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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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’.

When, in 1905, G. W. E. Russell commented on converts to Catholicism in the period preceding the zenith of the Oxford Movement, he mentioned six names: three of these were the ‘Cambridge Converts’ Ambrose Phillipps [de Lisle], George Spencer and Kenelm Henry Digby. These permutations,’ he said, ‘were regarded as mere eccentricities, and no one dreamed that they were likely to have any effect upon the Church.’ Did they have any effect on Anglicanism via their point of contact, the Oxford Movement? What were their motives in respect of the Tractarians, and how did they relate to each other as a group? These converts—Spencer and Digby in particular have largely been ignored—illustrate the range of Catholic attitudes to Anglicanism, while Digby represents the main body of Catholic opinion, which was suspicious of Anglo-Catholicism.

Several nineteenth-century Catholic bishops have found biographers, not only, as might be expected, the three archbishops of Westminster but also Ullathorne of Birmingham and Grant of South-wark. Yet Robert Cornthwaite, who was bishop in Yorkshire for almost twenty-nine years, laying the foundations for the three modern dioceses of Middlesbrough, Leeds and Hallam; who was Manning’s chief supporter at the Vatican Council and the most Ultramontane of the English bishops; and who was that allegedly rare creature, both an able administrator and a man of great spirituality, has been neglected. It is surely time to remedy matters.