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Power in vulnerability: widows and priest holes in the early modern English Catholic community

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 April 2020

Jennifer Binczewski
Jennifer Binczewski*
Affiliation:
Department of History, Washington State University, Wilson-Short Hall 301, PO Box 644030, Pullman, WA, 99164-4030, USA. Email: jennifer.binczewski@wsu.edu
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Abstract

Catholics in post-Reformation England faced new challenges in their resolution to remain faithful to Rome following the passage of anti-Catholic laws in the 1580s. These legislative attempts to root out Catholicism resulted in the creation of a clandestine community where private households became essential sites for the survival of Catholic worship. This article extends prior studies of the role of women in the English Catholic community by considering how marital status affected an individual’s ability to protect the ‘old faith’. By merging the study of widowhood with spatial analyses of Catholic households, I argue that early modern patriarchal structures provided specific opportunities inherent in widowhood that were unavailable to other men and women, whether married or single. While widowhood, in history and historiography, is frequently considered a weak, liminal, or potentially threatening status for women, in the harsh realities of a clandestine religious minority community, these weaknesses became catalysts for successful subversion of Protestant authority. Assisted by their legal autonomy, economic independence, and the manipulation of gendered cultural stereotypes, many Catholic widows used their households to harbour priests and outmanoeuvre searchers. This argument maintains that a broader interpretation of the role of women and marital status is essential to understanding the gendered nature of post-Reformation England.

Keywords

genderwidowsCatholicspriest-harbouringEngland
Type
Research Article
Information
British Catholic History , Volume 35 , Issue 1 , May 2020 , pp. 1 - 24
Copyright
© Trustees of the Catholic Record Society 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press

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References

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3 Bossy, John argued in 1975 that the Catholic gentlewoman ‘played an abnormally important part’ in the history of the English Catholic community in The English Catholic Community (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 1975), 158Google Scholar. Scholars have shown that women, both lay and religious, upset gendered roles and actively participated and shaped the English Catholic community. Some of these studies include Sister Joseph Damien Hanlon, ‘These be but women’, in Carter, Charles Howard, ed. From Renaissance to the Counter-Reformation: Essays in Honor of Garrett Mattingly (New York: Random House, 1965)Google Scholar; Rowlands, Marie B., ‘Recusant Women 1560-1640’, in Prior, Mary, ed. Women in English Society 1500–1800 (London: Methuen, 1985)Google Scholar; McGrath, Patrick and Rowe, Joy, ‘The Elizabethan Priests: the Harbourers and Helpers’, Recusant History 19, 3 (1989): 209–34CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Bastow, Sarah, ‘Worth Nothing, but very Wilful’: Catholic Recusant Women of Yorkshire, 1536–1642’, Recusant History 25, 4 (2001): 591–603CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Watson, Emma, ‘Disciplined Disobedience? Women and the Survival of Catholicism in the North York Moors in the Reign of Elizabeth I’, in Cooper, Kate and Gregory, Jeremy, eds. Discipline and Divinity: Studies in Church History Volume 43 (Woodbridge: Ecclesiastical History Society/Boydell Press, 2007), 295–306Google Scholar; and Rowlands, Marie, ‘Harbourers and Housekeepers: Catholic women in England 1570–1720’, in Kaplan, Benjamin, Moore, Bob, van Nierop, Henk and Pollmann, Judith, eds. Catholic Communities in Protestant States: Britain and the Netherlands, c. 1570–1720 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2009), 200–215Google Scholar. More recently, McClain, Lisa investigated the changing gender roles of both Catholic men and women in Divided Loyalties? Pushing the Boundaries of Gender and Lay Roles in the Catholic Church, 1534–1829 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Also, see Walsham, Alexandra, Catholic Reformation in Protestant Britain (London: Routledge, 2016)CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Kelly, James E. and Royal, Susan, eds. Early Modern English Catholicism: Identity, Memory and Counter-Reformation (Leiden: Brill, 2017)CrossRefGoogle Scholar for recent summaries of the field.

