God’s Traitors: Terror & Faith in Elizabethan England

by Childs, Jessie

  11

  Mrs Brooksby’s Household

  Why was Sheriff Cave so agitated? How could a widow’s household constituting six servants ‘of small ability’ and three children be considered a threat to state security? We know, of course, as Sheriff Cave must also have done, that Anne and Eleanor were priest-harbourers. More often than not, one of those priests was the superior of the Society of Jesus in England. ‘Since the coming of the Spanish fleet into these waters,’ Garnet would write, ‘far more than any other priest in the country I am suspect of stirring sedition and raising the Catholics to support the King of Spain.’1 His presence in Eleanor’s house would have been reason enough for Sheriff Cave to sense danger, but what seems to have troubled him more was the ‘evil instruction’ of the children there, something for which the ‘recusant mistress’ was as responsible as the holy men under her roof.

  Great Ashby lies in the south of Leicestershire, conveniently close to the borders of Northamptonshire and Warwickshire. The sisters knew the area well and probably escaped Cave’s jurisdiction with ease. Northamptonshire was the seat of the Vaux barony, but it was Warwickshire, ‘Forest of Arden’ country, where they settled, taking a house that would be Garnet’s ‘ordinary abode’ for the next three years. The new place was large enough to accommodate upwards of a dozen visitors. It was near a copse and had stables, a courtyard and some ‘very safe and close’ hiding places, including a damp but ‘very cleverly built sort of cave’.2

  It may well have been Baddesley Clinton with its sewer-turned-priest-hole in the west rangefn1 and an owner, Henry Ferrers, who shared the Vauxes’ religion as well, it seems, as some of their business contacts. (Two names in a 1601 Baddesley Clinton conveyance crop up as witnesses in three Vaux-related leases of 1599; in February 1596, the manor would be conveyed to George Shirley of Staunton Harold, Leicestershire, a fellow recusant, kinsman and trustee of Eleanor Brooksby.) Or it could have been neighbouring Rowington Hall, another moated manor and the home of the Skinner family, who were suspected priest-harbourers and also had links with Vaux associates (one of Anne’s most trusted servants, John Grissold of Rowington, would be hired on Robert Skinner’s recommendation; William Skinner of Rowington Hall later acquired a manuscript copy of Southwell’s A Short Rule of Good Life).3 Or the sisters may have chosen somewhere else in the region. They covered their tracks well and no direct documentary evidence pins them down for the 1588–91 period. What matters more than its site is what actually happened in Mrs Brooksby’s house and why it was thought to have such a pernicious effect on the commonwealth.

  It was, by all accounts, deeply pious. The informer George Snape mentioned that there was ‘commonly a priest or two’ resident, frequently more. One of them, Oswald Tesimond, wrote that ‘sometimes there might be more than twenty or thirty priests in her house at one time’, though this was extraordinary. Henry Garnet thought the house ‘angelica’ on account of the ‘many holy women consecrated to God’ there.4 The sisters were clearly not cloistered. They moved about more than most women, but inasmuch as circumstances allowed, they strived towards ‘the highest & most perfect’ manner of living: that of a convent. In 1621 the priest and Staffordshire man John Wilson would dedicate his translation of The Treasure of Vowed Chastity in Secular Persons to ‘the honourable and right virtuous gentlewoman, Mrs Anne Vaux’ in recognition of ‘the constant report of your virtuous life in the state whereof this little book entreateth’. To this Jesuit-authored work, Wilson appended another, The Widow’s Glass, in which he paid tribute to Eleanor’s ‘long, constant & most exemplar profession of that noble and worthy state of chaste widowhood’.5

  Such women, striving to live ‘in the world’ until the coming of their ‘heavenly spouse’, were expected to exist wholly for God, ‘contemplating him and meditating on him day and night’. The books prescribed daily fasting, prayer, spiritual reading and ‘handiwork’. The women were to wear ‘decent and grave’ clothes, ‘without any kind of vanity or curiosity, without pride also, or any secular ornaments’. They were not to squander their money on frivolities, but invest it in ‘the succour & relief of the poor, and of such as are servants of God’. Their companions must be ‘modest and devout women’, ideally widows and virgins, and they should shun ‘the conversation of secular persons (as much as they may)’. Leonard Lessius, the author of The Treasure of Vowed Chastity, did not even attempt to disguise his revulsion of family life. ‘The irksome slavery of marriage’ bound women to violent unfaithful drunks, and husbands to vain jealous shrews whose birthday ‘must be made a holy day’. Sex was ‘unclean, as a thing wherein we differ not from a beast’, and ‘the sluttishness [filthiness], the ill savour, the weeping, crying & brawling’ of babies was quite beyond the pale:

  How many times a day must it be made clean, fed, made up, apparelled, laid to sleep, rocked in the cradle, taken out again to give it suck and be held out? How many times must it be flattered and entreated with fair speeches & with a thousand pretty hypocrisies and flatterings to make it leave crying, or to sleep?

  These are the continual exercises of such as be mothers and in such they are employed, not only all day long, but also most part of the night, so that they can scarce take any rest but with often interruption.

  Chastity, by contrast, produced innumerable profits to which Anne Vaux had shown ‘good proof these many years’. There was some sacrifice: anyone seeking to emulate Anne ‘must first kill all carnal affections in herself’ and thereafter dwell ‘as it were mentally and spiritually with the Blessed, in community of heavenly things’.6

  Quite how a woman of the world could achieve this on a day-to-day basis was the subject of Robert Southwell’s A Short Rule of Good Life, which he wrote for Anne’s friend the Countess of Arundel. It described best practice for a heavenly life on earth and offered guidelines, ‘which may be, as it were, a lantern unto thy feet & a continual light unto thy steps’, as the writer of the ‘Preface to the Reader’ (probably Garnet) put it.7 An exemplary day for the recusant householder went something like this:

  5 a.m. – Rise. Short silent prayer and meditation.

  ‘I must procure to go neatly & handsome in my attire agreeably to my calling & to avoid all kind of undecency, which breedeth dislike and contempt and doth rather offend than please God.’

  Morning Prayer.

  ‘After prayer on working days I must go presently about some work or exercise that may be of some profit, and of all other things take heed of idleness, the mother of all vices.’

  Towards 11 a.m. – Rosary.

  ‘If company and other more weighty causes will permit, I may say my beads and call to mind how I have spent the morning, asking God grace to spend the afternoon better.’

  11 a.m. on a flesh day (12 p.m. on a fasting day) – Dinner.

  ‘I must learn my little children (if I have any) to say some short grace or at the least I must say grace to myself … At meals I must neither be too curious or doubtful of what I eat, neither too precise in the quantity, fineness or coarseness of the meat, but of that which God hath sent take a competent meal measureable to my need and not hurtful to my health.’

  Give thanks to God and leftovers to the poor.

  Keep obligations and appointments.

  3 p.m. – Evensong: ‘use the same order of my morning prayer’.

  Household chores.

  ‘It is good for me sometimes to go about the rooms of the house and to see that they be kept clean and handsome, thinking that God is delighted in cleanness both bodily and ghostly, and detesteth sluttishness as a thing which he permitteth as a punishment of sin and one of the scourges of hell.’

  Read ‘some part of some good book’.

  6 p.m. – Supper (or if a fasting day, a drink at 7 p.m.).

  ‘After supper I may talk as occasion shall serve, or walk for my health, or read some pleasant yet profitable book as Catholic histories or suchlike.’

  Examination of the conscience ‘touching the thoughts, words and
deeds of that day’.

  Bedtime prayers.

  9 p.m. – Bed.

  ‘When I lie down to rest, my intention must not be so much for sloth and contentment of the body as for necessity of keeping my health & that I may rise fitter to serve God. Also, when I lie down I may imagine to lie by the pillar, cross, manger or some such place where Christ was present, that when I wake in the morning he may be the first that shall come into my mind.’

  Sundays and feast days required earlier starts and ‘greater devotion’, with preparation for communion (beginning with confession the previous evening) and meditation after it. Although Southwell acknowledged that the householder was more likely to be ‘troubled with company’ on these days, he expected ‘godly exercises’ to take priority.8 In the absence of processions, shrines and the great spectacles of the medieval parish, Catholics were encouraged to look inwards and use their homes as commemorative and devotional aids. Thus:

  I must in every room of the house where I dwell imagine in some decent place thereof a throne or chair of estate and dedicate the same & the whole room to some saint, that whensoever I enter into it, I enter as it were into a chapel or church that is devoted to such a saint and therefore in mind do that reverence that is due to them.

  In big houses with many rooms, that meant a lot of saints, but Southwell had a solution for the forgetful householder, suggesting that the room and the saint could be matched according to function. So, ‘saints of spare and regular diet, of sober and virtuous conversation’, could go in the dining room or parlour, while those saints ‘given to short sleep and watchfulness’ might be better suited to the bedchamber. Certain spots in the garden or orchard could also be linked to particular saints, so that walks could become, ‘as it were, short pilgrimages’. The technique could be deployed throughout the meditative exercises, a visit to the dining chamber, for example, prompting thoughts of the last supper.9

  Frequent confession and communion were recommended. Many recusant women, including Anne Vaux, took private vows of obedience to their spiritual fathers, ‘taking his words when he counselleth, commandeth or forbiddeth me any thing, as the words of Christ’. Some women wore a hair shirt; others preferred fasting and flagellation. Southwell approved of all three, but counselled moderation.10 The point was to subdue one’s own passions in order to focus on Christ’s Passion, to confront the devil, the world and the flesh with a heart surrendered to God.

  An occasional ‘exercise’ recommended by Southwell and based on his training as a Jesuit highlights the centrality of the Passion in Counter-Reformation thought:

  I may take occasion of other creatures to remember God’s mercies: as by money the selling of Christ, by meat his last supper, by water the water of his eyes & side and washing of his disciples’ feet, by drinking his easel and gall,fn2 by wood his Cross and thorns, by stone, his grave.

  None of Southwell’s ‘rules’ were meant to be easy. ‘He that entereth into the way of life,’ he wrote, ‘must remember that he is not come to a play, pastime or pleasure, but to a continual rough battle & fight against most unplacable & spiteful enemies.’ He was following in the footsteps of Christ:

  who from his birth to his death, was in a restless battle, persecuted in his swaddling clouts by Herod, annoyed the rest of his infancy by banishment, wandering and need; in the flower of his age slandered, hated, pursued, whipped, crucified and most barbarously misused.11

  These were images with which England’s recusants could identify, but if they were to become soldiers of Christ, they required rigorous training; they had to learn about discipline, obedience, self-control and self-sacrifice; they needed ascesis.

  The Vaux sisters were ready for the fight, mentally and physically primed by exemplary, near-monastic living, and armed by the contents of their household. It is known from various accounts that they possessed books, pictures, crosses, rosaries, plate, vessels, vestments and massing equipment. An inventory, taken early the next century, lends a thicker description to the materials kept in the house:

  Two gold reliquaries of two of the thorns.

  A great relic of gold with leaves to open.

  Father Ignatiusfn3 picture of gold.

  St Stephen’s jawbone in gold and crystal.

  A bone of St Modwen of Burton set in gold.

  A piece of a hair shirt of St Thomas of Canterbury set in gold.

  A thumb of Mr Robert Suttonfn4 set in gold.

  A gold cross full of relics that was Mrs Anne’s grandmother’s.

  A gold crucifix bigger than that full of relics.

  A cross of gold without a crucifix that hath little crystals.

  A reliquary of silver, of silver and gilt.

  For church stuff: A vestment of cloth of silver and embroidered cross of gold upon it, stole and maniple of the same.fn5

  A vestment of cloth of gold, stole and maniple.

  A cope of the same.

  Two tunicles of purple.

  A taffeta vestment with an embroidered Jesus.

  An altarcloth to that with letters about: these two things were Mr Page’s the martyr.fn6

  A great reliquary of silver and gilt without relics with Mr Blu[nt].fn7

  A great deal of brass and pewter that were Mrs Brooksby’s and Mrs Anne’s.

  There should be 12 feather beds with their furniture.

  A tawny rouge mantle that was Anne’s grandmother’s, which she must have.

