by Hogge, Alice
Clitherow was the daughter of Thomas Middleton, a former Sheriff of York. Her stepfather was Henry Maye, Lord Mayor of York in the year of her death. In 1571 she married John Clitherow, a successful butcher and city chamberlain living in York’s Shambles (the name comes from the Saxon, Fleshammels, meaning the street of butchers). Hers was a solid, respectable background—marred only by her faith. Some time c.1574 Margaret Clitherow, then aged about eighteen, converted to Catholicism. Two years later she was arrested and imprisoned for recusancy. There followed a string of similar convictions, but all the while Clitherow continued maintaining priests, two at a time: one in a concealed chamber adjoining her house, the other stationed across the city. It was a high-risk strategy and several of her priests would be captured; she, herself, made no secret of her desire for martyrdom. On 10 March 1586 she was arrested for harbouring.30
On 14 March Margaret Clitherow was brought before the judges at the York Assizes and asked to enter her plea: guilty or not guilty as charged. Clitherow declined to do so, saying, ‘I know no offence whereof I should confess myself guilty.’ Asked once more by the judges to enter a plea, she responded, ‘Having made no offence, I need no trial.’ The law was clear about the fate of those felons who failed to plead in court (their refusal was felt to be a shameless spiking of the wheels of justice). Accordingly, the York judges invoked the fourteenth century penalty of peine forte et dure.* ‘You must return from whence you came,’ read Clitherow’s sentence, ‘and there, in the lowest part of the prison, be stripped naked, laid down, your back upon the ground, and as much weight laid upon you as you are able to bear, and so to continue three days without meat or drink, except a little barley bread and puddle water, and the third day to be pressed to death, your hands and feet tied to posts, and a sharp stone under your back.’31
There followed eleven days in which a stream of prison visitors attempted to persuade Clitherow to enter a plea and she refused them all. Perhaps she was unwilling to subject her family to the ordeal of testifying against her; perhaps she was just unprepared to accept that harbouring priests was a crime. Finally, on 25 March she was led out to the Tollbooth, some six or seven yards from the castle gaol, stripped of her clothes and stretched out on the ground, a wooden panel balanced on top of her. In an act of charity the judges appear to have accelerated the process that came after: ‘She was in dying one quarter of an hour,’ wrote John Mush, her biographer (and one of the priests she had maintained). ‘A sharp stone, as much as a man’s fist, [was] put under her back; upon her was laid to the quantity of seven or eight hundred weight [eight hundred and ninety-six pounds] at the least, which, breaking her ribs, caused them to burst forth of the skin.’32
Clitherow’s execution passed quickly into Catholic legend. Here was a martyr whose refusal to speak had emphatically given the lie to the belief that all women were ‘full of tongue and much babbling’. Her stubbornness served to remind both priests and government that the female sex was a force to be reckoned with. Over the years many missionaries would have cause to be grateful for this fact.
