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Sermons, Separatists, and Succession Politics in Late Elizabethan England

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 May 2013

Michael Questier
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Abstract

In late 1599 the population of York was able to witness a fairly extraordinary sight. In York Castle, the Catholic prisoners of conscience, as they saw themselves (though others regarded them as dangerous political dissidents), were being compelled to listen, once a week, to a Protestant sermon. These sermons were preached at them by a slate of godly ministers. This exercise was something the prisoners actively contested by murmuring, blocking their ears, shouting, and attempting to rush out of the hall. The prisoners' antics provoked the authorities into increasingly coercive measures to make them hear the Word of God. This outwardly rather ridiculous and unseemly charade went on, week after week, for nearly a year, at which point the whole business was abandoned by the lord president, Lord Burghley, as a waste of time. However, by decoding the extant manuscript narrative that we have of the sermon series and by looking at who was involved in this business and why, and what political messages were being sent during the course of it, we can say something about the popular politics of late Elizabethan England. In particular, we can comment on the strategies adopted by those who were anticipating the moment, surely not far off, when Tudor power would be extinguished and Elizabeth's crown would pass to her successor.

Keywords

CatholicspuritansprisonssuccessionconformityElizabeth IJames VI and IArchpriest controversy
Type
Articles
Information
Journal of British Studies , Volume 52 , Issue 2 , April 2013 , pp. 290 - 316
Copyright
Copyright © The North American Conference on British Studies 2013 

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References

1 For the Elizabethan settlement of religion, see, for example, Jones, N., Faith by Statute: Parliament and the Settlement of Religion, 1559 (London, 1982)Google Scholar. For the paradoxes of the settlement, and the difficulty in saying what conformity to it meant, see Lake, Peter and Questier, Michael, introduction to Conformity and Orthodoxy in the English Church, c. 1560–1660, ed. Lake, Peter and Questier, Michael (Woodbridge, 2000), ix–xxGoogle Scholar.

2 Elton, Geoffrey, The Tudor Constitution: Documents and Commentary (Cambridge, 1972), 366Google Scholar. I am grateful for advice on this point to Jonathan Gray. See also Jonathan Gray, “So Help Me God: Oaths and the English Reformation” (PhD diss., Stanford University, 2008).

3 This was even more the case in Ireland where, despite the coercion used to obtain it, the Reformation settlement of 1560 was, in practice, less ideologically invasive than the English one of 1559. Hayes-McCoy, Gerard, “Conciliation, Coercion, and the Protestant Reformation, 1547–71,” in A New History of Ireland III: Early Modern Ireland, 1534–1691, ed. Moody, Theodore, Martin, Francis, and Byrne, Francis, 9 vols. (Oxford, 1976), 3:83Google Scholar; Jefferies, Henry, “The Irish Parliament of 1560: The Anglican Reforms Authorised,” Irish Historical Studies 26 (1988): 128–41CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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9 For forced attendance at sermons, see, for example, Sir Edmund Trafford and Robert Worsley to the Privy Council, 28 February 1582, SP 12/152/38, The National Archives (TNA); Sir Edmund Trafford and Robert Worsley to the Privy Council, 13 April 1582, SP 12/153/6, TNA; paper of advice concerning prisoners in Wisbech Castle, 1 February 1584, SP 12/168/1, TNA; Foley, Henry, ed., Records of the English Province of the Society of Jesus, 7 vols. (London, 1875–83), 3:240–41Google Scholar; for the appointment of preachers (including the young Lancelot Andrewes) for the Catholic prisoners in Wisbech Castle, see Collinson, Patrick, The Elizabethan Puritan Movement (Oxford, 1967), 325Google Scholar. For Catholic conformist theory and practice, see Walsham, Alexandra, Church Papists: Catholicism, Conformity and Confessional Polemic in Early Modern England (London, 1993), chaps. 2, 3, 4Google Scholar; Crosignani, Ginevra, McCoog, Thomas, and Questier, Michael, ed., Recusancy and Conformity in Early Modern England: Manuscript and Printed Sources in Translation (Toronto, 2010)Google Scholar; Lake, Peter and Questier, Michael, The Trials of Margaret Clitherow: Persecution, Martyrdom and the Politics of Sanctity in Elizabethan England (London, 2011), chaps. 7, 8Google Scholar.

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11 As David Cressy so rightly argues, “the margins illuminate the centre” and “the cultural history” and, indeed, other sorts of history of this period remain “incomplete without hearing from people on the edge.” Cressy, Travesties and Transgressions in Tudor and Stuart England (Oxford, 2000), 7Google Scholar.

