God’s Traitors: Terror & Faith in Elizabethan England

by Childs, Jessie

21 Stubbs, Donne, p. 15.

  22 Colleton, A Just Defence, p. 248. At the time, Colleton and Garnet were on opposing sides of the intra-clerical dispute known as the Archpriest Controversy. See ch. 14 below.

  23 Gardiner, ‘Two Declarations’, p. 515; CP, 110, no. 16.

  24 DEP, p. 296; Caraman, Garnet, p. 198; PRO SP 14/19, f. 136.

  25 Rowlands, ‘Recusant Women’, p. 163.

  26 Sheldon, Survey, p. 135.

  27 Anstruther, Vaux, p. 189.

  28 Weber, ‘Little Women’, p. 144.

  29 Palmes, Dorothy Lawson, p. 13.

  30 Hamilton, Chronicle, II, p. 166.

  31 Anstruther, Vaux, p. 188.

  32 BL Harl. MS 6998, f. 199r.

  33 Rowlands, ‘Recusant Women’, pp. 152–5, 176n.

  34 BL Add. MS 39828, f. 275r.

  35 PRO SP 14/216/193.

  36 PRO SP 14/20, f. 29v. See McCoog, ‘Slightest Suspicion of Avarice’, p. 114.

  37 Hodgetts, ‘Certificate’, II, p. 12.

  38 PRO SP 12/208, ff. 75r, 91r, 93r.

  39 Lake and Questier, The Trials of Margaret Clitherow, pp. 106–8, 198. This is the best and most recent account.

  40 Foley, Records, VII, p. 1039; Bod MS Eng. Th. B. 2, p. 118.

  41 Caraman, Garnet, pp. 200–2; J. H. Baker, ‘Beaumont, Francis’, ODNB.

  42 NRO FH 124, f. 83 (The Privy Council to Lord Chancellor Hatton, Lieutenant General of Northants., 4 January 1588).

  43 Mattingly, The Defeat of the Spanish Armada, pp. 190–1.

  10 Fright and Rumour

  1 Mattingly, The Defeat of the Spanish Armada, p. 160.

  2 Parker, Grand Strategy, pp. 188, 203; Hogge, God’s Secret Agents, p. 5.

  3 Alford, Burghley, p. 306.

  4 Younger, ‘If the Armada Had Landed’.

  5 John Ponet, A Shorte Treatise of Politike Power (1556), sig. LIVr.

  6 Aubrey, Brief Lives, pp. 147, 156.

  7 NRO FH 124, f. 83; HMC Rutland, 1, p. 232.

  8 HMC Bath, 5, p. 92.

  9 BL Add. MS 39828, f. 140r; Bod MS Tanner 118, no. 14.

  10 Pollen, Unpublished Documents, pp. 325–7.

  11 LJ, II, p. 151. Also pp. 153–65.

  12 PRO SP 12/233, f. 21; Bowler and McCann, Recusants in the Exchequer Pipe Rolls, pp. 180–1. Also Bowler, Recusant Roll No. 2, p. xxxi.

  13 BL Add. MS 39828, f. 207r; PRO C 89/7/22: Private Act, 35 Eliz I, no. 16 (SR IV, p. 841).

  14 BL Add. MS 39828, ff. 178r, 187v, 190r.

  15 NRO WR 337.

  16 PRO SP 12/183, f. 218v; 12/187, f. 78r.

  17 Goring and Wake, ‘Northamptonshire Lieutenancy Papers’, p. 64; Bowler and McCann, Recusants in the Exchequer Pipe Rolls, p. 34. For the Earl of Arundel, see: Brigden, New Worlds, Lost Worlds, p. 294.

