God’s Traitors: Terror & Faith in Elizabethan England

by Childs, Jessie

  29 PRO SP 14/216/200.

  30 Mary Morgan deposed that ‘her husband & she serveth at Grant’s’ (PRO SP14/216/105, f. 158v).

  31 Ibid.; Travers, Gunpowder, pp. 41–2, 43; M. Nicholls, ‘Percy, Thomas’, ODNB.

  32 PRO SP 14/216/212.

  33 PRO SP 14/216/200.

  34 BL Add. MS 39829, ff. 176r, 180r.

  35 PRO SP 14/19, f. 88r; Gardiner, ‘Two Declarations’, pp. 515–16; HMC Salisbury, 18, p. 109.

  36 Tesimond, Narrative, p. 155; BL Add. MS 39828, f. 277r; 39829, f. 11r.

  37 Bod MS Eng. Th. B. 1, p. 572; B. 2, p. 823; Wake, ‘The Death of Francis Tresham’, p. 39; PRO SP 14/216/212; BL Add. MS 39828, f. 141r; Pollen, Babington Plot, p. 58.

  38 Wake, ‘The Death of Francis Tresham’, pp. 37–8; HMC Salisbury, 17, p. 528; Bod MS Laud Misc. 655, first leaf; PRO SO 3/3 (November 1605). Antonia Fraser (The Gunpowder Plot, pp. 145–6) is sceptical of Tresham’s ‘exculpatory confession’; Mark Nicholls (Investigating Gunpowder Plot, p. 50) is inclined to give it more credit.

  39 PRO SP 14/16, ff. 170–4; SP 14/216/135; PRO 31/6/1, f. 32r; Gerard, Narrative, p. 136; Barlow, The Gunpowder-Treason, pp. 241–2.

  40 Gardiner, ‘Two Declarations’, p. 516; HMC Salisbury, 18, p. 109; PRO SP 14/16, f. 170r.

  22 Strange and Unlooked for Letters

  1 PRO SP 14/216/11.

  2 Nicholls, Investigating Gunpowder Plot, p. 43.

  3 Ibid., pp. 8–9; Nicholls, ‘The Gunpowder Plot’, ODNB; ‘His Majesty’s Speech …’, pp. 244–5.

  4 PRO SP 14/216/2; Fraser, The Gunpowder Plot, p. 150.

  5 Scott, The Fortunes of Nigel (Edinburgh, 1822) III, pp. 96–7; Wormald, ‘Gunpowder, Treason, and Scots’, p. 144.

  6 Fraser, The Gunpowder Plot, pp. 150–8, 307n; M. Nicholls, ‘Tresham, Francis’, ODNB; Wake, ‘The Death of Francis Tresham’, p. 38. For Anne Vaux’s proposed candidacy, see D. Jardine, A Narrative of the Gunpowder Plot (1857), pp. 84–6.

  7 Swynnerton, A Christian Love-Letter, sig. L2r.

  8 PRO SP 14/16, f. 55; SP 14/17, ff. 19–20; Gerard, Autobiography, p. 33; T. F. Teversham, A History of the Village of Sawston, vol. 2 (Sawston, 1947), pp. 99–101.

  9 PRO SP 14/216/240, 241; M. Nicholls, ‘Digby, Sir Everard’, ODNB; Barlow, The Gunpowder-Treason, pp. 242–3, 250–1; Tesimond, Narrative, p. 156.

  10 Wake, ‘The Death of Francis Tresham’, pp. 39–40; PRO SP 14/17, ff. 75r, 85r.

  11 Gardiner, ‘Two Declarations’, pp. 516; PRO SP 14/216, nos. 70, 188; PRO 31/6/1, f. 34r. Fr Garnet heard that Grissold was ‘upon the rack for three hours’: Foley, Records, IV, p. 151.