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7 For studies on the opportunities inherent in widowhood, see Cavallo, Sandra and Warner, Lyndan, eds. Widowhood in Medieval and Early Modern Europe (Essex: Pearson Education Limited, 1999)Google Scholar. O’Day, Rosemary examines powerful widows in Women’s Agency in Early Modern Britain and the American Colonies: Patriarchy, Partnership, and Patronage (London: Pearson Longman, 2007)Google Scholar. See also Stephanie DeBacker, Fink, Widowhood in Early Modern Spain: Protectors, Proprietors, and Patrons (Leiden: Brill, 2010)Google Scholar and Walter, Katherine Clark, The Profession of Widowhood: Widows, Pastoral Care & Medieval Models of Holiness (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2018)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Akkerman’s, Nadine recent study of she-intelligencers in seventeenth-century Britain also highlights that women could become more active in subversion upon widowhood, Invisible Agents: Women and Espionage in Seventeenth-Century Britain (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018), 11Google Scholar.

8 Jan Broadway’s work on the Catholic widow Agnes Throckmorton considers the disadvantages of widowhood when it came to asserting maternal authority over her son. Broadway does detail Throckmorton’s seditious activities, such as harbouring, although the focus is on her entanglements regarding maternal authority. Broadway, Jan, ‘Agnes Throckmorton: A Jacobean Recusant Widow’, in Marshall, Peter and Scott, Geoffrey, eds. Catholic Gentry in English Society: The Throckmortons of Coughton from Reformation to Emancipation (Surrey: Ashgate Publishing, 2009), 131–32Google Scholar. Previous studies of female priest harborers have included widows in their analysis, although an engagement with how that marital status impacted efforts to preserve the English Catholic community is absent.

9 The power a widow could yield was substantially influenced by their wealth and social status, as argued by Rosemary O’Day in Women’s Agency, 309.

10 This rise in the construction of priest holes was primarily the work of Nicholas Owen, nicknamed ‘Little John’, the chief architect of priest holes in Elizabethan England. Nicholas Owen travelled with the Jesuit Henry Garnet for eighteen years constructing hides in various Catholic houses throughout England. Outside of Catholic sources, it is difficult to piece together how many hides Owen built. Michael Hodgetts attributes the best constructed hides to Owen. He maintains that most known priest holes were created in the 1590s and the first decade of the 1600s, which corresponds with the dates of Owen’s activity until his execution in 1606. Hodgetts, Michael, ‘Elizabethan Priest-Holes I: Dating and Chronology’, Recusant History 11 (1972): 292CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

11 The three women executed were Margaret Clitherow, executed in 1586 for refusing to plead, although she was also a priest harbourer; Margaret Ward, executed in 1588 for helping a priest escape from prison; and the widow Anne Line, charged with harbouring priests and executed in 1601. See Patrick McGrath and Joy Rowe, ‘The Elizabethan Priests’, 209–34.

12 Scholarship has recently turned to examining the multi-faceted activities of female Catholics in the English community, as discussed by Lux-Sterritt, Laurence, ‘“Virgo becomes Virago”: Women in Accounts of Seventeenth-Century English Catholic Missionaries’, Recusant History 30, 4 (2011): 537–553CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 537.

13 Erickson, Amy Louise, ‘Property and Widowhood in England 1660–1840’, in Cavallo, Sandra and Warner, Lyndan, eds. Widowhood in Medieval and Early Modern Europe (Essex: Pearson Education Limited, 1999), 145–63Google Scholar at 152. Erickson’s study of wills in seventeenth century England finds that approximately 70 percent of people died without making a will.

14 Erickson, Amy Louise, Women and Property in Early Modern England (London: Routledge, 1993), 163Google Scholar.

15 Froide, Amy M., ‘Marital Status as a Category of Difference: Singlewomen and Widows in Early Modern England’, in Bennett, Judith M. and Froide, Amy M., eds. Singlewomen in the European Past, 1250–1800 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999), 236–69Google Scholar at 239.