  18 Heale, ‘Contesting Terms’, pp. 197–8; Laughton, State Papers, p. 30.

  19 Allen, Admonition to the Nobility, sig. D3.

  20 PRO SP 12/239, f. 36r.

  21 CSP Rome, 1558–1571, p. 400; PRO SP 12/191, f.101r.

  22 CSP Spanish IV, pp. 184–6.

  23 BL Add. MS 39828, f. 140v.

  24 Parker, Grand Strategy, p. 214.

  25 Alford, Burghley, p. 307.

  26 Dekker, The Wonderful Year, p. 167.

  27 BL Add. MS 39828, f. 139v.

  28 Clark, England’s Remembrancer, opening passage.

  29 BL Add. MS 39828, f. 142v. For ‘Ely, my familiar prison’, see Ibid, f. 227r.

  30 Southwell, Humble Supplication, ed. Bald, App. I.

  31 BL Add. MS 39828, f. 230r.

  32 Ibid., ff. 139v, 142r.

  33 Caraman, Garnet, pp. 71–2, 79–81; Devlin, Southwell, p. 167.

  34 PRO SP 12/208, ff. 91–3.

  11 Mrs Brooksby’s Household

  1 Caraman, Garnet, pp. 152–3.

  2 PRO SP 12/229, f. 137r; Gerard, Narrative, p. 282; Gerard, Autobiography, pp. 41–3.

  3 For Baddesley Clinton, see Squiers, Secret Hiding-Places, pp. 28–34; Gerard, Autobiography, App. B. It may be significant that Thomas Tomlinson and Nathaniel Birkhead, who were involved in the release of the moiety of Baddesley Clinton on 13 July 1601, were witnesses (along with Ambrose Vaux) to the lease of the manor of Isham (formerly part of the Vaux patrimony) on 27 March 1599 and a related deed a fortnight later (Shakespeare Centre, DR 3/349; NRO YZ 8241–2). On 27 March 1599 Nathaniel Birkhead and Ambrose Vaux also witnessed the lease of Kirby Hall, ‘a princely mansion’ in Northamptonshire, which Eliza Vaux hoped to set up as a Jesuit stronghold (NRO FH 3013; Gerard, Autobiography, p. 149).

  On 19 February 1596 Baddesley Clinton was conveyed to George Shirley of Staunton Harold, Leicestershire, who had very close links to the Vauxes: Shakespeare Centre, DR 3/338; NRO WR 337; PRO SP 12/183, f. 76r; PRO SP 12/238, f. 188r; SP 38/9; PRO E 178/3628; E 377/32 & 33; Stemmata Shirleiana, pp. 39, 63, 69, 83–8. For Henry Garnet’s letter to George Shirley’s sister Elizabeth in 1605, see Caraman, Garnet, p. 320.

  For Rowington Hall, see Brown, ‘Paperchase’, pp. 134–7; Woodall, ‘Recusant Rowington’, pp. 6–11. For John Grissold of Rowington alias James Johnson, see Hodgetts, ‘Certificate’, I, p. 28; II, p. 12; PRO SP 14/216, nos. 70, 188.

  The close proximity of Baddesley Clinton to Rowington Hall means that evidence pointing to one tends also to support the other. Anne Vaux’s servant, John Grissold, may have come from Rowington, for example, but so did several servants of Henry Ferrers of Baddesley Clinton (cf. Laurence Cowper and William Shipton in BL Add. MS 4102, f. 13r and Hodgetts, ‘Certificate’, I, p. 28; II, p. 20). Thurstian Tubs of Rowington, examined in 1584, said that he heard of a priest at William Skinner’s house who ‘read upon a Latin portesse in his orchard or garden’. Three years earlier, at Skinner’s brother-in-law’s house ‘of Bushwood’, Tubs had met a priest ‘with his chalice and a book in his hand going toward Baddesley, but whether the same were the man which was said to be harboured at Mr Skinner’s or no, he knoweth not’ (PRO SP 12/167, f. 61r). Incidentally, Bushwood (alias Lapworth) Hall was the birthplace of Anne and Eleanor’s cousin, Robert Catesby, the architect of the Gunpowder Plot (Hodgetts, ‘Certificate’, I, 28).

