In an article published in The Month in 1908 Charles Plater claimed that there were three pressing needs which had to be met if English Catholic social action were to develop fruitfully. He admitted that there was no shortage of charitable institutions, and a long English Catholic tradition of charitable work, but claimed that in the main Catholics were apathetic when it came to social work. The three needs were, firstly, a need for experts, both clerical and lay, who could produce a sound social literature. These experts would form a Catholic equivalent of the British Institute of Social Service, to command the best advice and to foster local initiatives; with its help, Catholics could join in such bodies as anti-sweating leagues, housing schemes, temperance campaigns, and so on, and be sure of their ground. Secondly, there was a need for organised social study in all Catholic educational establishments, and for more or less informal study circles, so that interested and informed laypeople would be produced. Thirdly, there was a need to organise working-men’s study clubs to enable working-class Catholics to hold their own against socialist colleagues and so to form labour leaders. As Plater was to stress time and time again, working-men could only be reached by working-men. They would, he claimed, welcome the sense of power gained by this training and the self-improvement effected by it.

Hamlet has made the name of Elsinore, the Danish Helsingor, familiar to everyone. It is a small seaport at the narrowest part of the Sound, opposite the Swedish town of Helsingborg. During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, its Baltic traffic was of great importance, and here, in 1580, two Englishmen met by accident.

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.

When the Newcastle Chronicle in an editorial on ‘Irishmen in England’ in 1867 declared that ‘Tyneside is famous for itshospitality’, it was not merely voicing a random appeal for calm during the tense days of the Fenian scare. In spite of the fact that the North-East had by 1861 the fourth highest ratio of Irish to English in all England and Wales, the region had been, and continued to be, remarkably free from anti-Irish and anti-Catholic hostility. This was not because Irish immigration had been gradual: between 1841 and 1851 the Irish-born of Newcastle and County Durham—nearly all of whom were Catholic—had increased their numbers by over 200%. By the latter date, the Irish-born numbered over 25,000 and together with their English progeny comprised most of the 38,000 Catholics estimated to be in Newcastle and County Durham in 18525. In the 1830’s the Irish presence had been negligible, but by 1851 the Irish-born alone made up 5.1% of the total populationand 8% of Newcastle’s population. By 1861 a correspondent of the Nation reported of the Irish within a ten-mile radius of Newcastle that ‘except in London, Liverpool, and Manchester, there is no such Irish force to be met with in England’. Yet, despite this, only one anti-Irish riot of significance ever took place in Newcastle. This was during the No-Popery agitation of 1851 when a street preacher (by legend ‘Ranter Dick’) began a harangue in the midst of the dense population of Irish Catholics in the Newcastle slum of Sandgate. That the riotingwas never repeated nor matched elsewhere in the North-East, and that it wassoon rendered into a Geordie song more amusing than bitter, is only one of the many indications of the ephemeral nature of the No-Popery crusade in the North-East. Together with the evidence of bonhomie shown toward the Irish Catholics by, for example, Poor Law officials and city corporations, the region stands in contrast to those areas of England, Scotland and Wales where the Irish Catholics appear to have been surrounded by acrimony.

With the accession of James VI of Scotland to England’s throne as James I, many English Catholics began hoping that the vexing question of religion would soon be resolved in a manner not unfavourable to their faith. James, after all, was the son of the Catholic Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots, and it seemed not impossible that he would convert to the Catholic faith. The diplomatic contact with Spain that would eventually produce the Treaty of 1604 was already in process and religious toleration was one element in the discussion. But the more significant grounds for Catholics’ hope came most certainly from the position on the English religious question enunciated by the King himself. As his reign began, James seemed to be demonstrating a more favourable attitude towards Catholics than towards Puritans. His Basilikon Down declared the Church of Rome and the Church of England ‘agree in the grounds’, while his first speech to Parliament in March 1604 characterized Catholicism as ‘a religion, falsely called Catholik, but trewly Papist’, while defining the Puritans, as ‘a sect rather than a Religion’.

IT is well known that during the latter part of the reign of Elizabeth I prominent papists were, from time to time, imprisoned in castles or large houses. That was done whenever the privy council felt that there were dangers threatening England which would become more dangerous if influential papists were allowed to remain at liberty. It was a cheap way to restrain the liberty of papists, as the owners of the buildings used as prisons were required to put them into repair and maintain them at their own expense, while the prisoners were required to pay for their board and lodging. Although the practice is a commonplace, its origins and development are less well known.