12 William Richmond, “A Trewe Storie of the Catholicke Prisoners in Yorke Castle, theire Behavioure and Defence of the Catholicke Religion when they were hailed by force to the Protestants Sermons, Anno Domini 1600. With a Confutation of Cooke the Ministers Sermon by C.J. Priest” (hereafter cited as TS), Stonyhurst MS Anglia A II, Archivum Britannicum Societatis Jesu (hereafter cited as ABSJ). For another copy of this document, see British Library (BL), Add. MS 34,250; Stonyhurst MS Anglia VI, no. 98, ABSJ, lists one copy (presumably Stonyhurst MS Anglia A II, ABSJ) among the manuscripts of the rector of the Jesuit college at Liège in 1637. See also the Maxwell-Constable collection, Hull University Library, for John Knaresborough's manuscripts (DDEV/67/1-4), which reproduce some of Richmond's text. This in turn was printed by Challoner, Richard in his Memoirs of Missionary Priests, 2 vols. (Philadelphia, 1839), 1:251–61Google Scholar; see also Holmes, Peter, Resistance and Compromise: The Political Thought of the Elizabethan Catholics (Cambridge, 1982), 183–84Google Scholar; Morris, John, ed., The Troubles of our Catholic Forefathers, 3 vols. (London, 1872–77), 1:241–42Google Scholar; (Grace Babthorpe's account of the sermons, for which see Archives of the Archdiocese of Westminster (AAW) A VI (no. 100): 367–68); III:461–62; Aveling, John, Catholic Recusancy in the City of York (London, 1970), 159–60Google Scholar.

13 York Castle was a dilapidated former fortress. As Aveling describes it, “[W]ithin the walls [there] was a complex of patched-up medieval buildings forming the gaol, gaolers' houses and Moot Hall. The prisoners were housed in a higgledy-piggledy fashion through a maze of rooms and lean-to erections.” Aveling, Catholic Recusancy, 63–64; for a more detailed description of the prison accommodation in the castle, see also Longley, Katharine, Saint Margaret Clitherow (Wheathampstead, 1986), 60–61Google Scholar.

14 Anstruther, Godfrey, The Seminary Priests, 4 vols. (Ware and Great Wakering, 1968–77), 1:289Google Scholar; TS, f. 2r. The author listed the prisoners who subscribed the truth of his labors. Among them were Katherine Radcliffe of Ugthorpe and also Anne Tesh (the friend of the martyr Margaret Clitherow), Eleanor Hunt (who had been jailed for harboring the priest Christopher Wharton), and Bridget Maskew. TS, ff. 4v–5v; Anstruther, Seminary Priests, 1:377. Tesh and Maskew stood “condemned of highe treason . . . for perswadinge a minister to be a Catholicke” (ibid., f. 4v); for the circumstances of Tesh's and Maskew's conviction, see Petti, Anthony, ed., The Letters and Despatches of Richard Verstegan (c. 1550–1640) (London, 1959), 250Google Scholar; AAW, A VI (no. 100): 368. The majority of these Catholic separatists were of relatively low social status. The gentry who stand out are William Middleton of Stockeld and William Stillington of Kelfield.

15 Richmond narrates that “in a search,” the authorities “tooke two coppies of this Storie, fare written over, whereof one was given to Mr Robert Cooke, whome it most conserned.” TS, f. 3r–v.

16 Renold, Penelope, The Wisbech Stirs (1595–1598) (London, 1958)Google Scholar.

17 For the prison culture of the period, as it touched on Catholics and the political issues generated by Catholicism, see Lake, Peter with Questier, Michael, The Antichrist's Lewd Hat: Protestants, Papists and Players in Post-Reformation England (London, 2002), chaps. 6, 8Google Scholar; Lake, Peter and Questier, Michael, “Prisons, Priests and People in Early Modern England,” in England's Long Reformation, ed. Tyacke, Nicholas (London, 1997), 195–233Google Scholar.

18 TS, f. 2r. For the reception in this period of sermons as they were preached, see Hunt, Arnold, The Art of Hearing: English Preachers and their Audiences, 1590–1640 (Cambridge, 2010)Google Scholar.

19 See Peter Lake and Michael Questier, “Taking It to the Street? The Archpriest Controversy and the Issue of the Succession” (forthcoming); Pritchard, Arnold, Catholic Loyalism in Elizabethan England (London, 1979), esp. chaps. 7–11Google Scholar; Bossy, John, The English Catholic Community, 1570–1850 (London, 1975), 42–48Google Scholar.

20 See, for example, Questier, Michael, “The Politics of Religious Conformity and the Accession of James I,” Historical Research 71, no. 174 (1998): 19–23CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

21 Ibid., 21; Reid, Rachel, The King's Council in the North (London, 1975), 230Google Scholar; for Hutton's unwilling acceptance in December 1594 of the headship of the council, see Giuseppi, M. S. et al. , ed., Calendar of the Manuscripts of the Most Honourable the Marquess of Salisbury, 24 vols. (Historical Manuscripts Commission, 1888–1976, hereafter cited as HMCS), 5:35–36Google Scholar.