Two miles south of the parish church of All Saints in Wimbish, Essex stood Broadoaks Manor, high gabled, tall chimneyed, built round three sides of a courtyard, some time c.1560. The house was encircled by rich farmland; Wimbish, itself, lay just to the south of the prosperous market town of Saffron Walden. In Gerard’s words, the owner of Broadoaks, William Wiseman, enjoyed the wealth and independence ‘of a little prince’.33
It was Henry Drury, Gerard’s host at Lawshall, who had first brought the Wiseman family to Gerard’s attention, inviting Thomas and John Wiseman, William’s younger brothers, to meet the Jesuit there. Gerard had drilled the pair in the Spiritual Exercises of Ignatius Loyola. This was the Society’s vade mecum, a collection of documents (containing instructions and admonishments) and practical tasks (prayers and meditations) to help move the faithful to greater piety. (The full title of the work was Spiritual Exercises to conquer oneself and regulate one’s life, and to avoid coming to a determination through any inordinate affection, which gave a reasonably clear indication of the Spanish ex-soldier’s views on religious self-discipline.) Both men had been inspired by Gerard’s teaching; both had decided to leave England and join the Society.* Before they left, though, Thomas Wiseman had persuaded his brother William to try the Exercises for himself.34
In Gerard’s description, William Wiseman was a Catholic, ‘but his thoughts were very far from Christian perfection’. Like so many others of his religion, he had kept his head down and his family clear of the law, preferring to safeguard his estate rather than assist the mission. His encounter with Gerard was to change that. Within days of beginning the Spiritual Exercises William Wiseman ‘had resolved henceforth to devote the whole of his life to furthering God’s greater glory’. This was no mere boasting on Gerard’s part, for Wiseman immediately invited the Jesuit to move from Lawshall to Broadoaks and take up residence with him and his family. The man who up to now had avoided the company of seminary priests for fear of the harm they might do his reputation was now consorting with the even more harmful Society of Jesus.35
Wiseman’s invitation came at a good time for Gerard. Henry Drury had recently decided to leave England and become a Jesuit lay brother; the seminarian William Hanse had declared himself happy to stay on at Lawshall and care for Drury’s elderly mother; Henry Garnet was keen the Jesuits should open up another county for the mission.* So in the winter of 1591 Gerard shifted his centre of operations to Essex.36
Essex has been described as the headquarters of sixteenth century Puritanism. Like its neighbours Suffolk and Norfolk, it, too, had received an early dose of Protestant theology, courtesy of the east-coast trading vessels. In 1532 ‘the image of the crucifix was cast down and destroyed in the highway’ near Coggeshall, to the west of Braintree, as the muscles of the new religion began to flex. Under Mary the Bishop of London was ordered ‘to send into Essex certain discrete and learned preachers to reduce the people who hath been of late seduced by sundry lewd persons named ministers’. When the execution of heretics started, Essex suffered accordingly, with burnings at Colchester, Manningtree, Harwich and Saffron Walden among other sites. Under Elizabeth, and no doubt in part as a result of these widespread burnings, Protestantism in Essex had crystallized into a more hard-edged religious non-conformity, termed Puritanism for convenience’s sake, though this implied a greater unity of belief than was in fact ever the case. In the 1580s Robert, Lord Rich of Rochford Hall, prominent within the Puritan party, was imprisoned for a time to prevent this non-conformity spreading further; Rich was considered ‘the wealthiest lord’ in Essex. None of this deterred John Gerard. From Broadoaks he journeyed northwest to Sawston Hall, just over the county border in Cambridgeshire, to convert his host’s brother-in-law Henry Huddlestone, and northeast to Bury St Edmunds in Suffolk to supervise the religious education of the Rookwood children of Coldham Hall. He was even in conference with Lady Rich, attempting to win her to the faith.* Unknown to him, though, the Wisemans had come under suspicion.37
Some time in December 1592 an Essex magistrate named Nicholls led a raid on Broadoaks. The pursuivants spread out across the house and immediately set about sounding the wooden panelling in search of concealed hides. Very soon they struck lucky. Cowering in ‘a secret place between two walls’ they discovered the elderly priest Robert Jackson. As a Marian priest, Jackson was no outlaw (hence Wiseman’s long-standing support of him in favour of any seminarian): Elizabeth’s new treason legislation had made a clear distinction between those priests ordained in the previous reign—when England was Catholic—and those who had deliberately gone abroad to receive holy orders after England’s split with Rome. But when one of Wiseman’s servants, Edward Harrington, confessed to having heard Jackson say mass for the household on two separate occasions the family was now recognized to be in contravention of the law. On 12 January 1593 the Council received notice of the indictments against William Wiseman, his wife, moth
