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A dancer made a recusant: dance and evangelization in the Jacobean North East of England

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 September 2018

Gašper Jakovac*
Affiliation:
Department of English Studies, Durham University, Hallgarth House, 77 Hallgarth Street, Durham, DH1 3AY, UK. Email: gasper.jakovac@durham.ac.uk

Abstract

In the summer of 1615, a newly discovered Catholic conspiracy prompted William James, bishop of Durham, to vigorously correspond with the archbishop of Canterbury. On 3 August, in the midst of the crisis, the bishop incarcerated a professional dancer, Robert Hindmers (b. 1585). Together with his wife Anne, Robert was associated with the Newcastle-based secular priest William Southerne and involved in Catholic evangelising in the diocese of Durham. This article discusses the biography and career of Robert Hindmers, and speculates about the role of dancing within the Durham Catholic community. It also analyses how the activities of the Hindmers were perceived by the ecclesiastical authorities. The case of Robert Hindmers traverses and links many related issues, such as Counter-Reformation culture, traditional festivity, religious politics, and the interconnectedness of elite and popular cultures. But above all, it expands our understanding of Catholic missionary strategies in post-Reformation England by suggesting that dance instruction might have been used by Catholics to access households and assist the mission.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
© Trustees of the Catholic Record Society 2018. Published by Cambridge University Press 

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Footnotes

*

Research for this article was generously supported by the Gerda Henkel Foundation, Arts and Humanities Research Council, and the City of Ljubljana. I am deeply grateful to Professor Barbara Ravelhofer, Professor David Klausner, Dr Nicoletta Asciuto, and Dr Christian Schneider for their encouragement and useful comments on the previous versions of this article.

References

1 William James to George Abbot, 16 August 1615, Kew, The National Archives (hereafter TNA) State Papers Domestic, James I (hereafter SPD Jam. I), SP 14/81, ff. 92r–93v.

2 The papers relating to the plot are known to scholars, see Forster, Ann M. C., ‘Ven. William Southerne: Another Tyneside Martyr’, Recusant History (hereafter RH) 4 (1957–1958): 199216 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The article was later republished with slight alterations in Northern Catholic History (hereafter NCH) 26 (1987): 6–16.

3 Newkirk to James, 20 August 1615, TNA, SPD Jam. I, SP 14/81, f. 115v. Manuscript sources are quoted in their original spelling. For the sake of clarity, superfluous punctuation is sometimes omitted, abbreviations expanded in italics, and superior letters and superscriptions lowered to the line.

4 James to Abbot, 23 August 1615, TNA, SPD Jam. I, SP 14/81, f. 113r.

5 Abbot to Winwood, 17 August 1615, TNA, SPD Jam. I, SP 14/81, ff. 96r–97v.

6 See Newkirk’s last report from 17 September 1615, TNA, SPD Jam. I, SP 14/81, ff. 167r–69v, and excerpts from his memorials dating between 17 September and 22 October: TNA, SPD Jam. I, SP 14/88, ff. 217r–18r.

7 James to Abbot, 16 August 1615, TNA, SPD Jam. I, SP 14/81, f. 92r.

8 Ibid., f. 92r.

9 On Newcastle Hostmen and their coal-trade monopoly, see Hatcher, John, The History of the British Coal Industry, Vol 1. Before 1700: Towards the Age of Coal (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993), 509525 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Welford, Robert, History of Newcastle and Gateshead, 3 vols. (London: Scott, 1884–7), 2:5355 Google Scholar, 136–43; F. W. Dendy, Extracts from the Records of the Company of Hostmen of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Publications of the Surtees Society, vol. 105 (Durham: Andrews, 1901), xxix–xxxiii; Healy, Simon, ‘The Tyneside Lobby on the Thames: Politics and Economic Issues, c. 1580–1630’, in Diana Newton and A. J. Pollard, eds. Newcastle and Gateshead Before 1700 (Chichester: Phillimore, 2009), 219240 Google Scholar.

10 Rosamund Oates, ‘Catholicism, Conformity and the Community in the Elizabethan Diocese of Durham’, Northern History (hereafter NH) 43/1 (2006): 53–76 at 67–76; Clavering, Eric, ‘Catholics and the Rise of the Durham Coal Trade’, NCH 16 (1982): 1632 Google Scholar; James, Mervyn, Family, Lineage, and Civil Society: A Study of Society, Politics, and Mentality in the Durham Region, 1500–1640 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1974), 70 Google Scholar, 138–40; see also the report of Zeth Beridge alias William Morton the vicar of St. Nicholas’ in Newcastle and archdeacon of Durham, to Winwood on religious inclinations of Newcastle aldermen from 24 September 1616: TNA, SPD Jam. I, SP 14/88, f. 149r–v.

