In a recent work on English Catholic recusants the author describes ‘a small wave of conversions to Catholicism’ drawn from a wide spectrum of English Protestantism that began late in the reign of Charles II and increased in size after the accession of James II. One of the groups mentioned was a number of High Church Anglicans. My intention is to study one member of this group, the clergyman Mordaunt Webster whose career was centered primarily in the ‘enthusiastically Protestant region of East Anglia.’ Born in the village of Aldwinckle St. Peter, Northants, in 1637, he was the son of John Webster, rector of the local church, who during the Civil War served with the Royalist army and was ejected by Parliament from his Northamptonshire living and from another in Rutland.

The Jesuit mission to England so proudly announced by Edmund Campion in 1580 was a venture hesitantly undertaken by the Society of Jesus. There was careful, prayerful discernment not only before Father General Everard Mercurian decided in its favour but also throughout its subsequent growth and development. According to the Formula of the Institute, in a sense the Jesuit rule, the purpose and goal of the Society was twofold: the salvation and sanctification of both the individual Jesuits and of their fellow men and women. The entire thrust of Ignatian spirituality was the consideration of the first in so far as it advanced the second. Ignatius urged that all the ordinary practices and customs of religious life be considered in the context of the apostolate and either executed or modified in so far as they advanced the order’s goals. Because of the stress that Ignatius had placed on the Society’s works, he was reluctant to prescribe any universally binding spiritual practices. Indeed, among the wide powers granted to the General in the order’s Constitutions was that to grant dispensations ‘in particular cases which require such dispensation, while he takes account of the persons, places, times, and other circumstances.’

At the little church of St. Robert’s at Catforth in the Fylde of Lancashire is preserved a remarkable collection of relics of penal times. The most important is a human head, so often referred to as a ‘skull’ that I shall use the terms here quite indiscriminately, though it still contains, even in its decayed and mutilated state, many parts over and above those of a mere skull. The next most important is a small missal of 1570, on the fly-leaf of which was once inserted a reference to ‘our martyr’. These two items are, as I believe, the only ones likely to be of positive use in reconstructing the case. But with them is preserved a whole collection of other articles in the form of Mass-vestments, altar-cloths, linen, etc., dating variously from the fifteenth to the seventeenth centuries, a number of which bear yellow or brown stains.

Hugh Owen was a Welshman, born at Plas Du in Caernarvonshire in 1538, who refused to forego his Catholic religious allegiance in the reign of Elizabeth I. Secretary to Henry, twelfth and last of the Fitzalan Earls of Arundel, he fled abroad at the time of the Ridolfi Plot in 1571. Although only on the fringe of it, he, no doubt, considered himself, with reason, to be in danger of implication. Certainly he appears to have been involved, about this time, in a project to secure the release of Mary, Queen of Scots, which would have made it extremely perilous for him to stay in England. By the 1580s he enjoyed the full confidence of the Duke of Parma, governor of the Spanish Netherlands, as the organiser of an intelligence network which enabled him to counteract in large measure the very effective system of espionage established by Sir Francis Walsingham. Parma passed him on to Archduke Albert, who described him as ‘diligent, very discreet and suitable for any business’.

It is understandable that study of Southwell’s life should have had priority over the study of his poetry. This biographical bias is evident in the gaps and weaknesses of existing accounts of his poetry: shortcomings which, I would argue, are regrettable because his poetry could provide a better commentary on his life than the conventional assumptions of hagiography. His Latin poetry, which forms a substantial portion of his poetic output, has been overlooked both in Leicester Bradner’s history of Anglo-Latin poetry, and the more recent upsurge in Neo-Latin studies. A different kind of ignorance surrounds his English poetry. In his poetic masterpiece, ‘Saint Peters Complaint’, Southwell describes Christ’s glance as ‘In cyphred words, his misteries disclosing’. (The words are cyphered because they are zeroes, circles projected from Christ’s eyes. They are also cyphered in being encoded in an image.) The description may be aptly applied to the poem which also consists of ‘cyphered words’. The poem’s code is not difficult to penetrate, but nevertheless this essay represents the first attempt to give an account of the ‘high mysteries’ that it at once conceals and discloses; that is, to elucidate the cryptic aspect of the poem. This gap in the secondary literature exemplifies a more general charge that can be levelled against writers on Southwell: that they have tended to deprecate the mannerism or artifice of his work as somehow detracting from his sanctity, Typically, they present it as an external trapping or disguise which must be discarded in order to reveal the true, natural Southwell. I would maintain, however, that artifice is central to Southwell’s poetry, his conception of religion, and his life.

