No CrossRef data available.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 13 October 2009
My good Syr. Since my returne I have sent divers letters unto you and receaved also some from you but none in answer to mine doe come[.] Now I am shortly to go over having left things as I hope in good forwardnes. you shal ether with this or soone after with the first securitie receive the voices of 112 for Bish. you I know will expect more and surely more might have bene gotten if some were more diligent or the Pursivants did not so range [?] about as they do daily that nether london nor the countrie can afford any safetie or possibilitie to meet[.] yet this is certain that the number of pr. is nothing so great as was imagined and that it hath very smally increased since the span. sem: began, yett this number wil shew that it is not ambition which maketh so general a desire. I hear of scarce six that deny to have them and two for fear of offending withold their hands yet give their consents.
462 i.e. to England.
463 AAW A X, nos 12, 17, 23, 52, 66, 67.
464 According to Birkhead, Smith left for France by 3 August 1611 (though Thomas Heath said it was on 6 August, AAW A X, no. 150). He should have left on 3 July, but he delayed in order to be present at the christening of Viscount Montague's daughter, AAW A X, nos 97, 99, 103; cf. AAW A X, no. 71.
465 In his next letter to More, Smith said that there were 115 signatures to the petition for a bishop, but there were many others which had not been obtained, AAW A X, no. 92. AAW A XI, no. 253, provisionally assigned, however, by A.F. Allison to 1612, contains 115 names of secular priests, each signifying his preference for choice of bishop, but lists twenty-four others who would indicate privately their nomination. On 30 May 1611 Birkhead was still hesitating to send the collected signatures, AAW A X, no. 50. On 6 July 1611 he told More he would be sending the names shortly, AAW A X, no. 84. On 17 July Birkhead wrote that he and Smith had finally sent the petition with the appended names, AAW A X, no. 93, though subsequent letters are somewhat ambiguous about whether they have been despatched or not, and in mid-November 1611 Birkhead was expecting his ‘great packets’ to have gone only as far as Paris, AAW A X, no. 146 (p. 411). Only by January 1612 did Birkhead expect the ‘great packetts’ to have arrived in Rome, AAW A XI, no. io (p. 23); More acknowledged their receipt in a letter to Birkhead of 21 January 1612 (NS), AAW A XI, no. 26. More confirmed in a letter of 29 February 1612 (NS) that the petition material had now all arrived safely, AAW A XI, no. 67.
466 St Alban's College, Valladolid.
467 See Letter 7. John Bavant, however, in his letter to Robert Persons SJ of 28 March 1610 claimed that underhand means were used to extract consent from the secular priests when Thomas More went canvassing in late 1609, CRS 41, 99. In July/August 1610 a Jesuit newsletter said that subscription was forced out of all who did not positively object, and that an indifferent survey would show that ‘the half of them would deny having had any such a thought’, Foley VII, 1018.
468 Thomas Heath.
469 Heath's first extant letter was sent to More on 25 April 1611, AAW A X, no. 39. In late 1612 Birkhead wrote they were no longer able to maintain Heath in London, and Birkhead was at his ‘wittes end how to receyve or send’ letters, AAW A XI, no. 228 (p. 657). Heath, however, had still not left London by the beginning of September 1613, and he was arrested in October 1613 carrying letters for Benjamin Norton, AAW A XII, no. 160; Letter 46.
470 John Jackson.
471 John Almond alias Molinax, secular priest.
472 Benjamin Norton.
473 Katherine and Mary Pole, Geoffrey Pole's two youngest sisters, Downshire MSS III, 124Google Scholar, and perhaps also at this time Constance, who was noted in 1613 by William Rayner and Anthony Champney as being in Paris, AAW A XII, nos 90, 103. Norton notified More on 24 June 1611 that he proposed to ‘accompany the gentlewomen to ther brother’, AAW A X, no. 74 (p. 195). Geoffrey Pole had gone to Caen in early June 1611 to see to their coming over, AAW A X, no. 63. With others (including Anne Bluet and Elizabeth Dacres) Pole's sisters were intending to enter OSB, AAW A X, no. 62. See Letter 23; Lunn, ‘English Cassinese’, 64. The negotiations for the (soon defeated) union between the OSB congregations included a project for ‘the erectinge of a monasterye of Women which shoulde bee of the Englishe congregation’, AAW A X, no. 74 (p. 195); Lunn, ‘English Cassinese’, 63–4; Lunn, EB, 97. Pole travelled to Paris with them in mid-August. After the project's failure, Mary Pole lived with Geoffrey Pole at Paris for seven years, returned to England and then went, with Mary Lambe, her cousin, to the Augustinian house in Louvain. She was professed in 1622, Hamilton, A. (ed.), The Chronicle of the English Augustinian Canonesses Regular of the Lateran, at St. Monica's in Louvain 1548–1623 (1904), 243–4Google Scholar. Katherine Pole returned to England in 1613, Letter 39.
