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Elizabethan Catholicism: a Reconsideration

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 March 2011

Patrick McGrath
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Extract

It is more than twenty-one years since Professor John Bossy wrote his stimulating and controversial article on ‘The character of Elizabethan Catholicism’. His article made familiar to a wide range of students the concepts of ‘seigneurial Catholicism’ and ‘survivalism’. It concluded, tendentiously, that ‘the history of Elizabethan Catholicism is a progress from inertia to inertia in three generations’. Professor Bossy subsequently developed his ideas about the new kind of Counter-Reformation Catholicism which was affecting other countries outside England, and then in 1975 he produced a major work on The English Catholic Community 1570–1850. In this he advanced the view that the English Catholic Community really began in the 1570s. What happened between the 1530s and the 1570s was merely ‘the posthumous history, if you will, of “medieval” or “pre-Reformation” Christendom in England’. He agreed that the English Catholic community launched about 1570 had some continuity with the past, but he argued that it was ‘in most respects a new creation’. Before then, there existed a hangover from the past labelled ‘the Old Religion’, but this was ‘less concerned with doctrinal affirmation or dramas of conscience than with a set of ingrained observances which denned and gave meaning to the cycle of the week and the seasons of the year’. This, according to Professor Bossy, had been aptly termed survivalism. He argued that: ‘As a complex of social practices rather than a religion of internal conviction, it offered no barrier to the degree of attendance at the parish church required to preserve the integrity of the household.’

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Articles
Information
The Journal of Ecclesiastical History , Volume 35 , Issue 3 , July 1984 , pp. 414 - 428
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1984

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References

1 Bossy, J., ‘The character of Elizabethan Catholicism’, Past and Present, xxi (1962)Google Scholar, reprinted in Crisis in Europe 1560–1660, ed. Aston, Trevor, London 1965, 223–46Google Scholar. The references given here are to the reprint.

2 Bossy, ‘Elizabethan Catholicism’, 223ff.

3 Ibid., 246.

4 Bossy, J., ‘The Counter Reformation and the people of Catholic Europe’, Past and Present, xlvii (1970)Google Scholar; idem, ‘The Counter Reformation and the people of Catholic Ireland 1596–1641’, Historical Studies, viii (1971)Google Scholar.

5 Bossy, J., The English Catholic Community 1570–1850, London 1975, 5Google Scholar: ‘what one may call the old Catholic community in England was launched on its career about 1570’.

6 Ibid., 4. He points out that his starting point of roughly 1570 ‘represented a departure from the view taken by Mathew, and generally implied in existing treatments of the subject, that the proper place to begin a history of the English Catholic community was the reign of Henry vm’.

7 Ibid., 11.

8 Bossy, ‘Elizabethan Catholicism’, 225.

9 Ibid., 223.

10 Ibid., 223. Bossy refers to Dickens, A. G., ‘The first stages of Romanist recusancy in Yorkshire’, Yorkshire Archaeological Journal, xxxv (1943)Google Scholar. Dickens and Bossy seem to use the word ‘survivalism’ in somewhat different senses. Dickens is concerned primarily with the survival of Catholic practices inside the established Church.

11 Bossy, ‘Elizabethan Catholicism’, 226.

12 The English Catholic Community, 17. Bossy quotes Robert Parsons: ‘The things a man hath to believe are muche fewer than the things he hath to do.’

13 Bossy, ‘Elizabethan Catholicism’, 231.

14 Ibid., 238.

15 Aveling, J. C., The Handle and the Axe, London 1976, 19Google Scholar.

16 Pritchard, A., Catholic Loyalism in Elizabethan England, London 1979, 205Google Scholar.

17 He is arguing that the clerks brought a new kind of Catholicism.

18 Dickens, ‘Romanist recusancy in Yorkshire’, 157–8.

19 Ibid., 161 ff.

20 Ibid., 164.

21 Ibid., 169–70.

22 Ibid., 179.

23 Ibid., 180.

24 Ibid., 181.

25 Bossy, ‘Elizabethan Catholicism’, 223–5.

28 See particularly Dickens, ‘Romanist Recusancy in Yorkshire’, 157–8.

27 See Holmes, P., Resistance and Compromise: the political thought of the Elizabethan Catholics, Cambridge 1982Google Scholar, for an examination of Catholic religious resistance before and after the coming of the seminary priests. In his discussion of recusancy he shows (pp. 81–108) that a number of Catholic leaders opposed attendance at Protestant churches some time before any seminary priest landed in England and that even after 1580 some Catholic writers, including seminary priests, allowed a measure of conformity.