  For the Catholicism of the Arden area more generally, see Brown, ‘Recusant Community’, pp. 297–9.

  4 PRO SP 12/229, f. 137r; Tesimond, Narrative, p. 185; ABSI Anglia A I, 73, f. 140r.

  5 Lessius and Androtius, The Treasure of Vowed Chastity, sigs *2, *5.

  6 Ibid., sigs *4v, *5r; pp. 3, 86–8, 93–100, 110–117; 151, 159, 176–7, 193, 196, 237.

  7 Southwell, Short Rule, sig. a5v.

  8 Ibid., pp. 48–59.

  9 Ibid., pp. 128–31.

  10 Ibid., pp. 30, 47; Rowlands, ‘Recusant Women’, pp. 163–4.

  11 Southwell, Short Rule, pp. 103–4, 135.

  12 PRO SP 14/19, f. 136.

  13 Finucane, Miracles and Pilgrims, p. 26. For the following discussion, I am particularly indebted to Alexandra Walsham’s article, ‘Miracles and the Counter-Reformation Mission to England’.

  14 Walsham, ‘Domme Preachers?’, esp. pp. 80–1, 93–123.

  15 Gerard, Autobiography, p. 49; Pollen, Unpublished Documents, p. 291.

  16 DEP, p. 296; Walsham, Providence, pp. 238–40.

  17 McClain, Lest We be Damned, p. 154.

  18 Redworth, Letters of Luisa de Carvajal, II, pp. 291–4.

  19 Holmes, Elizabethan Casuistry, pp. 82–3.

  20 Ibid., p. 87; Gerard, Autobiography, pp. 183–4; Holroyd, ‘Rich Embrodered Churchstuffe’, pp. 75–8.

  21 Lux-Sterritt, Redefining Female Religious Life, p. 97; Lessius and Androtius, The Treasure of Vowed Chastity, p. 172; The Egerton Papers, ed. J. Payne Collier (1840), p. 164.

  22 Gerard, Autobiography, p. 40.

  23 Holmes, Elizabethan Casuistry, pp. 24, 86. The spy Thomas Dodwell, who had informed on the Vauxes at Hackney, reported on the use of a tin chalice by priests in prison (Gerard, Autobiography, p. 216n).

  24 Holmes, Elizabethan Casuistr
y, pp. 39–40, 60, 104–6, 109 and Introduction.

  25 Ibid., pp. 4, 23, 81–3; Williams, ‘Forbidden Sacred Spaces’, pp. 97–103.

  26 Cox, Derbyshire Annals, I, p. 284.

  27 Gerard, Autobiography, p. 130.

  28 HMC Downshire, 3, p. 180.

  29 Rex, ‘Thomas Vavasour’, p. 442.

  30 Ibid.; Hodgetts, Secret Hiding-Places, pp. 9–12, 117; Hodgetts, ‘Loca Secretiora’.

  31 Hodgetts, Secret Hiding-Places, passim; Hogge, God’s Secret Agents, pp. 118–19.

  32 Hierarchomachia, cited by Shell, Oral Culture, p. 145.

  33 Caraman, Garnet, p. 125.

  34 Foley, Records, V, p. 470.

  35 Caraman, Garnet, p. 168; Hodgetts, ‘Loca Secretiora’, pp. 390–1.

  36 Caraman, Garnet, p. 55; Holmes, Elizabethan Casuistry, p. 77.

  37 Sheldon, Survey, pp. 29–31. ‘The perjury of Thomas Cornford’ is also cited in John Gee’s The Foot out of the Snare (1624).

