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YOUTH, RELIGIOUS IDENTITY, AND AUTOBIOGRAPHY AT THE ENGLISH COLLEGES IN ROME AND VALLADOLID, 1592–1685*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 May 2012

LUCY UNDERWOOD
LUCY UNDERWOOD*
Affiliation:
Magdalene College, University of Cambridge
*
Magdalene College, Magdalene Street, Cambridge CB3 0AGlau20@cam.ac.uk
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Abstract

This article analyses the records of 595 entrants to the English College, Rome, and 309 entrants to the English College, Valladolid. These Colleges, set up to train young English men as Catholic priests at a time when Catholicism was proscribed in England, required all entrants to complete questionnaires covering their social, educational, and religious background. The Responsa Scholarum are the autograph manuscripts of students at Rome; the Liber Primi Examinis consists of summaries of oral examinations written down by the interviewers. Through a combination of quantitative analysis and close reading of individual accounts, this article explores responses to the questionnaires, focusing on the engagement of young people with religion and religious identity. It argues that their self-writings shed important light on our understanding of both early modern religion and of early modern childhood and adolescence.

Type
Articles
Information
The Historical Journal , Volume 55 , Issue 2 , June 2012 , pp. 349 - 374
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2012

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Footnotes

*

I am grateful to Dr Gavin Jarvis of Queen's University, Belfast, for technical assistance in data analysis and in constructing the graphs, without which help this article could not have been written. I am also grateful to Eamon Duffy, Michael Questier, Simon Healy, and Laurence Brockliss for reading drafts.

References

1 Anthony Kenny edited the Responsa Scholarum (Responsa) for the Catholic Record Society Records Series (CRS) 54 and 55 (London, 1962–3); E. Henson edited the Liber Primi Examinis (LPE) in the Records of the English College, Valladolid (CRS 30, London, 1930). I use these editions. I have also consulted the manuscripts of the Responsa, Scritture 24 and 25, at the English College archives, Rome (VEC). All translations are the author's unless otherwise noted. The Rome 1598 questionnaire was printed by Kenny, and with translation in M. Murray, The poetics of conversion in early modern English literature (Cambridge, 2009), p. 39. The questionnaire's content is discussed below.

2 595 Rome responsa survive, compared to 757 students entering during the period (Liber Ruber). At Valladolid, 309 entries for 356 students survive, 6 individuals appear in both.

3 Beales, A. C. F., Education under penalty: English Catholic education from the Reformation to the fall of James II, 1547–1689 (London, 1963), pp. 84–6Google Scholar.

4 Bossy, John, The English Catholic community, 1570–1850 (London, 1975). pp. 197–202Google Scholar, 415.

5 M. C. Questier, ‘Clerical recruitment, conversion and Rome c. 1580–1625’, in C. Cross, ed., Patronage and recruitment in the Tudor and early Stuart church (York, 1996) pp. 76–94.

6 M. Murray, ‘“Nowe I am a Catholique”: William Alabaster and the early modern Catholic conversion narrative’, in R. Corthell, F. E. Dolan, C. Highley, and A. F. Marotti, eds., Catholic culture in early modern England (Notre Dame, IN, 2007), pp. 189–215; Murray, Poetics of conversion, pp. 38–42.

7 H. Berry and E. Foyster assess the historiography in the Introduction to their edited collection entitled The family in early modern England (Cambridge, 2007), pp. 1–17CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Recent research on childhood and youth includes Griffiths, P., Youth and authority: formative experiences in England, 1560–1640 (Oxford, 1996)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Ben-Amos, I. K., Adolescence and youth in early modern England (New Haven, CT, and London, 1994)Google Scholar; A. Shell, ‘Furor juvenilis: post-Reformation English Catholicism and exemplary youthful behaviour’, in E. Shagan, ed., Catholics and the ‘Protestant nation’: religious politics and identity in early modern England (Manchester, 2005), pp. 185–206; Fletcher, A. J., Growing up in England: the experience of childhood, 1600–1914 (New Haven, CT, and London, 2008)Google Scholar; Foyster, E. and Marten, J., general eds., A cultural history of childhood and family (6 vols., New York, NY, 2010)Google Scholar.

8 See e.g. Highley, C., Catholics writing the nation in early modern Britain and Ireland (Oxford, 2008)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Walsham, A., Church papists: Catholicism, conformity and confessional polemic in early modern England (Woodbridge, 1993)Google Scholar; Dillon, A., The construction of martyrdom in the English Catholic community (Aldershot, 2002)Google Scholar; Lake, P. and Questier, M. C.The trials of Margaret Clitherow: persecution, martyrdom and the politics of sanctity in Elizabethan England (London and New York, NY, 2011)Google Scholar; Corthell et al., Catholic culture.

9 A recent study is Houliston, V.Catholic resistance in Elizabethan England: Robert Persons's Jesuit polemic (Aldershot, 2007)Google Scholar.

10 See CRS 55, pp. v–viii for the 1658 questionnaire.

11 CRS 30, pp. 1–3.

12 Williams, M. E., The Venerable English College, Rome: a history, 1579–1979 (2nd edn, Leominster 2008), pp. 23–8Google Scholar.

13 Ibid., p. 19.

14 Petti, A. G. (ed.), Letters and despatches of Richard Verstegan, CRS 52 (London, 1959)Google Scholar, Introduction, pp. xi–xlvi; Dillon, Martyrdom pp. 78–82; Robert Persons, ‘A storie of domesticall difficulties’, in CRS 2, pp. 48–218; Houliston, Resistance, ch. 5; T. M. McCoog, ‘Construing martyrdom in the English Catholic community, 1582–1602’, in Shagan, ed., Catholics and the ‘Protestant nation’, pp. 95–127.

15 E.g. Litteræ annuæ Societatis Jesu anni 1600 (Antwerp, 1618), pp. 24–5; redactions in H. Foley, ed., Records of the English Province of the Society of Jesus… (8 vols., London, 1875–83), vii.ii, pp. 975–8.

16 Bossy, Community, pp. 198–202, 415. Douai produced nothing comparable to the Responsa or LPE, but recorded students’ social origins from 1628 to 1633.

17 Mullett, M. A., Catholics in Britain and Ireland, 1558–1829 (Basingstoke, 1998), pp. 19–22CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 31–2; Bossy, Community, pp. 49–60, 149–81, 198–202; Kearney, H. F., Scholars and gentlemen (London, 1970), pp. 28–33Google Scholar. Rowlands, M. B., ed., Catholics of parish and town, 1558–1778 (London, 1999)Google Scholar modifies this picture.

18 7.4 per cent of Rome respondents were from London; 10.8 per cent from Yorkshire; 15.8 per cent from Lancashire. At Valladolid, 7.1 per cent were from London; 12.9 per cent from Yorkshire; 7.1 per cent from Lancashire. Compare Bossy's estimates, Community, pp. 404–5.

19 Where ages are not given in the Responsa, I have taken them from the Liber Ruber (very few are recorded in neither). At Valladolid, the register records what the LPE omits.

20 At Valladolid, 65.4 per cent; at Rome, 73.5 per cent overall, and 67.1 per cent up to 1620.

21 Kenny numbers responsa according to their writers' appearance in the College register, the Liber Ruber, ed. W. Kelly (2 vols., CRS 37 and 40, London, 1940–3); Valladolid entries are numbered by their appearance in the LPE. I follow this system, citing entries LRx (Rome) or LPEx (Valladolid), with entry year where appropriate; all references are in this form, and are to the Kenny and Henson editions respectively.

22 Griffiths, Youth and authority, pp. 19–26; K. Thomas, ‘Age and authority in early modern England’, in Proceedings of the British Academy 1976 (Oxford, 1977), pp. 205–48; Ben-Amos, Adolescence and youth, pp.1–9, 10–11.

