberlains’ Accounts, which contains two complete execution-bills, unique for Elizabethan England, as well as part of a third, and the imprisonment expenses of the Northumbrian layman George Errington, martyred at York in 1596.

Charles Butler's mother, née de Blandecque (anglice Blandyke), of a family established in Saint-Omer, was enthusiastically devoted to the Society of Jesus. His much-loved paternal uncle, Alban Butler, the hagiographer, had perhaps his own reasons for some measure of alienation from the regular clergy. In 1762, the French government expelled the Jesuits from France, and in 1766, when Charles was 16 years old, this uncle was put in charge of the English Jesuits’ college of St Omers, thus earning (I think it is not too much to say) a degree of obloquy amounting almost to the scale of vendetta, among a section of the recently-professed English Fathers.

On Henry Nevill II’s death at the ripe old age of 85 on 28 June 1728, the terms of his will were duly carried out. In it he arranged that ‘his youngest daughter, the Lady Mary Countess Migliorucci, should have the custody and management of his said son during his insanity, not doubting but she will see him taken all imaginable care of and used with that tenderness and regard that is due to be had for one in his unfortunate circumstance’. Then he left to his grandson, Cosmas Henry Joseph Count Migliorucci (whom he desired to take the surname of Nevill) the sum of £5,000. Next, he left to his eldest daughter, Margaret Conyers, the sum of £2,000 and to his Conyers grand-daughters, Harriet and Elizabeth, £300 apiece. To his youngest daughter, the Countess Mary Migliorucci, he left £10,000 in trust. On her father’s death, Lady Mary Migliorucci faced several problems. The first was to carry out her father’s instruction to take care of her idiot brother and for this she was allowed £200. It would seem, however, that his care fell mainly on the shoulders of Henry Milton, the bailiff of Nevill Holt, for Lady Mary spent most summers at her London house in Queen’s Square, near Ormond Street, Thus, on 3 June 1729, Milton wrote to her that ‘Mr. N. is in good health’.

In a recent article in this periodical on the identity of the early seventeenth-century controversialist who wrote under the pseudonym ‘John Brereley’, I published some biographical notes on the Jesuit, Lawrence Anderton (1575-1643) who is sometimes mistakenly credited with authorship of the ‘Brereley’ books. These notes included new evidence on a hitherto very obscure phase of Anderton’s career, the five or six years after he left Cambridge in 1597 to become a Catholic and go abroad to study for the priesthood. I was able to show that he studied at the English College at Seville and returned to England, a priest but not yet a Jesuit, a few years later. The date of his return seemed to be determined by an entry in the College accounts stating that his viaticum was collected on 24 March 1603. Of his life at the College, however, I could discover nothing beyond the fact that, while there, he went by the alias Lawrence Rigby or Ribe. Since publishing my article I have come across a piece of evidence which throws a little further light on his career at the College and which also suggests that he left Seville to come on the mission a few months earlier than the date of the viaticum would seem to indicate.

In November 1591 a royal proclamation was published denouncing the activities of seminary priests and Jesuits which inspired a surprising number of Catholic authors to undertake its refutation. Robert Persons, Joseph Cresswell, Richard Verstegan, Thomas Stapelton, and Robert Southwell all attacked it in works printed in English or Latin; a short, anonymous tract on the subject survives in manuscript; and two Spanish writers also dealt with the proclamation, which had touched the honour of Philip II. There was perhaps something of a tradition among Catholic authors of writing refutations of royal proclamations, and the edict of 1591 was indeed strongly worded, but it is clear that its appearance was largely a welcome excuse for the authors of these books to publish their views, which ranged wide in their attacks on Elizabethan policy and formed part of a sustained Catholic propaganda campaign which reached its height at around this time. Robert Persons continued to discuss the proclamation, although at much less length, in two tracts published in 1592 and 1593, which deal with other subjects.