11 See his first letter to Robert Cecil from 16 January 1597: TNA, State Papers Domestic, Elizabeth I (hereafter SPD Eliz. I), SP 12/262, f. 18r–v. Describing the North as uncivil and Catholic was a commonplace in the early modern period; for a succinct discussion of the issue see Newton, Diana, North-East England, 1569–1625: Governance, Culture and Identity (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2006), 105125 Google Scholar.

12 Oates, ‘Catholicism, Conformity and the Community’, 71–3; cf. James to Cecil, 9 December 1605, TNA, SPD Jam. I, SP 14/17, f. 32v; A list of recusants in Durham, 1608, Lambeth Palace Library (hereafter LP), Thomas Murray Papers (hereafter TMP), MS 663, f. 50r–v.

13 Questier, Michael, ‘The Politics of Religious Conformity and the Accession of James I’, Historical Research (hereafter HR) 71/174 (1998): 1430 CrossRefGoogle Scholar at 30.

14 Clare Talbot, ed. Miscellanea: Recusant records, Publications of the Catholic Record Society, vol. 53 (London: Catholic Record Society, 1961), 60. Cf. John A. Hilton, ‘Catholicism in Elizabethan Northumberland’, NH 13/1 (1977): 44–58 at 53. This is not to deny that a strong residual Puritan tradition, stretching back to John Knox’s ministry, was equally if not more prevalent in the city; see Howell, Roger, Newcastle upon Tyne and the Puritan Revolution: A Study of the Civil War in North England (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1967), 63119 Google Scholar; Christine M. Newman, ‘The Reformation Era in Newcastle, 1530–1662’, in Newcastle and Gateshead Before 1700, 189–218.

15 James, Family, Lineage, and Civil Society, 142–3; John A. Hilton, ‘Catholicism in Jacobean Durham’, RH 14 (1977): 78–85.

16 See the extant recusant report for county Durham in LP, TMP, MS 663, f. 50r–v and a list of recusants in the diocese of Durham from 4 November 1613 appended to William James’ letter to the Privy Council regarding the recent musters in the county, TNA, SPD Jam. I, SP 14/75, ff. 3v–4r.

17 A list of recusants indicted in the county of Durham, c. 1615, LP, Miscellaneous Papers (hereafter Misc.), MS 930/123, 1 f.; and Durham quarter session indictments of 19 April 1615, in C. M. Fraser, ed. Durham Quarter Sessions Rolls, 1471-1625, Publications of the Surtees Society, vol. 199 (Durham: Surtees Society, 1991), 245–9. The number suggested by MS 930/123 is in contradiction with the number in the 1615 Quarter sessions. The former reports 432 recusants, indicating that the levels of recusancy had almost returned to those of 1608, while the latter amount to c. 330 individuals. The reason for this discrepancy may be due to the missing Michaelmas and Epiphany Quarter sessions records for 1615. Cf. Hilton, ‘Catholicism in Jacobean Durham’, 81; James, Family, Lineage, and Civil Society, 142–3.

18 James to Winwood, 17 June 1616, TNA, SPD Jam. I, SP 14/80, f. 184r.

19 Ibid.

20 Ibid.

21 Henry Anderson to the Privy Council, 28 March 1616, TNA, SPD Jam. I, SP 14/86, f. 197r, published in George Ornsby, ed. Selections from the Household Books of the Lord William Howard of Naworth Castle, Publications of the Surtees Society, vol. 68 (Durham, 1878), 432.

22 Watts, Sheldon J. and Watts, Susan J., From Border to Middle Shire: Northumberland 1586–1625 (Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1975), 179191 Google Scholar.

23 Cf. Clavering, ‘Catholics and the Rise’, 18; Newton, North-East England, 126–35.

24 Information of Christopher Newkirk, 2 August 1615, TNA, SPD Jam. I, SP 14/81, fol. 85r; James, Family, Lineage, and Civil Society, 138–9; William Palmes, Life of Mrs. Dorothy Lawson of St. Anthony’s near Newcastle, ed. G. B. Richardson (London, 1885).

