In the summer of 1601 the English ambassador in France, Sir Ralph Winwood, warned Sir Robert Cecil against a merchant named Thomas James, who was ‘a hard and desperate Ruffian, who hath lived in great inwardness with Persons the Jesuit’. To assist in his capture, should he arrive in England, Winwood identified him to be of ‘a convenient stature, red beard, of the age of forty-five years’, born in Staffordshire ‘in a town called Noyall’ but subsequently raised in London where he had been a merchant’s apprentice.

The ‘inwardness’ between this Englishman and the Jesuit excites curiosity in itself, but Thomas James deserves investigation in his own right since he exemplifies the major contribution of the resourceful English layman to the survival of the Catholic mission during the late Elizabethan and early Jacobean period. The access of Catholics to the Continent was contingent on the well-placed merchant who facilitated the arrivals and departures of students, priests and other persons in search of asylum. As will be seen, the full confidence of the highly respected Duke of Medina Sidonia in the ability of Thomas James was to provide the Englishman with a unique status in Andalucia.

‘It was merry Christmas at St. Geneviève. There was a Yule log blazing on every hearth in that wide domain, from the hall of the squire to the peasant's roof. The Buttery Hatch was open for the whole week from noon to sunset; all comers might take their fill, and each carry away as much bold beef, white bread, and jolly ale as a strong man could bear in a basket with one hand. For every woman a red cloak, and a coat of broadcloth for every man. All day long, carts laden with fuel and warm raiment were traversing the various districts, distributing comfort and dispensing cheer. For a Christian gentleman of high degree was Eustace Lyle. (Disraeli, 1844.)

The English priest had to serve the Irish in England, by virtue of his priesthood. But the English Catholic layman could stand aloof, and it has usually been alleged that the English laity in their cliquish callousness shunned and despised immigrant Catholic Irishmen, and refused to help the Church provide them with chapels and schools. The notorious Monsignor George Talbot's strictures upon their selfishness were especially fierce; indeed his letters have a social dimension which his detractors have conspired to ignore, for he assailed English Papists in the name of the Papist poor.

In an article by Fr. W. K. L. Webb, S.J. in Biographical Studies (Recusant History) vol. 2, pp. 216 ff, Roger Widdrington of Cartington, Northumberland, has been adequately cleared of the misconception which identified him as the author of works put out, under the alias of Roger Widdrington, by Thomas Preston. There is no need, therefore, to dwell further upon this point. The object of the present study is to present a picture of the real Roger Widdrington.

He was born c. 1572, the second son of Edward Widdrington of Swinburne Castle, near Hexham, and Ursula Carnaby. His parents appear to have conformed, and it was as a Protestant that he visited Durham city one day in July 1594, to witness the execution of a seminary priest, now known to us as St John Boste.

‘When the hangman, pulling out Mr. Boast's heart, showed it to the crowd, with a “Behold the heart of a traitor”, a voice was heard to the effect: “No, the heart of a servant of God”. At which Mr. Widdrington of Cartington, who heard the voice, was so struck, that he was thereupon reconciled to the Church’. (Account of the Rev. Mr. Yaxley, which he received from Widdrington Castle.)

It has not, I think, been generally realised up till now, that Francis Bird was a Catholic. Joseph Gillow includes him in his Biographical Dictionary of the English Catholics but this is a source hardly known to historians of Art and one which recusant historians are hesitant about using because Gillow is sometimes inaccurate. In this case, Gillow may have been able to check his written sources against an accurate family tradition, since Francis Bird was a distant ancestor of his through the marriage of a great-great-grandson, George Thomas Ferrers, to Mary Gillow of Hammersmith. Francis Bird was the leading sculptor whose career bridges the gap between the age of Gibbons and the age of Rysbrack. It is clear that he had a large practice and must have made free use of assistants. He appears to have had a good continental training, though its details are somewhat obscure.

The main source for Francis Bird's life is one of the manuscript notebooks of George Vertue, the eighteenth-century engraver, himself a Catholic. He recorded in these the chief events in the world of London artists from September 1722 to August 1754. Vertue's notes were not intended for publication, and his information came either at first hand or from those who knew the artists personally. He states that when Francis Bird died, he left six children, one of them being a son who was aged fifteen at his father's death. C.R.S. sources have now enabled us to identify most of the children and grandchildren. I am most grateful to Sister Francis Agnes Onslow, O.S.F., of Goodings, for allowing me to take over the relevant part of her Bird and Chapman family tree, when we found that we were working in parallel, and it is reproduced here as a first draft so that others may fill in the gaps and make the necessary corrections. I hope to give the Chapman part of the family tree in a subsequent note.