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‘G.C.’, Recusant Prison Translator of the Japonian Epistells1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 September 2015

Paul Arblaster
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Extract

In the Royal Library of Belgium in Brussels is a manuscript which consists of over two hundred closely-written folios of English translations of Jesuit letters from Japan, or Japonia as it was then called, introduced with a prologue by the compiler ‘G.C.’, hinting fairly heavily that the translations were made in prison. Until recently rebound, the manuscript bore a Latin inscription on the pastedown, stating: ‘This book belongs to the English Benedictine Monastery of the Assumption of Our Lady in Brussels’. Although the contents of the volume are of interest in their own right, the concern of this article is with two men, Gabriel Colford and George Cotton, who have little in common except the initials ‘G.C.’ and the experience of imprisonment for religion.

Type
Research Article
Information
British Catholic History , Volume 28 , Issue 1 , May 2006 , pp. 43 - 54
Copyright
Copyright © Catholic Record Society 2006

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Footnotes

1

With thanks to Nigel Danby, Ian Gadd, Steven Gunn, Joe Munitiz and Alison Shell. Based on a paper delivered at the annual conference of the Catholic Record Society at Plater College, Oxford, July 2002, adapted from shorter papers delivered as ‘work in progress’ to the July 2001 CRS conference and as a communication to the Second International Conference of the Tudor Symposium, at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne, 7–9 September 2000.

References

Notes

2 ‘Hic liber pertinet ad monasterium Benedictarum Anglarum Assumptioni B. V. M. dicatum Bruxelli’, Van den Gheyn, J., Catalogue des Manuscrits de la Bibliotheque Royale de Belgique, vol. 6 (Brussels, 1906), p. 452.Google Scholar

3 Verstegan, Richard to Persons, Robert, Antwerp, 27 May 1593, in The Letters and Despatches of Richard Verstegan (c. 1550–1640), edited by Petti, Anthony G. (CRS 52, 1959), p. 155.Google Scholar

4 12 Nov. 1595 o.s., APC, vol. 25, ed. John Roche Dasent (London, 1901), p. 73.

5 5 July 1596 o.s., APC, vol. 26, ed. Dasent (London, 1902), p. 10.

6 13 January 1596/97, Essex Record Office, Calendar of Quarter Session Records, cited in O'Leary, J. G., ‘Gabriel Colford, Smuggler of Books’, Essex Recusant 8: 2 (1966), p. 78.Google Scholar

7 O'Leary, J. G., ‘Gabriel Colford, Smuggler of Books’, Essex Recusant 8: 2 (1966), p. 79.Google Scholar

8 Antwerp, Archief Plantin-Moretus, no. 21, Grootboek 1590–1599, fol. 338.

9 Antwerp, Archief Plantin-Moretus, no. 127, Grootboek 1600–1608, fol. 24.

10 Baetens, Roland, De nazomer van Antwerpens welvaart. De diaspora en het handelshuis De Groote tijdens de eerste helft der 17de eeuw (2 vols, Gemeentekrediet, 1976), vol. 1, pp. 231, 118.Google Scholar

11 Hansom, Joseph S. (ed.), ‘The Register Book of Professions, etc., of the English Benedictine Nuns at Brussels and Winchester, now at East Bergholt, 1598–1856’, in Miscellanea IX (CRS 14), p. 179.Google Scholar

12 Anonymous, Chronicle of the First Monastery Founded in Brussels for English Benedictine Nuns (privately printed at East Bergholt, 1898), appendix 4, no. 1, p. 282.

13 Wadworth, James, The English Spanish Pilgrime. Or, a New Discovery of Spanish Popery, and Jesuiticall Stratagems. With the estate of the English Pentioners and Fugitives under the King of Spaines Dominions, and else where at this present (2nd ed., London, T.C. for Michael Sparke, 1630) [1st ed. 1629], p. 69.Google Scholar

14 VCH Cheshire, ed. Harris, B. E., vol. 3 (1980), p. 189.Google Scholar

15 VCH Cheshire, ed. Harris, B. E., vol. 2 (1979), p. 102.Google Scholar

16 Calendar of the Patent Rolls Preserved in the Public Record Office. Elizabeth, vol. 2, 1560–1563 (London, 1948), p. 119.Google Scholar

17 CSP Domestic 1547–1580, p. 371. All references to CSP Domestic have been checked against microfilms of the original State Papers.

18 VCH Shropshire, vol. 8, p. 20.

19 VCH Hampshire & Wight, vol. 3 (1908, repr. 1973), p. 135.

20 VCH Hampshire & Wight, vol. 2 (1903, repr. 1973), p. 76.

21 PRO SP 12/154/129.

22 CSP Domestic 1581–1590, p. 140.

23 ARCR II, no. 160.

24 ARCR II, p. 38.

25 CSP Domestic 1581–1590, p. 609; APC, vol. 17, A.D. 1588–9, ed. John Roche Dasent (Norwich, 1898), p. 357.

26 Recusant Roll no. 2 (1593–1594). An Abstract in English, edited by Hugh Bowler, Dom (CRS 57, 1965), p. xxx;Google Scholar Aidan Gasquet, Francis, ‘Hampshire Recusants, a Story of Their Troubles in the Time of Queen Elizabeth’, in The Old English Bible and Other Essays (London, 1908), p. 304.Google Scholar

27 Recusant Roll no. 2, p. lxxxiv.

28 CSP Domestic 1581–1590, p. 276.

29 VCH Hampshire & Wight, vol. 3, p. 136.

30 CSP Foreign 1588, p. 452.

31 CSP Domestic 1591–1594, p. 176.

32 APC, vol. 24, A.D. 1592–3, ed. Dasent (London, 1901), p. 475.

33 APC, vol. 25, A.D. 1595–6, ed. Dasent (London, 1901), p. 208.

34 APC, vol. 25, p. 234.

35 APC, vol. 26, A.D. 1596–7, ed. Dasent (London, 1902), p. 362.

36 APC, vol. 28, A.D. 1597–8, ed. Dasent (London, 1904), p. 589.

37 Historical Manuscripts Commission, Calendar of the Manuscripts of the Most Honourable the Marquess of Salisbury preserved at Hatfield House, Part XVII, ed. Giuseppi, M. S. (London, 1938), pp. 500–501.Google Scholar

38 Gasquet, ‘Hampshire Recusants’, p. 324; citing Harl. MS 2083, fol. 127.

39 CSP Domestic 1603–1610, p. 561.

40 CSP Domestic 1611–1618, pp. 431, 442.

41 fol. 2–2v.

42 Ribeiro, Madalena, ‘The Japanese Diaspora in the Seventeenth Century, According to Jesuit Sources’, Bulletin of Portuguese/Japanese Studies 3 (2001), pp. 53–83.Google Scholar

43 See Takenaka, Masahiro and Burnett, Charles, Jesuit Plays on Japan and English Recusancy (Renaissance monographs 21; Sophia University. The Renaissance Institute Tokyo, 1995).Google Scholar

44 fol. 172r-v.

45 fol. 2v.

46 fol. 10.

47 Lettere del Giapone de gli anni 74, 75 & 76. (Naples, 1580), also as Lettres du Jappon (Paris, 1580); Alcune lettere delle cose del Giappone dell'anno 1579 insino al 1581 (Rome, 1584; Milan, 1584), also as Lettres nouvelles du Jappon (Paris, 1584).