25 In 1626, Bishop Neile was still struggling to break this Tyneside connection. Neile to Privy Council, 20 June 1626, TNA, State Papers Domestic, Charles I, SP 16/30, ff. 62r–63v. In November 1625, the Protestant mayor of Newcastle, Thomas Liddell, defended his Catholic neighbours by dismissing Neile’s claims. Welford, History of Newcastle and Gateshead, 3:264–65.

26 James to Abbot, 16 August 1615, TNA, SPD Jam. I, SP 14/81, f. 92r.

27 The itinerant recusant dancer has only received a short remark by J. A. Hilton, who mentions the episode to illustrate glimpses of cultural life among Durham Catholics, in ‘Catholicism in Jacobean Durham’, 82.

28 On the ambiguity of the records of performance, particularly those involving women, see Mueller, Sara, ‘Touring, Women, and the English Professional Stage’, Early Theatre 11/1 (2008): 5376 Google Scholar. Although evidence is scarce, scholars have been increasingly more interested in women’s performance in England before 1660, see Allen Brown, Pamela and Parolin, Peter, eds. Women Players in England, 1500–1660: Beyond All-Male Stage (Farnham: Ashgate, 2005)Google Scholar; Katritzky, M. A., Women, Medicine, and Theatre, 1500–1750: Literary Mountbanks and Performing Quacks (Farnham: Ashgate, 2007)Google Scholar.

29 On the controversies surrounding the oath see Questier, Michael, ‘Loyalty, Religion and State Power in Early Modern England: English Romanism and the Jacobean Oath of Allegiance’, The Historical Journal 40/2 (1997): 311329 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Sommerville, Johann P., ‘Papalist Political Thought and the Controversy Over the Jacobean Oath of Allegiancein Ethan Shagan, ed. Catholics and the “Protestant Nation” (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2005), 162184 Google Scholar; Tutino, Stefania, Law and Conscience: Catholicism in Early–Modern England, 1570–1625 (Farnham: Ashgate, 2007), 132193 Google Scholar.

30 The High Commission court, 1614–7, Durham Cathedral Library (hereafter DCL), DCD/D/SJB/7.

31 The High Commission court, 1614–7, DCL, DCD/D/SJB/7, f. 27v.

32 Ibid., f. 28r.

33 Ibid. Such conferences with nonconformists were common particularly in High Commission cases, see Questier, Michael, Conversion, Politics and Religion in England, 1580–1625 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 173 Google Scholar.

34 The High Commission court, DCL, DCD/D/SJB/7, f. 28r.

35 St. Mary-le-Bow parish register, Durham County Record Office (hereafter DRO), M42/313.

36 St. Nicholas parish register, DRO, M42/325.

37 At the time, Newcastle’s population was growing due to the expanding coal trade. The relocation of the Hindmers family agrees with general migration patterns and would not have been uncommon; see Burn, Andy, ‘Work before Play: The Occupational Structure of Newcastle upon Tyne, 1600-1710’, in Adrian Green and Barbara Crosbie, eds. The Economy and Culture of North East England, c. 1500–1800 (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2018), 115135 Google Scholar.

38 Forster, ‘Ven. William Southerne’, 203–05.

39 See Memorials of Newkirk, 7 August 1615, TNA, SPD Jam. I, SP 14/81, f. 94r–v for all the details of that particular evening.

40 Memorials of Newkirk, 7 August 1615, TNA, SPD Jam. I, SP 14/81, f. 94r.

41 Ibid.

42 Memorials of Newkirk, 7 August 1615, TNA, SPD Jam. I, SP 14/81, f. 94v.

43 Ibid.

44 Questier, Conversion, Politics and Religion, 174–75; Forster, ‘Ven. William Southerne’, 208–10.

45 See Marie B. Rowlands, ‘Hidden People: Catholic Commoners, 1558–1625’, in Marie B. Rowlands, ed. Catholics of Parish and Town, 1558–1778, Publications of the Catholic Record Society, Monograph Series, vol. 5 (London: Catholic Record Society, 1999), 10–35 at 15–19, 26–30.

46 Talbot, Miscellanea, 45, 57.

47 W. H. D. Longstaffe, ed. The Acts of the High Commission Court within the Diocese of Durham, Publications of the Surtees Society, vol. 34 (Durham: Andrews, 1858), 77–78.

48 TNA, SPD Eliz. I., SP 12/151, f. 44v. I am greatly indebted to one of the anonymous reviewers, who brought to my attention the sources relating to musician John Jacob. The reviewer also suggested to me that in spite of being bound in a volume of papers for 1581, the report by Worsley and Newell actually dates from 1592–93. It mentions antiquarian Thomas Habington as being held in prison at Worcester: TNA, SP 12/151, f. 44r. Habington was kept in the Tower from 1586 until 1592 and was only for a brief period, before his final release in 1593, confined at Worcester. The revised date fits well with the date of Jacob’s committal to the Clink in January 1593. See Anthony G. Petti, ed. Recusant Documents from the Ellesmere Manuscripts, Publications of the Catholic Record Society, vol. 60 (London: Catholic Record Society, 1968), 60.

49 TNA, SP 12/151, f. 44v.

50 TNA, Acts of the Privy Council of England, PC 2/13, f. 489r; cf. Simpson, Richard, Edmund Campion: a Biography (London: Williams and Norgate, 1867), 300 Google Scholar.

51 See David Mills’ discussion of the nomenclature in Elizabeth Baldwin and David Mills, Paying the Piper: Music in Pre-1642 Cheshire (Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, Western Michigan University, 2002), 14–24; cf. McGee, Timothy J., ‘The Fall of the Noble Minstrel: The Sixteenth-Century Minstrel in a Musical Context’, Medieval and Renaissance Drama in England 7 (1995): 98120 Google Scholar; for the employment prospects of early modern musicians, see Marsh, Christopher, Music and Society in Early Modern England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 107172 Google Scholar. For New College, Oxford, see Joseph Foster, ed. Alumni Oxonienses: The Members of the University of Oxford, 1500–1714, vol. 2 (London: Parker, 1891), 797; cf. Andrew Clark, ed. Register of the University of Oxford, vol. 2, part 2 (Oxford: Oxford Historical Society, 1887), 22. At the time, Jacob would have been in his twenties; in 1593, he was around 55 years old. Petti, Recusant Documents, 60.

52 Miscellanea II, Publications of the Catholic Record Society, vol. 2. (London: Catholic Record Society, 1906), 233, 235.

53 Miscellanea II, 221.

54 Caraman, Philip, ed. John Gerard: the Autobiography of an Elizabethan (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2012), 56 Google Scholar.

55 Ibid., 6, 271.

56 Petti, Recusant Documents, 60, 83; the identification of John Jacob from the Clink with Jacob arrested in Lyford in 1581 was first made by Petti in notes to this examination: Recusant Documents, 81–82.

57 Petti, Recusant Documents, 60.

58 Ibid., 61.

59 Ibid., 82.

60 Murphy, Emilie K. M., ‘Music and Catholic Culture in Post-Reformation Lancashire: Piety, Protest, and Conversion’, British Catholic History 32/4 (2015): 492525 Google Scholar at 522.

61 Murphy, ‘Music and Catholic Culture in Post-Reformation Lancashire’, 523.

62 For more on Lord William’s life as a politician and a man of letters see Ornsby, Selections from the Household Books, i–lxxiii; H. S. Reinmuth, ‘Lord William Howard (1563–1640) and his Catholic Associations’, RH 12 (1973–4): 226–34; and Priscilla Bawcutt, ‘Lord William Howard of Naworth (1563–1640): Antiquary, Book Collector, and Owner of the Scottish Devotional Manuscript British Library, Arundel 285’, Textual Cultures 7/1 (2012): 158–75.

63 Watts, From Border to Middle Shire, 182–4.

64 Reinmuth, ‘Lord William Howard’, 232; Michael C. Questier, ed. Newsletters from the Archpresbyterate of George Birkhead, Camden Fifth Series, vol. 12 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 117.

65 See the story of a recusant hagiographer Nicholas Roscarrock (d. 1634), who became tutor to Lord Howard’s sons: Reinmuth, ‘Lord William Howard’, 232–34; an account of Lord Howard’s alleged misconducts in the North, February 1616, TNA, SPD Jam. I, SP 14/86 ff. 68r–69v, published in Ornsby, Selections from the Household Books, 423–5; REED: Cumberland, Westmorland, Gloucestershire, 218); Morton to Abbot, 7 May 1616, TNA, SPD Jam. I., SP 14/87, ff. 18r–19r; Morton to Winwood, 9 May 1617, TNA, SPD Jam. I., SP 14/92 ff. 86r–87v. Calendar states that the last letter was written by William Morton, but it is clearly in the hand of Henry Anderson, an influential Puritan citizen of Newcastle. It is likely it was written a year before the stated date of 9 May 1617. Anderson’s letters to Winwood in April and May 1616 should be read in the context of his Northumberland shrievalty, which concluded at Michaelmas.

66 Records of Early English Drama (hereafter REED): Cumberland, Westmorland, Gloucestershire, eds. Audrey Douglas and Peter Greenfield (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1986), 135.

67 Ornsby, Selections from the Household Books, 9–10n§*; Reinmuth, ‘Lord William Howard’, 229.

68 REED: Cumberland, Westmorland, Gloucestershire, 136.

69 Ibid., 138.

70 Ibid.

71 Perhaps Lord William’s youngest daughter Mary, who sometime in December 1620 bought a new pair of expensive dancing pumps, was taking extra lessons that autumn at Thornthwaite (REED: Cumberland, Westmorland, Gloucestershire, 138).

72 Household account book, 1633–4, Carlisle Archive Centre (hereafter CA), Howard Family Papers (hereafter How.), DHN/C/706/12, f. 74v.

73 Cf. REED: Cumberland, Westmorland, Gloucestershire, 144; and Ornsby, Selections from the Household Books, 344, whose transcription is correct.

74 See the words “Clothes” and “Ladies” in the previous line or “boyes” in the next entry (fig. 2).

75 In parish and probate records of the period, the spelling of the surname Hindmers is particularly inconsistent and appears in many variants: Hindmarsh, Hyndmarsh, Hynmers, Hymners, Hymers, Hinmers, Hindners, Hemers etc. The identity of “Mr Heymore” may seem more problematic, yet Heymore is again merely a spelling variant of a more common form Hymers, since the original meaning of the suffix “moor” was identical to “marsh/merse” (see Oxford English Dictionary, s.v. “moor,” “marsh” and “merse”).

76 On the appropriation of country dances by the upper classes see Marsh, Music and Society, 383–87; Ravelhofer, Barbara, The Early Stuart Masque: Dance, Costume, and Music (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 4145 Google Scholar.

77 For a succinct discussion of various dancing traditions at early Stuart Court, see Ravelhofer’s introduction in Barthélemy de Montagut, Louange de la Danse, ed. Barbara Ravelhofer (Cambridge: RTM Publications, 2000), 30–42; Ravelhofer, The Early Stuart Masque, 27–45.

78 Cf. Woodward, Donald, Men at Work: Labourers and Building Craftsmen in the Towns of Northern England, 1450–1750 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 131135 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 271.

79 Montagut, Louange de la Danse, 19–22; Royal Commission on Historical Manuscripts, Sixth Report of the Royal Commission on Historical Manuscripts, 2 vols. (London, 1877–78), 1:229.

80 Cf. Playford, John, The English Dancing Master (London, 1651), 2 Google Scholar; see Howard, Jean E., Theater of a City: The Places of London Comedy, 1598–1642 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007), 162208 Google Scholar, for the importance of dance in shaping London town culture in 1620s and 1630s.

81 Dancer Jacob Watson was a resident of All Saints parish; two of his children were buried in 1695 and 1698. All Saints parish register, TW, MF 250; cf. Marsh, Music and Society, 331.

82 See in particular the All Saints parish registers, TW, MF 250; cf. Marsh, Music and Society, 136.

83 Breton, Nicholas, The Court and Country, or A briefe Discourse Dialogue-wise set downe betweene a Courtier and a Country-man (London, 1618), B2v Google Scholar.

84 Marsh, Music and Society, 387–88. For more on the Callys see Baldwin and Mills, Paying the Piper, 67–70; REED: Cheshire including Chester, 2 vols, eds. Elizabeth Baldwin, Lawrence M. Clopper, and David Mills (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2007), 1:lxii–iv, lxxix–xx, 391, 408.

85 For Montegut’s career see Montagut, Louange de la Danse, 9–24. Montagut plagiarized François de Lauze’s Apologie de la danse (1623); see Joan Wildeblood’ edition in Apologie de la danse by F. De Lauze 1623: A Treatise of Instruction in Dancing and Deportment (London, Muller, 1952).

86 James to Abbot, TNA, SPD Jam. I, SP 14/81, f. 92r.

87 Cf. Hutton, Ronald, The Rise and Fall of Merry England: The Ritual Year 1400–1700 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994), 69152 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Marsh, Music and Society, 354–81; Parker, Kenneth L., The English Sabbath: A Study of Doctrine and Discipline from the Reformation to the Civil War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On Puritanism, often perceived as a driving force behind these moralistic attacks, and its relationship with the Church of England, see Collinson, Patrick, The Elizabethan Puritan Movement (London: Cape, 1967)Google Scholar and Lake, Peter, Moderate Puritans and the Elizabethan Church (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

88 See Christopher Fetherston, A dialogue agaynst light, lewde, and lasciuious dauncing (London, 1582), D2v–D5v; William Prynne, Histrio-mastix. The players scovrge, or, actors tragaedie, divided into two parts (London, 1633), 220–61.

