The recent appearance of the final volume of The Contemporary Printed Literature of the English Counter-Reformation between 1558 and 1640, an Annotated Catalogue, by A. F. Allison and D. M. Rogers, volume II, Works in English (ARCR II), represents the completion of the work of two scholarly lifetimes devoted to the study of early recusant printed books. To call it merely a catalogue, or even an annotated catalogue, is to underestimate the nature of the achievement. Perhaps the best way to evaluate it is to begin by tracing the history of its development.

The process of depriving Catholic martyrs of their lives inevitably involved the lay authorities in some expense. This is borne out graphically by the Newcastle Chamberlains’ Accounts of the early 1590s, which relate to the sufferings of Joseph Lambton and Edward Waterson, who were executed at Newcastle, and John Ingram, who died across the river in Gateshead. The details of their torments are well established. Lambton—who was born in May 1568 and was probably the youngest of all the martyrs—and Waterson were captured at Newcastle at about the same time and condemned to death at the assizes held on 20 July 1592. The execution, which was set for Saturday 22 July, was postponed until the Monday ‘in order to avoid a crowd of people’. In the event Lambton suffered alone and his execution ‘was one of the most horrible on record’. The task of hanging and dismembering Lambton's body was given to a man condemned for felony at the same assizes: he was offered a reprieve in exchange for performing the gruesome duty. The job was badly botched and a French surgeon was called in and paid twenty shillings to complete it. Waterson was given a temporary reprieve. It is recorded that the sheriff took one of the quarters of Lambton's body to Waterson ‘hoping to frighten him into submission but Waterson only kissed it’. Indeed, Waterson was made of stern stuff. His date of birth is not known but he was born in London and brought up a protestant. After travelling in Turkey he was ordained at Rheims in March 1592 and sent to England two months later. After his reprieve in July 1592 Waterson escaped but was soon recaptured. He refused to be cowed and languish quietly in his cell: the Newcastle chamberlains had to lay out money to repair ‘the door that the priest burnt in prison’. He was executed on 8 January 1593 by John Litherington, a fellow prisoner, although the grisly task of quartering the body fell to the serjeant, William Fever.

The reputation of Robert Persons as a prose stylist has suffered from the repellant myth his opponents constructed around him. What if his works created a phenomenal stir at the time? A. L. Rowse, the most eloquent spokesman for the ‘common-sense’ English view of the matter, puts this down to the deceptively natural, easy prose of Persons, the smiling face of the villain. Haunted—if Rowse is to be believed—by the sound of the bells of St. Mary Magdalen, pealing backwards as if for a fire when he was expelled from Balliol in 1573, he nursed a lifelong grudge against his own nation for so dismissing his great intellectual gifts. No wonder Swift, himself a bitter, ‘conjured’ spirit, thought Persons the pick of Elizabethan prose writers. Everything he wrote, so smoothly and plausibly, was devoted to the overthrow of the State in England and the establishment of a Catholic monarchy under which Jesuits would exercise a monopoly of power. Rowse acknowledges Persons’ spirituality, notably evident in The Christian Directory, but treats it as being of his active career a thing apart.

Toward the end of the summer of 1594 King Philip II received from the hands of Sir Francis Englefield at the Escorial an Información, or report, written by Joseph Creswell, S.J. concerning English matters of significance for his régime in Flanders. Creswell did not claim to be the sole author for, together with Englefield's name, he mentioned in his first sentence that two other English Jesuits, Robert Persons and William Holt had also contributed to it and that Hugh Owen, a veteran observer of English affairs at the court in Brussels, vouched for its contents. Since Flanders was the province where the larger number of English Catholics lived overseas during the last decade of the reign of Elizabeth, the document translated and edited here for the first time can shed light on the situation facing them at that period. There are some questions that deserve attention first, about its origins, the experiences of the author and his collaborators which prompted them to prepare it, and above all the political and diplomatic crisis which seemed to give urgency to the report.

Martyrs were the first saints and some were among the most popular saints of the Middle Ages. Because it was the manner of their death that won them their place in heaven, martyrs were a special case; unlike other saints, evidence of heroic virtue in life and miracles were not required. Like the early martyrs, many sixteenth-century English martyrs were immediately recognized as saints by their co-religionists, without reference to judicial processes. But the status of martyr was not popularly accorded automatically to Catholics who died on account of their faith. Despite Southwell's ‘Epitaph’: ‘A Queen I liu'd, now dead I am a Saint/Once MARIE calde; my name now Martir is’, Mary, Queen of Scots, was not generally acclaimed as a martyr, even by Catholics.