  38 Bod MS Laud Misc. 655, f. 2; Sheldon, Survey, p. 31.

  39 Holmes, Elizabethan Casuistry, pp. 103, 123; Caraman, Garnet, p. 113.

  40 PRO E 377/32.

  41 Presumably this is why the third Lord Vaux bequeathed Frances £100 in his will, but ‘to the rest of her brothers and sisters one hundred pounds to be equally divided amongst them’ (PRO PROB 11/88/344). Hamilton, Chronicle, II, pp. 164–8.

  42 Williams, ‘Forbidden Sacred Spaces’, p. 113; Holmes, Elizabethan Casuistry, p. 23.

  43 Caraman, Garnet, p. 104n.

  44 Colleton, A Just Defence, p. 248; Shell, ‘Furor juvenilis’, p. 191. Caraman, Garnet, p. 218.

  45 Hamilton, Chronicle, II, p. 165.

  46 Foley, Records, V, pp. 598–600.

  47 Dillon, ‘Praying by Number’; Dekker, The Wonderful Year, p. 167. For other imaginative forms of Catholic renewal in England, see Walsham, ‘Translating Trent?’

  48 Hodgetts, ‘Certificate’, I, pp. 19, 28.

  49 ABSI Collectanea P II, f. 551.

  50 Caraman, Garnet, p. 215.

  51 Morris, Troubles, I, p. 177; Bod MS Eng. Th. B. 1, pp. 488, 490; Southwell, Short Rule, p. 69.

  52 Gerard, Autobiography, pp. 10, 17, 44–5.

  53 Bod MS Eng. Th. B. 1, p. 486; DEP, p. 216; Gerard, Autobiography, p. 239n.

  54 Southwell, ‘Two Letters’, p. 5.

  55 Hodgetts, ‘Certificate’, II, p. 7; McGrath and Rowe, ‘The Marian Priests’.

  56 ARSI Anglia 37, f. 259r (from discs held at ABSI); Foley, Records, VII, pp. 1347–55.

  57 ABSI Collectanea P II, f. 552.

  58 PRO SP 14/16, f. 55v. Strange stayed ‘for nearly two years’ (Gerard, Autobiography, p. 173, p. 248n).

  59 Gerard, Autobiography, p. 40; Caraman, Garnet, pp. 92, 204–5, 222–3, 233–4, 296.

  60 Caraman, Garnet, pp. 222, 276, 327; Gerard, Autobiography, pp. 45–8, 205.

  61 They had been captured at sea on their way to Goa in 1602 and taken to England, where they promptly escaped. Caraman, Garnet, pp. 297–8, 301.

  62 ABSI Collectanea P II, f. 551; Persons, ‘Memoirs’, 2, pp. 18, 36–7.

  63 Caraman, Garnet, pp. 122, 213, 217, 233.

  64 ARSI Anglia 37, f. 265v: ‘Fr Cowling’s Relation of our Fathers in England’ (from discs held at ABSI).

  65 HMC Salisbury, 17, p. 611; Bod MS Eng. Th. B. 2, p. 136; ABSI Collectanea P II, f. 580v.

  66 Gerard, Autobiography, pp. 40–1, p. 225n.

  67 Caraman, Garnet, p. 128.

  68 Gerard, Autobiography, p. 41.

  12 Virgo Becomes Virago

  1 ABSI Anglia A I, 73. Garnet’s account is in Latin. Morris (Troubles, I, pp. 149–51), Caraman (Garnet, pp. 128–35) and Anstruther (Vaux, pp. 186–91) all give lengthy translated extracts. The account above is taken largely from Anstruther with the kind permission of the Trustees of the English Province of the Order of Preachers. There is, sadly, no account of the raid in the State Papers.

  13 Hurly Burly

  1 Gerard, Autobiography, p. 42.

  2 Southwell, Humble Supplication, ed. Bald, App. I. The proclamation is dated 18 October 1591, but seems to have been issued towards the end of the following month.

