The years between Donne’s marriage in December 1601 and his ordination in January 1615 were the central period in his religious development during which, though he retained Catholic habits and sympathies, he began to refer to the Church of England as his church and ultimately took Anglican orders. Over forty years ago, G. R. Elliott pointed out how Donne’s biographers have slighted these middle years, portraying them as a merely dull hiatus between the libertine brilliance of Donne’s youth and hislater eloquent piety:

But Bald and earlier biographers have generally misunderstood Donne’s middle years, on account of their acceptance of the idea, first expressed by Walton, that at the time of his marriage Donne had long since discarded his Catholicism and was either a free-thinking sceptic or a convinced adherent to Anglicanism. This has obscured the character and crucial importance of the middle period, which (like the whole of Donne’s life and work) cannot be comprehended apart from the conflict between Protestantism and Catholicism that continued to polarise English religious life during the first decade of the seventeenth century.

The lesson of the Popish Plot, that the law was almost powerless against perjury, was widely applied in political accusations, administrative disputes and criminal prosecutions, particularly in the 1690s when so many former Exclusionists were in office or Parliament. MPs such as John Arnold, who had employed suborned evidence against the Monmouthshire Jesuits in attempting to overthrow the pro-Catholic Marcher magnate, the Duke of Beaufort, found it too good a weapon not to use in every-day politics. The Catholics, however, were not the main sufferers; the destruction of their Court party at the Revolution made them comparatively insignificant. Oates's successors, remembering the impunity with which he had attacked the Queen, James and Danby, laid their charges of treason against ministers or opposition leaders. However, one late offshoot of the Plot has caused some difficulties in Catholic history; it is another reminder that the compilers of the official records combined ignorance with their anti-Catholicism, holding with one judge during the Plot, that ‘They have such secret contrivances among themselves … that where there are two men that positively tell you a thing that lies within their knowledge and swear it is true, it is scarce any improbability that should weigh against such an evidence’. Land or money given to ‘superstitious’ uses was legally forfeit to the Crown under the Chantries Act (1 Edw. VI, c.14), extended (by implication) to the support of foundations abroad under 27 Eliz., c.2, sect. 4 The official findings in this decade are so odd that usually they have wisely been ignored; yet local historians can be deceived or confused. This investigation provides a full explanation and a glimpse of the Catholic underworld on which anti-Catholicism largely depended.

The two documents here transcribed as the core of a fuller account than any hitherto compiled of the escape from Government custody of a future martyr, the priest Ven. Thomas Tichborne, have in fact been in print since 1897. But though their previous editor, J. C. Jeaffreson, noted that these papers afforded new information unknown to Challoner when the latter published his brief account of the escape, yet Catholic historians who have written since the documents were printed have not been aware of them. Accordingly, since they first appeared in a context which Catholic writers have, not surprisingly, overlooked, there are grounds for republishing both documents freshly transcribed from the original manuscripts (now in the present writer's possession) and for elucidating them with the aid of notes and two sketch-maps, to retell more vividly a small incident played out in the streets of Elizabethan London, which cost two Catholics their lives.

When the Newcastle Chronicle in an editorial on ‘Irishmen in England’ in 1867 declared that ‘Tyneside is famous for itshospitality’, it was not merely voicing a random appeal for calm during the tense days of the Fenian scare. In spite of the fact that the North-East had by 1861 the fourth highest ratio of Irish to English in all England and Wales, the region had been, and continued to be, remarkably free from anti-Irish and anti-Catholic hostility. This was not because Irish immigration had been gradual: between 1841 and 1851 the Irish-born of Newcastle and County Durham—nearly all of whom were Catholic—had increased their numbers by over 200%. By the latter date, the Irish-born numbered over 25,000 and together with their English progeny comprised most of the 38,000 Catholics estimated to be in Newcastle and County Durham in 18525. In the 1830’s the Irish presence had been negligible, but by 1851 the Irish-born alone made up 5.1% of the total populationand 8% of Newcastle’s population. By 1861 a correspondent of the Nation reported of the Irish within a ten-mile radius of Newcastle that ‘except in London, Liverpool, and Manchester, there is no such Irish force to be met with in England’. Yet, despite this, only one anti-Irish riot of significance ever took place in Newcastle. This was during the No-Popery agitation of 1851 when a street preacher (by legend ‘Ranter Dick’) began a harangue in the midst of the dense population of Irish Catholics in the Newcastle slum of Sandgate. That the riotingwas never repeated nor matched elsewhere in the North-East, and that it wassoon rendered into a Geordie song more amusing than bitter, is only one of the many indications of the ephemeral nature of the No-Popery crusade in the North-East. Together with the evidence of bonhomie shown toward the Irish Catholics by, for example, Poor Law officials and city corporations, the region stands in contrast to those areas of England, Scotland and Wales where the Irish Catholics appear to have been surrounded by acrimony.