er and sisters for being present at one or both of two masses celebrated by Robert Jackson at Wimbish. Of John Gerard’s name there was no mention; neither does he, himself, record the event. Most likely he was absent at the time of the search.38
Clearly, though, it would now have been safest for Gerard to change base again. That he did not suggests either that he and Wiseman were happy the search was a one-off and would not be repeated, or that, for all his abundant confidence, Gerard recognized few families in the area would be ready to welcome him as a permanent addition to their household. Instead, Gerard summoned Nicholas Owen to Essex. Within days of the Nicholls’ raid, Owen was at Broadoaks strengthening the house’s internal fortifications.39
The following year, 1593, appears to have passed without incident. No doubt the family paid the requisite fines for hearing Catholic mass, currently one hundred marks apiece (Robert Jackson would have been liable for a two hundred marks fine for saying mass); no doubt Gerard continued his work in Essex; there is evidence of neither. The focus of most Catholics would have been on the proceedings in Parliament that spring and on the fear of increased penalties against them. When those penalties failed to materialize (barring the new facility for fining householders and the restriction on Catholic travel), there can have been little sense of relief. Yes, for the first time Parliament had acted as a check on the Government, stifling harsher measures against Catholics. Yes, there seemed to be a growing sense among some Englishmen that enough was enough; that year Henry Garnet reported Lord Grey as saying, ‘I was under the impression that our purpose hitherto was merely to keep the Papists humbled and in subjection so that they should cause no trouble. We have sucked them dry and reduced them to extreme poverty. Now we strive to harass them yet further. It is plain to me that we are persecuting religion.’* Yet few can have believed for an instant that their troubles were at an end. For the Wisemans, their troubles were just beginning.40
On Boxing Day 1593 pursuivants unexpectedly raided the North End house of the Widow Wiseman, William’s mother. Mass was in preparation when the raid took place. The priest, a man named Brewster, was successfully spirited away up a chimney to hide, but evidence of his activities lay all around and magistrate Richard Young, informing Lord Keeper Puckering of the event, advised bringing Mrs Wiseman in for examination. North End he described as the chief place of resort ‘for all these wicked persons’. When, some time the following year and after an unexplained pause, Mrs Wiseman was suddenly carried up to London and imprisoned in the Gatehouse gaol for receiving seminary priests, it might have appeared that this was something more than an ordinary case of bad luck.41
And still things got worse. On the evening of Friday 15 March 1594 Richard Topcliffe, apparently acting on his own authority, organized a raid of all known or suspected Catholic houses in London. ‘The uproar was such that Hannibal himself might have been at the gates or the Spanish fleet in the river Thames,’ wrote Garnet to Aquaviva in the months following. Local magistrates were called in to assist the priest-hunter and overnight the city’s churches were drafted into use as holding pens to contain all those arrested in the raids.42
That same evening Gerard was visiting Garnet at the latter’s new base in an undisclosed location some ‘four or five miles from London’. He had been scheduled to continue on to London that night, to a house at the upper end of Golden Lane (running between Old Street and the Barbican) rented just recently for his own and friends’ use. The house had been let from a neighbour, a Mr Tute, and the name on the lease was that of William Wiseman. But now Garnet begged Gerard not to go there. It was the second time the Jesuit Superior had had a premonition of danger. Gerard had experienced the first occasion for himself at Baddesley Clinton; accordingly, he remained with Garnet that night. ‘Early next morning’, he recorded afterwards, ‘rumours reached us that papists had been seized in the house.’ Garnet later wrote to Robert Persons that ‘there [should have] been there Long John with the little beard [Gerard]…if I had not more importunately stayed him than ever before’. Those arrested during the raid on Golden Lane included Gerard’s servant, Richard Fulwood, and the Wallis brothers, servants to William Wiseman, one of whom was vocal in his admiration for the Jesuits and declared himself glad to be arrested so that now he might suffer persecution for his faith.* They were taken away for interrogation. Under a barrage of questioning all of them were able to keep hidden from the authorities Gerard’s connection with the house, but William Wiseman’s own association was clearly documented and he was called to London.43