22 Raine, James, ed., The Correspondence of Dr. Matthew Hutton (Durham, 1843), 145–46Google Scholar; HMCS, 9:317; see also Aveling, John, Northern Catholics: The Catholic Recusants of the North Riding of Yorkshire, 1558–1790 (London, 1966), 114Google Scholar. For Hutton's moderate approach in demanding conformity from prominent Catholic separatists, see, for example, HMCS, 5:176, 283, 339, 430–32; 9:31; Raine, Correspondence, 101, 303; Lake, Peter, “Matthew Hutton—A Puritan Bishop?” History 64 (1979): 188CrossRefGoogle Scholar. A letter from Archbishop John Whitgift on 27 August 1599 said, sadly, that Hutton was believed in London to have been “too milde” with recusants and that even “some of your ministers doe also affirme the same to be trewe.” Raine, Correspondence, 147. For an undated petition from the council in the North, before Burghley's appointment, which lamented a falling off in the execution of the law against Catholic separatists, see HMCS, 14:312; see also the issuing on 24 November 1599 of a commission (“commissio specialis de schismate supprimendo”) to a long list of northerners, starting with Hutton, to deal with offences against the act of uniformity and other statutes. Rymer, Thomas, ed., Foedera, Conventiones, Literae . . . Editio Tertia . . . Tomi Septimi Pars I et II (The Hague, 1742), I: 224–31Google Scholar (for which reference I am very grateful to Claire Cross).

23 The instructions issued to Burghley from the queen on 3 August 1599 directed that, as the new lord president, he “must reform and correct that abundant falling away from religion.” Robert Lemon and Mary Green, ed., Calendar of State Papers, Domestic Series, 12 vols. ([for 1547–1625], 1856–72), 1598–1601 (hereafter cited as CSPD), 276; see also Reid, King's Council, 230, 232. His note of 1 September to his brother Sir Robert Cecil mentioned the problem of Catholic separatism. On 12 September he declared that “I hope soon to bring most to go to church but, for their continuance, must refer to the archbishop and preachers.” HMCS, 9:343–44; CSPD, 1598–1601, 322. Burghley refers here to his campaign to indict large numbers of recusants (Reid, King's Council, 232) and, perhaps, also to the sermon series which would commence in December 1599. The four Catholics (Fenton, Danby, Jackson, and Gelstrop) noted in the queen's instructions as stubborn but recently let out on license by the high commission were back in the castle jail by the time the sermons began. CSPD, 1598–1601, 276; TS, ff. 4v–5r. For existing tensions between Hutton and Sir Robert Cecil, see William Richardson, “The Religious Policy of the Cecils, 1588–1598” (DPhil diss., Oxford University, 1993), 206, 232–34, 237–38, 270.

24 Hutton's anxiety about using compulsion in the service of the Gospel was perhaps surprising because he had been a stalwart friend of the former lord president Huntingdon (“so precious a jewel” and “so true a professor” of the Gospel, and “so worthy a governor,” as Hutton described him after his death) and had been a supporter also of Archbishop Edmund Grindal. Lake, “Matthew Hutton,” 183, 185, 188, 189, 190, 191; Cross, Claire, “Hutton, Matthew,” in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, ed. Matthew, Henry and Harrison, Brian (Oxford, 2004)Google Scholar (hereafter cited as ODNB).

25 W. F. Wentworth-Shields, “William Goodwin,” ODNB. According to Lord North, William Goodwin had preached on 25 November 1596 “before the buisshop and others at the goale [sic] deliverie . . . that sithence the death of the late earle of Huntingdon and Archbuisshop [John] Peerce, papistes have increased, manie indifferent Protestantes being added to them, and some then justiciaries are nowe growen key could [i.e., cold].” Lansdowne MS 84, no. 104, f. 236r, BL. Hutton was similarly criticized in 1604 by Lord Sheffield, Burghley's successor as lord president. HMCS, 16:45. Hutton did not, of course, believe that Catholics deserved toleration (and this was clear enough from his unease over the license to return to the North procured by the earl of Essex for the former Jesuit Thomas Wright, though Hutton was, of course, one of Essex's supporters). Claire Cross, “Matthew Hutton,” ODNB; Lake, “Matthew Hutton,” 192; HMCS, 11:208–9; Stroud, “Father Thomas Wright,” 197–98.

26 HMCS, 11:208.

27 For John Favour's Puritan tendencies, see William Sheils, “John Favour,” ODNB; HMCS, 6:73.

28 In 1605, clergymen who had refused to subscribe to the 1604 canons were referred to Palmer in order to see if he could satisfy their consciences, presumably because his evangelical leanings would make him acceptable in this respect to Puritan nonconformists. Claire Cross, “William Palmer,” ODNB. He was also named in September 1601 by Lord Burghley as one of his chaplains. HMCS, 11:400.

29 Lake and Questier, Trials, chaps. 2, 7, 8; TS, f. 6r; Alexandra Walsham, “‘Yielding to the Extremity of the Time’: Conformity, Orthodoxy and the Post-Reformation Catholic Community,” in Lake and Questier, Conformity and Orthodoxy in the English Church, c. 1560–1660, 211–36; “Copie of an information given to Henry, earle of Darbie … by … Bell, a fallen seminarie priest living then in Lancashire,” 1662, AAW A IV (no. 38).

30 Foley, Records, 3:767–68; Lake and Questier, Trials, chap. 7. One of the female prisoners was Anne Hardesty, apparently the sister of the renegade priest William Hardesty, who was a friend of Bell and had decided to recant at about the same time. William Hardesty came to York Castle on 23 December 1593, shortly after he had renounced his Catholicism, in order to harangue the prisoners there about their errors, though he was happy to see those who refused to listen to him be allowed to absent themselves, and only then did he “read his sermon.” Foley, Records, 3:762, 767–68.