  3 PRO SP 12/229, f. 137r.

  4 Caraman, Garnet, pp. 140–1.

  5 Southwell, Humble Supplication, pp. 2, 17, 34.

  6 Caraman, Garnet, p. 136; Devlin, Southwell, pp. 255–6; Petti, Letters and Despatches, pp. 39, 42.

  7 The Rambler, new series, 7 (1857), pp. 112–15.

  8 See the entries for Topcliffe by S. T. Bindoff in The History of Parliament: HoC 1558–1603, ed. Hasler, and by W. Richardson, in ODNB. For specific quotations, see: Gerard, Autobiography, pp. 68–70; Caraman, Garnet, p. 107; Hogge, God’s Secret Agents, p. 123.

  9 Bod MS Eng. Th. B. 1, p. 758.

  10 BL Harl. MS 6998, f. 185v.

  11 HMC Middleton, pp. 530–1; Jeaffreson, Middlesex County Records, I, p. 73; Gerard, Autobiography, p. 68.

  12 BL Harl. MS 6998, f. 250v; Jeaffreson, Middlesex County Records, I, p. 73.

  13 Petti, Letters and Despatches, pp. 97–8: original MS and copy by Grene.

  14 Southwell, ‘Two Letters’, p. 78.

  15 Ibid., p. 82; Petti, Letters and Despatches, pp. 67–8.

  16 BL Lans. MS 72, f. 113.

  17 Southwell, ‘Two Letters’, pp. 77–8, 121n.

  18 Gerard, Autobiography, p. 26.

  19 Caraman, Garnet, pp. 197–8.

  20 Southwell, ‘Two Letters’, ed. Brown, pp. xvi, xxxix–xl.

  21 Petti, Letters and Despatches, p. 68.

  22 Ibid.; Caraman, Garnet, pp. 162, 195, 198.

  23 Caraman, Garnet, p. 196; Southwell, ‘Two Letters’, pp. xlii–xliii.

  24 Devlin, Southwell, pp. 88, 235.

  25 Ibid., p. 314; Southwell, ‘Two Letters’, p. 7; Petti, Letters and Despatches, p. 79.

  26 Southwell, ‘Two Letters’, pp. 81, 83.

  27 Caraman, Garnet, p. 162; Gerard, Autobiography, p. 26.

  28 Devlin, Southwell, p. 179.

  29 Caraman, Garnet, p. 168. Also Caraman, The Other Face, p. 129.

  30 Caraman, Garnet, pp. 152–3, 163, 177.

  31 Pollen, Unpublished Documents, pp. 237, 257, 259; Bod MS Eng. Th. B. 1, p. 758; Caraman, Garnet, pp. 190–1.

  32 Morris, Troubles, I, p. 177; Anstruther, Vaux, pp. 193–4.

  33 Caraman, Garnet, p. 152.

  34 ABSI Collectanea P II, f. 550; Caraman, Garnet, p. 185.

  35 Alford, The Watchers, pp. 300–8. For Walpole’s alleged involvement with the Irish assassins, see Hogge, God’s Secret Agents, p. 240.

  36 ABSI Collectanea P II, f. 550; Caraman, Garnet, pp. 185–7; Gerard, Autobiography, p. 54.

  37 Gerard, Autobiography, p. 59.

  38 Ibid., p. 65.

  39 Caraman, Garnet, pp. 188–9.

  40 Gerard, Autobiography, pp. 68, 77; ABSI Collectanea P II, f. 550.

  14 Hot Holy Ladies

  1 Lessius and Androtius, The Treasure of Vowed Chastity, sigs *2r–*6v; Walpole, The Life of B. Father Ignatius, sig. A2.

  2 Watson, Decacordon, pp. 17, 37, 39, 40.

  3 Christopher Bagshaw, A Sparing Discoverie of Our English Jesuits (1601), in Donnelly, Jesuit Writings, pp. 252, 254.

  4 Watson, ‘Preface’ to John Mush’s A Dialogue betwixt a Secular Priest and a Lay Gentleman, in Donnelly, Jesuit Writings, p. 256.