William Allen is best remembered as the founder of those colleges at Douai and Rome which prepared men to go as missionary priests to England and so helped to preserve the faith there during the time of persecution. Because of his own personal qualities as a scholar, and his ability to work with others and meet the changing political situation, he became in his day the acknowledged leader of the English catholics. He maintained cordial relations with the Society of Jesus and was fully aware of the ecclesiastical scene on the continent of Europe. His resolute attitude towards heresy and insistence on the practice of the true faith even in the most difficult conditions, entitles him to be considered the father of recusancy. Yet Allen's reputation is not high outside Catholic circles. His involvement in the cause of Spain, especially at the time of the Armada, has led many to regard him as seriously misguided if not an outright traitor. This criticism has had its effect on Catholics since it has cast a shadow on his work and his claim that he never allowed his students to become engaged in politics has not always sounded totally convincing. Over a hundred years ago in his Introduction to the Douai Diaries T. F. Knox deliberately avoided any discussion of this matter saying, ‘his political action stands in no relation to his work for the seminary.’ This side of Allen's activity has often proved an embarrassment to his biographers who sometimes try and console themselves with the ungracious conclusion that Allen's political involvement was due to the machinations of Robert Persons. The fourth centenary of his death provides an opportunity to take another look at Allen's life and writings, paying particular attention to the context in which he lived before he went into exile, and from an appreciation of the situation under Mary Tudor to progress towards an understanding of his later work and activity on the continent, especially his relationship with Spain.

At Yale University, the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library's James Marshall and Marie-Louise Osborn Collection has recently acquired a fascinating manuscript of late sixteenth-century Roman Catholic devotional verse in English (Osborn Shelves a30). Following the liturgical year from Trinity Sunday to the feast of Saint Catherine on November 25th, these fifty-eight poems celebrate the solemnities, feasts, and memorials of the Roman liturgical calendar throughout the approximately twenty-six weeks comprising the major portion of ‘ordinary time’. Presumably, this collection would have had a companion volume, now lost, covering the period from Advent to Pentecost which includes the principal solemnities and great seasons of the liturgical year.

Prevented by their refusal to take the Oath of Supremacy from being admitted to a degree at Oxford or Cambridge, Catholics—clerical or lay—who wished for higher education not infrequently attended foreign universities or colleges but there were those who achieved distinction in one branch or another of study without attending any institution of higher learning. One example of this was the subject of a recent article in Recusant History —the Jesuit astronomer Christopher Maire.

‘Father Persons’ has long been a legendary figure of controversy. We cannot even agree on the spelling of his name. Most of his contemporaries called him Parsons, especially if they were hostile, but his correspondence and other manuscript evidence make it quite clear he preferred Persons. The variant spellings would not affect the pronunciation of his name, but ‘Parsons’ is a reminder of the rumour that he was the bastard son of a Somerset parson. Parsons or Persons, he was notorious in his day as a traitorous plotter and irrepressible controversialist, but today he is virtually ignored by literary scholars. The story is told of a meeting in 1954, on a train from Cambridge to Oxford, between C. S. Lewis and A. L. Rowse. Rowse congratulated his fellow-traveller on the recent publication of his History of English Literature in the Sixteenth Century—a work that itself was to become, for other reasons, the centre of controversy—pausing only to register some surprise at his treatment of prose: ‘You praise Cardinal Allen, who is really negligible and wrote very little, but you do not even mention Robert Parsons, the Jesuit who wrote over thirty books and was one of the most considerable prose writers of the Elizabethan period. Why?’ To this piece of donnish one-upmanship, Lewis bluffed: ‘I did not think he was important enough to be included.’ He hadn't read Persons.

The mission at Burton Park in West Sussex has been most recently discussed by Fr. Geoffrey Holt in Recusant History 13 (1975). A few amplifications and corrections can, however, be made from sources not known to him.

First, the position within the Elizabethan house of the chapel that served the mission until the early nineteenth century can be identified from a local newspaper report of 1826. Successive manor houses at Burton occupied the same site, pace the speculations reported by Fr. Holt. A curious feature of that site was that at one time it straddled the boundary between Burton and Barlavington parishes (Fig. 1); the medieval house was evidently in the former and expanded eastwards into the latter. The Elizabethan house, which survived until the early nineteenth century, had at least two courtyards, of which the westemmost lay eighty metres south of Burton parish church and had an elaborate frontispiece, known from a drawing by Grimm. The east end of the house was rebuilt in the eighteenth century by the Venetian architect Giacomo Leoni, with a fine classical façade and a notable saloon and drawing room, but in 1826 the building was largely destroyed by fire caused by a servant girl's carelessness. The report of the event in the Brighton Herald states that the chapel was at the west end, which together with the centre of the building was the part that was burnt.