  12 CP, 193, no. 57.

  13 CP, 113, ff. 20–1.

  14 PRO SP 14/216/229.

  15 PRO SP 14/216/105.

  16 PRO SP 14/16, f. 131r.

  17 PRO SP 14/216/103.

  18 Bod MS Tanner 75, f. 214v.

  19 PRO SP 14/216/229.

  20 PRO SP 14/216, nos 83, 226. Anstruther, Vaux, p. 295.

  21 PRO SP 14/216, nos 98, 150.

  22 For Eliza, see PRO SP 14/216, nos 103–4; CP, 113, ff. 148–9. For Huddlestone: PRO SP 14/16, f. 55; SP 14/17, ff. 19–20.

  23 PRO SP 14/19, f. 93r. Strange confused his dates, but was referring to the supper at Harrowden on 5 November. For his alleged torture, see Gerard, Autobiography, p. 173, and ABSI Anglia A III, 64.

  24 Gerard, Autobiography, p. 199; PRO 14/216/134.

  25 PRO SP 14/216/227.

  26 CP, 112, f. 173; Gerard, Narrative, p. 140.

  27 Foley, Records, V, p. 470.

  28 PRO 14/16, f. 175r; SP 14/216/123; HMC Salisbury, 18, pp. 426–7, 453.

  29 CP, 113, ff. 148–9.

  30 PRO SP 14/216/10. For Fawkes’s confession, see Fraser, The Gunpowder Plot, p. 189.

  31 Bod MS Tanner 75, f. 214v.

  23 In the Hole

  1 Gerard, Autobiography, p. 197.

  2 PRO SP 14/216/92.

  3 BL Harl. MS 360, f. 8r; Harl. MS 6998, f. 71r.

  4 PRO SP 14/216/93.

  5 PRO SP 14/216/240.

  6 PRO 31/6/1, f. 25r; T. M. McCoog, ‘Sweetnam [Swetnam], John (1579–1622), ODNB.

  7 CP, 191, f. 71; PRO SP 12/118, ff. 59–60.

  8 Gerard, Autobiography, pp. 198–9.

  9 CP, 191, f. 71.

  10 Gerard, Autobiography, pp. 197–8.

  11 Gerard, Narrative, pp. 138–9.

  12 PRO E 178/3628.

  13 Gerard, Autobiography, pp. 197–8.

  14 CP, 191, ff. 71, 75.

  15 PRO 14/216/103–4. See too CP, 113, ff. 148–9.

  16 For an interesting recent take on this, see Baynham, ‘Twice done and then done double’.

  17 Gerard, Narrative, pp. 140–1.

  18 Gerard, Autobiography, p. 208.

  19 CP, 113, f. 65; PRO 14/216/105.

  20 BL Add. MS 11402, f. 108r.

  21 Anstruther, Vaux, pp. 324–6; Fraser, The Gunpowder Plot, pp. 199–200.

  22 Gerard, Narrative, p. 141.

  23 PRO SP 14/16, f. 168; CP, 113, no. 19; vol. 114, ff. 84–5; vol. 119, f. 31.

  24 Gerard, Narrative, p. 140; Roberts, Diary of Walter Yonge, pp. 1–2.

  25 BL Stowe MS 168, f. 235r.

  26 Barlow, The Gunpowder-Treason, pp. 241, 245; Gerard, Narrative, p. 137.

  27 Barlow, The Gunpowder-Treason, pp. 261–2.

  28 Anstruther, Vaux, pp. 328–30.

  29 Swynnerton, A Christian Love-Letter, sig. K.

  30 Ibid., sigs Ar, B–B3r; CP, 119, f. 110.

  31 Swynnerton, A Christian Love-Letter, sig. K4v.

  32 CP, 110, f. 121; CP, Petitions 1375.

  33 Gerard, Narrative, p. 141; CP, 113, f. 65.

  34 BL Add. MS 11402, f. 108r; Gerard, Autobiography, p. 208.

  35 CP, 116, f. 22.

  36 Gerard, Autobiography, pp. 208–9.

  24 Two Ghosts

  1 Howell, State Trials, II, col. 176.