Indictments are of frequent occurrence in post-Reformation Catholic history, and it is important that their precise effect should be known. The length and prolixity of Tudor indictments, however, cause difficulty to many readers of these documents, and that difficulty is often increased by a lack of acquaintance with the technicalities involved. Indictments are technical documents and they can only be properly understood in the light of the technical rules which regulated them. Accordingly, the purpose of this paper is to deal generally with some of the more important rules governing indictments, and then to illustrate their application by means of the indictment of St. Thomas More. More's indictment is a convenient one for this purpose because it neatly illustrates a common pitfall, and the general circumstances of More's condemnation are so well known that it is unnecessary to set them out.

This bibliography, like those in previous Newsletters, has been compiled largely from a search of periodicals, especially those taken by the Institute of Historical Research. The items listed cover the period from the accession of Elizabeth I to the first Vatican Council. The publications of the Catholic Record Society, the Catholic Archives Society and the local recusant societies (Essex Recusant, Kent Recusant History, London Recusant, Northern Catholic History, North-West Catholic History, Staffordshire Catholic History and Worcestershire Recusant) have not been included.

In the early development of their spiritual and theological roots, the Sisters of Mercy are indebted to many Irish diocesan priests and to many religious orders active in Dublin and the surrounding area during the early nineteenth century, especially to those most supportive of Catherine McAuley and the first Sisters of Mercy prior to and following the founding of the Institute of Mercy in Baggot Street in 1831. Among the religious orders, the Carmelite Fathers on Clarendon Street, the Presentation Sisters on George’s Hill, the Dominican Fathers at Carlow College, the Irish Sisters of Charity (in the person of their founder, Mary Aikenhead), the Poor Clares, and the Irish Christian Brothers come immediately to mind. The theological debt of Catherine McAuley (1778–1841) and the Sisters of Mercy to the Society of Jesus, however, is fundamental and quite specific. The subsequent historical affiliations of the Sisters of Mercy with members of the Society of Jesus and the frequent consultations which many congregations of Sisters of Mercy have had, and continue to have, with various Jesuit advisers and spiritual directors have their earliest exemplar in the remarkably close association of Catherine McAuley with the classical religious writings of the well-known sixteenth-century Spanish Jesuit theologian, Alonso Rodriguez (1526–1616). This intellectual relationship is suggested by much in Catherine’s thought and writing, but, for the purpose of this article, most notably in the remarkable parallels that exist between Catherine’s only long essay and Rodriguez’s early seventeenth-century essay on the same general theme.

In historical narratives of the Tudor Period, disquisitions on the papal deposing power usually occur as comments on the events of the year 1570, when Pius V issued the Bull Regnans in Excelsis, declaring Queen Elizabeth to be a usurper. Catholic opinion on the deposing power, however, underwent many fluctuations and changes of emphasis in the years that followed. It may be profitable, therefore, to trace the history of the ideas of the English Catholics about the temporal power of the Pope during the seventy years which followed Regnans in Excelsis. In the present article we shall follow the changes as they are reflected in the printed books of those years, and documentary evidence will only be adduced to explain and comment on published statements.

St Francis de Sales’ devotional manual, An Introduction to a Devout Life (1609), had a complex but fascinating reception history in seventeenth-century England and Scotland. Collectively, the English-language editions in this century include two translations and, perhaps most interestingly, several reformed editions. It is curious that a post-Reformation, Tridentine Catholic work, written by a French bishop dedicated to converting Protestant ‘Heretiques,’ would appeal to both Catholics and Protestants alike. Most of the seventeenth-century English editions were published abroad in Douai, Paris, St Omer, and Rouen, places that were home to many English and Scottish exiled communities, both lay and religious. Two of the three reformed editions were published in England, evidence of the Introduction’s widespread readership and its importance to seventeenth-century English devotion. Finally, during James II’s reign two Catholic editions were openly published, one in England and the other in Scotland.

The Archpriest Controversy, a dispute that took place from 1598 to 1602 over the necessity for an archpriest to enforce moral discipline among the English Catholic clergy, has been traditionally seen either as a struggle for hierarchical order within the Catholic Church or a serious ideological breach between the Jesuit faction and the Appellants. In contrast to recent historiography, this paper argues that the Appellants, secular clergy that opposed the archpriest, represented views of conservative English Catholics who believed they could reconcile their political loyalty to their monarch with their Catholicism. The Archpriest Controversy should be reconsidered as a critical moment in a chain of important events from the English Mission of 1580–81 to the Gunpowder Plot of 1605 that reaffirmed the inherently traditionalist nature of the Catholic community in England.