31 On 24 April 1600 Stillington complained to Dr. Bennett that “att the sermons” Catholics “were esteamed as communicantes and partakers with the preachers of an other religion.” TS, f. 30r.

32 Grindal had appointed Bunny to the subdeanship of the minster in 1570. Aveling, Catholic Recusancy, 39.

33 Persons's First Booke of the Christian Exercise was in effect a companion volume to his Brief Discours of 1580, which had urged Catholics to go into separation; Bunny's work (particularly when it appeared with an appended Treatise tending to Pacification) was a reply to both. See Persons, Robert, The First Booke of the Christian Exercise, appertaining to Resolution (Rouen, 1582)Google Scholar; Bunny, Edmund, A Booke of Christian Exercise, appertayning to Resolution . . . and accompanied now with a Treatise tending to Pacification (London, 1584)Google Scholar; Gregory, Brad, “The ‘True and Zealouse Seruice of God’: Robert Parsons, Edmund Bunny, and The First Booke of the Christian Exercise,” Journal of Ecclesiastical History 45, no. 2 (1994): 238–68CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Lake and Questier, Trials, chap. 4.

34 TS, ff. 2v–3r.

35 Ibid., f. 8r.

36 Ibid., f. 3r.

37 Ibid., f. 8r.

38 Ibid. There was something of an irony in the recusants' response here. It had been axiomatic among those Catholics who tried to justify or excuse a measure of limited or occasional conformity that a Catholic who attended church could make a verbal protestation that he went there only out of temporal obedience to the queen's authority and not for any liking that he had of the service used there. This was precisely the case that the priest Thomas Bell had made (i.e., while he remained a Catholic) and that had been condemned by Bell's opponents (notably John Mush and Henry Garnet). Lake and Questier, Trials, esp. chaps. 7 and 8. Yet, now, the imprisoned Catholics were trying to prevent their forced attendance being construed as compliance precisely through the deployment of a protestation. In fact, the author of the “Trewe Storie” notes that immediately “one of the counsel asked” Stillington “if he would there make a protestacion, and whether he spake for himselfe or for all his companye.” TS, f. 8r–v.

39 Ibid., ff. 8v–9r.

40 Ibid., ff. 9r, 9v, 10r–11r.

41 Ibid., f. 11r–v; see Alban, K. J., “George Rayner—An Elizabethan Carmelite,” Carmelus 46 (1999)Google Scholar.

42 TS, ff. 11v–12r.

43 Ibid., f. 12r.

44 Ibid., f. 12r–v. Wright was moved to Wisbech Castle in February 1600. Stroud, “Father Thomas Wright,” 202.

45 Stroud, “Father Thomas Wright,” 196, 204; Hammer, Paul, The Polarisation of Elizabethan Politics: The Political Career of Robert Devereux, 2nd earl of Essex, 1585–1597 (Cambridge, 1999), 177Google Scholar.

46 In 1597 Thomas Wright had, back in London, attempted to engage in debate with a string of Protestant clergymen, including William Alabaster, who was on the verge of converting to Rome, and in such a manner that some believed that Wright had converted this young clergyman and poet. After this, Wright was sent to the Gatehouse prison and subsequently to Bridewell. In September 1595 Matthew Hutton had complained about Wright's behavior in York and even claimed that he was defending tyrannicide: “God . . . knoweth whether he hathe not a dispensation to bewraie some thinges against the Spanyard that some other way he may doe the pope some better service, either against this state or against religion.” Lansdowne MS 79, no. 44, f. 120r, BL; Hammer, Polarisation, 177; Francis Bremer, “Thomas Wright,” ODNB; see also Birch, Thomas, ed., Memoirs of the Reign of Queen Elizabeth, 2 vols. (London, 1754), 1:307Google Scholar; see also CSPD, 1598–1601, 217; cf. Kenny, Anthony, ed., The Responsa Scholarum of the English College, Rome, 2 vols. (London, 1962–63), 1:3Google Scholar; Stroud, “Father Thomas Wright,” 196–202; HMCS, 7:394, 395, 474; 8:394–95. For Wright's anti-Spanish opinions, see CSPD, 1595–97, 156–57. In ca. April 1600, he published on a clandestine press, perhaps in Northamptonshire, his inflammatory Certaine Articles, or Forcible Reasons, which led to his rearrest (he had recently absconded from Wisbech). Stroud, “Father Thomas Wright,” 202; HMCS, 10:125, 135–36, 256.

47 Strype, John, ed., Annals of the Reformation, 4 vols. (Oxford, 1824), 3:ii, 583–97Google Scholar; Hammer, Polarisation, 177 (suggesting that the piece was written after Wright was recalled to London and that it was given to Essex by January 1596); Pritchard, Catholic Loyalism, 61–67; see also Crosignani, “De Adeundis Ecclesiis Protestantium,” 183–89.

48 TS, f. 12v.

49 Ibid., ff. 13r–14r.

50 Sir Robert Cecil to the archbishop of York and the council in the North, 16 March 1599, SP 15/34/3, TNA; Brett Usher, “John Thornborough,” ODNB. In Ireland, Thornborough had been associated with a hard line against the rebels, arguing in October 1595 against any kind of truce with the earl of Tyrone. John Thornborough to Sir Robert Cecil, 28 October 1595, SP 63/183/106, TNA.