23 VEC Scritture 24–5; Kenny, CRS 54, Introduction.

24 CRS 30, p. 2.

25 Kenny, CRS 54 p. vii; referring to responsa which mention this, also those few dated to the day: e.g. LR447 Thomas Cooke, responsa dated 15 Oct. 1607; admitted 16 Oct. 1607. LR450 and LR451 are dated 16 Oct. 1607, with an admission date the same day. Liber Ruber, i, pp. 147–9.

26 See e.g. VEC Scritture 24/2, 24/17.

27 I.e. ritually absolved him from heresy and/or schism. See discussion below.

28 Conscientious refusal to attend church, punishable by a fine of 12d a time, and £20 per lunar month after 1581. Recusants were also targets for imprisonment and other official harassment.

29 See Walsham, Church papists, ch. 2, for recusancy theory.

30 Ibid.

31 Ibid., Church papists, ch. 3, on pro-conformity tracts; also her ‘“Yielding to the extremity of the time”: conformity, orthodoxy and the post-Reformation Catholic community’, in P. Lake and M. C. Questier, eds., Conformity and orthodoxy in the English church, c. 1560–1660 (Woodbridge, 2000), pp. 211–36.

32 Thomas Beveridge (LR362, 1600).

33 Questier, ‘Recruitment’, p. 93.

34 Many historians have covered this subject. See e.g. Houliston, Resistance, ch. 6.

35 A division at twenty-four might better reflect contemporary ideas of ‘youth’, but would include so many respondents as to make the categories meaningless. I therefore focus on childhood and early youth rather than those on the verge of adulthood.

36 Questier, ‘Recruitment’.

37 Ben-Amos, Adolescence and youth, pp. 184–91; Griffiths, Youth and authority, pp. 54–61; Argyle, M. and Beit-Hallahmi, B., The psychology of religious behaviour, belief and experience (London, 1997), pp. 114–17Google Scholar, 150–2; Gillespie, V. B., The dynamics of religious conversion (Birmingham, AL, 1991), pp. 95–109Google Scholar. Ben-Amos qualifies the distinctive connection of youth to conversion. Neither Ben-Amos nor Griffiths mention Catholicism in discussing religion.

38 Murray, ‘William Alabaster’, pp. 194–5.

39 21.9 per cent of juvenile and 22.4 per cent of other converts 1598–1629 refer to schism; 16.7 per cent of younger converts to 10.3 per cent of others converted from schism only. Most Valladolid converts did not state what they converted from: only five refer to schism, and seven heresy. My count differs from Questier's (‘Recruitment’, p. 85). I include only those using the term ‘schism’, although other respondents record similar experiences without doing so.

40 John Gerard, Autobiography of an Elizabethan, trans. P. Caraman (London, 1951), pp. 174–5, narrates this conversion similarly, but calls him Thomas Smith. Gerard records his words as ‘Father, for the love of God I beg you to hear my confession.’

41 Questier, M. C., Conversion, politics and religion in England, 1580–1625 (Cambridge, 1996)Google Scholar; Questier, ‘Recruitment’, pp. 90–3.

42 Murray, ‘William Alabaster’, pp. 193–4.

43 Cf. Questier, Conversion, pp. 53–4, 89–94; Tyacke, N., Anti-Calvinists: the rise of English Arminianism, c. 1590–1640 (Oxford, 1987), pp. 62–5Google Scholar, and his Aspects of English Protestantism (Manchester, 2001), pp. 9–11, 132–75.

44 M. Questier, ‘Conformity, Catholicism and the law’, in Lake and Questier, eds., Conformity and orthodoxy, pp. 237–61.

45 Lanman was working for the Catholic Viscount Montague. Questier, M. C., Catholicism and community in early modern England: politics, aristocratic patronage and religion, c. 1550–1640 (Cambridge, 2006), pp. 202, 238CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

46 LR815, 1644 (a late example); LR496, 1611; LR527, 1612; LR585, 1618.

47 LR612, 1620; LR860, 1649.

48 Walsham, Church papists, p. 52.

49 LR950; LR909; LR926.

50 Walsham, Church papists, pp. 77–81, with brief reference to the Responsa. My figure includes only those recording both parents' religion.

