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 verie good Sr, I have receyved yours of the 3 and 18 [?] of lanuarie. I passe not much for there late arrivall when they come safe, my indisposition is such that neither fish nor flesh will goe downe. and yet yow wold judge me able to live, which I f[ea]re verie much. mr mush is gon, and so is m.r Southworth in lancashyre. be yow assured that your course is pleasinge to us, and for my part I do approve it, and lik verie well therof. I am sorie that fra Bartholomeo Telles hath served us in such sort, alas poore man, he knoweth full little owr needes and miseries, nor his master also, who doth what lieth in him to please [2 words deleted] and giveth catholiques faire wordes. I dare not write what is said of his unfittnes [?] for his place: neither do I know whome to gett to enforeme [?] him. for my selfe dare not venture upon it. but be yow full of good couradge, and be [‘yow’ deleted] sure that in what I can I will assist yow. heare is such sturre for Letters taken of late by my L of Canturberie, that it hath wrought us great trouble. do not marvell I praie yow that men write of our matters in generall. for in particular they dare not. to get some to regist[er] all particulars wilbe so chargeable, as I shall not be able to beare it out.
1039 See Letter 35.
1040 Christopher Southworth, secular priest, son of Sir John Southworth of Samlesbury, Lancashire. See Harmsen, , John Gee's Foot out of the Snare (1624), 130, 179Google Scholar; Anstr. I, 326–8.
1041 Robert Pett wrote to More on 1 February 1613 (NS) that the friar Bartholomew Teles, chaplain-confessor in the Spanish embassy, had been in England for a total of about two and a half years. Teles thought ‘that our country cannot morrally be reunited unto the See Apostolique agaynst our princes will and that he beinge brought to any qualification matters would quickly goe far better with Catholiques’ with which Pett and others agreed. But Teles, for this stated reason, was also ‘absolutly agaynst the makinge’ of bishops, whereas Pett and the other seculars thought that the appointment of an overtly loyal priest as a bishop would not goad James into persecution. Pett wrote scornfully ‘he is a religious and therfore noe marvaile yf with the religious he concur agaynst us in that poynt’, AAW A XII, no. 27 (p. 63). See Belvederi, 247–51, for the Brussels nuncio Guido Bentivoglio's report to Rome of Teles's views about England. John Jackson and John Colleton thought Teles had been suborned by SJ, AAW A XII, no. 46. Teles's opinions were taken seriously in Rome. He was a close friend of Cardinal Arrigoni, AAW A XII, no. 29. Colleton noted on 2 March 1613 that Teles ‘hath informed his hol: of the stait of our cuntrie in such sort, as his hol: hath given a plaine deniall to our long sute, and that he will heare no more thereof’, AAW A XII, no. 49 (p. 107). For More's memoranda against Teles's advice, see AAW A XI, nos 155, 156, 162.
1042 John Jackson wrote to More on 1 March 1613 that ‘thear was not long since one gentleman stayed in the port. & a bagg taken from him with above 200 lettres as it is thowght from the lesuites & their freinds, whearby they say the Archb. hath…advantage given him & great matters are discovered. & the party hath confessed that he had the lettres from one mr Scot, (who is mr [Thomas] Laithwayte the Iesuite) & named the place also’, AAW A XII, no. 46 (p. 101). Cf. AAW A XII, no. 73 (William Bishop's account).
1043 William Harrison, secular priest, and Birkhead's successor as archpriest. Harrison was accounted by Robert Persons SJ as a moderate, or possibly even an opponent of the anti-Jesuit secular priests, Milton House MSS, Persons to Birkhead, 21 August 1608 (NS) (transcript at ABSI). This was an opinion shared, in 1616, by John Cecil, AAW A XV, no. 65. Birkhead informed More on 2 May 1613 that Geoffrey Pole had advised Birkhead ‘once with verie good reason not to make choice of d harrison for my Assistant’, but John Mush and others had changed Birkhead's mind, AAW A XII, no. 86 (p. 187).
1044 Martinus Becanus SJ had written several works against the Protestant defenders of the oath of allegiance, Milward II, 95–8. But his Controversia Anglicana (Mainz, 1612)Google Scholar caused controversy among Catholics. Propositions from this book were condemned by the Sorbonne on 1 February 1613 (NS), ARCR I, no. 1480; Dounshire MSS IV, 46Google Scholar. Anthony Champney noted on 13 February 1613 (NS) that ‘here came by the last ordinarie from the congregatione of the index [in Rome] a sharpe censure’ of Becanus, ‘which censure hathe freed our facultie frome muche troble which would have ensued aboute the censure of that booke’, AAW A XII, no. 34 (p. 76); cf. Conway, AH 23, 43Google Scholar. Robert Pett, however, thought that Becanus ‘is a worthy man and hath done great good in Germany and hath been a great scourge to the Calvinists’, AAW A XII, no. 41 (p. 87). As J.P. Sommerville explains, Becanus put forward (Controversia Anglicana, 120Google Scholar) a ‘radical interpretation’ of the scriptural case of Queen Athaliah, namely that ‘popular consent outweighs hereditary succession’ so much so that ‘even if the legitimate heir is known to all, the people can ignore his claims and elect another ruler’. The passage in question was omitted from the second edition of the book in 1613, Sommerville, , ‘Jacobean Political Thought’, 301Google Scholar. The appearance of that second edition, ‘recognitus et auctus with an epistle to his Holiness’, clearly distressed Champney, AAW A XII, no. 93 (p. 203).