51 TS, f. 17r.

52 Ibid., f. 17v.

53 Ibid., f. 18r–v. Similarly incarcerated was George Sweeting in whose house Bolland had been arrested; see Talbot, Clare, Miscellanea: Recusant Records (London, 1960), 95Google Scholar; a lord treasurer's remembrancer's memoranda roll, Hilary term, 1610, E 368/536, mem. 121, TNA.

54 TS, ff. 18r–v, 19v, 20r. For Thomas Clitherow, see Aveling, Catholic Recusancy, 87, 225–26; Morris, Troubles, 3:353. Thomas Clitherow had been indicted in front of the high commission on 5 December 1599 along with his brother William, that is, just before the sermon series began. Aveling, Catholic Recusancy, 225–26. Thomas refused outright to “go to any church but the Catholick church and being offered some time to confer with Mr [William] Palmer or some other preachers he denied to confer at all” and was “committed to close prison” in the castle. York, Borthwick Institute, High Commission Act Books, 14, f. 305v.

55 TS, f. 21r.

56 Ibid., f. 21v.

57 Ibid., ff. 21v–23r; HMCS, 8:414. Archdeacon Gregory died four days after delivering the nineteenth of these sermons, which the author of the “Trewe Storie” considered a providential occurrence. TS, f. 29v.

58 Ibid., f. 23r–v. Subsequently, the preferred day became a Thursday; see, for example, ibid., f. 29v (Goodwin's sermon of 3 April 1600).

59 Foley, Records, 3:6; Anstruther, Seminary Priests, 1:190; Hasler, Peter, ed., The House of Commons, 1558–1603, 3 vols. (London, 1981), 1:640–41Google Scholar. It may be significant that, a few years before, Margaret Constable had been a patron to the priest Thomas Clarke, who had formally recanted in 1593. HMCS, 5:77; Clarke, Thomas, The Recantation of Thomas Clarke (London, 1594)Google Scholar; her current chaplains perhaps had more reason than most to demonstrate that they were determined opponents of the least concession to, or compliance with, the regime's demands for conformity.

60 Two years before, Sir Robert Cecil had, it seems, used Redhead to try to entrap William Richmond's patrons, the Constable family. HMCS, 7:230. Joseph Constable had taken his revenge on Redhead in November 1597 by denouncing his corrupt administration of York Castle jail, soon after Constable had offered his conformity to Archbishop Hutton. HMCS, 7:105, 203, 493.

61 HMCS, 7:492–93, 506, 514–16; see also HMCS, 12: 238–39.

62 TS, ff. 26v–27r. Redhead, who was described by the Privy Council in September 1596 as “one of her Majesty's servauntes in ordynarie,” had been responsible for a virtually identical artifice in the case of Scots prisoners in the castle in March 1599. Here the council was kept informed of the project as it developed (Edward Stanhope described Redhead as “careful, politic and secret in this service”). Dasent, John et al. , ed., Acts of the Privy Council of England (1542–1628), 32 vols. (London, 1890–1907), 140Google Scholar; HMCS, 9:104–7; see also HMCS, 11:379; Bain, Joseph, ed., Calendar of Letters and Papers relating to the Affairs of the Borders of England and Scotland, 2 vols. (London, 1894–96), 2:500, 541, 542, 562, 582, 591, 593–99Google Scholar. For Alice Wright of Plowland, Welwick (who had in 1593 married William Readshaw of Oulston), see Aveling, Northern Catholics, 186. When she was accused of adultery by the high commission in 1599, John Wright and Thomas Percy of Alnwick had stood as sureties for her. Ibid.; York, Borthwick Institute, High Commission Act Books, 14, f. 55v; see also HMCS, 18:51. The Jesuit John Gerard noted that John Wright “became Catholic about the time” of the earl of Essex's rebellion “in which he was.” Morris, John, ed., The Condition of Catholics under James I (London, 1871), 59Google Scholar. On 18 February 1601, after Essex's revolt had failed, the Wright brothers were interrogated about Bolland and whether they had been part of a conspiracy to release him from York Castle. CSPD, 1598–1601, 576. As is well known, the Wright brothers were subsequently among those detected for the Gunpowder Conspiracy of 1605.

63 TS, f. 27r–v.

64 Ibid., ff. 27v–28r; Aveling, Catholic Recusancy, 64–65.

65 TS, f. 28r. In 1591 the earl of Huntingdon had sent Bunny to evangelize the recusant wife and children of the Lancashire JP Sir Richard Sherborne. Sherborne's wife and daughters “did stoppe their eares with woll leaste they should heare.” SP 12/240/140, f. 226r, TNA.

66 TS, f. 28v.

67 Ibid., f. 28r.

68 Ibid., f. 29r. See also interrogatories for the examination of Sir William Constable, John Wright, Christopher Wright, and William Alabaster, 18 February 1601, SP 12/278/82, TNA. For Bolland's conformity and pardon see C 66/1552, mem. 190, TNA; CSPD, 1598–1601, 542. The Privy Council ordered that he should be rewarded with a “spirytuall living” in part so as to serve as a “meanes to bring others to lyke conformity.” Acts of the Privy Council of England (1542–1628), 1599–1600, 601.