28 Holmes, P. J., Elizabethan Casuistry (Catholic Record Society, Records Section 67, 1981), 2–4, 20–1, 74–7, 94–6, 120–1, 163–4Google Scholar. See also, Holmes, Resistance and Compromise, 100–8.

29 I do not think this is stressed sufficiently by Dr Haigh.

30 Haigh, C., Reformation and Resistance in Tudor Lancashire, Cambridge 1975Google Scholar.

31 Haigh, C., ‘The continuity of Catholicism in the English Reformation’, Past and Present, xciii (1981)Google Scholar.

32 Haigh, C., ‘From monopoly to minority: Catholicism in early modern England’, Trans. Royal Historical Society, 5th ser., xxxi (1981)Google Scholar.

33 Haigh, ‘The continuity of Catholicism’, 69.

34 See, for example, Dr Haigh's own works; Aveling, J. C. H., Northern Catholics, London 1966Google Scholar; idem, ‘The Catholic recusants of the West Riding of Yorkshire, 1558–1790’, Proc. Leeds Philosophical and Literary Society, 1963; idem, Post Reformation Catholicism in East Yorkshire 1558–1790, East Yorkshire Local History Society, Ser. II, York 1960Google Scholar; Catholic Recusancy in the City of York 1538–1791, Catholic Record Society, London 1970Google Scholar; Forster, A., ‘Bishop Tunstall's priests’, Recusant History, ix (1968)Google Scholar; McCann, T. J., ‘The clergy and the Elizabethan settlement in the diocese of Chichester’, in Studies in Sussex Church History, ed. Kitch, M. J., University of Sussex 1981Google Scholar; Field, C. W., The Province of Canterbury and the Elizabethan Settlement of Religion, privately printed 1972Google Scholar. MrsRowe, J. and I contributed a paper on ‘The Marian Priests’ to the Post-Reformation Catholic History Conference in 1983, and this will be published in 1984Google Scholar.

35 Jones, J. L., Faith by Statute: parliament and the settlement of religion 1559, London 1982Google Scholar, has some interesting comments on the resistance of Catholic bishops, peers and MPs to the settlement.

36 Haigh, ‘The continuity of Catholicism’, 40ff; idem, ‘From monopoly to minority’, 131ff.

37 Haigh, ‘From monopoly to minority’, 131.

38 Haigh, ‘The continuity of Catholicism’, 40.

39 Ibid., 37. Dr Haigh argues that ‘The conservative parish clergy thus fulfilled an essential bridging role between the Marian church and separated Elizabethan Catholicism. Some historians have regarded the contribution of “survivalism” to post-Reformation Catholicism as negligible, but such a view seems not to take account of the chronology and geography of conservatism and recusancy.’

40 Haigh,‘From monopoly to minority’, 129–30, 147;‘The continuity of Catholicism’, 38–9.

41 Haigh, ‘From monopoly to minority’, 129.

42 Ibid., 129.

43 This is printed in ‘The Memoirs of Father Robert Persons’, ed. Pollen, J. H., Catholic Record Society, II (1906)Google Scholar. The pages especially relevant to the alleged fairy story are 54–7 and 60–2.

44 ‘The Memoirs of Father Robert Persons’, 59–60.

45 Ibid., 61.

46 She was, however, not as young as she had been and was glad of help.

47 A Treatise of Three Conversions of England from Paganisme to Christian Religion, 3 parts, St Omer 1603–4. See Milward, P., Religious Controversies of the Jacobean Age, London 1978, 77–8Google Scholar.

48 Haigh, ‘The continuity of Catholicism’, 38 n. 6.

49 A Treatise of Three Conversions, introductory preface, ‘The Epistle to the Catholiques of England’, n.p. and 264ff. There is a sustained paean of praise for the English Catholics and their reaction to the schism on pp. 234–65.

50 This view fits in with the more general argument that the progress of the Protestant Reformation in England was much slower than many historians believe. See Haigh, Christopher, ‘The recent historiography of the English Reformation’, Historical Journal, xxv (1982)Google Scholar, and Scarisbrick, J., The Reformation and the English People, Oxford 1984Google Scholar.

51 Haigh, ‘The continuity of Catholicism’, 57ff; ‘From monopoly to minority’, 132ff.

52 Haigh, ‘The continuity of Catholicism’, 62.

53 Ibid., 57–8. Further evidence is given in Haigh, ‘From monopoly to minority’, 133ff.

54 Haigh, ‘From monopoly to minority’, 134. Dr Haigh thinks that thereafter the situation deteriorated. There is some danger in treating Catholicism under Elizabeth and Catholicism under the early Stuarts as a whole. Some of the criticisms which Dr Haigh makes apply better to the period after 1603 than they do to the Elizabethan period.

