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Campion in the Thames Valley, 1580

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 February 2015

Michael Hodgetts
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Abstract

Between July and October 1580, Robert Persons and Edmund Campion, who had landed at Dover in June, ‘passed through the most part of the shires of England, preaching and administering the sacraments in almost every gentleman's and nobleman's house that we passed by, whether he was Catholic or not, provided he had any Catholics in his house to hear us’. Between Christmas 1580 and Whitsun 1581 Campion went on a similar journey to the North, the itinerary of which can be recovered in fair detail from entries in the Acts of the Privy Council and from a summary of the subsequent examinations which was annotated by Lord Burghley. The mission of Campion and Persons (and of the dozen or so others who accompanied them from Rome) has rightly been regarded as a pivotal event in the story of Elizabethan recusancy. But no serious attempt has ever been made to reconstruct their itineraries in 1580.

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British Catholic History , Volume 30 , Issue 1 , May 2010 , pp. 26 - 46
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Copyright © Catholic Record Society 2010

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References

Notes

1 Quoted in Simpson, p. 233.

2 British Library, MS Lansdowne 30, no. 78, ff. 201–2.

3 On this first journey there are four pages (pp. 84–87, mostly quoting two letters of Persons) in Reynolds, E. E., Campion and Persons: The Jesuit Mission of 1580–1 (1980) and two pages (pp. 52–54)Google Scholar in Malcolm, H. South, The Jesuits and the Joint Mission to England during 1580–1581, Renaissance Studies 4 (Lewiston, N. Y. Lampeter, 1999).Google Scholar See also, Francis, Edwards, Robert Persons: the Biography of an Elizabethan Jesuit, 1546–1610 (St. Louis, 1995).Google Scholar

4 C.R.S. 2 (1906), p. 27; cf. Simpson, pp. 251–2, and Waugh, p. 121.

5 Waugh, pp. 121–2, following Simpson, p. 252.

6 Vaux, pp. 138–9, 135. Campion had been tutor to Lord Vaux's son Henry at Harrowden for some months in 1567 or 1568: Vaux, pp. 100–102.

7 Simpson, p. 305; Waugh, p. 140.

8 Acts of the Privy Council, 1581–2, p. 153; cf. pp. 238–9.

9 Waugh, pp. 136–7. The complexity of the job can be seen from the reprint in English Recusant Literature, 1558–1640: 1, Scolar Press, 1971.

10 Acts of the Privy Council, 1581–2, pp. 170–1; Hodgetts, cf., ‘Campion in Staffordshire and Derbyshire, 1581’, Midland Catholic History 7 (2000), pp. 52–54.Google Scholar

11 Simpson, pp. 236, 305.

12 Waugh, pp. 139–40.

13 Simpson, p. 313; Waugh, p. 143.

14 Cf. Vaux, pp. 77, 85–86, 465. For thirty years the Prices exploited ecclesiastical geography to evade conviction. Washingley was just in Huntingdonshire, in the diocese of Ely, but their parish church was at Lutton (Northamptonshire) in the diocese of Peterborough: Vaux, p. 86.

15 SP 13/27/60, a contemporary translation of Campion to Aquaviva ‘five months’ after his landing, which was on 24 June 1580. Printed in Allen, Briefs Historié, ed. Pollen (1908), pp. 21–26, and Simpson, pp. 246–50; cf. Waugh, pp. 126–8.