69 Cecil Papers (CP), 68/66 Hatfield House (HMCS, 10:48).

70 At trial, Wharton claimed that he had been ordained before 1559 (he was indeed a considerable age) and was therefore not subject to the penalties of the 1585 statute that applied to those clergy ordained abroad since Elizabeth's accession. He was in fact ordained at Reims in March 1584. He was condemned “upon the onlie testimonie of M. [John] Savil . . . affirming that he knew him in Oxford.” Challoner, Richard, Memoirs of Missionary Priests, ed. Pollen, J. H. (London, 1924), 237–38Google Scholar; Worthington, Thomas, A Relation of Sixtene Martyrs (Douai, 1601)Google Scholar, sig. C8r; Anstruther, Seminary Priests, I:377. For Savile, see Hasler, House of Commons, 3:350–51.

71 TS, ff. 29v–30r; for the activity of the rebels in Limerick, see, for example, HMCS, 9:418. At this sermon, Lord Burghley's relative by marriage, Sir Thomas Posthumous Hoby, who was involved with Thornborough in the late Elizabethan and early Jacobean period in attempting to tighten up the financial penalties against recusants, was present. HMCS, 9:390. See also Questier, Michael, “Sir Henry Spiller, Recusancy and the Efficiency of the Jacobean Exchequer,” Historical Research 66, no. 161 (1993): 260, 264–65CrossRefGoogle Scholar. It is possible that the famous confrontation at Hoby's house at Hackness on 26 August 1600, during which the household's Protestant prayers were mocked by Sir William Eure and other visitors, was, in part, the result of Hoby's presence at the sermons, as well as the visitors' grievances against him; they also poured scorn on Thomas Bell, who, on 3 July, had preached at the castle (see below); Simon Healy, “Religion and Ridicule: The Politics of the Hackness Incident” (forthcoming); HMCS, 11:546, 14:189; Bain, Calendar of Letters and Papers relating to the Affairs of the Borders of England and Scotland, 2:699. Mr. Higgins may be the George Higgins who had been deputed (along with Archbishop Edwin Sandys's son, Miles) to dispute with and, if possible, persuade the Jesuit Henry Walpole in York, before his trial in 1595, into concessions on political and theological matters. Jessopp, Augustus, One Generation of a Norfolk House (London, 1879), 280, 285Google Scholar. Alternatively, he may be the preacher Anthony Higgins named in the commission of 24 November 1599 addressed to Archbishop Hutton and others; see note 22 above; Rymer, Foedera, I:225.

72 TS, ff. 32v–34r. Richmond “had nowe gotten the answere of Mr Cookes sermon written forth and readie” (which had been penned by the priest Cuthbert Johnson) and, “hearinge that he came to preach that daie, they tooke it to the hall with them, hopinge to have gott it redd openlie in the hall,” though Thornborough would not permit it. Ibid., f. 31r. For Johnson, see also Questier, Michael, ed., Newsletters from the Archpresbyterate of George Birkhead (London, 1998), 35, 66–67, 77, 79, 82, 85, 87Google Scholar; for the oath of allegiance formulated by Cuthbert Johnson, see AAW B 24. Ralph Thoresby's manuscripts collection once contained a paper titled “A learned disputation between Robert Cooke B.D. and Cuthbert Johnson, alias William Darell, before his Majesty's council and other learned men at York, an. 1610,” that is, after Johnson was arrested in 1609 at the house of Richard Cholmeley. Stephen Wright, “Robert Cooke,” ODNB. This is presumably the same text as BL, Add. MS 12,515, no. 5 (“The summe of that which past in conference between a priest called Cuthbert Johnson . . . & Mr Robert Cooke . . .” [9 July 1610]), for which, see Anstruther, Seminary Priests, 1:190; Questier, Newsletters, 66–67.

73 TS, f. 34r.

74 Verstegan, Richard, Theatrum Crudelitatum Haereticorum Nostri Temporis (Antwerp, 1587)Google Scholar, sig. Kr; Dillon, Anne, The Construction of Martyrdom in the English Catholic Community, 1535–1603 (London, 2002), 268–69Google Scholar. Clitherow's chaplain and biographer, John Mush was, apparently, at this point in York. Aveling, Catholic Recusancy, 76. In 1601, during the Archpriest Controversy, several of the prisoners in the castle (including Anne Tesh and Bridget Maskew) witnessed an affidavit in Mush's favor. Fairhurst MS 2006, f. 276r, Lambeth Palace Library (LPL).

75 TS, ff. 4v–5r.

76 Ibid., f. 34r.

77 Ibid. The author of the “Trewe Storie” set down Cooke's sermon in outline, with Johnson's answer, which the council asked to see. The prisoners also procured an answer to Cooke (i.e., to the first and sixth points in his sermon) from the Jesuit William Weston at Wisbech, the archenemy of Bagshaw and the leading appellant clergy there. Perhaps there was not complete unanimity among the Catholics in York Castle over which clergy they should appeal to for guidance in such matters. Ibid., ff. 34v, 35r–49v.