The religion of Alexander Pope, like so many other aspects of his life, is characterized by ambiguity and equivocation. Many have seen his profession of the Catholic faith as shallow and insincere, not least those, like Warburton and Ruffhead, who proclaim his supposed insincerity as a sign of grace. A study of the family tradition within which Pope learned his religion sets the problem in a different light, and at the same time illustrates the complex ambiguities which must be borne in mind by anyone who wishes to look behind the solid statistics of convictions for recusancy into the obscure minds and hearts of those whom social status, deviousness, or sheer indecision conspired to shield from the penalties of their religious inclinations.

In seeking signs of vitality in the English Catholic Church of the early eighteenth century John Bossy notes first the publication of new books reformulating the position of Catholics in England, and also the growth of catechising, spearheaded by the introduction of several new editions of simplified catechisms. But he makes no mention of the problems, surely severe, which an underground organisation must face in printing and circulating its propaganda. The Church needed books rather than pamphlets or broadsheets, and the presses on which books were printed cannot have been either itinerant or easily hidden; rather, they would have needed the constant attendance of skilled compositors and pressmen, and a steady supply of bulky materials such as ink and paper.

In recent years, students of recusancy have begun to turn their attention to the inner life of the Catholic community, a development much to be welcomed; and it is understandable that for the most part the centre of interest has been what is called the spiritual life. Influences coming from St. Francis of Sales and St. Teresa of Avila have been traced, and Augustine Baker has rightly been the subject of much study. What needs further investigation, I believe, is the devotional life of the ordinary person, namely the gentry and their wives and daughters in their country houses, especially in the seventeenth century. There were also those who towards the end of the century increasingly lived in London and other towns without the support of the ‘patriarchal’ life of the greater families. No doubt, many were unlettered, and even if they could read they were probably unused to handling anything but the simplest of books. It would be interesting to know what vernacular prayers they knew and said, how they managed to ‘hear Mass’, as the phrase went, what they made of the sacrament of penance, and what notions about God and Jesus Christ they entertained. Perhaps the religious practice of the unlettered is now beyond recall, but something remains of the practice of those who used the many Primers and Manuals that are still extant.

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.

A work commonly attributed in bibliographies to Joseph Creswell S.J. (1556–1623) is a reply, written under the pseudonym B. D. de Clerimond, to King James I’s proclamation of 2 June 1610 ‘for the due execution of all former laws against Recusants’. The reply, published in 1611, is A&R 265: A proclamation published vnder the name of lames King of Great Britanny. With a brief & moderate answere therunto. Whereto are added the penall statutes, made in the same kingdome, against Catholikes. Togeather with a letter which sheweth the said Catholikes piety: and diuers aduertisements also, for better vnderstanding of the whole matter. Translated out of Latin into English.

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.

At the Reformation, three possibilities faced English Catholics. They could continue to be Catholics and so suffer the penalties of the penal laws; they could conform to the Church of England; or they could adopt a middle course and become Church Papists. The Nevills of Nevill Holt, near Market Harborough in Leicestershire, went through all three phases. In the reign of Edward VI, Thomas Nevill I became a Protestant. His grandson, Thomas Nevill II, became a Church Papist under James I; and Thomas II’s son, Henry Nevill I, continued to be one at the time of the Civil War. But Henry l’s son William was definitely a Catholic and went into exile with King James II, while William’s son, Henry Nevill II, was an open Catholic under Charles II. Henry Nevill II’s descendants continued to be Catholics throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries until they left Nevill Holt in the late nineteenth century.