  2 Ibid., col. 194; Hawarde, Les Reportes, pp. 256–7; Willson, Diary of Robert Bowyer, pp. 4–8, 10.

  3 Howell, State Trials, II, cols 162, 182.

  4 Larkin and Hughes, Stuart Royal Proclamations, pp. 131–3; Tesimond, Narrative, pp. 162–3.

  5 Nicholls, Investigating Gunpowder Plot, p. 50; Gerard, Narrative, p. 211.

  6 A. J. Loomie, ‘Creswell, Joseph’, ODNB.

  7 Hasler, The History of Parliament: HoC 1558–1603: Baynham, Edmund; Nicholls, Investigating Gunpowder Plot, pp. 67–8.

  8 Howell, State Trials, II, cols 165, 168, 183.

  9 Nicholls, Investigating Gunpowder Plot, p. 49; Roberts, Diary of Walter Yonge, p. 5.

  10 Coke at the trial in June 1606 of Lords Mordaunt and Stourton: Nicholls, Investigating Gunpowder Plot, p. 75.

  11 PRO SP 14/19, f. 20r. Caraman, Garnet, pp. 152–3; Gerard, Autobiography, p. 45.

  12 Gerard, Autobiography, pp. 44–5; Narrative, pp. 149–50.

  13 Hodgetts, Life at Harvington, p. 28. The Harvington library is now at Oscott College, near Birmingham.

  14 PRO SP 14/216/121; Gerard, Narrative, p. 185.

  15 PRO SP 14/216/194; Gerard, Narrative, p. 149.

  16 ABSI Anglia A III, 58.

  17 Gilbert, ‘Thomas Habington’s Account’, p. 417. For the following narrative, I have also drawn on Bromley’s and Garnet’s own relations of the search: PRO SP 14/18, ff. 48, 65 (‘wet winter nights’), 68, 86; SP 14/19, ff. 17–18r; HMC Salisbury, 18, p. 109 (general confessions). Also: Bromley’s instructions from London (PRO SP 14/18, f. 35); an official manuscript account on ‘the service performed at Hinlip’, which was intended for publication (BL Harl. MS 360, ff. 93–101), and Gerard’s Narrative, pp. 151–6. Although they differ in some details, the accounts tend to agree substantively. Much information is printed in Foley, Records, IV, pp. 69–81, 154, 223–5, 269. Glyn Redworth’s excellent English-language edition of The Letters of Luisa de Carvajal provides fresh details (I, p. 122).

  18 Howell, State Trials, II, cols 165, 219.


  25 That Woman

  1 PRO 14/216/200; Luisa de Carvajal to Magdalena de San Jerónimo, 12 April 1606 (NS), in Rhodes, This Tight Embrace, p. 239.

  2 PRO SP 14/216/241.

  3 Foley, Records, IV, p. 148.

  4 CP, 110, no. 16.

  5 PRO SP 14/216/242.

  6 PRO SP 14/19, f. 20v.

  7 BL Add. MS 11402, ff. 190v–110r; BL Stowe MS 168, f. 364r; CP, 227, p. 209; Hogge, God’s Secret Agents, pp. 363–5; M. Hodgetts, ‘Owen, Nicholas’, ODNB.

  8 PRO SP 14/19, ff. 17–20.

  9 HMC Salisbury, 18, pp. 108–9; Gerard, Narrative, pp. 173–4; Foley, Records, IV, p. 153.

  10 Foley, Records, IV, p. 153n.

  11 Ibid., pp. 148–53.

  12 HMC Salisbury, 18, p. 108; ABSI Anglia A III, 64; Howell, State Trials, II, col. 243; Rhodes, This Tight Embrace, p. 237; Redworth, Letters of Luisa de Carvajal, I, pp. 156, 158.

