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.

Of the many topicalities which fill the writings of the Elizabethan pamphleteers, Gabriel Harvey and Thomas Nashe, two concern the now almost unknown recusant poet and Cambridge tutor, Stephen Vallenger. In each allusion, as the subject of a long standing esoteric joke, he is referred to with obvious irony as “noble.” In Catholic eyes, at least, he merited the title, for he risked life imprisonment, if not worse, in an attempt to vindicate the cause for which Edmund Campion died, and when arrested, shielded his associates, taking full punishment upon himself.

Antony Munday, in his book The English Romayne Life, described the customs of the English College in Rome and narrated the mutiny of the English scholars against their first Rector, the Welshman Dr. Morus Clynnog. He claimed to base his account on his own stay in the College, as ‘the Pope's scholar,’ during the troubles. However, in all the records of this over-documented squabble, no trace has hitherto been found of his name: it is absent, for example, from the earliest published list of English College scholars in the Liber Ruber or College diary. For this reason, it has sometimes been doubted whether Munday was ever in the College at all.

On the 9th August, 1600, after trial at the Summer Assizes at Durham, three men were hanged there: a priest named Thomas Palaser and two laymen, John Talbot, of Thornton-le-Street in Yorkshire, and John Norton, of Ravensworth, Co. Durham, in whose house the priest had been apprehended. The career of John Talbot has been ably reconstructed by Dom Hugh Bowler, O.S.B., in Biographical Studies. Of John Norton little is generally known beyond the bare facts of his capture and death, and the circumstance that Margaret Norton, his wife, who was also condemned to death, was reprieved and afterwards pardoned. I have taken up the study of Norton and abandoned it several times for lack of evidence, during the last few years. Now it seems best to put on record the facts that have emerged, incomplete though they be, in the hope that further information may be forthcoming.

It has already been stated that, on the 17 September, 1603, Standen, while at Florence, sent his companion, Edmund Thornhill, Canon of Vicenza, to Rome to ask for the Pope's blessing and for some spiritual favours. Thus began that Roman episode which on his return to England led to his downfall.

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.

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.

The accession of James I to the throne of England in 1603 brought about a change in the political thought of the English Catholics. As was pointed out at the end of the previous part of this study, the battle for a Catholic prince was over and the battle for toleration under a Protestant prince was about to begin. In this new struggle the doctrine of the deposing power was, as far as practical politics went, merely an embarrassment. The doctrine was, however, implied by the current Catholic teaching concerning the nature and government of the church, and no champion of the Holy See could then imagine how it could be denied without seriously impairing the Catholic case for the Roman primacy. But since it was plain to all that the last chance for invoking the deposing power in England had passed and that it was now useless as a political weapon, the temptation was naturally very strong to renounce it altogether as a doctrine.

In a list of influential persons of about the year 1574, in a section devoted to Catholics, occur the names of Sir Nicholas Poyntz and his wife. The name of Sir Nicholas Poyntz also occurs in a list, dated 1580, of Catholics who had been arrested or confined to their houses or to the houses of Protestants. Challoner, writing of James Fen, gives incidental information about Sir Nicholas: “James Fenn … having … lost his wife, betook himself to the service of Sir Nicholas Poyntz, an eminent Catholic gentleman, whom he served in quality of steward … A learned and pious priest, who used to frequent Sir Nicholas's house, taking notice of the excellent qualifications … of Mr. Fenn … advised him to quit that worldly employ and go over to Rheims to the English College … Mr. Fenn took the counsel … and went over to Rheims, where he was made priest … in 1580.” The College diary does not record the year of his arrival at Rheims, but his studies for the priesthood probably lasted some four years. Sir Nicholas was therefore entertaining, if not harbouring, a priest in about 1575.

Nobody will pretend that Henry Constable was more than a minor poet and an indifferent theologian; he is nonetheless a crucial figure in the history of English Catholicism, and it is most important that we should have a clear idea of his motives and opinions. Dr. Rogers has done us a great service by sorting out the bibliographical history of his Examen pacifique de la Doctrine des Huguenots, and dispelling a number of confusions which had accumulated around it. I propose to supplement his article by producing evidence which, except on a few points, will support and amplify his conclusions and suggest a more concrete biographical background to them.

When Bishop Challoner wrote his account of the martyr Bl. John Wall in the second volume of his Memoirs of Missionary Priests, which was published in 1742, he used as his authority transcripts of some documents which then belonged to the Douai seminary and wrote, “ John Wall … was born in Lancashire in 1620 of a gentleman's family, possessed at that time of about £500 a year, which, he and his elder brother William … entering into religion, was devolved to the third brother and by him enjoyed at the time of the execution of our confessor [i.e. in 1679]. Mr John was sent over young to the English College at Doway.”

The Rambler, one of the leading English Catholic magazines of the nineteenth century, is best known as the literary organ of the Liberal Catholic movement. Founded in 1848 by a group of lay converts, it became the stormy petrel of Catholic periodical literature, coming into frequent conflict with the hierarchy, until its career was terminated by its last editor, Sir John (later Lord) Acton, in 1862. Despite the troubles with which it was beset, the Rambler contained many notable contributions to Catholic literature. Among these are a number of articles dealing with the history of English Catholicism since the Reformation, which may still be of interest to students of recusant history.

In our Catalogue of Catholic Books in English printed abroad or secretly in England, 1558-1640, we made many factual statements about the authorship, printing and dating of anonymous Recusant books, without giving the evidence. This was unavoidable if the catalogue was to be kept to a manageable size. The evidence for some of these statements has already appeared in miscellaneous articles and notes in Recusant History, and we propose to publish the rest gradually in two parallel series, Series A dealing with authors and translators, Series B with printers and presses, contributions to each series being numbered consecutively. Not all these contributions will necessarily be complete or exhaustive; in some instances we shall simply set out the evidence we have so far found. Occasionally we shall correct statements made in the catalogue in the light of more recent research. Our object is to make public the evidence on which the attributions were based, but not to imply that there is no further work to be done.