  5 McCoog, ‘Construing Martyrdom’, pp. 106–20; Watson, ‘Preface’, in Donnelly, Jesuit Writings, p. 255.

  6 Watson, Decacordon, p. 109; Persons, ‘Memoirs’, 2, pp. 37, 41; Caraman, The Other Face, p. 131.

  7 Caraman, Garnet, p. 207.

  8 Watson, Decacordon, pp. 37, 40, 44. Bagshaw, Sparing Discoverie, p. 252.

  9 Bruce, ‘Observations’, p. 74.

  10 BL Add. MS 39828, f. 260r; 39829, f. 11r.

  11 Finch, Wealth, App. VIII, lists nineteen principal lawsuits. It excludes subsidiary cases and, as the Tresham Papers reveal, is by no means exhaustive. See, for
example, Tresham’s letter to his sister, Lady Vaux, of 22 February 1593 (BL Add. MS 39828, ff. 191–2), in which he complains of ‘restless vexation in the law’.

  12 BL Add. MS 39829, f. 11r.

  13 BL Add. MS 39828, ff. 269r–270r.

  14 Ibid., f. 269r.

  15 BL Add. MS 39829, f. 11v. Also: 39828, f. 278r. For the proclamation of 10 January 1581, see Strype, Annals, III, pt I, pp. 58–9.

  16 BL Add. MS 39829, f. 13.

  17 BL Add. MS 39828, f. 277r.

  18 Ibid., ff. 271–2.

  19 Brigden, New Worlds, Lost Worlds, p. 300.

  20 McGrath, Papists and Puritans, pp. 177n, 255–6.

  21 Lord Burghley, quoted by Alford, Burghley, p. 323.

  22 See, for example, Marsh, Popular Religion, p. 23.

  23 BL Add. MS 39828, f. 277r; PRO SP 12/287, f. 72r; Foley, Records, III, p. 502; Fitzalan-Howard, Lives, pp. 225–6.

  24 Morris, Troubles, I, pp. 177–8.

  25 ABSI Collectanea P II, f. 551.

  26 Gerard, Autobiography, pp. 156–7; Morris, Troubles, I, p. 178–80. For the possibility that Garnet kept a printing press at the house in Spitalfields, see Brown, ‘Paperchase’, pp. 132–40.

  27 ABSI Collectanea P II, f. 551.

  28 PRO SP 14/216/188–9.

  29 Caraman, Garnet, pp. 245–6.

  30 ABSI Collectanea P II, ff. 553v, 554v.

  PART THREE: ELIZA

  15 Brazen-faced Bravados

  1 Carvajal, Epistolario, no. 135. I am grateful to George McPherson for his translation from the Spanish.

  2 Gerard, Autobiography, pp. 148–9. According to a document in the Court of Wards (PRO WARD 3/18 part 2), Eliza was thirty-three in 1598.

  3 BL Add. MS 39829, f. 12v.

  4 BL Add. MS 39828, f. 169r.

  5 Ibid., ff. 187v, 270v; Gerard, Autobiography, p. 148.

  6 BL Add. MS 39828, ff. 169r, 270v; PRO C2/Eliz./U2/12 (Ambrose Vaux contra George Vaux, 6 November 1590); Vaux Petitions, Minutes, p. 203.

  7 BL Add. MS 39828, ff. 169r, 187v, 191r, 209r.

  8 PRO SP 12/233, f. 13.

  9 Vallance, ‘The Ropers and Their Monuments’, pp. 148, 151–6; J. G. Nicholas, ‘Sepulchral Memorials of the English Formerly at Bruges’, The Topographer and Genealogist, II (1853), p. 469.

  10 HMC Downshire, 6, no. 167, p. 71; CP, 114, ff. 84–5 (quotations at f. 84r).

  11 PRO SP 14/70, f. 54v.

  12 Poulton, John Dowland, pp. 433–4.