God’s Traitors: Terror & Faith in Elizabethan England
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There comes a hurried knock at the door, like that of a pursuivant; all start up and listen – like deer when they hear the huntsmen. We leave our food and commend ourselves to God in a brief ejaculation, nor is word or sound heard till the servants come to say what the matter is. If it is nothing, we laugh at our fright.14
It is surprising that the Vauxes were not targeted with the Treshams and the other recusant families whose homes were raided on 27 August 1584 in a major crackdown on Catholic centres in and around London.15 Perhaps Burghley’s friendly shadow was behind the omission, or perhaps a decision was made to observe the family from within. According to Thomas Dodwell, a renegade priest in the pay of the government, Henry Vaux was keeping ‘in manner of a serving man one Bridge alias Gratley, a seminary priest’. What Dodwell did not mention, and probably did not know, was that Gratley was himself a government spy. It was, perhaps, on the recommendation of the unsuspecting Henry Vaux that he soon became chaplain to the Earl of Arundel, a recent convert to Catholicism. In April 1585, the Earl wrote to Queen Elizabeth explaining his decision to forsake his family, friends and property for a life on the Continent ‘without danger of my conscience, without offence to your Majesty, without this servile abjection to mine enemies & without the daily peril to my life’. He did not make it beyond the Channel. He was captured in his boat and taken to the Tower of London, where, a decade later, he would die. Gratley had betrayed him and, unfortunately for the Vauxes, he was not the only spy in their midst.16
*
On 10 July 1584, William of Orange, the Dutch resistance leader and Protestant figurehead, was assassinated. He was shot in the chest by a Catholic fanatic, who said ‘he had done an act acceptable to God … and that for so doing, he was confident that he should be sanctified and received into the heavens into the first place near to God’.17 It transpired that Philip II of Spain had offered a bounty for Orange’s death. Two months later the city of Ghent succumbed to Philip’s general, the Duke of Parma. The grim spectre of Spanish victory in the Low Countries – and consequently of Habsburg control of the North Sea coastline – loomed large. The Duke of Guise’s Catholic League looked set to dominate affairs in France and by the end of the year it had concluded an alliance with Spain to prevent the succession of the Protestant heir. The forces of international Catholicism were arguably more militant and menacing than at any previous time in Elizabeth’s reign. Her government braced itself for war.
For many Protestants, ‘the enemy within’ was just as threatening. Catholic polemic had become noticeably more offensive and there was a steady stream of intelligence leading to further intrigues on behalf of Mary Stuart. Some plots were obscure: we may never fathom the true intentions of puffed-up William Parry, a government agent, turned Parliamentarian, turned freelance adventurer, who became ensnared in his own trap to expose disloyalty within the Catholic community. Other designs on Elizabeth’s life were frighteningly simple: John Somerville seems only to have had a ‘frantic humour’ and a pistol in his pocket when he set off from Warwickshire to kill the Queen.18 But as the fate of William of Orange highlighted, it only took one extremist, bent on martyrdom and blind to worldly consequence, to effect an assassination. The thread upon which hung the safety of the Queen, and that of her subjects, was frail indeed. In the autumn of 1584, Burghley and Walsingham discussed ways of making it a little stronger.
They came up with the ‘Bond of Association’, a national covenant to protect the Queen and defend the Protestant establishment. The signatories, who numbered in the thousands, pledged as members of ‘one firm and loyal society’ to pursue, ‘as well by force of arms as by all other means of revenge’, anyone who tried to harm the Queen or anyone ‘for whom any such detestable act shall be attempted or committed’. In effect, the Bond turned subscribers into vigilantes, obliging them, if circumstance arose, to form a lynch mob against Mary Stuart or any other ‘pretended successor’, regardless of whether they had connived in a plot or not.