This short note is a belated answer to a request from David Rogers and Antony Allison. Some ten years ago they told me that they had discovered two copies of a hitherto-unknown passio of Bishop Conor O’Devany which had been published as a small quarto volume of twelve folios two years after his martyrdom. This is the Martyrium Rmi. D. F. Cornelii Dovenii, Dunensis et Connerensis episcopi, ex Seraphica D. Francisci Reg. Observant. familia assumpti, et R. D. Patritii Luchrani, Presbyteri, Dublinii in Hybernia, sub Arthuro Chichestriensi Prorege Anno M.D.CXII. 1. Februarii Dublinii faeliciter consummatum, Coloniae Agrippinae, excudebat Arnoldus Kempensis, 1614. I examined the copy preserved among the rare books in the British Library in London (shelf number G 5546). In addition to this and the copy in the Bibliothèque Mazarine in Paris, four other copies have been traced by them in recent years.

John Champion, a Jesuit, was at Sawston Hall near Cambridge, the home of the Huddleston family, from 1730 or earlier until his death in 1776. It is possible from a study of the Huddleston papers deposited in the Cambridgeshire Record Office and of other contemporary documents to discover something of his life as a family chaplain—a life that was probably typical of the lives of other priests of the time.

The extent of the achievement on the part of the Catholic community in developing its own poor schools in the last century in England can only be gauged in the light of the deprived social conditions out of which they came. So some brief mention of the plight of the majority of the Catholics is here given as an introduction to the work of the Catholic Poor School Committee (henceforth CPSC); the role of the religious orders is next considered, and the training colleges. Some indications of the growth conclude this paper.

The August Order was issued by the Poor Law Board on 23 August 1859 and made the provision of Religious Instruction for Catholic orphan pauper children obligatory on the Masters of all Workhouses. It was a significant concession to Roman Catholic, who had been demanding something like it for more than two decades. At the same time, its mandatory nature greatly offended and angered those Guardians who had ultra-Protestant sympathies and connections. The vigour and persistence of the ensuing agitation to have it repealed is almost without parallel in the history of nineteenth-century Protestant-Catholic relations in England and is worth examining in some detail.

When James II began looking in Wales for Catholics who could be appointed to the Bench and lieutenancy, he found very few potential supporters in most Welsh counties. What Catholics there were tended to be minor figures, or outsiders who happened to hold Welsh lands. Monmouthshire had a strong contingent of recusants; but the greatest surprise came in Glamorgan, where there came forward a series of apparently recent converts from the Carne and Stradling families. Three Carne brothers served as enthusiastic Catholic Justices, all the more valuable because they held their position by their own prestige and ancestry in addition to political orthodoxy. In 1688, they were virtually the only family in south Wales to attempt serious (indeed, threatening) resistance to the Protestant coup.

The eighteenth century abounds with colourful, eccentric figures, some famous and others known by but few readers. Sir John Dalrymple of Cranston, was such a person, curious in his interests and controversial in his activities even for his time. Historians of modern Roman Catholicism have long recognized that he played a part in the negotiations which led to the English Roman Catholic Relief Act of 1778, but they have mentioned him only in passing. Their sketchy references to his role usually derive in one way or another from Fr. James Stother’s account of the abortive negotiations for Scottish relief, which paralleled the more successful discussions on behalf of English and Irish Catholics. Stother’s chronicle, published over a century ago, remains by far the most extensive account of Sir John’s activities in print, although it is itself brief and discreet. Advancing projects for Catholic relief required caution at the very least, and the project for the Scots, beyond this, demanded secrecy, in so far as relief in the northern kingdom involved concessions to Catholics in return for their encouragement of troop enlistment in the controversial American war. Concealment by Sir John and his associates of the role he played at the time has led to neglect of that role by historians ever since.

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’.

The biography of Edmund Campion in the Dictionary of National Biography describes how, after a year of ministering to English Catholics, Campion was captured in Berkshire with three other priests on 17 July 1581, was brought to London, and was imprisoned in the Tower on Saturday 22 July. The DNB continues: