God’s Traitors: Terror & Faith in Elizabethan England

by Childs, Jessie

  13 Lake and Questier, ‘Campion in Context’, p. 605.

  14 Simpson, Campion, pp. 303–4; Campion, Ten Reasons, p. 142.

  15 Campion, Ten Reasons, p. 90.

  16 Simpson, Campion, p. 266.

  17 Four debates were held within the precincts of the Tower of London on 31 August and 18, 23, and 27 September. A fifth conference, scheduled for 13 October, was cancelled. See McCoog, ‘Playing the Champion’, pp. 135–8.

  18 Reynolds, Campion and Parsons, p. 200.

  19 Ibid., pp. 161–2.

  20 Alford, Burghley, p. 250. For further analysis and text, see Kingdon’s double edition.

  21 Simpson, Campion, p. 155; Reynolds, Campion and Parsons, p. 172.

  22 Lake and Questier, ‘Campion in Context’.

  23 Fitzherbert, A Defence of the Catholyke Cause (Antwerp, 1602), sig. G2r.

  24 Reynolds, Campion and Parsons, pp. 150, 154–6, 202–4.

  25 Simpson, Campion, pp. 455, 466–8; DEP, pp. 266–7, 295–6; Bod MS Eng. Th. B. 1, p. 490.

  26 For an absorbing analysis of Persons’ subsequent state of mind, see Bossy, ‘The Heart of Robert Persons’.

  27 APC, XII, pp. 271, 294–5; XIII, p. 144.

  28 Gerard, Autobiography, p. 116n.

  29 Reynolds, Campion and Parsons, pp. 133–4.

  30 Graves, Thomas Norton, pp. 275–7; Alford, Burghley, p. 241.

  31 Reynolds, Campion and Parsons, pp. 179–80; BL Harl MS 859, f. 44r.

  32 ‘Loves Exchange’, cited by Stubbs, Donne, p. 93.

  33 Reynolds, Campion and Parsons, p. 138.

  34 APC, XIII, p. 164; Cross, ‘Letters of Sir Francis Hastings’, pp. 18–19.

  35 APC, XIII, pp. 155–6.

  3 Lying Lips

  1 Folger MS Bd.w. STC 22957. f. 77v.

  2 BL Add. MS 39828, f. 59r; Kingdon, The Execution of Justice, p. 12; Alford, Burghley, pp. 249–50.

  3 BL Add. MS 39828, f. 59r.

  4 PRO KB 9/653, pt. II, ff. 106–7.

  5 Bod MS Eng. Th. B. 2, p. 822.

  6 Ibid., B. 1, p. 4.

  7 Anstruther, p. 278. PRO SP 12/233, f. 21.

  8 Bod MS Eng. Th. B. 2, p. 822.

  9 APC, XI, pp. 179–80, 207.

  10 BL Add. MS 39828, ff. 59r–60r.

  11 Bod MS Eng. Th. B. 2, p. 822.

  12 APC, XIII, p. 176.

  13 Ackroyd, London: The Biography (2000), pp. 556–7; R. L. Brown, A History of the Fleet Prison, London (1996), p. 3; Foxe, Acts and Monuments (1583 edn), bk 11, p. 1530; BL Harl MS 78, fo. 24.

  14 BL Add. MS 39828, ff. 43r, 59r.

  15 BL Add. MS 39828, f. 77r; Bod MS Eng. Th. B. 2, pp. 823–36; Persons, ‘Memoirs’, 2, p. 29.

  16 BL Add. MS 39828, ff. 59r–60r.

  17 Ibid., ff. 60r–61v.

  18 PRO SP 12/233, f. 21.

  19 Ibid., f. 22; BL Add. MS 39828, f. 262r.

  20 For the trial, I have relied upon the eyewitness account in the British Library: BL Harl MS 859, ff. 44–50. There are also two printed versions: Bruce, ‘Observations’, and Simpson, ‘A Morning at the Star-Chamber’. For Mildmay’s speech, see BL Harl MS 6265, ff. 86v–87v (also printed in Bruce, ‘Observations’, pp. 101–4n).

  21 TP, pp. 17–19; BL Add. MS 39830, f. 46v.

  22 Kaushik, ‘Resistance, Loyalty and Recusant Politics’, p. 52.

  23 Reynolds, Campion and Parsons, p. 201.

  4 Worldly Woes

  1 BL Add. MS 39828, f. 72v.

  2 Questier, Catholicism and Community, pp. 188–90; Challoner, Memoirs, p. 113.

  3 PRO SP 12/152, fo. 97r; Pollen, Unpublished Documents, p. 27. Lady Vaux was indicted several times during her Southwark residence ‘for not resorting to the church according to the statutes’ (Hyland, A Century of Persecution, pp. 379, 381, 384–7, 401).

  4 BL Add. MS 39828, f. 74r.

  5 CSP Spanish III, pp. 236, 364.

  6 Pollen, ‘Official Lists’, pp. 223, 229; Pollen, Unpublished Documents, pp. 27–8; Persons, ‘Memoirs’, 4, p. 47; Anstruther, Seminary Priests, pp. 261–2. For the alleged threat of torture, see Allen’s True, Sincere, and Modest Defense, in Kingdon, The Execution of Justice, pp. 75–6.

  7 APC, XIII, pp. 353, 360.

  8 Gerard, Autobiography, p. 270.

  9 Pollen, Unpublished Documents, p. 28; Bowler and McCann, Recusants in the Exchequer Pipe Rolls, p. 180.

  10 Pollen, ‘Official Lists’, pp. 223, 228–9; PRO SP 12/168, f. 86r. For the dating, see D. Flynn, ‘“Out of Step”: Six Supplementary Notes on Jasper Heywood’, in McCoog, The Reckoned Expense, p. 185n.

  11 BL Add. MS 39828, f. 269v.

  12 Ibid. For her jointure, Eleanor received a manor house and tenements in Ashby Magna, Leicestershire (PRO SP 12/183, f. 76r).

  13 Persons, ‘Memoirs’, 4, p. 49; BL Add. MS 39828, f. 278r.

  14 BL Add. MS 39828, ff. 59v, 72r.

  15 ‘Isham Correspondence’, p. 29. See too Finch, Wealth, p. 179.

  16 NRO YZ 5622, 8235–40.

  17 PRO SP 78/7, f. 35v.

  18 Knox, Douay Diaries, pp. 174–5. See too Anstruther, Seminary Priests, p. 252.

  19 Knox, Douay Diaries, p. lxxxii.

  20 Ibid., pp. lxxi–lxxvi.

  21 Ibid., pp. 186–7.

  22 BL Add. MS 39828, f. 74r.

  23 Bossy, ‘The Heart of Robert Persons’, pp. 144–5; Philip Benedict, Rouen during the Wars of Religion (Cambridge, 1981), pp. 170–1, 178, 184, 195, 202; Hicks, Letters and Memorials, pp. 107–8.

  24 PRO SP 78/7, f. 93v. Cobham reported on 10 April (Old Style), which would be two days after 18 April (New Style).

  25 Cf. Duffy, ‘Allen, William’, ODNB; Mattingly, ‘William Allen and Catholic Propaganda in England’, pp. 335–9; Kingdon, The Execution of Justice, pp. xxxiii–xxxvii.

  26 Christie, Letters of Sir Thomas Copley, pp. xxxv–xxxvii, 136; Michael A. R. Graves, ‘Copley, Thomas’, ODNB.

  27 Christie, Letters of Sir Thomas Copley, p. xxxvi. For Polidore Morgan, see Anstruther, Seminary Priests, pp. 234–5; Pollen, ‘Official Lists’, pp. 219, 225, 230. For Nicholas Morgan: Poulton, John Dowland, pp. 419–20; W. H. Grattan Flood, ‘Nicholas Morgan of the Chapel Royal’, The Musical Antiquary 4 (1912), pp. 59–60; W. Barclay Squire, ‘John Dowland’, The Musical Times 37 (1896), pp. 793–4, and 38 (1897), pp. 92–3. For Roland Morgan: Anstruther, Seminary Priests, pp. 235–6. For Thomas Morgan: A. Plowden, ‘Morgan, Thomas’, ODNB; Bossy, Under the Molehill, passim; A discoverie of the treasons, sig. Biv. Cobham’s reference to surnames only might perhaps argue that he meant the most obvious Morgan, i.e. Thomas.

  28 Plowden, Danger to Elizabeth, p. 201. For Walsingham’s intelligence operation, see Bossy, Under the Molehill.

  29 Foley, Records, VI, p. 726; PRO SP 15/27A, f. 199r.

  30 PRO SP 78/8, f. 166r.

  31 Knox, Douay Diaries, pp. 192, 194.

  32 BL Add. MS 39828, ff. 83r, 187v, 209r; 39829, f. 13r; PRO C2/Eliz./U2/12.

  5 Refuse of the World

  1 Tierney, Dodd’s Church History, III, p. 157.

  2 BL Lans. MS 103, ff. 25–8; Alford, Burghley, pp. 245–6. BL Add. MS 39828, f. 78r.

  3 BL Add. MS 39828, f. 187v.

  4 Ibid., f. 84r.

  5 Jeaffreson, Middlesex County Records, I, pp. 143–4, 150, 158, 163, 167, 173; KB 9/666, pt I, no. 51; Bowler and McCann, Recusants in the Exchequer Pipe Rolls, p. 180. Lord Vaux and his household were sometimes referred to as ‘of Tottenham’, but usually as ‘of Hackney’.

  6 Foley, Records, V, p. 470; VI, p. 717.

  7 BL Harl. MS 286, ff. 52–3, 267r.

  8 PRO C 54/1162/29; BL Add. MS 39828, f. 86v. See too NRO YZ 8235. For Holborn as a rendezvous for the Catholic community, see McClain, Lest We be Damned, p. 147.

  9 CSP Spanish III, p. 236; Mattingly, ‘William Allen and Catholic Propaganda in England’, pp. 336–7.

  10 Caraman, The Other Face, p. 109.

  11 Caraman, Garnet, pp. 59, 180; Gerard, Autobiography, pp. 98–9; BL Harl.
MS 6998, ff. 65r, 71v. Also, McGrath, ‘The Bloody Questions Reconsidered’.

  12 Talbot, Recusant Records, p. 206; Anstruther, Seminary Priests, pp. 226–7; A discoverie of the treasons, sig. Bii.

  13 PRO SP 12/173, ff. 100–1. For Browne, see Knox, Douay Diaries, p. 199. Also pp. 204, 217.

  14 Simpson, Campion, pp. 242–3.

  15 Weston, Autobiography, p. 39n.

  16 Foley, Records, VI, pp. 17, 727; Anstruther, Seminary Priests, p. 135; J. G. Elzinga, ‘Howard, Philip, thirteenth earl of Arundel’, ODNB.

  17 Wilson, Walsingham, p. 180.

  18 PRO SP 12/163, f. 140v.

  19 27 Eliz. c. 1; Guy, My Heart is My Own, pp. 474–6; Rex, Elizabeth, pp. 187–9.

  20 TP, pp. 37–43.

  21 Alford, Burghley, p. 199. See too Kaushik, ‘Resistance, Loyalty and Recusant Politics’, pp. 57–9.

  22 Markham Memorials, I, pp. 103–4.

  23 Hicks, Letters and Memorials, pp. 334–7.

  24 PRO SP 12/183, f. 218v.

  25 PRO SP 12/178, ff. 88–90, 170r.

  26 Persons, ‘Life and Martyrdom’, 12, pp. 29–30.

  6 Flibbertigibbets

  1 The History of King Lear (The Quarto Text, 1608), Scene 15.

  2 DEP, pp. 211–12, 295–6.

  3 Vaux Petitions, Minutes, p. 203; BL Add. MS 39829, f. 12v.

  4 DEP, pp. 400, 408.

  5 Bod MS Eng. Th. B. 1, Lib. 25: ‘Of Exorcisms’, pp. 485–91. The ‘true witness’ of Sara’s exorcism may have been the priest and future government informant, Anthony Tyrrell (DEP, p. 394).

  The ‘Brudenell manuscript’ is discussed by Kilroy in Edmund Campion, passim, but esp. at pp. 5, 13–15. Kilroy suggests that that author, ‘Thomas Jollet’, was Sir Thomas Tresham, but it may not be a pseudonym: a certain Thomas Jollett/Jellett/Jallet of Edmonton and Shoreditch was cited for recusancy several times in the reign of James I (Jeaffreson, Middlesex County Records, II, pp. 115, 131, 134, 144, 211–12).

  6 Weston, Autobiography, p. 24.

  7 Walsham, ‘Miracles’, p. 801.

  8 DEP, pp. 350, 375.

  9 Ibid., p. 390; Weston, Autobiography, p. 25. Also, Holmes, ‘Witchcraft and Possession’, pp. 71–3.

  10 The book was dedicated to ‘the seduced Catholics of England’. Quotations are from the edition by Brownlow [DEP].

  11 DEP, p. 318. Holmes, ‘Witchcraft and Possession’.

  12 Brownlow, Shakespeare, Harsnett, and the Devils of Denham, pp. 76–83.

  13 Holmes, ‘Witchcraft and Possession’, p. 70.

  14 DEP, p. 350.

  15 Ibid., pp. 297, 266, 312–13, 350.

  16 Crawford, ‘Attitudes to Menstruation’, p. 49.

  17 DEP, pp. 224–5, 352.

  18 Ibid., p. 357.

  19 Brownlow, Shakespeare, Harsnett, and the Devils of Denham, pp. 23, 88.

  20 Weston, Autobiography, pp. 26–7; also p. 30n.

  21 Bod MS Eng. Th. B. 1, p. 491.

  22 DEP, pp. 357–9.

  23 Bod MS Eng. Th. B. 1, p. 485; BL Add. MS 39828, ff. 203r, 239r; PRO PROB 11/88/344 & 11/92/52; NRO YZ 8240. John Cheney was also Sir Thomas Tresham’s solicitor (BL Add. MS 39829, f. 21r). Pollen, ‘Official Lists’, p. 269; Bowler and McCann, Recusants in the Exchequer Pipe Rolls, p. 36; Bridges, History and Antiquities, II, p. 152; Jeaffreson, Middlesex County Records, I, p. 163.

  24 DEP, pp. 311, 357.

  25 Ibid., pp. 208, 211, 391, 405.

  26 Jeaffreson, Middlesex County Records, I, p. 160. The other surety was ‘Henry Marshe of London, letherseller’, who appears to have been a moneylender operating by St Paul’s Cathedral (ibid., p. 267).

  27 PRO SP 12/179, f. 1r.

  28 Weston, Autobiography, p. 99.

  29 PRO SP 53/19, no. 28.

  7 Atheistical Anthony Babington’s Complotment

  1 DEP, p. 208.

  2 Pollen, Babington Plot, pp. 18–22, 52–3. This is an invaluable resource. Two excellent recent accounts of the plot are by John Guy (My Heart is My Own, ch. 29) and Stephen Alford (The Watchers, chs 13–15). Also very useful are: Fraser, Mary Queen of Scots, ch. 24; Bossy, Under the Molehill, pp. 140–1; and the ODNB entries for Anthony Babington (by Penry Williams), Gilbert Gifford (by Alison Plowden) and Thomas Phelippes (by William Richardson).

  3 Weston, Autobiography, p. 101.

  4 Pollen, Babington Plot, pp. 38–46.

  5 PRO SP 53/20, no. 26.

  6 Camden, Annales, p. 142; Read, Bardon Papers, pp. 45, 47.

  7 Weston, Autobiography, p. 87n.

  8 BL Harl MS 360, f. 8; PRO SP 12/203, f. 100r; SP 53/19, no. 28.

  9 PRO SP 12/179, f. 3r; Pollen, Babington Plot, pp. 58, 92, 108; Pollen, ‘Official Lists’, p. 269; BL Add. MS 39828, f. 170v.

  10 PRO E 133/10/1656. Almost a decade later, Sir Thomas Tresham recalled that ‘one Babington which was executed, or some other to his use, bought lands of the said Lord Harrowden & his sons, as he taketh it, which lands lie in Lincolnshire or Nottinghamshire as he remembreth’ (PRO WARD 3/17 part 2).

  11 BL Harl MS 360, ff. 8r, 12r; PRO SP 53/19, no. 28.

  12 PRO SP 12/193 f. 119r. Five years later, one Robert Weston, the son of ‘a notable recusant dwelling in Clerkenwell’, was apprehended with letters on his person from his father to John Palmer and ‘Francis Babington, brother to Anthony Babington the traitor’ (PRO SP 12/238, f. 185r).

  13 Howell, State Trials, I, cols 1135, 1150; BL Harl. MS 286, f. 52v; PRO SP 12/178, f. 170r.

  14 DEP, p. 391; P. Holmes, ‘Tyrrell, Anthony’, ODNB.

  15 DEP, p. 362 and Brownlow’s commentary in this edition, pp. 30–4.

  16 Weston, Autobiography, p. 88.

  17 DEP, p. 350; Pollen, ‘Official Lists’, pp. 258, 280.

  18 PRO SP 12/191, f.101r.

  19 CSP Spanish III, p. 605.

  20 Pollen, Babington Plot, p. 108.

  21 BL Add. MS 39829, f. 105r.

  22 CSP Spanish III, p. 607.

  23 Miola, Early Modern Catholicism, pp. 180–1.

  8 Lambs to the Slaughter

  1 Devlin, Southwell, p. 107. See too Caraman, Garnet, ch. 3.

  2 Caraman, Garnet, p. 244; ABSI Collectanea P II, f. 551.

  3 Bod MS Eng. Th. B. 1, p. 758; N. P. Brown, ‘Southwell, Robert’, ODNB.

  4 T. M. McCoog, ‘Garnett, Henry’, ODNB.

  5 Caraman, Garnet, p. 20.

  6 Devlin, Southwell, p. 99.

  7 Ibid., pp. 107–8; Caraman, Garnet, p. 28.

  8 PRO SP 12/178, f. 88r.

  9 Weston, Autobiography, pp, 69, 75n.

  10 Devlin, Southwell, p. 109.

  11 Ibid., p. 116; More, Historia, p. 235; Bartoli, Dell’ Istoria, p. 374.

  12 Devlin, Southwell, p. 109.

  13 Southwell, Humble Supplication, p. 22.

  14 Weston, Autobiography, p. 31.

  15 Pollen, Unpublished Documents, pp. 308, 309, 313, 314; Devlin, Southwell, pp. 117, 122.

  16 Morris, Troubles, II, pp. 428–9. There is no record of a priest called (or having the alias) Sale. It has plausibly been suggested that it was a mishearing of the elided form of Southwell (pronounced Suthall). See Devlin, Southwell, p. 123; N. P. Brown, ‘Southwell, Robert’, ODNB.

  17 Pollen, Unpublished Documents, p. 313.

  18 PRO SP 53/20, no. 26; SP 12/192, f. 92r. For Henry Davies, see: PRO SP 12/194, f. 95r; SP 12/202, f. 2r.

  19 Morris, Troubles, II, pp. 428–9.

  20 PRO SP 53/20, no. 26.

  21 APC, XV, p. 89.

  22 LRO Parish Register, Ashby Magna, 19 November 1587.

  23 Persons, ‘Life and Martyrdom’, 12, p. 30; Gerard, Autobiography, p. 195; Caraman, Garnet, pp. 44, 209.

  24 Anstruther, Vaux, p. 100; BL Add. MS 39829, f. 12v; Caraman, Garnet, p. 209; Persons, ‘Life and Martyrdom’, 12, pp. 29–30. Catilyn’s report can be found at PRO SP 53/20, no. 26. Elsewhere, he describes Clerkenwell as ‘a very college of wicked papists’ (PRO SP 12/194, f. 95r).

  25 Gerard, Autobiography, p. 1
95; BL Add. MS 39828, f. 275r. Henry’s verses are bound up with Robert Southwell’s in a seventeenth-century manuscript volume in the Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington, DC: MS Bd.w. STC 22957, ff. 69r–88v (quotation at f. 88r). They are also accessible online courtesy of Timothy Hacksley’s MA thesis, ‘A Critical Edition of the Poems of Henry Vaux’. Full details in the bibliography. I am most grateful to Timothy Hacksley for kindly permitting me to cite his thesis.

  26 Anstruther, Vaux, pp. 100–1.

  27 Caraman, Garnet, p. 128.

  28 Pollen, Unpublished Documents, p. 317.

  29 Parker, Grand Strategy, p. 189.

  PART TWO: ELEANOR AND ANNE

  1 Miola, Early Modern Catholicism, p. 193.

  9 The Widow and the Virgin

  1 Anstruther, Vaux, p. 101; Persons, ‘Life and Martyrdom’, 12, p. 30.

  2 LRO Parish Register, Ashby Magna, 19 November 1587.

  3 Lessius and Androtius, The Treasure of Vowed Chastity, sig. *5 & p. 310.

  4 Anstruther, Vaux, p. 188.

  5 ABSI Anglia A I, 73, f 138v; Cross, ‘Letters of Sir Francis Hastings’, p. 19; DEP, p. 400.

  6 Anstruther, Vaux, p. 189; BL Add. MS 39828, f. 271v; Rhodes, This Tight Embrace, p. 237.

  7 BL Add. MS 39828, f. 277r; 39829, f. 13r.

  8 Lessius and Androtius, The Treasure of Vowed Chastity, sig. *6r.

  9 Pollen, Unpublished Documents, p. 320.

  10 ABSI Anglia A I, 73, f 138v; HMC Salisbury, 18, p. 109; Foley, Records, IV, p. 141; Anstruther, Vaux, p. 276; Caraman, Garnet, pp. 63–4, 187, 258, 296; PRO SP 12/287, f. 72r.

  11 PRO SP 14/20, f. 29r.

  12 PRO SP 14/216/121, f. 23r.

  13 Inner Temple, Petyt MS 538.38, f. 415r. Francis Taylor was Catholic, but supported the faction of secular priests who opposed the Jesuits. He accused the Society of luring away his wife, keeping her from him for almost two years, slandering him as an excommunicated ‘lewd fellow’ and seeking his death at the gallows.

  14 PRO SP 14/20, ff. 29r, 30v for the quotations. For the controversy, see ch. 25 below.

  15 Devlin, Southwell, p. 140.

  16 BL Add. MS 39828, f. 60r.

  17 Foley, Records, VII, p. 1352.

  18 Colleton, A Just Defence, p. 248.

  19 Caraman, Garnet, p. 250.

  20 Palmes, Dorothy Lawson, pp. 18–19, 40. Also, Lux-Sterritt, Redefining Female Religious Life, pp. 121–2 and passim.