16 At this point in time, the option of maintaining independence as a nun was unavailable to English women. Following the dissolution of the monasteries by Henry VIII beginning in 1536, and the accession of Elizabeth I in 1558, English nuns had two choices: enter secular life or join convents on the continent. Most Catholic women desirous of living an enclosed life travelled to the continent. By the end of the seventeenth century, the English convent community in exile was comprised of 22 enclosed convents with more than 1,950 members in Flanders and France. Bowden, Caroline, ‘Community Space and Cultural Transmission: Formation and Schooling in English Enclosed Convents in the Seventeenth Century’, History of Education 34, 4 (2005): 365–86CrossRefGoogle Scholar at 366.

17 Hodgetts, Michael, ‘A Topographical Index of Hiding-Places, III’, Recusant History 27, 4 (2005): 476CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

18 Apart from Vaux’s presence in Jesuit writings, state papers also corroborate her role as a priest harbourer. See a recounting of the priests associated with Elizabeth Vaux in SP 14/216/1 f. 22, the National Archives, London (hereafter TNA).

19 Evidence suggests that most widows in this study chose to remain single. In the biography of Dorothy Lawson, author William Palmes writes, ‘She intended to expend the rest of her life like a solitary sparrow in the holes of a rock, or morning turtle, that never had mate but one, and vow’d never to know another,’ Palmes, William, The Life of Mrs. Dorothy Lawson of St. Antony’s Near Newcastle-on-Tyne (London: Charles Dolman, 1855), 23Google Scholar. Similarly, the biography of Lady Magdalen Montague states, ‘For her husband being dead, the Lord Cobham, a man of great estate, honour, and authority in the realm, did most earnestly seek her in marriage…but she gave him a resolute denial, that thenceforward she was no more solicited by suitors,’ Smith, Richard, An Elizabethan Recusant House, ed. Southern, A.C. (London: Sands & Co., 1954), 32Google Scholar. In addition, Anne Dacre Howard refused to remarry after her husband’s death in the Tower. Her biographer wrote, ‘She had made a constant resolution to live and die a widow,’ The Lives of Philip Howard, Earl of Arundel, and of Anne Dacres, his wife, edited from the original manuscript by The Duke of Norfolk, E.M. (London: Hurst and Blackett, 1857), 199. Not only did Howard keep this vow, but she renewed it several times every year, in the same fashion as some religious men.

20 Gerard, John, The Autobiography of a Hunted Priest, trans. Caraman, Philip (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1988), 186Google Scholar.

21 Gerard, Autobiography, 185.

22 Ibid., 186.

23 Ibid., 187.

24 Ibid., 198.

25 Anstruther, Godfrey, Vaux of Harrowden: A Recusant Family (Monmouthshire: R. H. Johns Limited, 1953), 243Google Scholar.

26 Gerard, Autobiography, 201.

27 Anstruther, Vaux of Harrowden, 243.

28 Like Elizabeth Vaux, Elizabeth Stapleton, the widow of Brian Stapleton, commissioned a priest hole at Carlton Towers in 1614 during a remodel of the house. The hide is in a space between chimneystacks and underneath the floor. Access to the priest hole is through a trap door in the floor of a closet. Robinson, John Martin, Carlton Towers: The Yorkshire Home of the Duke of Norfolk (Derby: English Life Publications, Ltd., 1991), 11Google Scholar.

29 Palmes, Life of Mrs. Dorothy Lawson, 8.

30 Lawson’s number of children varies in sources, listing anywhere between twelve and nineteen. Fifteen is the number most accepted. See Hanlon, ‘These be but women’, 378.

31 Palmes, Life of Mrs. Dorothy Lawson, 29. Upon widowhood, Lawson was in financial difficulties due to her husband’s debt. A settlement for the payment of debts between Roger’s father, Sir Ralph Lawson of Brough and Sir Thomas Fairfax of Gilling suggest that by 1614, the debt was finally cleared by money from the manor of Heaton, the mansion house of Heaton, and part of the manor of Byker. Settlement for payment of debts and portions, 4 Sept. 1614, North Yorkshire Record Office, ZRL 8/21 1-2. By 1623, the date Dorothy Lawson moved to St. Antony’s, she appears to have been in a stronger financial situation thanks to her father-in-law, unencumbered by her husband’s debts.

32 Hanlon, ‘These Be But Women’, 372, 391. Hanlon argues that it was leniency in the enforcement of laws that allowed for Dorothy Lawson’s recusant actions.

33 Assignment of lease, 21 April 1623, North Yorkshire Record Office, ZRL 6/54.

34 An argument made by William Palmes, Life of Mrs. Dorothy Lawson, 31. See Davidson, , ‘Recusant Catholic Spaces in Early Modern England’, in Corthell, Ronald, Dolan, Frances E., Highley, Christopher, and Marotti, Arthur F., eds. Catholic Culture in Early Modern England (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2007), 20Google Scholar, for a discussion of how early modern English churches and houses communicated a recusant Catholic identity through symbolically articulated spaces.

35 Palmes, Life of Mrs. Dorothy Lawson, 47.

36 The use of dower houses for harbouring continued late into the Stuart reign. Consider the example of Lady Dowager of Worcester in whose house a raid uncovered numerous papists and priests in 1679. Newsletter to Francis Pye at Morpeth, 12 February 1679, Vol. 21: Charles II, Entry 342, p. 81, TNA.

37 List by Rich. Young of seven recusant servants found in Mr. Wiseman’s house, 1594, SP 12/248 f. 160, TNA.

38 Anne Dacre Howard’s unnamed biographer states that he stayed with Anne for fourteen years and that she moved four times during his stay. Lives, 202, 209.

39 Smith, An Elizabethan Recusant House, 41–42, 55.

40 ‘Conveyance’ was the Elizabethan term for priest hole. Declaration of John Ellys, of Bradmayne, Dorset, tailor, 11 September 1602, at Hatfield House, Hertfordshire Vol. 12: 1602 [795], 366. Mrs. Jesope represents an example of a widow who was arguably not part of the aristocracy or gentry. Arrest warrants, lists from magistrates, and correspondence within state papers present an opportunity to mine for individuals whose actions would otherwise be lost. However, these sources only tell part of the story, as those featured in such sources were caught. Those individuals, with social situations and harbouring exploits that left little evidence, continue to remain hidden.

41 Examination of Wm. Holmes, late servant to Lady Stourton, before Sir Geo. Trenchard, Sir Ralph Horsey, and John Williams, 21 April 1594, SP 12/248 f.170, TNA.

42 More than thirty individuals are listed in as keeping Campion in his confession. Campion’s ‘confession of his being entertained at the houses of Lord Vaux, Sir Thomas Tresham, Sir Wm. Catesby, &c. with some notes by Lord Burghley, 1580, Lansdowne MS 30, Fol. 78, BL.

43 Foley, Henry, Records of the English Province of the Society of Jesus, 7 vols (London: Burns and Oates, 1875–1883)Google Scholar, 3:551.

44 Foley, Records, 216.

45 Trewe Storie of the Catholicke Prisoners in Yorke Castle, c. 1599, Add MS 34250, BL.

46 Thomas Wilson to the Earl of Salisbury, 20 November 1605, Hatfield House, Calendar of the manuscripts of the most Hon. The Marquis of Salisbury, Vol 17 [988].

47 Collocates for the terms ‘widow’ and ‘widowhood’ were created using EEBO-TCP, through a corpus query textual analysis software created by the University of Lancashire, UK. https://cqpweb.lancs.ac.uk/. I am grateful for the assistance from both Andrew Hardie and Mark Knights in utilizing this tool. The database Early English Books Online (EEBO) was chosen to create a sketch of the treatment of widows in extant early modern English texts because it contains one of the largest and most diverse digital collections of English writings. Biblical associations between widows and orphans, together with the stories of the widow’s mite and the parable of the persistent widow overwhelm discussions of widows in early modern literature. Biblical discussions of widows include, but are not limited to, Exodus 22:22, Deuteronomy 10:18, James 1:27, 1 Corinthians 7:8, and 1 Timothy 5:6–14. For the story of the widow’s mite, see Mark 12:42 and Luke 21:2. For the parable of the persistent widow, see Luke 18:1–8.

