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Midhurst Catholics and the Protestation Returns of 1642

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 October 2016

Timothy J. McCann
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Extract

Two recent articles in Recusant History have drawn attention to the Protestation Returns, and used them as evidence for the size and strength of the Catholic community in the seventeenth century, as well as for evidence for the existence or non-existence of ‘Church Papists’. The purpose of this article is to move the discussion on towards an examination of the reliability of the Protestation Returns themselves as giving an accurate picture of the size of the Catholic community, and, in particular, to examine the evidence in the case of the parish of Midhurst in West Sussex, a well-known centre of recusancy.

Type
Articles
Information
British Catholic History , Volume 16 , Issue 2 , October 1982 , pp. 319 - 323
Copyright
Copyright © Catholic Record Society 1982

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References

Notes

1 Newman, P. R., ‘Roman Catholics in Pre-Civil War England: The Problem of Definition’, Recusant History 15, no. 2 (1979), pp. 148–52Google Scholar, and Reid, D. S., ‘P. R. Newman and the Durham Protestations’, Recusant History 15, no. 5 (1981), pp. 370–1.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2 Stephens, W. B., Sources for English Local History (1973), p. 38.Google Scholar

3 Faraday, M. A., The Westmoreland Protestation Returns, 1641/2, Cumberland and Westmoreland Antiquarian and Archaeological Society 17 (1971), p. ix.Google Scholar

4 Garraway Rice, R., West Sussex Protestation Returns, 1641-1642, Sussex Record Society 5 (1905)Google Scholar.

5 Fletcher, Anthony, A County Community in Peace and War: Sussex 1600-1660 (1975). D. 99.Google Scholar

6 See for example Southern, A. C. (ed.), An Elizabethan Recusant House: The Life of the Lady Magdalen Viscountess Montague (1954)Google Scholar and Rev. Willaert, H., History of an old Catholic Mission: Cowdray—Easebourne—Midhurst (1928).Google Scholar

7 West Sussex Record Office, Ep.1/15/l, 1624, 1626 and 1628.

8 W.S.R.O., QR/W14, f. 15/22.

9 W.S.R.O., Ep.1/22/1, 1641. See also Welch, C. E., ‘Roman Catholics at Midhurst in 1641’, Sussex Notes and Queries 14 (1956), pp. 166–9Google Scholar.

10 W.S.R.O., Par. 138/9/1, ff. 29-31.