The validity of bringing together the works of writers who may have little in common other than their religious allegiance is not something which could be justified in every age, especially within the current ecumenical climate. Two anthologies of Catholic poets, Shane Leslie's of 1925 and Frank Sheed's of 1943 may appear to today's reader rather more revelatory of the taste and beliefs of the compilers and their periods than of the poets concerned. Yet it can be claimed that scrutiny of the religious poetry of Catholic writers of the first half of the seventeenth century has a validity which might be lacking in a later period. If religious poetry is indeed the expression of sincere conviction, it is to be expected that writers who have different beliefs will differ also in the forms of expression they give to them in their poetry. In the light of this, the question may be asked as to how, in the seventeenth century, the religious poetry written by Catholics differs from that written by Protestants. The study of a large number of minor writers of this period leads to the conclusion that in the seventeenth century the choice and treatment of subject matter seems to be more integrally related to religious conviction than is the case in later periods.

This paper is a sequel to ‘The Pakingtons of Harvington’ by Lionel and Veronica Anderton Webster, which was published in Recusant History in April 1974. There they only had room to discuss in detail the century between the purchase of Chaddesley Corbett and Harvington by Sir John Pakington in 1529 and the death in 1631 of his great-nephew Humphrey III, who had built the Elizabethan Hall with its remarkable priest-holes and wall-paintings. In continuing the story I have had invaluable help from the Websters’ genealogical and legal notes, which Veronica passed on to me in the summer of 1991, the year before her death; but their references have been checked, a great deal has been added, and the structure, the inferences and any errors are mine. The paper therefore appears under my name with these acknowledgements, rather than as a joint publication. I hope that in due course the trilogy can be completed by another paper on The Throckmortons of Harvington, 1696–1923’.

THE writings of the seventeenth-century English theologian, Henry Holden, played a small but significant part in the development of western religious thought in the centuries following his death. His most important work, Divinae fidei analysis, first printed in Latin at Paris in 1652 and afterwards translated and published in English, was several times reprinted in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and was later incorporated in two theological collections, J. P. Migne's Theologiae cursus completus (tom.6, 1839), and Josef Braun's Bibliotheca regularum fidei (tom.2, 1844). It influenced the thinking, in the nineteenth century, not only of avowed liberals such as Dôllinger and Acton, but also, in some degree, of moderate progressives like Newman. In recent years, specialist studies on different aspects of Holden's thought have appeared in English and in French. So far, however, no serious attempt has been made to revise his bibliography: we still have to rely, in large measure, on that published by Joseph Gillow more than a century ago. In this article I want to bring together material that has come to light since Gillow's time and to examine Holden's works afresh against the background of his life and the religious and political developments in England and France at that period. I shall devote particular attention to two themes that run through all his work. One is gallicanism, that amalgam of mediaeval theories limiting the authority of the papacy in relation to secular states and their rulers and national churches and their bishops. It will be seen that plans which Holden advanced in the 1640s for the reform of the Catholic Church in England along gallican lines are based largely on ideas developed in his Divinaefidei analysis published a few years later. The other is his analytical and critical approach to doctrine, aiming always to distinguish truths solidly based on Scripture and tradition from the mere speculations of theologians. It is an approach that had been made popular in France by the Catholic controversialist, François Véron, whose Régula fidei catholicae was first published at Paris in 1644 when Holden was probably already at work on his Divinae fidei analysis. It reveals itself in all Holden's writings and distinguishes him from many of the other Catholic apologists who were drawn into controversy with the Anglican divines of the post-Chillingworth era.

Just prior to their departure for England in the spring of 1580, Robert Persons and Edmund Campion received an explanatio from Pope Gregory XIII suspending the sentence of excommunication against Queen Elizabeth in the bull Regnans in Excelsis. The explanatio decreed that English Catholics were not bound to implement the sentence of deposition against Elizabeth rebus sic stantibus, that is, under the present circumstances. The two priests hoped that this faculty would allay the English government's fear that they had come to foment rebellion in England. But the explanatio produced the opposite result. Lord Burghley and the government seized upon the conditional nature of the decree to argue that any future profession of Catholic loyalty must be disregarded out of hand. Rome's strategy, therefore, had backfired. The rebus sic stantibus declaration had given the Persons/Campion mission a fatal taint of treachery and treason.

