The recusant brothers-in-law William, third Baron Vaux of Harrowden (1535-95) and Sir Thomas Tresham (1543-1605), are best-known as exemplars of stalwart Catholicism and for their claims of fidelity to queen and country. They rose to prominence for their connection to the Jesuit proto-martyr Edmund Campion in 1581, and Vaux’s daughters Anne and Eleanor are celebrated — or notorious — for their support of the Jesuit Henry Garnet and suspected complicity in the Gunpowder Plot. Tresham’s sister Mary married Vaux, and the two men enjoyed a close friendship. Vaux leant heavily on Tresham for counsel, and the families have thus been absorbed into arguments for a closed Catholic community who drew closer together amid persecution. Yet these families were also divided, not by religio-political matters of great weight, but by more earthly causes of family unhappiness: youthful disobedience, scandalous marriage, and money. Through a close analysis of three linked episodes of family strife, this article looks beyond the singular fact of their confessional identity to argue that, like their Protestant counterparts, Catholics were not immune to acrimony. Disruptions to family unity could heap further tribulation on Catholics, and shared confessional identity might not be sufficient to repair bonds once severed.

For more than two and half centuries, the case of Emmanuel College v Evans (1626) has been understood as a leading case for the origin of the principal doctrine of mortgage law: the equity of redemption. A closer inspection shows that it has nothing to do with the equity of redemption. This article examines Emmanuel College to see what it was actually about and where this leaves the history of mortgages in equity. In so doing, the article demonstrates the status of Emmanuel College as a leading case to be invalid, and exposes a serious flaw in the methodology of much historiography on mortgages and of early-modern equity more generally. The article also shows how a leading case can obtain its position when it does not stand for its purported proposition. And it provides a nearly unique window into the nature of the Chancery court record and development of equity thanks to a serendipitous documentary survival.