16 Hodgetts, ‘Campion in Staffordshire and Derbyshire, 1581’, Midland Catholic History 7 (2000), pp. 52–54.Google Scholar

17 Recusant History 24 (1998–99), p. 418.

18 SP12/206/77, printed in C.R.S. 5, p. 133, where, however, Ufton (‘Vveton’) is given as ‘Weton’.

19 SP 14/216/ii/121, 153, printed in Worcestershire Recusant 47 (June 1986), pp. 27, 31.

20 I Henry IV, III.3.196–7; Cymbeline, III.2.66–68. Official messengers with changes of horses could, of course, make much better time. A letter sent by the mayor of Chester at eight o'clock on the night of Sunday 5 January 1605–6 was delivered to the Earl of Salisbury at Theobalds within thirty-six hours. It reached Nantwich at midnight, Stone at four o'clock on the Monday morning, Lichfield at eight, Coleshill at eleven, Coventry at one, Daventry at five, Towcester at eight, Brickhill at eleven at night, St. Alban's at four on the morning of Tuesday 7th and Barnet at six. David, Mathew, The Jacobean Age (1938), p. 67,Google Scholar from Cecil Papers 193, f. 28

21 Richard, Ollard, The Escape of Charles II (1966), pp. 57–62, 119–125.Google Scholar

22 Quoted in Ollard, p. 123.

23 ‘Persons to Agazzari, 5 November 1580’ in C.R.S. 39, pp. 46–62. For the missionaries’ faculties, see Hodgetts, ‘The English Church without Bishops, 1559–1623’, Canon Law Society of Great Britain and Ireland Newsletter 32 (March 1977), pp. 41–60.Google Scholar

24 ‘The Memoirs of Fr. Robert Persons’, ed. Pollen, J. H., C.R.S. 2 (1906), pp. 12–218;Google Scholar 4 (1907), pp. 1–161.

25 ‘Letters and Memorials of Fr. Robert Persons’, ed. Leo, Hicks, C.R.S. 39 (1942).Google Scholar

26 Printed in Letters and Notices 11 (1877), pp. 219–42, 308–39; 12 (1878), pp. 1–68.

27 Simpson, pp. 236, 241, 251–2.

28 Simpson, pp. 172–3, 222–4, 231.

29 Also in Simpson, p. 236.

30 S.P.12/99/55 (C.R.S. 13, pp. 89–138); S.P.12/157/90 (C.R.S. 13, pp. 139–42).

31 C.R.S. 22, pp. 77–79, 81–93, 97–114.

32 Also in Simpson, pp. 305–6, 343—4, 346–8, 354–6.

33 Vaux, p. 115 (from KB 9/654/57, 58).

34 ‘The names of certain persons noted in sundry counties to be receivers and entertainers of Jesuits and seminaries’: S.P.12/168/33, printed in Foley VI, p. 719, and (Oxfordshire items only) Stapleton, p. 1.

35 Historical MSS Commission, Hatfield Calendar IV, p. 270; also in Stapleton, pp. 2–3.

36 S.P. 12/229/78, ff. 178–9, printed as ‘Itinerant Priests in Oxfordshire, 1592’, Midland Catholic History 15 (2008), pp. 1–6.Google Scholar

37 Simpson, p. 233.

38 Waugh, p. 123. ‘Rarely stopping anywhere for more than one night’ is from C.R.S. 39, p. 77: ne longiori mora periculum creetur.

39 Acts of the Privy Council, 1580–1, p. 170 (14 August 1581).

40 On this see further Aileen Hodgson & Michael Hodgetts edd., Little Malvern Letters: I—1482–1737, which is to be published by the C.R.S. in 2010–11.

41 Worcester R. O., Berington Collection (BA 81, 705:24), 22–29.

42 Ibidem, 29 (1).

43 This part of Berkshire is just across the Thames from Oxford and is now in Oxfordshire.

44 British Library, Lansdowne MSS, Burghley Papers, 33 Plut., no. 16.

45 Vaux, p. 115 (from KB.9/654, nos. 57, 58); cf. Acts of the Privy Council, 1580–1, pp. 163–4.

46 Pevsner, Architectural Guides, The Buildings of England: Berkshire (1966), p. 14;Google Scholar Hodgetts, ‘Topographical Index of Hiding-Places: II’, Recusant History 24 (1998–99), pp. 5–6.Google Scholar

47 C.R.S. 60, pp. 60–61, 81 n. 38, 82–83 (‘a goer from one recusant's house to another under the colour to teach music’); John Gerard, pp. 5, 216, 237.