89 Fetherston, A dialogue, D3r.

90 Thesiger, Sara, ‘The Orchestra of Sir John Davies and the Image of the Dance’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 36 (1973): 277304 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Pennino-Baskerville, Mary, ‘Terpsichore Reviled: Antidance Tracts in Elizabethan England’, The Sixteenth Century Journal, 22/3 (1991): 475494 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Marsh, Music and Society, 357–8; Howard, Skiles, ‘Rival Discourses of Dancing in Early Modern England’, Studies in English Literature, 1500–1900 36/1 (1996): 3156 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 37–40, 43–50; for extensive analysis of traditional pastimes’ association with Catholicism see Jensen, Religion and Revelry, 38–53.

91 Marsh, Music and Society, 367–68; Hutton, The Rise and Fall, 168–9.

92 Winerock, Emily, ‘Churchyard Capers: The Controversial use of church space for Dancing in Early Modern England’, in Jennifer Maria DeSilva, ed. The Sacralization of Space and Behaviour in the Early Modern World: Studies and Sources (Farnham: Ashgate, 2015), 233256 Google Scholar at 237.

93 Jensen, Religion and Revelry, 38–9.

94 REED: Lancashire, ed. David George (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1991), xxiv–vi; the Lancashire Declaration is published on pp. 229–31; for a detailed discussion of the Book of Sports controversy see Dougall, Alistair, The Devil’s Book: Charles I, the Book of Sports and Puritanism in Tudor and Early Stuart England (Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 2011)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Parker, The English Sabbath, 139–77; Leah Marcus, The Politics of Mirth (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986), 106–39.

95 The Difference of Hearers (London, 1614), in REED: Lancashire, 27–28.

96 REED: Lancashire, 28.

97 Murphy, ‘Music and Catholic Culture in post-Reformation Lancashire’; cf. Jensen, Phebe, ‘“Honest Mirth and Merriment”: Christmas and Catholicism in Early Modern England’, in Lowell Gallagher, ed. Redrawing the Map of Early Modern English Catholicism (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2012), 213244 Google Scholar.

98 Baldwin, Elizabeth, ‘Rushbearings and Maygames in the Diocese of Chester before 1642’, in Alexandra F. Johnston and Wim Hüsken, ed. English Parish Drama (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1996), 3140 Google Scholar.; Keenan, Siobhan, ‘Recusant Involvement in a Robin Hood Play at Brandsby Church, Yorkshire, 1615’, Notes and Queries 45 (2000): 475478 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

99 REED: Cumberland, Westmorland, Gloucestershire, 218; Henry Sanderson on the insolence of the recusants, October 1603, TNA, SPD Jam I, SP 14/4, ff. 7r–8v; Anderson to Privy Council, 28 March 1616, TNA, SPD Jam. I, SP 14/86, ff. 196r–197r; James to Cecil, 9 December 1605, TNA, SPD Jam. I, SP 14/17, ff. 32r–33v; Act and visitation book of the archdeacon of Northumberland, 1619–24, PG, DDR/A/ACN/1/1, f. 88r–v; Diary of Thomas Chaytor of Butterby, May 1612–December 1617, PG, Add.MS. 866, ff. 2v, 13v–14r, 22r, 23r, 24r, 32v, 33r, 46r, 57r.

100 The King Majesties Declaration to His Subjects, Concerning lawful Sports to be used (London, 1618), in REED: Cumberland, Westmorland, Gloucestershire, 366. The same argument was used decades earlier in George Gilbert’s 1583 instructions for Jesuit proselytizing; although priests were advised to abstain themselves from excessive banqueting, dancing, and gambling, they should not be ‘over scrupulous and strict’ in trifling matters, in order to prevent ‘the heretic to think that the Catholic religion is an intolerable yoke and too austere’ L. Hicks, ed. Letters and Memorials of Father Robert Persons, S.J., Vol. 1: to 1588, Publications of the Catholic Record Society, vol. 39 (London: Whitehead, 1942), 336.