78 Ibid., f. 54r. At this point in Richmond's narrative, after the sermon on 15 May by Christopher Lindall, vicar of Hampsthwaite, a letter from Stillington was incorporated that described how “William Clitheroe, an universitie man and a Catholike,” had offered to dispute with Robert Cooke but was forbidden. Ibid., ff. 55v–56r.

79 Ibid., ff. 59v–60v; for Burghley's departure, see HMCS, 10:48.

80 TS, f. 63v.

81 Ibid.

82 TS, ff. 63v–66r: Brett Usher, “Culverwell family,” ODNB. Morton may well have been Thomas Morton, the future bishop, who at this time was chaplain to Lord Eure. In 1603, in very different circumstances from the 1599–1600 sermon series, Morton was asked by Lord Sheffield to “conferr and dispute, in points of religion, with one Mr Young, a popish priest (then prisoner in York Castle) and one Mr [William] Stillington, a gentleman of that persuasion.” The “conference” was staged in the King's Manor in front of Sheffield, “the learned counsell,” and “many of the knights and gentry in the county”; the “main point which was controverted . . . was the popes infallibility of judging.” Baddeley, Richard and Naylor, J., The Life of Dr. Thomas Morton . . . (London, 1669), 18–19Google Scholar.

83 Ibid., f. 66r.

84 Ibid., f. 67r–v.

85 Ibid., f. 69v.

86 Reid, King's Council, 230; Stafford, Helen, James VI of Scotland and the Crown of England (London, 1940), 26, 73Google Scholar; for Essex and James, see Hammer, Polarisation, 91–92, 167f.; see also Newton, Diana, The Making of the Jacobean Regime: James VI and I and the Government of England, 1603–1605 (Woodbridge, 2005), 12Google Scholar.

87 Collinson, Elizabethan Puritan Movement, 444–46; Richardson, “Religious Policy,” 196–97; HMCS, 11:211–12; for the Puritan John Burgess's letter of appeal and advice to Essex written on 16 June 1600, see HMCS, 10:185.

88 Loomie, Albert, “A Catholic Petition to the Earl of Essex,” Recusant History 7 (1963–64): 33–42CrossRefGoogle Scholar. William Richardson argues that Essex had, as early as 1593, endorsed tolerance (in principle) towards Catholics, and points out that Essex was believed to have intervened, while the 1593 Parliament was sitting, in favor of the self-professed Catholic loyalist Sir Thomas Tresham (whose son was a client of Essex). Richardson, “Religious Policy,” 185, 188; CSPD, 1591–94, 342; Hammer, Polarisation, 175.

89 R. Doleman (pseud.) [attrib. in whole or part to Robert Persons], A Conference about the Next Succession to the Crowne of Ingland (Antwerp, 1594); Lake, Peter, “The King (the Queen) and the Jesuit: James Stuart's True Lawe of Free Monarchies in Context/s,” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 14 (2004): 243–60Google Scholar. On 28 February/10 March 1597 Henry Constable, who had been with Essex in France in 1591 and converted to Rome at the end of that year, urged Essex to distinguish between “Catholics which mearly seek the peacable” enjoyment of their “consciences and such as practise or desire the subvertion of this present state”; this would “give us occasion to disclaime mor justly in the opinion of the world against all practises against the state and facilitate the peace of Christendom.” CP 175/3, Hatfield House (HMCS, 7:86). For Constable's previous appeals to Essex in late 1595, see HMCS, 5:403, 487. See also Stafford, James VI, 233–34; Wickes, George, “Henry Constable, Poet and Courtier,” Biographical Studies 2 (1953–54): 272–300Google Scholar; Parmelee, Lisa, Good Newes from Fraunce: French Anti-League Propaganda in Late Elizabethan England (Rochester, NY, 1996), 113–14Google Scholar; Constable, Henry, A Discoverye of a Counterfecte Conference (Cologne [imprint false; printed at Paris], 1600)Google Scholar. For William Jenison's petition to Essex in October 1598 to prevent the proceedings against him by the high commission in Durham, see HMCS, 8:384, 386.

90 Rachel Reid argued that Essex, “seeking to win the Catholics, used his influence over such members of the council in the North as looked to him as their patron to keep the penal laws from being too strictly enforced.” Reid, King's Council, 227, 230. The northern Catholic Francis Dacre had arranged channels of communication between Essex, on the one hand, and English and Scottish Catholics, on the other. Ibid., 225–26. The leading appellant priest William Watson claimed that his own Jesuit enemies “had given oute every where to take hede of me that I was nowe set on by my lord of Essex, and met withe” Francis Dacre “in the Northe in Cumberlande, which my lord of Essex [was] privie unto.” Law, Thomas, ed., The Archpriest Controversy (London, 1896, 1898), 1:218Google Scholar. For Essex's efforts to attract popular political backing in the later 1590s, see Hammer, Paul, “The Smiling Crocodile: The Earl of Essex and Late Elizabethan ‘Popularity,’” in The Politics of the Public Sphere in Early Modern England, ed. Lake, Peter and Pincus, Steven (Manchester, 2007), 95–115Google Scholar.