Historians are generally agreed that Lancashire was the most Catholic and the most Jacobite county in England at the time of the 1715 rebellion. Indeed, final confirmation of this connection would seem to have been established by Professor Paul Kléber Monod. In his book, Jacobitism and the English People 1688–1788, Monod has stated that ‘Lancashire had the largest [Catholic] recusant population in England’ at the end of the seventeenth century, and that of the 688 listed English Jacobite rebels captured at Preston in 1715, 366 were from Lancashire, 227 from Northumberland, 78 from other counties, six from Ireland and eleven from unidentified places. Monod also discovered the religious affiliations of four-fifths of the Lancashire rebels and noted that 76 per cent of them were Roman Catholics. With these vital statistics in our possession it would seem that there is no need for further research on Lancashire Catholicism and Jacobitism in the early eighteenth century. But certain questions, ignored or barely touched on by Monod and other historians, need answering. First, how many Catholics were there in Lancashire in about 1715, what was their geographical distribution and social composition, and how far were they dominated by the gentry? Secondly, what was the social composition of the various Lancashire Catholic groups: the active Jacobites, the passive Jacobites and those of unknown allegiance? Thirdly, how do the Catholic and Protestant Jacobite rebels of Lancashire compare from a social and political standpoint? Finally, and confining ourselves mainly to the Catholic gentry, how strong a link was there in Lancashire between the Royalism of the Civil Wars (1642–48) and the Jacobitism of the 1715 rebellion?

The manor house of Horton Court, about three miles from Chipping Sodbury in Gloucestershire, was a focus of Catholicism when occupied in the eighteenth century by a recusant branch of the Paston family. The present writer's interest in its past has recently been kindled by the discovery that its library, whose catalogue survives, though the books have long been dispersed, contains many books by, or closely associated with, English Catholics of the penal times. One of the collections that went from it had probably been put together by Dr Edward Paston, a distinguished President of the English College at Douai, who died in 1714.

Four Jerningham Augustinian canonesses from Bruges were at Cossey, the home of Sir William Jerningham (1736–1809), in the summer of 1794, and then lived at Hengrave Hall near Bury St. Edmunds Suffolk. They were Ann, Elizabeth, Edwardina, and Frances Henrietta Jerningham, Sir William's cousins. The sixteen bound volumes of correspondence received by Lady Bedingfield 1776–1833 and now at Birmingham University, from which Egerton Castle's Jerningham Letters were taken, include three unpublished letters from Elizabeth, Sister Mary Agnes Jerningham (1727–1807) and three unpublished letters from her American niece, Frances Henrietta, Sister Mary Sales Jerningham (1745–1824). Sister Mary Sales's 1803 letter to Lady Jerningham is now at the Stafford Record Office.

The Irish, noted a French traveller in 1644, ‘se nomment Ayrenake’. Is it all that noteworthy that those whom the traveller questioned should denote themselves as ‘Éireannach’ or Irish? The answer must be a cautious ‘yes’ because if the same question had been posed some forty years earlier the reply would most likely have been either ‘Gael’ or ‘English’ depending on the respondent's racial identity. This new patriotism which centred on love of one's native land and religion had been created over the preceding sixty years by the ‘Old’ (i.e. of pre-Reformation settler stock) English who found themselves increasingly estranged from Protestantism as espoused by the crown and by ‘New’ English officials and settlers. A more immediate impulse towards the fashioning of a new Irishness was the Protestant device of lumping all Irish Catholics together regardless of putative ethnicity. In the 1680s an Irish Protestant spokesman briskly summed up the outlook of his group; ‘If the most ancient and natural Irishman be a Protestant, no man takes him for other than an Englishman; and if a cockney be a Papist, he is reckoned in Ireland to be as much an Irishman as if he was born on Slevelogher.’ By then what had been a self-serving rhetorical commonplace was indisputably a reality. So, the ‘faith and fatherland’ patriotism was to an extent thrust on the Old English and was not necessarily hostile to the crown in general or to the Stuarts in particular. Far from it, the motto of the Confederation of Kilkenny (1642–9) ‘pro Deo, pro Rege, pro patria Hibernia unanimis’ shows how an earlier generation had tried to square this circle.