101 Cf. Marcus, The Politics of Mirth.

102 REED: Newcastle, xvi–vii; in 1599, in addition to paying the quarterly wages to the city waits, Newcastle paid for at least three itinerant musical companies: King of Scot’s (James VI’s), Earl of Cumberland’s, and Lord Willoughby’s musicians (126–32). For Durham, e.g. The Masons’ company accounts, 1606–1658, PG, DCG 10/2, ff. 1–53; The Cordwainers’ company accounts, 1596–1704, PG, DCG 4/1, ff. 13–39.

103 REED: Newcastle, 139.

104 Surtees, Robert, The History and Antiquities of the County Palatine of Durham, 4 vols. (Wakefield: EP Publishing, 1972), 4:42 Google Scholar.

105 Walsham, Alexandra, ‘Translating Trent? English Catholicism and the Counter Reformation’, HR 78/201 (2005): 288310 CrossRefGoogle Scholar at 302–06; Hutton, The Rise and Fall, 111–12; Jensen, ‘“Honest Mirth and Merriment”’; for clerical attitudes towards popular culture in early modern Europe see Burke, Peter, Popular Culture in Early Modern Europe, 3rd ed. (Farnham: Ashgate, 2009), 289334 Google Scholar; Bossy, John, ‘The Counter-Reformation and the People of Catholic Europe’, Past & Present 47 (1970): 5170 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

106 Palmes, Life of Mrs. Dorothy Lawson, 30–1; McClain, Lisa, Lest We be Damned: Practical Innovation and Lived Experience among Catholics in Protestant England, 1559–1642 (New York: Routledge, 2004), 5759 Google Scholar.

107 Palmes, Life of Mrs. Dorothy Lawson, 44.

108 Ibid., 44–5.

109 Ibid., 45.

110 Southwell, Robert, Saint Peter’s Complaint, With other Poems (London, 1595), A3r Google Scholar.

111 Palmes, Life of Mrs. Dorothy Lawson, 30, 32–3.

112 Kenneth Fincham, ed. Visitation Articles and Injunctions of the Early Stuart Church. 2 vols. (Woodbridge: Boydell, 1994), 1:59; Marsh, Music and Society, 367.

113 We know this from other sources, for example, REED: Lancashire, 4–93, 213–28; REED: Cumberland, Westmorland, Gloucestershire, 329–43.

114 Act and visitation book of archdeacon of Durham, March 1600–September 1619, PG, DDR/A/ACD/1/1, f. 289r.

115 Act and visitation book, PG, DDR/A/ACD/1/1, f. 147v.

116 Ibid., f. 176v.

117 Marsh, Music and Society, 335–6. Cf. Hutton, The Rise and Fall, 28–34.

118 Act and visitation book, PG, DDR/A/ACD/1/1, f. 144v.

119 Cf. a presentment of Richard Briggam, a churchwarden of Kirby Grindalythe, East Riding of Yorkshire, who was charged with failing to present ‘two or three pypers […] and A great multitude dauncing’ in a local alehouse during evening prayer in 1613: Borthwick Institute for Archives, University of York, York Diocesan Archive, Archiepiscopal Visitation, GB 193 V. 1615, f. 171c.

120 See, for example, Act and visitation book, PG, DDR/A/ACD/1/1, ff. 40r, 48v.

121 Act and visitation book of the archdeacon of Northumberland, 1619–24, PG, DDR/A/ACN/1/1, f. 61r.

122 Act and visitation book of the archdeacon of Northumberland, 1619–22, PG, DDR/A/ACN/1/2, f. 31v.

123 Act and visitation book, PG, DDR/A/ACD/1/1, f. 214r.

124 Dean and Chapter act and visitation book, April 1608–4 December 1617, DCL, DCD/D/SJC/3, f. 59r.

125 Cf. Jensen, Religion and Revelry, 2008, 38–53. Emily Winerock uses a convenient term ‘festive traditionalists’ to describe all those who actively resisted suppression of traditional festivity regardless of their religious provenance: ‘Churchyard Capers’, 235.

126 REED: Cheshire including Chester, 2:518.

127 List of recusants in Durham, 1608, LP, TMP, MS 663, f. 50r.

128 KJV 2 Tim 3, 6; Robert Carroll and Stephen Prickett, eds. The Bible: Authorized King James Version (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998).

129 Cf. Marotti, Arthur F., Religious Ideology and Cultural Fantasy: Catholic and Anti-Catholic Discourses in Early Modern England (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2005), 5365 Google Scholar.