On 19 March 1594 Wiseman appeared before the Attorney General, Edward Coke, to assist in the inquiry into Golden Lane. He strongly denied that the house was a resort for priests and though he did admit that he had stood guarantor for a third party who was renting the property, he refused ‘for charity’s sake’ to give that party’s name. He was led off to the Counter prison in nearby Wood Street where he was placed in solitary confinement. Only his servant John Frank was permitted contact with him, and back at Broadoaks the family waited anxiously for Frank to bring news. Towards the end of the month Frank left London for Essex with a letter containing reassurances from Wiseman and precise details of the questions he had been asked and the answers he had given, necessary if the family’s stories were to be consistent. Meanwhile, Gerard had returned to Wimbish to offer what comfort he could and vitally, now that the Wisemans were facing investigation, ‘to get everything [at the house] hidden neatly away’. Thus it was that on 1 April 1594, Easter Monday, he was at Broadoaks when the pursuivants raided.44
It was first light and Gerard was preparing mass when he was halted by the sound of horses approaching. Within moments the house had been surrounded. Escape was now impossible. The servants barred the doors while Gerard stripped the altar, concealing his books and papers in one of the many caches with which the house had been provisioned. Then he began making his way downstairs from the attic chapel to one of Nicholas Owen’s new hides near the dining room, stocked with basic supplies for just such an event. But here Mrs Wiseman intervened, drawing Gerard back towards a second Owen-built hide leading off the chapel. Speed was now of the essence and the Jesuit did not resist, crawling into this new hiding place with the altar furnishings crammed in around him. At the last moment Mrs Wiseman handed him a jar of quince jelly she happened to have with her and the hide was closed over Gerard’s head.45
Downstairs the pursuivants fanned out across the house. Mrs Wiseman and her two daughters were locked away in her chamber, the family’s Catholic servants were segregated in different parts of the building, and the search began. Candles were shone into dark corners. Long rods were brought out to measure walls, checking where the internal and external dimensions did not tally; any section that could not be accounted for was demolished. Panelling and floorboards were sounded for hollow spots then swiftly smashed through. This took two days.
By late Wednesday the justices leading the raid were ready to admit defeat. A detachment of pursuivants was left behind to escort Mrs Wiseman, her two children and the Catholic servants to London the next morning. The non-Catholic servants, of whom there was a handful, were detailed to watch the house; among their number was John Frank. That evening Mrs Wiseman got a message to Frank that as soon as the house was empty he was to call to Gerard from the room beneath the chapel, telling him the search was over (such was the secrecy of Broadoaks’ hides that even now she was unwilling to divulge their precise location). This message Frank now conveyed to the pursuivants.
On Thursday, 4 April the justices returned to Broadoaks and the search resumed. Mrs Wiseman’s instructions to Frank suggested the existence of a hiding place positioned somewhere within the interior masonry of the first floor in the north wing. That day the corresponding rooms were measured and sounded even more carefully as the pursuivants closed in on their prey. That night a watch was set. Two men now guarded the attic chapel, stopping off Gerard’s only way out of the house. As darkness fell so, too, did the temperature and
the men decided to light a fire laid ready in the attic grate. From his hide beneath the fireplace, accessed by lifting a small section of floor under the grate, Gerard listened as the thin layer of bricks constituting the false hearth came loose with a rattle. Immediately above him the wooden floorboards, on which the bricks rested, began to smoulder and shift. He heard one of the guards comment on this peculiarity, but neither seemed inclined to pursue it further, putting off their investigation until the following day.
By Friday, 5 April Gerard’s capture seemed a formality. All night the fire had burnt over him, the embers raining down on his head. Now, from where he crouched, he could look up through the charred remnants of the hide into the attic room beyond, just as clearly as anyone approaching the fireplace could look down on him. Yet no one looked. At first light his guards were called from their post to the rooms below, which now became the focus of even greater scrutiny as, systematically, the pursuivants began to strip the plaster from the walls. During this process they discovered the hiding place Gerard had initially intended using, before Mrs Wiseman dissuaded him; inside, untouched, lay his store of provisions. Meanwhile, the stripping of the plaster continued. By late afternoon the room beneath the chapel was entirely denuded, bar a small section of wall immediately surrounding the fireplace. Here a large and finely carved chimney-piece impeded the pursuivants’ progress; this, plus the growing belief that Gerard had somehow managed to escape during the night, was enough to halt the proceedings. Immediately behind the chimney-piece lay Gerard’s hide.