With the accession of James VI of Scotland to England’s throne as James I, many English Catholics began hoping that the vexing question of religion would soon be resolved in a manner not unfavourable to their faith. James, after all, was the son of the Catholic Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots, and it seemed not impossible that he would convert to the Catholic faith. The diplomatic contact with Spain that would eventually produce the Treaty of 1604 was already in process and religious toleration was one element in the discussion. But the more significant grounds for Catholics’ hope came most certainly from the position on the English religious question enunciated by the King himself. As his reign began, James seemed to be demonstrating a more favourable attitude towards Catholics than towards Puritans. His Basilikon Down declared the Church of Rome and the Church of England ‘agree in the grounds’, while his first speech to Parliament in March 1604 characterized Catholicism as ‘a religion, falsely called Catholik, but trewly Papist’, while defining the Puritans, as ‘a sect rather than a Religion’.

IT is well known that during the latter part of the reign of Elizabeth I prominent papists were, from time to time, imprisoned in castles or large houses. That was done whenever the privy council felt that there were dangers threatening England which would become more dangerous if influential papists were allowed to remain at liberty. It was a cheap way to restrain the liberty of papists, as the owners of the buildings used as prisons were required to put them into repair and maintain them at their own expense, while the prisoners were required to pay for their board and lodging. Although the practice is a commonplace, its origins and development are less well known.

Indictments are of frequent occurrence in post-Reformation Catholic history, and it is important that their precise effect should be known. The length and prolixity of Tudor indictments, however, cause difficulty to many readers of these documents, and that difficulty is often increased by a lack of acquaintance with the technicalities involved. Indictments are technical documents and they can only be properly understood in the light of the technical rules which regulated them. Accordingly, the purpose of this paper is to deal generally with some of the more important rules governing indictments, and then to illustrate their application by means of the indictment of St. Thomas More. More's indictment is a convenient one for this purpose because it neatly illustrates a common pitfall, and the general circumstances of More's condemnation are so well known that it is unnecessary to set them out.

In historical narratives of the Tudor Period, disquisitions on the papal deposing power usually occur as comments on the events of the year 1570, when Pius V issued the Bull Regnans in Excelsis, declaring Queen Elizabeth to be a usurper. Catholic opinion on the deposing power, however, underwent many fluctuations and changes of emphasis in the years that followed. It may be profitable, therefore, to trace the history of the ideas of the English Catholics about the temporal power of the Pope during the seventy years which followed Regnans in Excelsis. In the present article we shall follow the changes as they are reflected in the printed books of those years, and documentary evidence will only be adduced to explain and comment on published statements.

This bibliography, like those in previous Newsletters, has been compiled largely from a search of periodicals, especially those taken by the Institute of Historical Research. The items listed cover the period from the accession of Elizabeth I to the first Vatican Council. The publications of the Catholic Record Society, the Catholic Archives Society and the local recusant societies (Essex Recusant, Kent Recusant History, London Recusant, Northern Catholic History, North-West Catholic History, Staffordshire Catholic History and Worcestershire Recusant) have not been included.

In the early development of their spiritual and theological roots, the Sisters of Mercy are indebted to many Irish diocesan priests and to many religious orders active in Dublin and the surrounding area during the early nineteenth century, especially to those most supportive of Catherine McAuley and the first Sisters of Mercy prior to and following the founding of the Institute of Mercy in Baggot Street in 1831. Among the religious orders, the Carmelite Fathers on Clarendon Street, the Presentation Sisters on George’s Hill, the Dominican Fathers at Carlow College, the Irish Sisters of Charity (in the person of their founder, Mary Aikenhead), the Poor Clares, and the Irish Christian Brothers come immediately to mind. The theological debt of Catherine McAuley (1778–1841) and the Sisters of Mercy to the Society of Jesus, however, is fundamental and quite specific. The subsequent historical affiliations of the Sisters of Mercy with members of the Society of Jesus and the frequent consultations which many congregations of Sisters of Mercy have had, and continue to have, with various Jesuit advisers and spiritual directors have their earliest exemplar in the remarkably close association of Catherine McAuley with the classical religious writings of the well-known sixteenth-century Spanish Jesuit theologian, Alonso Rodriguez (1526–1616). This intellectual relationship is suggested by much in Catherine’s thought and writing, but, for the purpose of this article, most notably in the remarkable parallels that exist between Catherine’s only long essay and Rodriguez’s early seventeenth-century essay on the same general theme.

St Francis de Sales’ devotional manual, An Introduction to a Devout Life (1609), had a complex but fascinating reception history in seventeenth-century England and Scotland. Collectively, the English-language editions in this century include two translations and, perhaps most interestingly, several reformed editions. It is curious that a post-Reformation, Tridentine Catholic work, written by a French bishop dedicated to converting Protestant ‘Heretiques,’ would appeal to both Catholics and Protestants alike. Most of the seventeenth-century English editions were published abroad in Douai, Paris, St Omer, and Rouen, places that were home to many English and Scottish exiled communities, both lay and religious. Two of the three reformed editions were published in England, evidence of the Introduction’s widespread readership and its importance to seventeenth-century English devotion. Finally, during James II’s reign two Catholic editions were openly published, one in England and the other in Scotland.