48 Cavallo and Warner, Widowhood, 9.

49 The perceived threat of widows was also associated with witchcraft. Wiesner-Hanks, Merry argues that most persons in isolated cases of witchcraft fit the stereotype of old, widowed women who were poor, looked odd, and behaved badly, Women and Gender in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 266Google Scholar. See also Roper, Lyndal, Oedipus and the Devil: Witchcraft, Sexuality and Religion in Early Modern Europe (New York: Routledge, 1994)Google Scholar. However, Alison Rowlands has argued, along with Robin Briggs, that widows have been overrepresented in studies of witchcraft and that external religious, social and economic factors contributed more towards witchcraft accusations than gender, old age, and marital status. Rowlands maintains that less than half of accused women were widows. Rowlands, Alison, ‘Witchcraft and Old Women in Early Modern Germany’, Past & Present 173 (2001): 50–89CrossRefGoogle Scholar at 62–63. See also Briggs, Robin, Witches and Neighbors: The Social and Cultural Context of European Witchcraft (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2002)Google Scholar.

50 Christman, Victoria found that widowed Catholic book publishers in Antwerp similarly benefited from the vulnerability associated with their marital status, as they were ‘practically invisible to imperial officials, thereby enabling them to continue their illicit production unimpeded by judicial censure.’ Christman, ‘The Coverture of Widowhood: Heterodox Female Publishers in Antwerp 1530–1580’, Sixteenth Century Journal 42, 1 (2011): 77–97Google Scholar at 91.

51 Gerard, Autobiography, 51. Anne Vaux and Eleanor Brooksby were already a well-known harbouring duo, even to the authorities. They were listed by George Snape as harbourers of seminary priests in Warwickshire. Confession of George Snape of the names of Seminary Priests and the places of their abode, 1589, SP 12/229 f. 136, TNA.

52 List of relics, church stuff, &c. belonging to Mrs. Brookesby and Mrs. Anne [Vaux], March 1606, SP 14/19 f. 136, TNA. Robert Sutton was a seminary priest who was executed at Stafford in July 1588.

53 Gerard, Autobiography, 51.

54 Anstruther, Vaux of Harrowden, 188.

55 As quoted in Anstruther, Vaux of Harrowden, 188. The letter Anstruther is referring to was written by Henry Garnet to the Jesuit General in March 1593.

56 Some works have incorporated age as a theme in analyses. See Sheils, Bill, ‘Household, Age, and Gender among Jacobean Yorkshire Recusants’, in English Catholics of Parish and Town, 1558–1778 (Catholic Record Society, 1999)Google Scholar; Jütte, Robert, ‘Aging and the body images in the sixteenth century’, European History Quarterly 18 (1988): 259–290CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed; Minois, George, History of Old Age: From Antiquity to the Renaissance (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989)Google Scholar; and Ottoway, Susannah R., The Decline of Life: Old Age in Eighteenth-Century England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

57 For a study of hospitality, see Heal, Felicity, Hospitality in Early Modern England (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

58 Baddesley Clinton is open to the public. https://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/baddesley-clinton. It has long been acknowledged that Baddesley Clinton housed three priest holes. One ran along the roof in an attic space, although this hide was probably not used because any noise made in the ceiling would betray the hidden priests and burning candles would have shown through the boards. However, it could have played a role as a diversion hide that would be shown to authorities, proving that there were no priests hiding in the house. A second hide is now visible from the kitchen through a pane of glass and is purported to have been the hide used during this search. It is large enough to hide seven adults and it is positioned below the waterline of the moat surrounding the house, consistent with John Gerard’s description. Gerard, Autobiography, 52. The alleged third hide is between the walls and was supposed to have been accessed by the fireplace in the Great Parlour, although following a rewiring project in 2016 it was proved that the space could not have been accessed from the fireplace, due to its location within the walls. It is possible that the ‘priest hole’ could have been accessed from the Library, however when lifting the floorboards during the 2016 work, no signs of an opening were discovered. In addition, its size and location next to the flue would have made it very hot and uncomfortable. As a result, the identification of this space as a priest hole is in question. I am grateful to Ellie Fisher, Senior House Steward of Baddesley Clinton, for her knowledge and assistance with the question of the third hide.