48 Challoner, Memoirs of Missionary Priests (ed. Pollen, 1924), p. 30.Google Scholar

49 Francis Yate was then in prison in London, so that Campion and the others were in fact harboured by his wife, Jane Tichborne.

50 C.R.S. 71, p. 44.

51 C.R.S. 22, p. 67 and n; C.R.S. 2, p. 228; C.R.S. 71, p. 101 and n.

52 C.R.S. 71, p. 83.

53 C.R.S. 22, pp. 85–87; for Braybrooke and his wife see also C.R.S. 71, pp. 26–27. In West Hanney church there is a monument (1611) to ‘Oliver Ayshcoombe, of Lyfford, Gent; and Martha his wife, that was one of the daughters of Thomas Yeate of Lyfford esquier’.

54 C.R.S. 71, pp. 77, 102–3; Berkshire Visitations, 1532–1665/6 (Harleian Society 56), pp. 148–50. She was the eldest daughter of James Yate of Buckland, whose half-brother Thomas of Lyford was the father of Francis.

55 Margaret, Gosling, ‘Berkshire and Oxfordshire Catholics and the Lenten Assize of 1588’, Oxoniensia 58 (1993), pp. 253–262.Google Scholar Her maps are worth careful study with reference to C.R.S. 71, on which her article is based.

56 Berkshire Visitations, pp. 148–9, 150, 202, 318; cf. V.C.H Berks. Ill, p. 453; IV, pp. 106–7, 275, 288, 293, 467–8, 532.

57 Hodgetts, ‘Itinerant Priests in Oxfordshire, 1592’, p. 3. For Hopton's conviction as a recusant see Gosling, Oxoniensia 58, p. 260; C.R.S. 71, p. 87.

58 C.R.S. 54, pp. 115–6.

59 C.R.S. 22, pp. 86, 104, 131; Geoffrey, de C. Parmiter, Elizabethan Popish Recusancy in the Inns of Court, Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research, Special Supplement 11 (1976), pp. 14, 22, 50, 51.Google Scholar

60 C.R.S. 22, p. 86; 71, pp. 90–91.

61 Anstruther, pp. 164–6.

62 Anstruther, p. 365; Foley I, pp. 380, 382 (SP 12/238/62); Foley VI, p. 723.

63 Anstruther, p. 324; C.R.S. 54, pp. 115–6 (where ‘Staffordiae’ should read ‘Sheffordiae”). Sir George's half-brother Sir Anthony Browne married Mary Dormer.

64 C.R.S. 71, p. 130.

65 V.C.H. Berks. IV, pp. 106–7.

66 V.C.H. III, pp. 313–4; Foley I, p. 380; cf. C.R.S. 18, p. 12.

67 C.R.S. 71, p. 37; Harleian Society 56, p. 148; V.C.H, IV, p. 243.

68 Foley I, p. 382; C.R.S. 71, pp. 113–4.

69 Recusant History 12 (1973–74), pp. 100–2. Francis Perkins was first listed as a recusant in 1588: C.R.S. 22, p. 124.

70 C.R.S. 22, p. 86; V.C.H. Berks. III, pp. 93–96, 104.

71 C.R.S. 22, p. 124; Philip, Caraman ed., William Weston: The Autobiography of an Elizabethan (1955), p. 76.Google Scholar

72 C.R.S. 2, p. 27.

73 Hodgetts, ‘A Topographical Index of Hiding-Places—III’, Recusant History 21 (2004–2005), p. 481, with references.

74 Foley VI, p. 719 (SP 12/169/33); Anstruther, p. 54.

75 Anstruther, p. 54; Foley VII, p. 723; William Weston, pp. 24–26, 29–30, 71–72, 77; Hodgetts, ‘Topographical Index of Hiding-PIaces—II’, Recusant History 24 (1998–99), p. 7.

76 C.R.S. 71, p. 134.

77 C.R.S. 18, pp. 3–4; cf. C.R.S. 22, p. 124.

78 V.C.H. II, pp. 247, 249; C.R.S. 18, pp. 2, 253; 57, pp. 6–7; 71, p. 55.

79 Staple ton, p. 181.

80 Anstruther, p. 254.

81 Anstruther, pp. 150, 254; Trappes-Lomax, cf. T. B., ‘Some Homes of the Dormer Family’, Recusant History 8 (1965–66), pp. 175–187,CrossRefGoogle Scholar esp. pp. 176–180.

82 Trappes-Lomax, p. 178.

83 Anstruther, p. 117; Simpson, p. 282.

84 V.C.H. Bucks. III, pp. 35–36 with photo; Pevsner, Architectural Guides, The Buildings of England: Buckinghamshire (1960), p. 71;Google Scholar C.R.S. 2, p. 24.

85 C.R.S. 22, pp. 110, 120.

86 Simpson, p. 170; Waugh, p. 91.

87 Stapleton, pp. 268–71.

88 Acts of the Privy Council, 1580–1, pp. 163–4.

89 V.C.H. Oxfordshire V, pp. 52–53; C.R.S. 22, p. 111. Philippa Pollard was a daughter of William Sheldon of Beoley in Worcestershire and a grand-daughter of Richard Middlemore and Margaret Throckmorton: Worcs. Visitation, 1569 (Harleian Society 27), p. 128. The Frances Pollard, wife of John Pollard, who was a recusant in 1604 at North Leigh, three miles north-east of Witney (C.R.S. 60, p. 223) was probably her daughter-in-law: cf. V.C.H. as above.

90 Foley VI, p. 719

91 C.R.S. 22, p. 111.

92 Midland Catholic History 15, p. 6 (SP 12/229/78); C.R.S. 22, p. 111; C.R.S. 71, p. 137.

93 Berkshire Visitation, 1602, Harleian Society 57, pp. 184—6; cf. 56, p. 10.

94 John Gerard, pp. 169–70.

95 Waugh, p. 37.

96 Simpson, pp. 18, 178; Waugh, pp. 12, 37, 107.

97 C.R.S. 22, p. 113; Anstruther, pp. 150, 277–8. Susanna Pitts of Holywell Manor was excommunicated in 1601: C.R.S. 60, p. 135.

98 Anstruther, pp. 115–6; Midland Catholic History 15, p. 2.

99 Midland Catholic History 15, p. 2; C.R.S. 22, pp. 97, 112.

100 C.R.S. 22, p. 97; cf. p. 112.

101 The Cardinal was a younger son of Edward Peto of Chesterton, Warwks., and Godith, daughter of Sir Thomas Throckmorton of Fladbury in Worcestershire. Exiled after 1532 and indicted in 1539, he was chamberlain and warden of the English Hospice in Rome from 1544 to 1548, but was at the restored Franciscan convent at Greenwich in 1555 and became a cardinal in 1557; see Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. For other Napper connexions see the Commonplace Book in C.R.S. 1, pp. 133–7.

102 Anstruther, p. 370; Foley IV, pp. 574–82.

103 Stapleton, pp. 211–222, 198–202; Hodgetts, Secret Hiding-Places (1989), pp. 181–2; A Memorandum of Holywell Manor (Oxford, 1932). This last item, though of only 8 pp., includes a description and map of the manor and a summary of the building contract of 1516.

104 Stevenson, W. H. & Salter, H. E., The Early History of St. John's College (Oxford Historical Society, N.S. 1, 1939), pp. 432–9;Google Scholar Gilbert, C. D., ‘Henry Russell and Gloucester Hall’, Worcester College Record 1991, pp. 25–32;Google Scholar Stapleton, pp. 189–90.

105 C.R.S. 22, p. 101.

106 Gilbert, ‘Henry Russell and Gloucester Hall’, pp. 29–30.

107 Vaux, p. 126.

108 Deposition of Robert Weston, 20 April 1591: C.S.P.D. 1591–4, p. 29 (SP 12/238/126/3). Another deposition by Weston of the same date (SP 12/238/62) is in Foley I, pp. 379–82. ‘John’ Allen was perhaps the Roger (or William) Allen who was arrested in Berkshire in 1578 and committed to the Marshalsea: Anstruther, p. 4.

109 Stapleton, pp. 268–71; Foley VI, p. 719; C.R.S. 22, pp. 112, 124, 131; C.R.S. 71, p. 129.

110 C.R.S. 22, pp. 97–98.

111 Anstruther, p. 254.

112 Foley VI, p. 719; Anstruther, p. 337. Anne, wife of John Barber of St. Mary Magdalen's, yeoman, was a recusant by 1586: C.R.S. 71, p. 14; cf. C.R.S. 60, pp. 135, 212, 235.

113 Anstruther, pp. 153–5. Eynsham Ferry, across the Thames, was replaced in the eighteenth century by a handsome stone toll-bridge, still in use.

114 C.R.S. 37, p. 10.

115 Stapleton, pp. 188–94.

116 C.R.S. 22, p. 120; Hodgetts, ‘Coughton and the Gunpowder Plot’ in Peter, Marshall & Geoffrey, Scott edd., Catholic Gentry in English Society: The Throckmortons of Coughton from Reformation to Emancipation (2009), esp. pp. 116–119.Google Scholar

117 V.C.H. Warwks. III, p. 689; Pevsner & Wedgwood, Architectural Guides, The Buildings of England: Warwickshire (1966), p. 233; information from Melanie Hall of English Heritage.

118 Stapleton, pp. 185–7.

119 Stapleton, pp. 116–120; Pevsner & Sherwood, Architectural Guides, The Buildings of England: Oxfordshire (1974), p. 788; V.C.H. XI, pp. 59–75.

120 SP 12/168/33 = Foley VI, p. 719; cf. Stapleton, p. 106.

121 Campion to Aquaviva, November 1580, SP 12/27/60, printed in Allen, Briefe Historie, ed. Pollen (1908), pp. 21–26. The letter was probably written from Southlands, near Uxbridge.

122 Holmes was sent to England in April 1581. In August 1584 he was captured in Swithin Wells's house in Holborn with all his Massing stuff and committed to Newgate, where he died of starvation before the end of the year. Anstruther, p. 174; Foley VII, p. 715.

123 Anstruther, pp. 337, 339–40; Midland Catholic History 15, p. 3.

124 Stapleton, pp. 1–3.

125 Ibidem, pp. 259–60.

126 Anne Windsor, widow, of Addington was a recusant in 1592–3: C.R.S. 18, pp. 5–6.

127 Anstruther, pp. 250–2, 389–90; Christine, Kelly, Blessed Thomas Belson: His Life and Times, 1563–1589 (1987).Google Scholar For a Latin poem by Belson see Hodgetts in Midland Catholic History 3 (1994), pp. 1–3.Google Scholar

128 Stapleton, pp. 67–68, 80, 89, 106–12, 114. Tusmore, later the main house of the Fermors, was not bought, by Sir Richard, until 1612.

129 C.R.S. 22, p. 110; C.R.S. 71, p. 163; Recusant History 27 (2004–05), p. 480.Google ScholarPubMed Cf. V.C.H. Oxfordshire VI, pp. 301–312; Recusant History 24 (1998–99), p. 34.