Elizabeth I disliked the Bond. She would never have survived her sister’s reign had such a provision existed and, quite apart from the dubious ethics of slaying a potential innocent, she baulked (as she had in 1563) at Burghley’s additional efforts to force through radical constitutional measures that would have interfered with her right to determine the succession. The Act for the Queen’s Surety, which was passed in March 1585, enshrined a moderated version of the Bond in statute. In the event of a plot or assassination, intended beneficiaries could be killed according to the Bond, but only if found guilty of involvement or ‘privity’ by an official commission. There was no question of unsuspecting heirs being at risk (the nineteen-year-old James VI of Scotland was thus kept onside) and no revenge could be wreaked without a nod from on high. Nevertheless, the enthusiasm with which Englishmen from all backgrounds had subscribed to the Bond in its early form told of the strength of their devotion to their Queen and the national religion. The other side of the coin revealed a virulent strain of anti-Catholicism throughout the land.19
It was in this climate of fear and retribution that another major piece of legislation was introduced in Parliament. The bill ‘against Jesuits, Seminary Priests and such other like disobedient Persons’ was designed to annihilate the English mission. Any priest ordained abroad since the accession of the Queen and found in England after forty days of promulgation would automatically be deemed a traitor and face the death penalty. Anyone who wittingly harboured him would be ‘adjudged a felon’ and ‘suffer death, loss and forfeit as in case of one attainted of felony’. The bill presented an impossible scenario for England’s Catholics. Their one hope lay with Queen Elizabeth, ‘our headspring and fountain of mercy’. In a long petition, probably drafted by Tresham, and endorsed by several prominent recusants, including Lord Vaux, they begged for a measure of toleration. ‘O most lamentable condition,’ they cried:
If we receive them (by whom we know no evil at all) it shall be deemed treason in us. If we shut our doors and deny our temporal relief to our Catholic pastors in respect of their function, then are we already judged most damnable traitors to Almighty God …
Albeit that many ways we have been afflicted, yet this affliction following (if it be not by the accustomed natural benignity of your Majesty suspended or taken away) will light upon us to our extreme ruin and certain calamity: that either we (being Catholics) must live as bodies without souls, or else lose the temporal use both of body and soul.
‘Suffer us not,’ they begged the Queen, ‘to be the only outcasts and refuse of the world’:
Let not us, your Catholic native English and obedient subjects, stand in more peril for frequenting the Blessed Sacraments and exercising the Catholic religion (and that most secretly) than do the Catholic subjects to the Turk publicly, than do the perverse and blasphemous Jews haunting their synagogue under sundry Christian kings openly, and than do the Protestants enjoying their public assemblies under diverse Catholic kings and princes quietly. Let it not be treason for the sick man in body (even at the last gasp) to seek ghostly counsel for the salvation of his soul of a Catholic priest.
The petition stressed the apostolic nature of the mission and the loyalty of the priests to ‘their undoubted and lawful Queen’. In the unlikely event that any hint of treason could be discerned in any priest, the petitioners pledged to turn him into the authorities. ‘For our own parts,’ they concluded, whatever the outcome of the petition, ‘your Majesty shall find us such subjects as God requireth and your Majesty desireth, that is most obedient first to God and next to your Highness most loving, most loyal and most dutiful.’20
One of the petitioners, Richard Shelley, put the document in the Queen’s hands as she took the air in Greenwich Park. His presumption was rewarded with a cell in Marshalsea prison. The petition evokes a great deal of sympathy for England’s Catholics, stretched to breaking point by the uncompromising injunctions of rival authorities. At one level, they simply wanted to be allowed to receive the sacraments and pur
ify their ‘unclean souls’. Yet they were also aware of the politics of religion and the latest casuist teaching that allowed a certain amount of equivocation and ‘mental reservation’ in dealing with a persecuting body. One must wonder how sincere they really were when they offered to betray all treasonous priests. Reconciliation to Rome was categorised as treason, so official and Catholic interpretations of the crime clearly differed. While the petitioners’ first allegiance was to God – a Catholic God who, through the Pope, had excommunicated Elizabeth I – their love, loyalty and duty to the heretic Queen would always be qualified. Burghley’s confidant, Robert Beale, had expressed his concern years earlier: ‘It is unpossible that they should love her, whose religion founded in the Pope’s authority maketh her birth and title unlawful.’21
And yet so many of them did love her – despite the bull of excommunication and despite the repressive laws. When the 24-year-old Robert Markham resolved to flee abroad and convert to Catholicism, he wrote a desperately sad letter to his parents, craving their forgiveness and explaining ‘the horror of my conscience’. He abhorred the ‘odious name of traitor’ and pledged never to fight against the Queen or have any truck with conspiracy. ‘I am,’ he declared, ‘and will be as good a subject to her Majesty as any in England.’ But there had to be a caveat: ‘my conscience only reserve I to myself, whereupon dependeth my salvation.’22 Fellows like Markham would have loved nothing more than to have been a good Englishman and a good Catholic. Parliament and the papacy conspired to make it impossible.
