Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of illustrations
- Preface
- Note on the text
- List of abbreviations
- 1 Introduction
- 2 The local setting
- 3 The emergence of a Catholic dynasty: the Brownes of Cowdray
- 4 The Brownes, Catholicism and politics until the Ridolfi plot
- 5 The Brownes, Catholicism and politics from the 1570s until the early 1590s
- 6 The entourage of the first Viscount Montague
- 7 A period of transition
- 8 The 1590s to the Gunpowder plot
- 9 Catholic politics and clerical culture after the accession of James Stuart
- 10 The household and circle of the second Viscount Montague
- 11 ‘Grand captain’ or ‘little lord’: the second Viscount Montague as Catholic leader
- 12 The later Jacobean and early Caroline period
- 13 The second Viscount Montague, his entourage and the approbation controversy
- 14 Catholicism, clientage networks and the debates of the 1630s
- 15 Epilogue: the civil war and after
- Appendix 1 The Brownes in town and country
- Appendix 2 The families of Browne, Dormer, Gage and Arundell
- Index
- Titles in the series
13 - The second Viscount Montague, his entourage and the approbation controversy
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 06 July 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of illustrations
- Preface
- Note on the text
- List of abbreviations
- 1 Introduction
- 2 The local setting
- 3 The emergence of a Catholic dynasty: the Brownes of Cowdray
- 4 The Brownes, Catholicism and politics until the Ridolfi plot
- 5 The Brownes, Catholicism and politics from the 1570s until the early 1590s
- 6 The entourage of the first Viscount Montague
- 7 A period of transition
- 8 The 1590s to the Gunpowder plot
- 9 Catholic politics and clerical culture after the accession of James Stuart
- 10 The household and circle of the second Viscount Montague
- 11 ‘Grand captain’ or ‘little lord’: the second Viscount Montague as Catholic leader
- 12 The later Jacobean and early Caroline period
- 13 The second Viscount Montague, his entourage and the approbation controversy
- 14 Catholicism, clientage networks and the debates of the 1630s
- 15 Epilogue: the civil war and after
- Appendix 1 The Brownes in town and country
- Appendix 2 The families of Browne, Dormer, Gage and Arundell
- Index
- Titles in the series
Summary
It was almost inevitable that once Richard Smith had returned, armed with his new episcopal status and authority, to the bosom of those aristocratic families which traditionally rendered support to him and his friends, he would take the opportunity to try to realise what had previously been just hierarchalist hallucinations. Of course, he and his circle would claim that his rule over the Catholic community in England was purely benign and, indeed, fruitful, just as William Bishop's had been. Faction and discontent arose, Smith claimed, merely because of the emulous bitterness of his enemies. When he started to insist that Catholic clergymen in England should turn to him for ‘approbation’, i.e. the (theoretically automatic) licensing of missionary priests to hear the confessions of their ghostly children, his critics maliciously (said Smith) seized on this instance of his dutiful attention to his flock's spiritual welfare in order to attack him.
Smith's claims about the peacefulness and benignity of his rule were, however, in their essentials, severely economical with the truth. As David Lunn has shown from the archives of the Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith (De Propaganda Fide), in autumn 1626 Smith launched a visitation of the entire country and, though virtually no formal records of it survive, he occupied himself at this time by transmitting rude messages to Rome about his critics in the religious orders.
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- Information
- Catholicism and Community in Early Modern EnglandPolitics, Aristocratic Patronage and Religion, c.1550–1640, pp. 433 - 472Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2006