91 HMCS, 11:39–40, 44; ibid.,14:171; cf. Aveling, Northern Catholics, 121.

92 Simon Adams, “The Protestant Cause: Religious Alliance with the West European Calvinist Communities as a Political Issue in England, 1585–1630” (DPhil diss., Oxford University, 1973), 139–40, 146.

93 Ibid., 140–43, 144–45; CSPD, 1592–1603, 259, 260, 309–13.

94 Ibid., 326.

95 Peter Lake, Bad Queen Bess? Secret Histories and Libellous Politics in an Age of Confessional Division (forthcoming); see also Richardson, “Religious Policy,” 190–91.

96 CSPI, 1596–97 (London, 1893), 51Google Scholar.

97 Owen, Geraint, ed., The Manuscripts of the Marquis of Bath Preserved at Longleat: Volume V: Talbot, Dudley and Devereux Papers, 1533–1659 (Historical Manuscripts Commission, London, 1980), 271Google Scholar. About a week later, Thomas Wright, recently retaken after absconding from Wisbech, was interrogated about his dealings with Essex. Stroud, “Father Thomas Wright,” 203.

98 See, for example, CSPD, 1598–1601, 566.

99 Thomas Cecil, Lord Burghley to Sir Robert Cecil, 29 June 1602, SP 12/284/52, f. 133r, TNA. See also, for example, the memorandum of 4 March 1601 from John Bird to Sir Robert Cecil about Essex's Catholic contacts, in particular in Herefordshire. HMCS, 11:106–8. In July 1601, however, it was noted by Lord Burghley that Catholics in Yorkshire, as well they might at this stage, were disclaiming any connection with Essex's rebellion and were citing this fact as a reason for allowing them the degree of tolerance which they sought. Aveling, Northern Catholics, 121. It was Burghley who on 8 February 1601 in London publicly proclaimed Essex as a traitor. Reid, King's Council, 234.

100 Back in October 1598 it had been claimed by Thomas Bluet at Wisbech Castle that some of the clergy there allowed “of all such enterprises as the right honourable the earle of Essex hath undertaken in his employments for the warres against the Spaniards.” AAW, A VI (no. 89): 331; Robert Persons, A Briefe Apologie, or Defence of the Catholike Ecclesiasticall Hierarchie (n.p. [Antwerp], n.d. [1601]), f. 152v; Anstruther, Seminary Priests, 1:15.

101 CSPI, 1599–1600, 241, 246, 252, 253, 256, 258. I am grateful to an anonymous reader at the Journal of British Studies for this point.

102 Baddeley's and Naylor's biography of Thomas Morton says, however, that Morton's “conference” with Young and Stillington in 1603 [see note 82] “was never hitherto published, but is in their hands who may let it see the light.” Baddeley and Naylor, Life, 19. Equally, a record was kept of the dispute between Robert Cooke and Cuthbert Johnson in 1610; see note 72.

103 CP 93/137, Hatfield House (HMCS, 11:194); SP 12/284/52, TNA; Anstruther, Seminary Priests, 1:363–64. Calverley, who in Wisbech Castle made damaging allegations against William Weston and “his Jezveticall faction,” had on 8 February 1602 petitioned Bancroft for maintenance. Petyt MS 538, vol. 38, no. 150, f. 399r, Inner Temple Library; Fairhurst MS 2014, f. 127r, LPL. For the perception of the recent hard line in the North against Catholics, see, for example, HMCS, 10:185. For the close working relationship between Sir Robert Cecil and Bancroft (Cecil had worked with Archbishop Whitgift in order to secure Bancroft's appointment as bishop of London), see Richardson, “Religious Policy,” 267. For Richardson's account of Sir Robert's moving away from the first Lord Burghley's policy over separatist Catholicism, see ibid., 288, 290.

104 CP 94/45, Hatfield House (HMCS, 12:232); see also HMCS, 12:243.

105 MS 2006, ff. 177r–78r, LPL; HMCS, 15:232, 348–49; Loomie, Albert, Toleration and Diplomacy: The Religious Issue in Anglo-Spanish Relations, 1603–1605 (Philadelphia, 1963), 14Google Scholar; HMCS, 10:30.

106 CP 118/36, Hatfield House (HMCS, 15:278).

107 Bishop Tobias Matthew to Sir Robert Cecil, 24 November 1603, TNA, SP 14/4/92, f. 204r. Matthew was politically close to Sir Robert Cecil. Richardson, “Religious Policy,” 241. For the “vewe taken within the bishopricke of Duresme and countie of Northumberlande,” dated 31 August 1603, by Matthew, citing 526 recusants of whom allegedly only fifty were “of any accompt,” but of whom 196 had “very lately and specially since the decease of Quene Elizabeth . . . been seduced or after their conformitie revolted to papistrie,” see TNA, SP 14/3/42, f. 80r; TNA; for the certificate listing 126 Durham recusants that Matthew had compiled back in May 1597, see TNA, SP 12/263/81, ff. 117r 18r.

108 14/4/92, ff. 204r, 205r, TNA: SP; Larkin, James and Hughes, Paul, Stuart Royal Proclamations: Royal Proclamations of King James I, 1603–1625 (Oxford, 1973)Google Scholar, no. 30. For Matthew's enclosure of a copy of the first petition that he mentioned, see SP 14/4/92. i, f. 206r, TNA.