At the end of March 1585, royal assent was granted to the ‘Act against Jesuits, Seminary Priests, and such other like disobedient Persons’ (27 Eliz. c. 2). For all those priests ordained after 1559 it was now a capital offence just to be in England. They had forty days to leave the country.
Not long afterwards, a group of men gathered at a house in Hoxton. Lord Vaux, Sir Thomas Tresham and Sir William Catesby (our triumvirate of Fleet veterans, cousins and countrymen) were present, as were Henry Vaux, ‘certain other gentlemen’ and six priests, including the superior of the Society of Jesus, William Weston alias Edmunds.fn3 The new law had rattled the recusant community and a fresh wave of raids was anticipated. Some householders felt that the risk of harbouring was too great. It was decided that priests should approach their homes by invitation only. Otherwise, they would ‘shift for themselves abroad, as in inns or such like places’.
There was no question, though, of leaving them exposed and destitute. The mission was a collaborative effort. Sometimes, as George Gilbert’s handbook written just before his death in 1583 makes clear, it was the layman who took the initiative with conversions, assessing and priming potential candidates, briefing the priest on ‘natural dispositions’ and exploitable weaknesses, creating ‘an opportunity for conversation suited to the occasion’.fn4 23 If the lay brethren did not live with the quotidian fear of the rack and the gibbet in the same way as their confessors, they nevertheless pledged lasting devotion to the cause and refused to abandon it in its hour of need.
It was ‘concluded and agreed’ at Hoxton to set up a fund. Lord Vaux, who later in the year would declare himself unable to pay a levy for the Queen’s army,24 pledged one hundred marks ‘to the relief of priests that would tarry’. Tresham, Catesby and their Hoxton host, Mr Wylford, matched Vaux’s donation and other unnamed gentlemen were ‘assessed at lower sums’. They also decided to launch an appeal in the shires. Henry Vaux was appointed treasurer. It was a formidable role, one that Henry, now in his mid-twenties and officially free from the burden of the Vaux inheritance, was seemingly keen to undertake.
The meeting at Hoxton broke up and the participants melted back into the streets and alleys of north-east London. One man, who identified himself as ‘A.B.’, returned to his lodging and took out his quill. ‘May it please your honour,’ he began his letter to Sir Francis Walsingham, ‘to be advertised that it is concluded & agreed among the papists that such priests as are determined to remain in England or hereafter shall come into England shall be relieved at the hands of Mr Henry Vaux, son to the Lord Vaux, or by his assigns.’
The spy proceeded to give a detailed account of the meeting and the proposed fund. ‘All this money,’ he continued,
is presently to be delivered to Mr Vaux before the 40 days to avoid the danger of the statute. And letters also directed into the countries abroad for the said collection & the money to be delivered to Mr Vaux. And he to take notice of all priests that shall remain or come into England & in secret by his servant Harrisfn5 (as is thought) to relieve them where they shall be heard of.
In the margin, the spy added an ominous note: ‘The hope which the papists have to receive comfort by the Duke of Guise & his confederates is not little.’ By the end of May 1585, the relief operation was functioning well. The spy reported to Walsingham that Henry was ‘daily’ collecting money for the fund.25
For several years, it seems, probably since at least 1580, Henry Vaux had been privy to a certain amount of sensitive information on the English mission. After Hoxton, he was in receipt of the intelligence and income needed to bolster the whole enterprise. Not only was he in regular touch with lay benefactors, but he also took ‘notice of all priests that shall remain or come into England’. From the late spring of 1585, he liaised with priests and sustained their work. According to Robert Persons, he was a ‘blessed gentleman’, who presented ‘a rare mirror of religion and holiness unto all that knew him and conversed with him’.26 According to Elizabethan law, he was a felon, who ‘wittingly and willingly’ mixed with traitors and abetted their treason. He had become a person of very great interest in the ongoing investigations of Lord Burghley and Sir Francis Walsingham.
