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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 October 2016
The Jesuit Provincial Thomas Whitbread (alias Harcourt), executed at Tyburn on 20 June 1679, was the most eminent ecclesiastical victim of the so-called ‘Popish Plot’, and has been beatified. Who exactly was he? There is apparently still some uncertainty. His parentage and early background are in one sense irrelevant to the dramatic public events at the close of his life. Nevertheless it is tantalising not to be able to ‘place’ an historical character. This paper re-examines the question with the aid of some scraps of fresh evidence.
1 Brevis Relatio felicis agonis, quem… subierunt aliquot e Societate Jesu Sacerdotes in ultima Angliae persecutione…. (Prague, 1683), p. 43 (by Fr Matthias Tanner, S.J.).
2 Florus Anglo-Bavaricus (Liège, 1685), p. 163.
3 Warner, John, S.J.: History of the English Persecution of Catholics and the Presbyterian Plot, ed. Prof. Birrell, T. A., in C.R.S., 47 (London, 1953), p. 113.Google Scholar
4 Dictionary of National Biography, vol. 8 (London, 1908), p. 1210.Google Scholar
5 Henry Foley, S.J.: Records of the English Province of the Society of Jesus (London, 1878–83), vol. 5, pp. 233–40Google Scholar, and vol. 7, pp. 832-3.
6 Gillow, Joseph: A Literary and Biographical… Dictionary of the English Catholics, 5 vols (London, 1885–95)Google Scholar; and Anstruther, G., O.P.: The Seminary Priests, vols 2 (1603–59) and 3 (1660-1715); (Great Wakering, 1975 and 1976)Google Scholar.
7 Holt, G., S.J.: St Omers and Bruges Colleges, 1593-1773: A Biographical Dictionary; C.R.S., vol. 69 (1979), p. 284.Google Scholar
8 Visitations of Essex, 1612 and 1634, ed. Metealf, W. C., in Harleian Society, vol. 13 (London, 1878), pp. 320–2 and 520;Google Scholar and Visitation of Essex 1664-1668, ed. Howard, J. J. (London, 1888), p. 101.Google Scholar
9 See notes 11, 13 and 17 below.
10 Essex Record Office (E.R.O.), D/ABR 12/148 (1684).
11 Miss M. M. Nolan: ‘The Whitbread family in Essex’, ‘Two Whitbread Wills’, and ‘Some Relations of William Whitbread’, in Essex Recusant, vol. 7 (1965), pp. 1 Google Scholar and 115, et seqq., and vol. 8 (1966), p. 23 et seq.
12 Jeffcock, W. P. and Whatmore, L. E.: ‘Some notes on the Families of the English martyrs’, in Recusant History, vol. 1 (1951), p. 233.Google Scholar
13 Public Record Office (P.R.O.), SP/23/141, no. 629.
14 P.R.O., PCC 2 Hele (1626). A summary of this will was included in Anstruther, G., O.P.: ‘Abstracts of wills of Essex Catholic interest’, in Essex Recusant, vol. 16 (1974), p. 94 Google Scholar et seq.
15 Florus Anglo-Bavaricus, v. note 2 above.
16 Foley, v. note 5 above; and see Challoner, Bishop: Memoirs of the Missionary Priests, vol. 2 (Edinburgh, 1878), p. 244.Google Scholar
17 E.R.O., Q/SR 252 and 261: Calendar of Essex Quarter Sessions Records, January 1625-26 and April 1628.
18 P.R.O., SP/23/258, listing ‘John Whitbread of Writtle, esq.’ as already under sequestration for recusancy at 1 April 1652.
19 E.R.O., D/P/50/1/1 (Writtle parish register). Nothing else has been traced about John Whitbread l’s second wife, not even her maiden name; nor about her first husband, who does not figure among the gentry family of Allen in the Essex Visitations.
20 E.R.O. D/DP E. 25 (Petre lease register), f. 226.
21 E.R.O. ib., ff. 141 and 247, and D/DP E.26, f. 50.
22 E.R.O. D/DP M. 723 (manorial roll).
23 E.R.O., D/DP M. 1333A.
24 E.R.O., D/DP Z. 30/13 (will of Lady Katherine Petre, 1624).
25 P.R.O. PCC 92 Goare (will of William 2nd Lord Petre, dated 10 January 1632-33). Richard Chenery was ‘servant in the household’ of the 2nd Lord Petre by 1620 (E.R.O. D/DP E.25 f. 264), and in 1629 he was first witness to a group of deeds of settlement on Lord Petre’s younger sons (E.R.O., D/DP F.23, F.29 and F.31).
26 Foley, vol. 2, pp. 393-4; Briggs, Nancy: ‘William 2nd Lord Petre’ in Essex Recusant, vol. 10, no. 2 (1968), pp. 51–64Google Scholar; and Gillow, op. cit., vol. 5, pp. 97-99 (Fr Henry More, S.J.).
27 Holt, loc. cit. note 7 above.
28 E.R.O., D/DP Z.30/13 (‘As for Jane Bolte I desire that yf she may be admitted into religione that then my deere husband will bestowe that sum of munny of her wh. hee and I have agreed upon’).
29 C.R.S., vol. 24 (1922), ‘The English Franciscan Nuns, 1619-1821’, p. 11, under date 1624: ‘Sara Chenery, the daughter of Richard Chenery and Sara Scrivin, born at Barton Mills in Suffolk, took the habit at 17 years of age and was called in the order Marie Peeter’. Barton Mills is near the Cambridgeshire manor of Kennett which the Petre servant’s father John Chenery leased from the first Lord Petre in 1603 (E.R.O., D/DP E.25 ff. 164 and 264). He married Elizabeth Whitbread some time between 1622, when she appears single in the account-book of William Petre’s heir Robert (E.R.O. D/DP A.40) and 1625, when the couple figure in John I’s will (q.v.). Robert Petre’s wife was named Mary.
30 C.R.S. vol. 55 (1963), pp. 483-4.
31 Ibid.
32 E.R.O., D/DP E.22/2. The rental names ‘John Chenery gent.’ The manor was leased in 1631 to Richard Chenery with permission to alienate it to ‘John Chenery his brother’ (E.R.O., D/DP E.25 ff. 319-20).
33 ‘Madelyn the wyfe of John Whytebrede gent’, was buried at Writtle on 26 January 1649/50 (E.R.O., D/P/50/1/1).
34 Loc. cit., notes 2 and 3 above.
35 Anstruther, op. cit., note 6 above, vol. 2, p. 375.
36 P.R.O., PCC 35 Penn (1670).
37 P.R.O., PCC 203 May (1661).
38 Vide William 2nd Lord Petre’s will (q.v., note 25 above). He also appears in 1629-30 as witness to Petre deeds (E.R.O., D/DP F. 30 and F. 31, with endorsements of 1651 identifying this man as the later William Whitbread of Writtle, gent.).
39 Petre pedigree in Foley, vol. 2, p. 584.
40 Gillow, op. cit., vol. 5, p. 288.
41 E.g. Fr Augustine Baker, O.S.B., vide Wood, Anthony: Athenae Oxonienses, ed. Bliss, vol. 3 (London, 1817), col. 10.Google Scholar
42 Brevis Relatio, loc. cit., note I above; see also Foley, vol. 5, p. 233.
43 Foley, vol. 2, pp. 393-4.
44 Foley, vol. 5, p. 393.
45 Writtle Park was originally intended by the second Lord Petre as headquarters of the rector of the college he endowed; vide Worrall, E. S., ‘Eighteenth-Century Jesuit priests in Essex’, in Essex Recusant, vol. 4 (1962), p. 118.Google Scholar