Hamlet has made the name of Elsinore, the Danish Helsingor, familiar to everyone. It is a small seaport at the narrowest part of the Sound, opposite the Swedish town of Helsingborg. During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, its Baltic traffic was of great importance, and here, in 1580, two Englishmen met by accident.

Among the most prominent Lincolnshire families in Tudor and Jacobean times were the Tyrwhitts of Kettleby and Twigmore. Other Lincolnshire branches of the family were seated at Scotter, Cammeringham and Stainfield. The Victoria County History of Lincolnshire says, ‘To follow various members of the Tyrwhitt family, whose names re-appear from first to last in connexion with Romanist sympathy, is to trace the history of recusancy in the county.’ But some important parts of the history of the Kettleby Tyrwhitts have been confused or overlooked by historians, and the record should be corrected. Here we shall focus on one of the sons of Sir Robert Tyrwhitt of Kettleby, a son who died in prison in 1580. In a further article we will identify a grandson of Sir Robert who gave John Gerard SJ much financial support from about 1598 until Gerard left England in 1606.

Shrewsbury, like many towns of eighteenth century England, bears witness to the slow emergence of an urban Catholic community. The fact that its first Catholic chapel could be built as early as 1776, two years before the first Relief Act, and thus laying the community open to serious reprisals, is an indication of the easing of relations between the Catholic and his neighbours. It was not until 1791 that the building of chapels was permitted, but after 1778 most of the penal restraints were removed from the statute book. This, too, is a reflection of growing toleration rather than its cause, although it was prompted immediately by the need to recruit Catholic highlanders into the army. The ’45 could now be forgotten and the Catholic tended to be regarded as a somewhat quaint, though harmless, figure. This was a time of transition from country to town and perhaps the Catholic community, unencumbered by the social restraints of the establishment from which it had been excluded for so long, was to gain particularly from the change. The Catholic Brook family of Madeley Court, for example, felt free to turn its attention to industry, opening the first iron forge in Coalbrookdale, the cradle of the Industrial Revolution.

Around the main actors in the drama of the Oxford Movement there was a supporting cast of secondary figures which have remained in relative darkness; the increasing glow of attention focused on the central characters, Newman in particular, appears to have relegated them even further into obscurity. Samuel Francis Wood belonged to this group of people, and he is perhaps the most attractive of the personalities among them: loyal, generous, warm, affectionate towards his friends and passionate in the promotion of the causes he espoused. He was destined to be on most intimate terms of friendship with both Newman and Manning, acting as a bridge—together with the Wilberforces—between these two extraordinary personalities.

The most insistent theme in Donne's writings is his sometimes trivial obsession with suicide and martyrdom. From his ‘Paradoxes’ to his last sermon this theme runs through his prose, and it is no less a constant preoccupation of his verse. That the Jacobeans in their melancholy were obsessed with death has often been observed; but Donne's obsession was a special one, a quintessence of Jacobean melancholy, distilled in him by a special circumstance of his life: he had been born a Catholic. Donne's personal rebellion against the trend of religion in his society was a lifelong struggle within him, though the seed of his rebelliousness grew in his words and deeds to be a trifling thing. This seed had been nurtured by his mother, who lived all her long life a stubborn Catholic, almost outliving her apostate son. She reared him to be a soldier for the Old Faith, bringing him into association with hunted and martyred priests, as if by their example he might learn to savour death. Somehow, this strange education led Donne not into the path of righteous fidelity, but to a bemused fascination with death by self-murder, a cavalier irony that is one of the hallmarks of his style.

Among the archives of the Archbishop of Westminster is a four-page list of ‘Persons of Quality’ and their chaplains and of other Mass-centres, riding-missions, etc. marked in pencil ‘between 1695 and 1710—c. 1701’ possibly because the latter was the year when the Catholic eighth Duke of Norfolk, who heads the list, succeeded to the title. It is, however, possible to assign a more accurate date to this document, i.e. between 14 September 1704 when Sir Henry Arundell Bedingfield—born in 1689 and marked ‘yet minor’ in the list—succeeded to the baronetcy and 11 May 1706 when Lord Carrington died without issue. It may be that further investigation can narrow down the date still further. The document gives no indication of the purpose for which it was compiled though the tenor of its final page suggests that it was drawn up by a secular priest, probably a member of the Old Chapter. The contents of the document are summed-up in a note added in a later hand at the end: ‘This paper tells whether the family was served by a clergyman, that is a secular priest or by a regular viz. a Jesuit (underlined) or a Monk or a Friar’.

On 23rd November, 1584, the fifth Parliament of Queen Elizabeth introduced a bill against “Jesuits, seminary priests and such other like disobedient persons,” which proposed to order all Catholic priests ordained since the feast of the Nativity of St. John the Baptist, 1559, to leave the country within forty days after the end of the current session of Parliament or suffer pain of death for high treason, their aiders and abettors to be adjudged felons and condemned to death as felons. This bill passed its third reading in the House of Commons on December 19, 1584, but it was not taken up by the House of Lords until after the Christmas recess.