fn1 That is, the equipment Alfield needed to celebrate the Mass. As the Jesuit John Gerard explained,
‘At first I used to take round with me my own Mass equipment. It was simple, but fitting, and specially made so that it could be carried easily with the other things I needed by the man who acted as my servant. In this way I was able to say Mass in the morning wherever I happened to lodge.’ (Gerard, Autobiography, p. 40)
fn2 Charles Arundell, a prominent supporter of Mary Stuart, had fled to Paris a month after the arrest of Francis Throckmorton. He was suspected of having had a hand in a scurrilous ‘evil counsellor’ tract that portrayed the Earl of Leicester as a power- and sex-crazed murderer, who kept bottles of erection-enhancing ointment at his bedside. More ominously, the tract anticipated the assassination of Queen Elizabeth and advanced the claims of the Scottish Queen to the succession. Compiled in Paris and printed at Robert Persons’ press at Rouen, ‘Leicester’s Commonwealth’, as it was popularly known, was circulating in London from September 1584. Writing to Leicester on the 29th of the month, Sir Francis Walsingham called it ‘the most malicious written thing that ever was penned sithence the beginning of the world’ (BL Cotton MS Titus B VII, f. 10r). Along with Allen’s True, Sincere, and Modest Defence, also published in 1584, it marked a shift in Catholic polemic towards a more combative stance.
fn3 Weston’s alias was a tribute to his late friend and Oxford contemporary, Edmund Campion, S.J.
fn4 The weather was a useful opener: ‘He should seize also any opportunity from the weather, which renders a man more apt to devotion – as, for instance, when the weather is fine to speak of elevation of spirit, in bad or rainy weather of graver things.’
fn5 The following year, another spy reported: ‘There is one Thomas Harris, a trusty servant to Mr Henry Vaux; much matter might be found out in him if he were apprehended.’ Around the same time, one ‘Harris, servant to Henry Vaux’, headed a list of ‘knaves & papists & harbourers of priests’. (PRO SP 12/195, ff. 36r, 184r)
6
Flibbertigibbets
In Shakespeare’s original version of King Lear, Edgar, disguised as the madman Poor Tom, claims to have been tormented by the fiends Obidicut, Hobbididence, Mahu, Modo and Flibbertigibbet, ‘who since possesses chambermaids and waiting
-women’.1 As fantastical as these names sound, they are not the product of Shakespeare’s imagination. He was inspired by real events. They occurred over a period of about eight months around twenty years before he wrote his great tragedy and the most extraordinary episode, ‘the prime grand miracle’, was performed at Lord Vaux’s house in Hackney towards the early autumn of 1585.
It involved the Jesuit superior Weston and Nicholas Marwood, a servant of Henry Vaux’s friend Anthony Babington. In attempting to expel the devil from the unfortunate Marwood, Weston utilised several ‘fresh green new relics’, including ‘certain pieces of Father Campion’s body’, which ‘did wonderfully burn the devil, all the organs of all his senses seeming to be broken and rent asunder’. Marwood’s screeching was witnessed by various members of the Vaux household alongside a carefully selected audience, which was reportedly put into ‘such astonishment as there was a confused shout made of weeping and joy for this foil of the devil’.2
The exorcism was the talk of the town in smart Catholic circles. It must have been a welcome diversion for the Vauxes, who were reeling from the death at home of the baron’s third son, Edward,fn1 and the ‘unfortunatist mismatching’ of his second son, George, to Eliza Roper.3 No one in the family seems to have had a good word for the girl. George’s uncle, Sir Thomas Tresham, questioned Eliza’s motives – George had formally become his father’s heir in April 1585 – and her virginity. George ignored the warnings and on the very day of his younger brother’s death, 25 July 1585, he defied the conditions of his inheritance and married without permission. By November, though, when a young man called Richard Mainy dined at Hackney with a son and daughter of Lord Vaux, there was not much talk of death or undesirable brides, nor even, it seems, of the imminent war with Spain (effectively declared the following month when Elizabeth I sent the Earl of Leicester to command an expedition in the Low Countries). Instead there was much excited chatter about ‘the late possession and dispossession’ of Nicholas Marwood.