130 Baxter, John, A toile for two-legged foxes (London, 1600), 108 Google Scholar; on spousal agreements in Catholic households see Walsham, Alexandra, Church Papists: Catholicism, Conformity, and Confessional Polemic in Early Modern England (Woodbridge: Boydell, 1993), 7882 Google Scholar.

131 On recusant women, see Rowlands, Marie B., ‘Recusant Women 1560–1640’, in Mary Prior, ed. Women in English Society, 1500–1800 (London: Methuen, 1985), 112135 Google Scholar; Dolan, Frances F., Whores of Babylon: Catholicism, Gender, and Seventeenth-Century Print Culture (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1999), 4594 Google Scholar.

132 Dolan, Whores of Babylon, 70–1.

133 Ibid., 85–94; Marotti, Religious Ideology and Cultural Fantasy, 53–65; also Marotti, ‘Alienating Catholics in Early Modern England: Recusant Women, Jesuits and Ideological Fantasies’, in Arthur F. Marotti, ed. Catholicism and Anti-Catholicism in Early Modern Texts (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 1999), 1–34; an example of such fantasies manifesting itself in the bureaucratic writings can be found on a Wisbech Castle prisoners’ list from 1587, in which Francis Tillettson is described as an ‘Amorous prieste making muche of Catholikes wyves & a greate persuader of women’. TNA, SPD Eliz. I, SP 12/199, ff. 172r–173v. Cf. also Topcliffe’s insinuations in Caraman, John Gerard: the Autobiography, 119–20.

134 Baxter, A toile for two-legged foxes, 27.

135 Fletcher, Phineus, Locvstae vel Pietas Iesvitica (Cambridge, 1627), 56 Google Scholar; cf. Marotti, Religious Ideology and Cultural Fantasy, 63, who does not identify nor expand on the relevance of the biblical allusion.

136 Gee, John, The foot out of the snare: with a detection of svndry late practices and impostures of the priests and Iesuits in England (London, 1624), 2 Google Scholar. See also Theodorus H. B. M. Harmsen’s edition John Gee’s Foot out of the snare (1624) (Nijmegen: Cicero Press, 1992).

137 Gee, The foot out of the snare, 2–3.

138 Abbot, George, An Exposition upon the Prophet Jonah (London, 1600), 614615 Google Scholar.

139 Hutton, The Rise and Fall, 80; cf. Duffy, Eamon, Striping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England, 1400–1580 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992), 443444 Google Scholar, 457.

140 Joseph T. Fowler, ed. Rites of Durham, Publications of the Surtees Society, vol. 107 (Durham: Andrews, 1903), 11.

141 Palmes, Life of Mrs. Dorothy Lawson, 43–4. Cf. creeping to the cross on Good Friday 1595 in the Clink: Caraman, John Gerard: the Autobiography, 123–24; and a report on private creeping to the cross in Golborne, Lancashire, at the home of Peter Croncke in 1604: McClain, Lest We be Damned, 55.

142 TNA, SPD Jam. I, SP 14/81, f. 92r.

143 Strigood in Richard Brome’s The New Academy (1635) is represented as a Catholic, who learned how to behave as a dancing master from a Jesuit Howard, Theater of a City, 189.

144 List of recusants in Durham, 1608, LP, TMP, MS 663, f. 50r.

145 Hicks, Letters and Memorials, 321–41; cf. Questier, Conversion, Politics and Religion, 178–86.

146 Questier, Conversion, Politics and Religion, 183; Caraman, John Gerard: the Autobiography, 206, 233–6.

147 Winerock, Emily F., ‘“Mixt” and Matched: Dance Games in Late Sixteenth- and Early Seventeenth-Century Europe’, in Allison Levy, ed. Playthings in Early Modernity: Party Games, Word Games, Mind Games (Kalamazoo: Westerm Michigan University, 2017), 2948 Google Scholar at 36; Marsh, Music and Society, 331–32, 362–3.

148 On the Simpson players, see especially Boddy, G. W., ‘Players of Interludes in North Yorkshire in the Early Seventeenth Century’, North Yorkshire County Record Office Journal 3 (1976): 95130 Google Scholar; and Jensen, Phebe, ‘Recusancy, Festivity and Community: The Simpsons at Gowlthwaite Hall’, in Richard Dutton, Alison Findlay, and Richard Wilson, eds. Region, Religion and Patronage (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2003), 101120 Google Scholar.

149 Deposition of Sir Stephen Procter, TNA, STAC 8/19/10, f. 18.