51 CRS 30, p. 72n.

52 Although there is no discrepancy in incidence of schism among the six overlapping entries.

53 The Responsa evoke the role-reversals explored by Shell in literary examples, which allowed sons to exhort their parents to conversion. Shell, ‘Furor juvenilis’.

54 Walsham, Church papists, pp. 96–7. Three examples of ‘schism’ occur after 1630, the last reference being to a schismatic mother in 1666 (LR984).

55 Bossy, Community, pp. 75–194, especially pp. 108–10, 182–4.

56 Griffiths, Youth and authority, ch. 2.

57 Cf. ibid., pp. 390–7; Ben-Amos, Adolescence and youth, pp. 208–42.

58 Griffiths, Youth and authority, ch. 4.

59 S. Brigden, ‘Youth and the English Reformation’, in Past and Present, 95 (1982), pp. 36–67; Shell, ‘Furor juvenilis’, considers the Catholic angle.

60 Eight years previously, Leedes's father persuaded him to go to church, but he was reconciled three years later through his mother's influence. He was twenty on entering (Liber Ruber, i, p. 176).

61 CRS 18, p. 175; CRS 53, p. 77, for Mary Huddleston's recusancy. Richard did not specify his parents' religion.

62 Walsham, Church papists p. 42.

63 Both versions are dated 26 Nov. 1599. There is no evidence of order of composition.

64 Forsters of Earswick. Aveling, J. C. H., Northern Catholics: the Catholic recusants of the North Riding of Yorkshire, 1558–1790 (London, 1966), pp. 187–8Google Scholar.

65 de Molen, R. L., ‘Childhood and the sacraments in the sixteenth century’, Archiv fur Reformationsgeschichte, 66 (1975), pp. 49–70Google Scholar.

66 Schroeder, H. J. (trans.), The canons and decrees of the Council of Trent (Rockford, IL, 1978), p. 53Google Scholar; Holmes, P. J., Elizabethan casuistry (CRS 67, 1981), pp. 35, 99Google Scholar.

67 Examples include: Peacock, E., ed., Roman Catholics in the diocese of York, 1604 (London, 1872)Google Scholar, passim (report on recusants); William Weston, Autobiography of an Elizabethan, trans. P. Caraman (London, 1955), pp. 4–5; Questier, Catholicism and community, pp. 234–8; and two local studies, Longden, R., ‘The Fowlers of St Thomas, near Stafford, 1543–1736’, Staffordshire Studies, 16 (2005), pp. 91–11Google Scholar, and Arkell, V. J. T., ‘An enquiry into the frequency of the parochial registration of Catholics in a seventeenth-century Warwickshire parish’, Local Population Studies, 9 (1972), pp. 23–32Google Scholar. My doctoral thesis, ‘Childhood, youth and Catholicism in England, c. 1558–1660’ (Ph.D.diss., Cambridge 2011), considers this further.

68 LR450, 1607; LR516, 1613; LR418, 1605; LR448 (implied); LR678, 1627; LR620, 1621.

69 Cliffe, J. T., The Yorkshire gentry from the Reformation to the Civil War (London, 1969), p. 183Google Scholar.

70 See, e.g. entry for Francis Radcliffe in a 1596 report on recusants: CRS 53, p. 63; cf. pp. 56, 58, 60.

71 Bireley, R., The refashioning of Catholicism, 1450–1700 (London, 1999), pp. 105, 209CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Bossy, J., ‘The social history of confession in the age of the Reformation’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 5th ser., 15 (London, 1975), pp. 21–38CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

72 Duffy, E., Fires of faith: Catholic England under Mary Tudor (New Haven, CT, and London, 2009), pp. 15–17Google Scholar.

73 CRS 30, pp. 110–11 (Warnford); Robert Dolman LPE226 (1610)/LR556 (1616).

74 Letter of 1594; printed CRS 5, p. 229. My emphasis.

75 I hope to complete further work on this subject.

76 Childhood and adolescent conversion is explored further in my doctoral thesis.