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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 October 2016
John and Henry Donne matriculated from Hart Hall, Oxford, on 23 October 1584, aged 12 and 11 respectively. Their father’s sister was married to Robert Dawson, who kept the Blue Boar, on the corner of St Aldate’s and Blue Boar Lane, as a tenant of New College; and R. C. Bald writes that ‘no doubt they visited the Blue Boar Inn from time to time to see the members of the Dawson family’. But he does not include one clue to the Dawsons’ religious sympathies, and hence to the likelihood of the Catholic Donnes being both welcome and willing guests. In 1577, William Cole, Vice-Chancellor of the University, recorded of the parish of St Aldate’s: ‘There is one Henslowe, a master of arte of nyne or tenne yeres standing, once of Newe Colledge and expeld out of that house for poperie, who lyeth nowe at the signe of the Blewe Bore at one Daston’s and never commeth to the Churche. His host is wealthie; what he is I knowe not.’
1 R. C. Bald, John Donne: A Life (1970), pp. 31, 42-44. Bald also notes that in 1571 the elder John Donne (d. 1576) acquired a tenement and an orchard in Oxford, p. 31.
2 Stephen Henslowe became a Fellow of New College in 1557.
3 SP 12/118/37, printed C.R.S. 22, p. 100. Cf. Flynn, Dennis, ‘Donne’s Catholicism’, Recusant History, 13 (1975), p. 17, n. 41.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
4 Cornmarket. The site of the Blue Boar is now occupied by a museum (formerly the Public Library, as noted by Bald, p. 31); of the Star by a Woolworth’s store: Oxoniensia, 23 (1958), pp. 1-129.
6 SP 12/118/37, printed C.R.S. 22, pp. 98-99.
7 Bodl. MS. Wills Oxon. 186, ff. 113-14; 190, f. 408v; Wood, A., City of Oxford, 3 (Oxf. Hist. Soc. 37), p. 250.Google Scholar
7 DNB (Marbeck, Roger); Clark, G., History of the Royal College of Physicians, 1, pp. 125–6 Google Scholar. Marbeck was thus no longer resident in Oxford when the Donnes arrived.
8 Hammer, Carl I. Jr., ‘Town and Gown in Tudor Oxford: a note and two documents’, Oxoniensia, 39 (1974), pp. 81–82 Google Scholar. That Williams was more than a menial servant is suggested by his possession of Dr London’s books, revealed in his will (Bodl. MS. Wills Oxon. 186, if. 113-14), and by his part in the Dissolution: LP Hen. VIII, 13 (2), nos. 653, 655, 698, 704, 1014.
9 For Richard Owen, John Chamberlain and Edmund Powell, see Davidson, A., ‘Roman Catholicism in Oxfordshire c. 1580—c. 1640’ (Bristol Ph.D. thesis, 1970), passim.Google Scholar
10 Campion debated before the Queen on her visit to Oxford in 1566, when Thomas Williams, serving his second term as mayor, greeted her on behalf of the city.
11 Williams left to ‘my sonne Thomas Williams yf he be alive ten powndes if the lawes of the realme will permitt it to be bestowed as he shall thinke bes’ (Bodl. MS. Wills Oxon. 186, ff. 113-4); which serves to identify the younger man with the Jesuit, whom Foley calls simply the son of a leading Oxford merchant. Fr. Williams died at Olmutz in 1613. Two of his brothers, Edward and Ralph, also went overseas, Ralph by 1581 and Edward some years later as a messenger from his master Ralph Sheldon of Beoley, Worcestershire, to Cardinal Allen: SP 12/150/95; 249/92; Davidson, A., ‘Edward Williams of Oxford: a Sheldon servant’, Worcs. Recusant, 25 (June 1975), pp. 2–4.Google Scholar
12 His other Jesuit uncle, Jasper’s elder brother Ellis, died in 1578.
13 Bald, pp. 39-45.