It was in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries that colleges were first established in the Iberian Peninsula for the provision of Catholic priests to serve on the English mission. The first to be opened was at Valladolid in 1589; this ‘was followed by Seville in 1592 and Madrid in 1611. They were supported by the alms of the faithful, taken under the protection of the Spanish Crown, and administered by the Society of Jesus. Smaller establishments, residences, were in existence at Lisbon and San Lucar de Barrameda (near Cadiz) serving as points of entry and departure for students and priests on their journeys between Spain and England. Eventually, in 1622, a College was established at Lisbon but from the beginning, this college differed from the others in that it was always administered by the English secular clergy and not by the Jesuits. The golden age of the Spanish colleges was in the first fifty or sixty years of their existence when they not only provided many missioners, including martyrs, but also exercised a political influence on the English Catholic scene by reason of their Jesuit administration and their situation in Spain. However, by the eighteenth century a decline had set in. There were complaints about the administration, and the recruitment of students was low so that few missioners returned to work in England. In fact, between 1739 and 1756 the College at Valladolid was closed to students while rebuilding took place. Partly because of the poor recruitment and partly because of their antipathy to the Jesuits, the Vicars Aṕostolic were dissatisfied and almost lost interest in these three colleges, relying on the establishments at Douai and Lisbon which were under the direction of the seculars.

Bernard Burder, Abbot of the Cistercian Abbey of Mount St Bernard's, Leicestershire, from 1853 to 1858 is largely forgotten today; but for a few years in the middle of the last century his activities were important, and to a considerable extent, anticipated those of Archbishop Manning in the field of reformatory education. Burder's spiritual progress was similar to Newman's: he began life as a nonconformist, was then converted to Anglicanism and finally joined the Catholic Church one year after Newman. That same year, 1846, he entered Mount St Bernard's and on the death of its first Abbot, Dom Bernard Palmer, in 1853, was, in December of that year, elected to succeed him.

Among the archives of the Archbishop of Westminster is a four-page list of ‘Persons of Quality’ and their chaplains and of other Mass-centres, riding-missions, etc. marked in pencil ‘between 1695 and 1710—c. 1701’ possibly because the latter was the year when the Catholic eighth Duke of Norfolk, who heads the list, succeeded to the title. It is, however, possible to assign a more accurate date to this document, i.e. between 14 September 1704 when Sir Henry Arundell Bedingfield—born in 1689 and marked ‘yet minor’ in the list—succeeded to the baronetcy and 11 May 1706 when Lord Carrington died without issue. It may be that further investigation can narrow down the date still further. The document gives no indication of the purpose for which it was compiled though the tenor of its final page suggests that it was drawn up by a secular priest, probably a member of the Old Chapter. The contents of the document are summed-up in a note added in a later hand at the end: ‘This paper tells whether the family was served by a clergyman, that is a secular priest or by a regular viz. a Jesuit (underlined) or a Monk or a Friar’.

‘I acknowledge this Doctrine is not commonly received by Protestants, who (I humbly conceive) might reject it chiefly in opposition to the See of Rome, wherein such a multitude of monsters do swim…’ This is how the Congregationalist divine, Robert Dingley (1619-1660) summarized the characteristic Protestant attitude to the Roman Catholic belief in guardian angels in the preface to The Deputation of Angels, or The Angel-Guardian (1654, Wing D 1496).

In 1850, during its first year of publication, Notes and Queries printed the enquiry of one ‘J.M.’, who asked for information about a treatise of equivocation to which he had found reference in a seventeenth-century book. A number of replies in subsequent issues provided bits of information about the treatise, and called attention to a manuscript copy in the Bodleian. This flurry of items in Notes and Queries seems to have prompted David Jardine (1794-1860), who later wrote a history of the Gunpowder Plot, to prepare an edition of the treatise, which was published in 1851. Jardine composed a preface, but since he could not establish who had written the work, and was not optimistic that the matter would ever be clarified, his account is far from complete. There did, however, exist documents that could identify the author, and exactly 100 years after the appearance of Jardine's edition, an article by A. F. Allison showed conclusively that the treatise had been written by Father Henry Garnet, S.J. Since the treatise played a significant part in the history of ‘equivocation’ in England, and was a subject of controversy at the time of the Gunpowder Plot, I believe it will be useful to provide an account of what is now known about the work.

In the Royal Library of Belgium in Brussels is a manuscript which consists of over two hundred closely-written folios of English translations of Jesuit letters from Japan, or Japonia as it was then called, introduced with a prologue by the compiler ‘G.C.’, hinting fairly heavily that the translations were made in prison. Until recently rebound, the manuscript bore a Latin inscription on the pastedown, stating: ‘This book belongs to the English Benedictine Monastery of the Assumption of Our Lady in Brussels’. Although the contents of the volume are of interest in their own right, the concern of this article is with two men, Gabriel Colford and George Cotton, who have little in common except the initials ‘G.C.’ and the experience of imprisonment for religion.