1045 Cardinal Robert Bellarmine SJ.
1046 John Cecil.
1047 Birkhead had written to More on 5 December 1612 that ‘mr Clinch I have appeased, suspendinge the action against him untill it may be better examined, which I think will content him’, AAW A XI, no. 220 (p. 625).
1048 See Letter 33.
1049 Roger Widdrington.
1050 Samuel (Bartholomew) Kennett OSB.
1051 William (Benedict) Jones OSB.
1052 John (Leander) Jones OSB. For John (Leander) Jones's relationship with William (Benedict) Jones, see Lunn, , EB, 101–2.Google Scholar
1053 For William (Benedict) Jones's legendary high-handedness, see Lunn, , EB, 101.Google Scholar
1054 John (Augustine) Bradshaw OSB.
1055 See Lunn, , EB, 99.Google Scholar
1056 John Baptist Vives.
1057 Not identified. In a letter of 19 July 1612 (NS), More had recommended this priest to Birkhead as a useful contact, AAW A XI, no. 146.
1058 William Stanney OFM, Franciscan Commissary for England, informed More that Robert Gray had left England during the first half of 1612 with letters from Stanney to the general of the Franciscans. (See Letter 35.) Now, as he attempted to return from the Continent, he was ‘drowned upon the sea I feare in sinn for that he came as an Apostate out of England hearing that I would not send him unto the generall chap[ter]’, AAW A XI, no. 237 (p. 681). Gray had narrowly escaped drowning in the recent violent storms, Letter 39; AAW A XII, no. 50.
1059 John Jackson alerted More on 11 September 1612 that Gray had lost all his remaining credit in England by his ‘goodfellowship’, and, in order to prevent scandal, he should not be allowed to return, at least for some time, AAW A XI, no. 147 (p. 404). Pett noted in December that Gray, who was preparing in Brussels to go to England, ‘is since by order from the Card: protector of ther order stayed and called back agayne to Rome without all or any delay upon payne of excommunication to be ipso facto incurred together with the losinge of his office and faculties and this citation was insinuated to him here and delivered by the provinciall of ther order in ther Chapter some 8 dayes past’, though clearly Gray did not obey, AAW A XI, no. 234 (p. 675). Stanney was informed by his friends in Sussex that More had told them that Gray was returning to England as the superior of the Franciscans in England, which news ‘did much greve’ some of More's ‘speciall frendes & mine and hath caused others that had given somthing in their wils’ to the Franciscans ‘now to alter their determination’. Stanney stressed that, if the rumours of Gray's drowning during his passage from the Continent were untrue, ‘how great authority soever he bring he must be enforced to returne againe for that every one that heare of him have fully resolved not to recei[ve] him into their houses’, AAW A XI, no. 237 (p. 681).
1060 Broughton told More in March 1613 that Gray was complaining that More had always been opposed ‘to his prefermentes’, AAW A XII, no. 47 (pp. 103–4). According to Godfrey Anstruther, Gray had been at Cowdray in the late 1580s; Anstr. I, 135. There is, however, some doubt about the identity of the priest called Gray who frequented the Sussex residence of the Browne family in the 1580s, for there was a Marian priest of that name who served Magdalen Browne, Viscountess Montague, PRO, SP12/245/38; Dollman, F. T., The Priory of St. Mary Overie, Southwark (1881), 29Google Scholar. The man here is presumably ‘Father graye a cordellier … a Scottche man borne’, noted by a correspondent of the earl of Salisbury in August 1610, PRO, SP 78/56. fo. 255r. In March 1613 Birkhead reported that Gray ‘hath once pressed to see our frendes, but hath had the repulse, upon just feares’ of danger (i.e. for fear that he would betray those who harboured him), AAW A XII, no. 60 (p. 125). William Stanney was now ‘Loth to speake with him’. Birkhead understood that Gray ‘hath Lost his commission’, AAW A XII, no. 68 (p. 145). By April, Gray had become ill because some people ‘wold not admitt him to there loginge at an unseasonable tyme of the night’, AAW A XII, no. 68 (p. 145). He was arrested with John Varder in January 1614 and sent to Newgate, Letter 54. His conformity secured him a pardon late in 1614, CSPD 1611–18, 260Google Scholar; PRO, SO 3/6 (November 1614). It was said that he would receive a benefice in the Church of England and preach a recantation sermon, AAW A XIV, no. 139. According to William Rayner, he ‘had a queane’, AAW A XIV, no. 120 (p. 375). Nevertheless, he left the country in 1615, with the assistance, apparently, of a chaplain in the French embassy, AAW A XIV, no. 129. He returned to Rome and a spell in the Inquisition prison, AAW A XIV, no. 139.
1061 John Varder.
1062 See Letter 23.
1063 i.e. in the college of writers.
1064 Thomas Worthington.
1065 Champney wrote to More on 30 July 1613 (NS) that John (Augustine) Bradshaw OSB ‘ys of opinione that an industriouse understandinge man in spayne would not only procure our pensione but be a meanes with a litle directione to procure us a large meanes to entertayne all our banished prestes’, AAW A XII, no. 139 (p. 312).