  13 Travers, Gunpowder, p. 155.

  14 Foley, Records, IV, p. 155; HMC Salisbury, 18, pp. 109–110.

  15 Gardiner, ‘Two Declarations’, p. 516; HMC Salisbury, 18, pp. 107, 109.

  16 Gardiner, ‘Two Declarations’, p. 518; HMC Salisbury, 18, pp. 96, 107, 111.

  17 Bod MS Eng. Th. B. 2, p. 134; Foley, Records, IV, p. 157.

  18 Alice Hogge’s words (God’s Secret Agents, p. 344).

  19 HMC Salisbury, 18, p. 108; Gardiner, ‘Two Declarations’, p. 517.

  20 Howell, State Trials, II, col. 256.

  21 PRO SP 14/216/244.

  22 Gerard, Narrative, p. 168.

  23 PRO SP 14/216/245. Gerard, Narrative, p. 306.

  24 PRO SP 14/216/246.

  25 HMC Salisbury, 18, p. 111 (CP, 115, f. 16r).

  26 Lessius and Androtius, The Treasure of Vowed Chastity, dedication; Inner Temple, Petyt MS 538.38, f. 415r; Gerard, Narrative, p. 172; Caraman, Garnet, pp. 175, 321; Fraser, The Gunpowder Plot, pp. 237–9.

  27 Caraman, Garnet, p. 193.

  28 PRO SP 14/81, ff. 122–3.

  29 McCoog, The Society of Jesus, p. 138; Loarte, The Exercise of a Christian Life, pp. 80, 105; Lessius and Androtius, The Treasure of Vowed Chastity, p. 199.

  30 McNamara, Sisters in Arms, esp. chs 1 and 16; Lessius and Androtius, The Treasure of Vowed Chastity, ch. 2.

  31 PRO SP 14/216/242.

  32 Gerard, Narrative, pp. 171–2.

  33 Luisa de Carvajal to Magdalena de San Jerónimo, 12 April 1606 (NS), in Rhodes, This Tight Embrace, p. 239.

  34 PRO SP 14/216/200.

  35 Gardiner, ‘Two Declarations’, p. 515 (CP, 110, f. 33v).

  36 HMC Salisbury, 18, pp. 109–10 (CP, 115, f. 15).

  37 Tesimond, Narrative, p. 190.

  38 Rhodes, This Tight Embrace, pp. 236–9.

  39 PRO 14/216/201. The words that I have transcribed as ‘any ways’ are problematic. In the original, they are ‘ane yease’ and have been interpreted variously. Anne sometimes wrote ‘y’ for ‘w’ (e.g. SP 14/216/244, lines 2 & 9).

  40 PRO SP 14/216/211; Wake, ‘The Death of Francis Tresham’, p. 40.

  41 PRO SP 14/216/205–6.

  42 PRO SP 14/216, nos. 205, 212.

  43 HMC Salisbury, 18, p. 109 (CP, 115, f. 14v); Gardiner, ‘Two Declarations’, p. 512.

  44 PRO SP 14/216/215.

  45 For the trial, see Howell, State Trials, II, cols 217–355; Gerard, Narrative, pp. 224–64; Foley, Records, IV, pp. 164–90; Rhodes, This Tight Embrace, pp. 235–7.

  46 Bod MS Laud Misc. 655, first leaf.

  47 HMC Salisbury, 17, p. 595; PRO SP 14/19, f. 40r.

  26 Yours Forever

  1 Redworth, Letters of Luisa de Carvajal, I, p. 156; Gerard, Narrative, p. 175.

  2 PRO SP 14/20, ff. 29–30.

  3 HMC Salisbury, 18, p. 97.

  4 PRO SP 14/20, f. 91.

  5 PRO SP 14/21, f. 2r; Foley, Records, III, p. 513; Gerard, Narrative, p. 288; Gerard, Autobiography, p. 209.

  6 Bod MS Eng. Th. B. 2, p. 133. Also Anstruther, Vaux, p. 368.

  7 Bod MS Eng. Th. B. 2, p. 133; Redworth, Letters of Luisa de Carvajal, I, p. 158. See too Gerard, Narrative, pp. 289–97.

  8 Howell, State Trials, II, cols 355, 357.

  9 PRO SP 14/21, f. 2r.

  10 Bod MS Eng. Th. B. 2, p. 134.

  11 HMC Buccleuch, 1, p. 64.

  12 Gerard, Narrative, p. 294; BL Add. MS 34218, f. 82v; Bod MS Eng. Th. B. 2, p. 135.

  13 BL Add. MS 34218, f. 82v; Howell, State Trials, II, col. 358; Gerard, Narrative, pp. 295–6; Redworth, Letters of Luisa de Carvajal, I, p. 158.

  14 Redworth, Letters of Luisa de Carvajal, I, pp. 165, 174, 196; ABSI Anglia A III, 64; LRO Parish Register, Ashby Magna, 7 June 1606.

  15 Bod MS Eng. Th. B. 2, p. 134; BL Add. MS 21203, f. 22r.

  16 For what follows, see Bod MS Eng. Th. B. 2, pp. 135–6; AAW A VIII, nos. 13–18; Redworth, Letters of Luisa de Carvajal, I, pp. 201–3, 292–3; Bartoli, Dell’ Istoria, pp. 582–5; Foley, Records, IV, pp. 121–33, 195–210; Gerard, Narrative, pp. 297–305; Gerard, Autobiography, pp. 201–2, 274–6. HMC Salisbury, 18, p. 357; HMC Downshire, 2, p. 454; BL Stowe MS 169, f. 27r; Gee, The Foot out of the Snare, p. 137; Sheldon, Survey, pp. 94–5; P[ricket], The Jesuits Miracles, passim (quotation at sig. B3r). Also Caraman, Garnet, App. D; Walsham, Providence, pp. 242–3, and, for a fascinating discussion of the straw as a rebus, Shell, Oral Culture, pp. 134–5.

  17 The phrase is Alexandra Walsham’s (‘Miracles’, p. 791).

  18 Redworth, Letters of Luisa de Carvajal, I, p. 279.

  Epilogue

  1 Lippincott, Merry Passages and Jeasts, no. 361.

  2 LJ, III, pp. 209–10.

  3 ABSI Anglia A III, 64.

  4 Redworth, Letters of Luisa de Carvajal, I, pp. 256–7, 278; T. M. McCoog, ‘Wright, William’, ODNB; Foley, Records, II, pp. 275–86.

  5 BL Add. MS 34765, f. 27r; PRO SP 38/9; PRO E 377, nos. 31, 33; Fraser, The Gunpowder Plot, p. 236; Foley, Records, V, pp. 598–600.

  6 Anstruther, Vaux, pp. 460–2; McCoog, ‘The Society of Jesus in England’, pp. 293–5; Beales, Education Under Penalty, pp. 209–11.

  7 Lessius and Androtius, The Treasure of Vowed Chastity, sigs *2r–*6v; Walpole, The Life of B. Father Ignatius, sig. A2.

  8 McCoog, ‘The Society of Jesus in England’, pp. 290–3. The full title was: the Residence of St Anne with the Leicester mission. In 1633 it became the College of the Immaculate Conception with the mission of Nottingham and Derby.

  9 Redworth, Letters of Luisa de Carvajal, I, p. 196; Anstruther, Vaux, pp. 381–2. See McCoog, ‘The Society of Jesus in England’, pp. 193–5 for the ‘church’ of AP (Percy) in 1609.

  10 Anstruther, Vaux, pp. 377–8; H. Chadwick, St Omers to Stonyhurst: A History of Two Centuries (1962).

  11 Carvajal, Epistolario, no. 135. I am grateful to George McPherson for his translation from the Spanish. The letter can now also be read in translation in Redworth, Letters of Luisa de Carvajal, II, pp. 188–90. Several Newsletters from the Archpresbyterate of George Birkhead (nos 19, 20, 22, 23, 25, 26, 28, 29, 31, 32, 36, 41) are instructive on the raid and its aftermath, as is the editor Michael Questier’s excellent commentary. Gilbert Pickering’s gloating letter can be read in BL Add. MS 15625, f. 3r (endorsed on f. 4v). Otherwise see the detailed account provided by Anstruther, Vaux, pp. 392–407, 414–21, 426–9.

  12 Gerard, Autobiography, p. 181n.

  13 Gilbert Pickering, whose sister was Elizabeth Throckmorton (BL Add. MS 15625, f. 3r), was involved in the witches of Warboys story. See D. P. Walker, Unclean Spirits: Possession and Exorcism in France and England in the Late Sixteenth and Early Seventeenth Centuries (1981), pp. 49–52; Philip C. Almond, The Witches of Warboys: An Extraordinary Story of Sorcery, Sadism and Satanic Possession (2008), passim, but esp. pp. 31–2.

  14 PRO E 178/3628. The eleven-year trust was ostensibly to secure a dowry for Lord Vaux’s sister, Katherine. The four trustees were Sir George Shirley, Sir George Fermor, Sir Richard Wenman and Sir William Tate. The first two were
conforming Catholics. Wenman was the Protestant husband of Eliza’s friend, Agnes, and apparently disapproving of Eliza. Tate was the courteous official in charge of the search of Harrowden Hall in November 1605.

  15 The Following of Christ, trans. ‘B.F.’ (Anthony Hoskins, S.J.), sig. *2. The dedication is dated 1 November 1612 NS. Hoskins had previously written A Briefe and Cleare Declaration of Sundry Pointes (St Omer, 1611).

  16 Foley, Records, VII, pp. 1039–40; Questier, Catholicism and Community, p. 369.

  17 The Jacobean oath still provokes lively debate. Cf., for example, Sommerville, ‘Papalist Political Thought’, and Questier, ‘Catholic Loyalism in Early Stuart England’. For one way of dealing with the oath, see Redworth, Letters of Luisa de Carvajal, I, pp. 285–6.

  18 ABSI Anglia A III, 111.

  19 BL Lans. MS 153, ff. 89–90. Also ff. 44–7 for the £2,000 offered by the Vaux tenants in composition for Lord Vaux and his mother. For the Vaux estate, see also PRO E 178/3628. For Lord Vaux’s pardon and the restitution of his lands, see PRO SO 3/5 (October 1612 and April 1613).

  20 LJ, III, pp. 209, 211, 216; Questier, Catholicism and Community, pp. 409–10.

  21 PRO 16/9, f. 26; BL Harl. MS 1580, ff. 201r, 342–3; HMC Buccleuch, 1, pp. 261–2; vol. 3, pp. 254, 258, 267; HMC Cowper, 1, p. 235; APC, 1625–6, pp. 228–9, 231, 234, 237–8, 248, 249; Pollen, ‘Notebook of John Southcote’, p. 101; LJ, III, p. 496. See too PRO SO 3/8 (June 1626); SP 14/155, ff. 31v–32r; SP 16/12, f. 106; Questier, Stuart Dynastic Policy and Religious Politics, pp. 27–8; 124–7; R. Cust, ‘Knightley, Richard’, ODNB; Seaver, ‘Puritan Preachers and Their Patrons’, pp. 141–2.

  22 Wake, The Montagu Musters Book, p. 224 and note on p. xlv. For the Vaux contribution to the musters, see ibid., pp. 6, 18, 21, 45, 51, 61, 76, 92, 100, 117, 145, 163, 189, 205.

  23 PRO PROB 11/155/169.

  24 Foley, Records, II, p. 561; PRO C 203/4, no. 46; BL Add. MS 61681, f. 95r; Cal. Committee for Compounding, p. 88; LJ, IX, pp. 67–8 (18 June 1660).

  25 Champion, ‘Popes and Guys and Anti-Catholicism’, in Buchanan et al., Gunpowder Plots, pp. 104–5; M. Murphy, St. Gregory’s College, Seville, CRS 73 (1992), p. 174. For Edward’s death, see The Case of William Earl of Banbury, Minutes, pp. 14–15.

  26 William Knollys was born on 20 March 1545. See Varlow, ‘Sir Francis Knollys’s Latin Dictionary’, App.

  27 L. Hotson, The First Night of Twelfth Night (1954), pp. 97–119; Lady Newdigate-Newdegate, Gossip from a Muniment Room (1897), passim.