  A great brass pot to boil beef for a college.12

  This was quite an arsenal. As monuments to martyrs and repositories of numinous power, relics were a crucial aspect of traditional Christianity. Formed at the juncture of heaven and earth, they were the conduits of God’s wonders and were believed to emit ‘a kind of holy radioactivity’, charging anyone or anything that touched them.13 Prayers said in their vicinity were more likely to be answered, fires might be quenched, the sick healed. Relics could not bestow sacramental grace like a priest, but set into an altar or pressed against the flesh of a demoniac, they might assist him in his work. At times of clerical scarcity, moreover, their function and value might rise to a quasi-sacerdotal level. Just as books and manuscripts became, for want of regular pastoral direction, the recusant community’s ‘domme preachers’,14 and ‘sacramentals’ (rosary beads, medals, crucifixes, holy water and the like) could offer penitents temporary relief until they received formal absolution, so relics came to be regarded, to some extent, as supernatural stand-ins, affording a household a measure of protection until normal priestly service could be resumed.

  As memorials to the suffering of Christ and his followers, they also reminded those labouring under the cross that they were not alone. When they appeared efficacious, like during the exorcisms of the mid-1580s, they validated faith and encouraged constancy. Sometimes the relic itself was the miracle. Robert Sutton’s right index finger and thumb (named in our inventory) were the only parts of his quartered body ‘preserved from decay’ after a year ‘pinned up to be eaten by birds’. These were the two digits ‘anointed with sacred oil at ordination’ and ‘sanctified by the touch of the Blessed Sacrament’ – so wrote the Jesuit John Gerard, who was later housed by the Vauxes.fn8 15

  To the dismay of their superiors in Rome, who favoured strict, centralised regulation, the Jesuit missionaries did little to discourage, and much to foster, English lay enthusiasm for the ‘fresh green new relics’ of the recently departed. In part, this was a simple matter of supply and demand. No official shrines and fewer priests meant a greater recourse to portable relics at the very time when their supply was dwindling through confiscation and export. The shortage in clerical manpower must surely also have enhanced the perceived charisma of the few priests that were left, so that when one was captured and eviscerated, his remains were pounced upon as the precious remnants of a heroic martyr. Then the hagiographers set to work. Knowing that they could not hope to control the wave of popular saint-making (had they even been so inclined), the missionaries chose to ride it for al
l its didactic and proselytising potential, stressing in particular the righteousness of recusancy and the sacred powers of the priestly caste. Conversely, God’s fury at conformists and persecutors was allegedly manifested in slow death and swift decay. In stark contrast to Robert Sutton’s miraculous thumb, for example, the rotting corpse of Francis Walsingham (d. 1590) allegedly emitted such a ‘noisome smell’ that it gassed one of the pall-bearers.16

  Relics were not always gathered with the dignity in which they were subsequently held. Thomas Garnet (Henry Garnet’s nephew and fellow Jesuit) complained of being fleeced of his possessions while awaiting execution in prison in 1608.17 A gun battle nearly broke out between rival camps of body-snatchers after the execution of John Almond at Tyburn in December 1612. On that occasion, a Spanish noblewoman called Luisa de Carvajal claimed the spoils. ‘There are two instances,’ she informed Don Rodrigo Calderón that month, ‘in which I always find England to be very sweet, and forget about it being a sea of bile.’ One was when she triumphed against Protestants in debate. The other

  is when I receive these joyous corpses and spend the whole night exhausted from dressing them with aromatic spices, having first cleaned them of mud and caught the blood that still springs from some of the veins. I kiss their hands and feet many times, binding the severed limbs in new white holland,fn9 keeping vigil over them and putting them in their sepulchre of lead, so that they might be preserved should Our Sovereign Lord so choose.18

  It is not known if Anne and Eleanor ever became quite so involved, but relic traffic certainly passed through their house and, looking ahead to 1606, Anne would help propagate the most notorious miracle tale of all, that of ‘Garnet’s Straw’.

  Another prominent item in the aforementioned inventory is the vestment, the ritual apparel of the Catholic clergy. The most significant and symbolic were the Eucharistic vestments, those worn by the priest at Mass. They could be works of art: sumptuous textiles, exquisitely embroidered and sometimes (like the Vaux set at Harrowden Hall) embellished with gold and pearls. They helped the priest represent Christ at the Sacrifice of the Altar and they presented the laity with a ‘living picture’ of the Passion. A priest celebrating Mass without the right vestments – that is, the alb, amice, stole, maniple and chasuble – was committing a mortal sin, even in England, it was ruled, despite the high risk of detection.19