130 C.R.S. 2, p. 27; C.R.S. 13, pp. 90, 140. Compton married Anne Spencer in 1581.

131 Vaux, p. 121.

132 Foley II, p. 587 (Lansdowne MSS, Burghley Papers, 33 Plut., n. 16).

133 C.R.S. 2, pp. 180–1.

134 John, Morris ed., Troubles of our Catholic Forefathers, 3 vols., II (1875), pp. 157, 379, 397, 408, 426, 427, 479, 492.Google Scholar

135 Recusant History 12 (1973), pp. 116–7.Google ScholarPubMed

136 William, George Compton, 5th Marquess of Northampton, Compton Wynyates (1904), pp. 39–40;Google Scholar William, Bingham Compton, 6th Marquess of Northampton, History of the Comptons of Compton Wynyates (1930), p. 90.Google Scholar The Countess was Mary, daughter of Sir Francis Beaumont of Cole Orton, Leicestershire.

137 Stapleton, pp. 159, 168; Oxfordshire Visitations, 1566–74 & 1634 (Harleian Society 5), p. 256.

138 Stapleton, pp. 2–3; C.R.S. 71, p. 10; C.R.S. 22, p. 99; C.R.S. 60, pp. 211, 231, 239.

139 Stapleton, pp. 161–2; Anstruther, pp. 296–7; C.R.S. 71, pp. 169, 172.

140 Vaux, pp. 120–7; C.R.S. 60, pp. 6–9, 120; C.R.S. 54, pp. 243–5 (Responsa (1611) of James Griffith, son of Ambrose Griffith and Jane Thompson); cf. C.R.S. 2, pp. 222, 295, 297; Foley IV, pp. 333–6, 370, 462–70; C.R.S. 53, pp. 140–2, 144.

141 Lansdowne MSS, Burghley Papers, 33 Plut., no. 16; V.C.H. Oxfordshire XIII, pp. 87–88.

142 Acts of the Privy Council, 1581–2, p. 290.

143 C.R.S. 22, p. 49.

144 Emmison, F. G., Tudor Secretary: Sir William Petre at Court and Home (1961), pp. 25, 171, 271, 279, 304.Google Scholar

145 V.C.H. Oxfordshire XIII, pp. 22–25.

146 Emmison, pp. 224, 245, 287, 289, 303–5. Persons describes the martyr Robert Johnson as ‘Mr. Talbot's priest’: C.R.S. 2, p. 27.

147 Emmison, pp. 69, 89.

148 For the evidence and a discussion see Hodgetts, ‘The Chimney Hide at Mapledurham’, Midland Catholic History 11 (2005), pp. 4–30, esp. pp. 12–13.

149 Simpson, pp. 305, 343–4, 347–8, 354–6; Waugh, pp. 132–3, 139–40, 162—4.

150 Simpson, p. 354.

151 Worcs. R.O., Berington 29(1).

152 Berington 29(2).

153 Allen to Agazzari, 23 June 1581, in Simpson, p. 296. Users of Simpson, pp. 306–26, should be aware that his indicator no. 236*, p. 306, refers to Note 237, p. 528. Indicators 237–249 refer to Notes 238–250. Indicator 250 refers to Note 250 bis and indicator 250* to Note 250 tert. From no. 251 onwards, indicators and notes correspond again.

154 Claire Cross, M., ‘The Third Earl of Huntingdon and Trials of Catholics in the North, 1581–1595’, Recusant History 8 (1965–66), pp. 136–46.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

155 For the dates see Hodgetts, ‘Campion in Staffordshire and Derbyshire, 1581’, Midland Catholic History 7 (2000), pp. 52–54.Google Scholar

156 C.R.S. 53, p. 188–9, with ‘shoe’, ‘in’ and ‘cloe’ [sic] emended to ‘serve’, ‘Mr’ and ‘clear’. Henry Sacheverell himself is given on pp. 187 and 189 as ‘Henrie Sir Cheverell’ and ‘Mr. Sir Cheverall’, and in the index as ‘Cheverell, Sir Henry’.

157 C.S.P.D., 1581–90, pp. 136, 149, 154, 157.