God’s Traitors: Terror & Faith in Elizabethan England

by Childs, Jessie

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  Acknowledgements

  I owe a great deal to the many works of the many scholars listed, with gratitude, in the Notes and Bibliography. I would particularly like to salute the Dominican friar, Godfrey Anstruther, who first wrote about the Vaux family in 1953, as well as the more recent scholarship of Alexandra Walsham, Peter Lake, Michael Questier and Thomas McCoog. I have benefited enormously from, and thoroughly enjoyed, numerous conversations with Antonia Fraser on ‘the recs’, for which my heartfelt thanks. Support and advice have also come from Saul David, William Dalrymple, Simon Sebag Montefiore, Adrian Tinniswood and Richard Foreman. John Holland helped with the Latin, George McPherson with the Spanish and Nicola Newson and Giovanni Gabassi with the Italian.

  I am most grateful to the Trustees of the English Province of the Order of Preachers for allowing me to use Father Anstruther’s translation for chapter 12. Timothy Hacksley kindly permitted me to cite his thesis on the poems of Henry Vaux; the Revd Thomas McCoog, S.J., graciously did the same with his doctoral thesis on the Society of Jesus. I am also indebted to Father McCoog and his colleague at Farm Street, Anna Edwards, for their warm welco
me to the British Jesuit archives and their determined help sourcing manuscripts for me there.

  Thanks, too, to the talented and friendly librarians and archivists who have lent assistance at the Bodleian Library, the British Library, the National Archives, the College of Arms, the Inner Temple Library, the London Library, Northamptonshire Record Office, Leicestershire Record Office, the Shakespeare Centre, Westminster Diocesan Archives and the Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington, D.C.

  I am immensely grateful to Jan Graffius for showing me the remarkable collections at Stonyhurst; to David Waite, Managing Director of Wellingborough Golf Club, for heroically shifting the office furniture so I could peer at the Harrowden Hall priest-hole; and to the staff at Rushton Hall Hotel, who kindly showed me the Tresham oratory and priest-hole. I should also like to take this opportunity to thank the owners and custodians of the various historic houses whose priest-holes are on public view. Mentioned in this book, but by no means the only ones, are Baddesley Clinton and Coughton Court in Warwickshire and Harvington Hall in Worcestershire. Every school trip should include one of these places.

  Anthony Gilbey, the current Lord Vaux, was kind enough to encourage my pursuit of his ancestors and answer all my queries. Tom Baring of Baring Fine Art went out of his way to hunt the provenance of the third Lord and Lady Vaux’s portraits. Jo Baring and Sarah Keller read the typescript with eagle eyes and generous hearts.

  My deepest gratitude to my super agent, Andrew Lownie, and to Will Sulkin, an inspirational publisher, who always knew I would get there in the end, despite the babies and his own – richly deserved – retirement. His successor at Bodley Head, Stuart Williams, instantly knew what we were trying to achieve with the book and did not blink in his commitment to it: faith indeed. I am delighted to have the opportunity to appreciate and thank every person at Bodley Head who made an improving mark on the book, namely: Julia Connolly for the jacket design, Darren Bennett for the map and family tree, Mark Handsley for the copy-edit, Jane Howard for the proofread, Ben Murphy for the index, Eoin Dunne, Katherine Ailes and Ruth Waldram. Kay Peddle guided the book through every process with sensitivity, passion and flair; it has been a complete joy to work with her.

  My daughters, Isabella and Lara, made a considerable contribution to the delay in delivering this book, but also gave me the wonderful perspective of motherhood. I would like to thank them both, along with my nieces Matilda and Poppy, for our experiments in orange-juice writing; if only historical research and childcare were always so compatible. Fletch, you got me through it and I thank you for more than I can possibly put down here.