59 Gerard, Autobiography, 201.

60 Anthony G. Petti, ed. The Letters and Dispatches of Richard Verstegan (c.1550–1640), Publications of the Catholic Record Society, 52, (London: Catholic Record Society, 1959) 7, as quoted in Walsham, Alexandra, ‘“Domme Preachers”? Post-Reformation English Catholicism and the Culture of Print’, Past and Present, 168, 1 (2000): 72–123CrossRefGoogle Scholar at 88.

61 Wm. Tate to Salisbury, 13 Nov. 1605, SP 14/216/1 f.140, TNA.

62 Anne Lady Markham to Salisbury, 3 Jan. 1606, SP 14/18 f.6, TNA and Earl of Salisbury to Lady Markham, 15 Jan. 1606, SP 14/18 f. 23, TNA.

63 Elizabeth Vaux to the Earl of Salisbury, 1605, at Hatfield House, Calendar of the manuscripts of the most Hon. The Marquis of Salisbury, Vol 17 [1322].

64 Jane, Lady Lovell to the Earl of Salisbury, 1605, at Hatfield House, Calendar of the manuscripts of the most Hon. The Marquis of Salisbury, Vol 17 [1256].

65 Salisbury documents on the Examination of Lady Lovell, at Hatfield House, Calendar of the manuscripts of the most Hon. The Marquis of Salisbury, Vol. 17 [985].

66 Jane, Lady Lovell to the Earl of Salisbury, 1605, at Hatfield House, Calendar of the manuscripts of the most Hon. The Marquis of Salisbury, Vol 17 [1256].

67 Henry Earl of Huntingdon to Sec. Walsingham, 1581, SP 15/27/1 f. 40, TNA.

68 Note of misdemeanours, 5 February 1584, SP 12/168 f. 13, TNA.

69 Although, as noted earlier, old age was not a prerequisite for widowhood. Eleanor Brooksby was 21 when widowed. Likewise, Anne Line was known as a ‘young widow’. The state of widowhood, not old age or gender alone, provided the combination of social solitude, stereotypes of vulnerability, and financial independence used by these widow priest-harbourers.

70 Foley, Records, 3:276.

71 Ibid., 277.

72 Ibid., 548.

73 Ibid., 549.

74 Ibid., 550.

75 Ibid., 549.

76 Lives, 216–17.

77 Walsham, Church Papists, 79–81.

78 While there are numerous printings of the biography, the most used is Mush’s, John ‘A True Report of the Life and Martyrdom of Mrs. Margaret Clitherow’, in Morris, John, The Troubles of our Catholic Forefathers, 3 vols. (London, 1877), 3Google Scholar. For a history of Clitherow’s life, see Lake, Peter and Questier, Michael, The Trials of Margaret Clitherow: Persecution, Martyrdom and the Politics of Sanctity in Elizabethan England (London: Continuum International, 2011)Google Scholar.

79 Mush, ‘Life of Margaret Clitherow’, 390–2.

80 Ibid., 381–82.

81 Ibid., 395.

82 Aveling, Hugh, ‘Catholic Households in Yorkshire, 1580-1603’, Northern History 16 (1980): 85–101CrossRefGoogle Scholar at 99. More recently, Lisa McClain has provided a gendered analysis of Clitherow’s conflicting loyalties and her dual qualities of piety and deception in Divided Loyalties, 139–46.

83 Mush, ‘Life of Margaret Clitherow’, 371.