471 Presumably Richard Brenning, husband of Eleanor (Uvedale), and his son Anthony, Mott, fo. 62v. In late 1612 Anthony Brenning appeared before the exchequer court as the son and heir of Richard Brenning (of Hambledon), and, by virtue of the 1604 recusancy statute's provision for conforming heirs, claimed discharge of recusancy forfeitures levied on his deceased father's property, PRO, E 368/547, mem. 162a.
475 John Cotton, the second son of the recusant George Cotton of Warblington, Hampshire.
476 See Letter 15.
477 Lord William Howard of Naworth.
478 Birkhead wrote to More on 3 August 1611 that ‘those of greater worth, being winked at by some, can finde distinctions to take it by way of modification, yea some of them stick not to say, that no man of Consideration will refuse in that sence’, AAW A X, no. 97 (p. 273).
479 Preston, , Apologia Cardinalis Bellarmini.Google Scholar
480 Roger Widdrington.
481 Oliver Almond, secular priest. Birkhead made him his assistant in Staffordshire in September 1612 in place of Ralph Stamford, though by June 1613 Birkhead had replaced him with Roger Suffield because Almond had been arrested and imprisoned, AAW A XI, no. 171, XII, no. 111. In late July 1613 William Bishop believed Almond's release could be purchased for a small sum of money, AAW A XII, no. 138. Anthony Champney notified More in November 1613 that Almond, Bishop and other secular priests were suspected of agreeing with Preston's opinions, AAW A XII, no. 205. (In June 1591 the priest John Cecil had informed Sir Robert Cecil that Almond was a loyalist, CSPD 1591–4, 53.)
482 George Abbot.
483 Edward Collier, secular priest. Birkhead reported on 3 August 1611 that Collier had published a book in defence of the oath, AAW A X, no. 97. If so, it has not survived.
484 John Chrysostom Campbell.
485 Campbell was delivered through the agency of Louis Gallacio de l'Hospital, Marquis de Vitry, recently in England on diplomatic business, AAW A X, no. 98. In August 1611 Campbell went with Thomas Sackville to Douai to ensure that Thomas Worthington was not replaced as president of Douai College with the hated John Knatchbull alias Norton, a future Jesuit; thence Campbell went to Rome, AAW A X, no. 109. The seculars wanted Campbell to help persuade the Cassinese Benedictines, principally Robert (Anselm) Beech, that the appointment of a bishop in England would not be prejudicial to OSB's interests, AAW A X, no. 183.
486 Robert Gray OFM. See Letter 35.
487 Robert Cecil, first Earl of Salisbury.
488 See Letter 16.
489 Robert Persons SJ. On 28 August 1812 (NS) Smith wrote to More thanking him for the letter in question, AAW A XI, no. 140. According to Christopher Greene SJ Thomas Owen SJ also used the alias ‘Mercante’, ARSI, Anglia 37, fo. 314v.
490 Robert (Anselm) Beech OSB.
491 John Bavant.
492 The foundation of the writers' college.
493 William Baldwin SJ.
494 Otto, son of Maurice, Landgrave of Hesse-Cassel. See CSPV 1610–13, 175.Google Scholar
495 Elizabeth Dacres.
496 Smith reported on 17 July 1611 that Elizabeth Dacres had got a licence ‘to goe over’, AAW A X, no. 92 (p. 261).
497 Edward Bennett.
498 Francis Hore and Anthony and Robert Dormer.
499 Samuel Harsnett.
500 Newsletters written in July and August informed More that sixty Catholics in Midhurst had been summoned to take the oath, thirty in Easebourne, and all the Catholics in Battle, AAW A X, no. no. According to Birkhead, in October a certificate of ninety refusers of the oath at Midhurst had been ‘given to his meiestie’, though they were all of the ‘poorer sort’, AAW A X, no. 136 (p. 390).
501 William Wyborne, who died on 31 January 1612, PRO, E 368/545, mem. 122C.
502 Cardinal Edward Farnese.
503 Nicholas Fitzherbert.
504 Christopher Isham.