55 Haigh, ‘The continuity of Catholicism’, 62.

56 Haigh, ‘From monopoly to minority’, 139: ‘If, as I have suggested, the mission should be judged by its ability to sustain existing commitment, it was a strategy for disaster, for it dictated a concentration upon the least promising areas and a neglect of the majority of Catholics.’

57 G. Anstruther, The Seminary Priests, i, Ware and Durham n.d., gives the names of some 804 Elizabethan seminary priests. From the information given in the biographies, it appears that only 463 of these were definitely at work in England under Elizabeth I. Some 205 followed careers elsewhere. Another 136 were sent to England, but there is no evidence that they worked in England under Elizabeth.

58 Haigh, ‘From monopoly to minority’, 136ff; ‘The continuity of Catholicism’, 59.

59 Haigh, ‘From monopoly to minority’, 139. If these men were prepared to face the great dangers and discomforts of coming to England as missionary priests, it is not clear why they should not be ready to become peripatetic missionaries to the rural poor, if and when suitable opportunities arose. In many cases, of course, we have very few details about their lives and work in England.

60 Ibid., 145.

61 Ibid., 137.

62 Ibid., 146.

63 Ibid., 142.

64 Caraman, Philip, Henry Garnet, 1555–1606, and the Gunpowder Plot, London 1964, 215Google Scholar.

65 These figures are based on my examination of Godfrey Anstruther, The Seminary Priests, i.

66 23 Elizabeth, cap. 1.

67 27 Elizabeth, cap. 2.

68 Haigh, ‘From monopoly to minority’, 147. It is possible that the practice became more common under the early Stuarts, and quite a lot of Dr Haigh's evidence is post-Elizabethan, but even then one would have thought that most of those who wanted a life of comfort would have sought a career in the Church abroad rather than face the great risks in England.

69 I hope to develop this point elsewhere.

70 Haigh, ‘The continuity of Catholicism’, 55.

71 Ibid., 57.

72 Ibid., 56 and n. 83.

73 Southwell, Robert, An Humble Supplication to Her Majesty, ed. Bald, R. C., Cambridge 1953. 11Google Scholar.

74 Haigh, ‘The continuity of Catholicism’, 56; The First and Second Diaries of the English College, Douay, ed. Knox, T. F., London 1878, 98Google Scholar.

75 Edmund Campion's ‘Letter to the Council’ states that the purpose of the mission is to ‘preach the Gospel, to minister the Sacraments, to instruct the simple, to reforme sinners, to confute errors…to crie alarme spiritual against foul vice and proud ignorance wherewith many my dear Country-men are abused’, and he asked for a public debate because ‘I know perfectly that no one Protestant, nor all the Protestants living, nor any sect of our adversaries…can maintain their doctrine in disputation’, See Southern, A. C., Elizabethan Recusant Prose 1559–1582, London 1950, 153ffGoogle Scholar.

76 Haigh, ‘From monopoly to minority’, 135.

77 Ibid., 135–6.

78 A contemporary recorded that he had often heard Thirkeld say ‘that for eight years he made it the subject of his prayers that he might one day lay down his life for his faith’. As he went on doing this for eight years, it seems clear that he wanted martyrdom only if it was the will of God and that he was not deliberately seeking it: Challoner, Richard, Memoirs of Missionary Priests, London 1924, 79Google Scholar. In two other cases referred to in Dr Haigh's footnotes, the priest and the layman concerned were in prison and were very upset when they were not sent for trial, but this was hardly seeking martyrdom. See Unpublished Documents relating to the English Martyrs, ed. Pollen, J. H., Catholic Record Society, London 1908, v. 100Google Scholar.

79 Haigh, ‘From monopoly to minority’, 136 n. 24; Devlin, C., The Life of Robert Southwell, Priest and Martyr, London 1956, 235Google Scholar.

80 Holmes, Elizabethan Casuistry, 72–4. Hagiographers probably exaggerated the desire for martyrdom, as did some of those who wrote enthusiastically about the splendid young men in the seminaries who were ready to die for their faith. Knowing what you might have to face was not the same thing as deliberately seeking it, and many of those in the seminaries must have known that a considerable number of priests gave way when they were caught.

81 Historical Journal, xxi (1978), 182Google Scholar.