Abstract: This article is a study of some aspects of the role of Catholic women in sixteenth-century England. It assesses how the Catholic faith was passed on to children and the wider family. It looks at examples of Catholic families where the women had a role in resisting the imposition of the established church and how they managed to access the sacraments and continue their devotions in secret. Women used their homes and servants to pass on their faith and support to the recusant Catholic community as well. In fact, the use of a recusant woman’s home as a haven for fellow recusants and itinerant priests was the main method of preserving Catholicism during this period. Women such as Margaret Clitherow of York and the women of the Throckmorton family of Coughton Court are a few examples. It is a story of personal bravery, hardship, and dogged determination in the face of punitive laws and regulations imposed by the male-dominated society in which they found themselves. Catholic women, therefore, had a central role in keeping alive a smoldering ember of the old faith in the dark night of persecution, in the hope that one day, it would burst back into flame once more. Women suffered substantially for their recusancy, and Elizabeth’s government was not reluctant to jail them. Women, married and otherwise, were imprisoned throughout the reign of Elizabeth. In 1581, Parliament passed a new law against Catholics. Recusants (those who refused to attend church) had to pay a fine, and those who tried to encourage people to become Catholic could even be accused of the very serious crime of treason. The penalty for treason was death. A law of 1581 made it difficult for the courts to collect fines incurred by recusant women, at least until the deaths of their husbands, as men were assumed to have the responsibility in law for family finances. This fact did not make these women immune to imprisonment, though. Several women, during the period after the passing of his statute, served time in prison and even died there. This article is dedicated to their memory.
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In the last hundred years, women have gained a more equal place in society in Britain. However, the situation for women, especially Catholic women, in the early modern period, could not be more different. Some historians might argue that the role of women in early modern history is not fully recognized and that the role of Catholic women in this period does not, at first reading of the historical sources, appear to be central. The evidence, however, about the role they played at the time of the Reformation and its immediate aftermath, tells a different story. The role of Catholic female resistance to the harsh and punitive anti-Catholic laws in England needs to be told. There were bitter disputes brought about by the Reformation in England, and Catholic recusancy became part of this identity with its tales of martyrs for the faith. It is a story that, at its heart, is the meeting point between gender relations, religious identity formation, and confessional conflict. In the Catholic tradition, the family is the bedrock of the faith, and the duty of parents is to pass on that faith. This gave the mothers, in the early modern period, a unique role within the family and within the Catholic community. It was both a devotional and spiritual role, as well as having a community dimension. Historical evidence appears to indicate that Catholic women and girls who adhered to the Catholic faith in the post-Reformation period were able to cope with religious turmoil and develop methods that enabled them to function successfully in preserving certain elements of their faith within their own environment. As Catholic practice was removed from the public sphere at the Reformation and gradually became more of a dissident, underground faith, Catholic women applied their skills and, together with laymen, became effective agents of the by-then clandestine faith.
It could be argued that women have, throughout the ages, been upholders of Catholic family life, serving primarily as mothers and wives. Women of different ranks and levels of society were generally instructed and expected to become devoted mothers and to rear and raise their children in Catholic families. However, a Catholic woman’s role in sixteenth-century society could be much more complicated. Sixteenth-century English society was patriarchal in which men, by law, had superior power, influence, and control over women, married and unmarried. Queens such as Mary I and her half-sister Elizabeth both wielded power as monarchs, but the advisers, ministers, Privy Council, MPs, Lords, and bishops surrounding her were, of course, all males. Catholics who would not conform to the rules laid down by the state and Anglican establishment and attend the Church of England’s services were known as recusants. Some refused to conform to the state’s legislation and instead recused themselves from the government-imposed beliefs, worship and practice. Laws were passed from the 1530s onwards, restricting how Catholics could worship and practice their faith. A brief respite from royal disapproval came during the reign of Queen Mary when the Catholic church once again held its position in the nation as the predominant church. Queen Mary was able to roll back the liturgical changes brought about during the reign of Edward. During his reign, there had been the greatest confiscation of church property in the history of the country. Every parish was left with only the bare necessities for simple worship whilst the state enjoyed the proceeds. The church at this time was at a low ebb which was slowly remedied during Mary’s reign.
The reign of Queen Elizabeth brought harsh and punitive laws against Catholics. When Queen Elizabeth I came to the throne in 1559, she set herself against the Pope by declaring herself ‘Supreme Governor’ of the English church in matters spiritual and temporal and denouncing loyalty to the Bishop of Rome as an act of treason. Thenceforth all Christians in the realm were required to follow the state religion or suffer the consequences. Some saw Catholicism and treason in the Privy Council as synonymous. Under the early guidance of Secretary of State Sir William Cecil, Parliament repealed Mary’s pro-Catholic legislation, established a permanent Protestant Church of England, and encouraged the Calvinist reformers in Scotland. In 1570, Pope Pius V issued the bull Regnans in Excelsis, which effectively excommunicated Queen Elizabeth I (who had, of course, been baptized a Catholic), deprived her of her right to rule, and released her subjects from obedience to her. This had the unfortunate effect of antagonizing Elizabeth and confirming her opinion of the church she had joined as a baby. It also led to suspicion of and bad feeling about Catholics within the kingdom. Over the years of Elizabeth’s reign, things gradually got worse for her Catholic subjects. New laws associated Catholicism with sedition and treason against the crown.
Recusancy was the legal term for refusal to attend church under the Act of Uniformity. The first law in which the term ‘Popish Recusants’ was used dates from 1593 and was called: ‘An Act for restraining Popish Recusants to some certain place of abode.’ This Act of Parliament went on to describe Catholics as: “sundry wicked and seditious persons, who, terming themselves Catholics, and being indeed spies and intelligencers, not only for her majesty’s foreign enemies, but also for rebellious and traitorous subjects born within her highness’s realms and dominions, and hiding their most detestable and devilish purposes under a false pretext of religion and conscience, do secretly wander and shift from place to place within this realm, to corrupt and seduce her majesty’s subjects, and to stir them to sedition and rebellion.” There were no ‘grey areas’ with this legislation. It was plain and simple: Catholicism was an alien and dangerous canker which should be cut out of the body politic. No further justification was needed to excuse how Catholics were to be treated.
The statute’s definition of a recusant is a person ‘convicted for not repairing to some Church, Chapel, or usual place of Common Prayer to hear Divine Service.’ The first Recusancy Act was added to by six more up to 1627, and they were in force up to the reign of George III towards the end of the eighteenth century, although they were not applied with equal vigor. There were other refusers. However, the recusant lists produced because of the Acts named mainly Roman Catholics. It was not until the Catholic Relief Act of 1778 finally put a formal end to the prosecution of priests by informers and finally allowed Catholics to purchase and inherit land legally. Thirteen years later, a second act re-opened the professions to Catholics and permitted the legalization of Catholic chapels. The families of known Catholics were now under suspicion. During Elizabeth’s reign, hiding a priest could incur imprisonment. The death penalty was imposed for merely being a foreign-trained priest, as this was considered to amount to high treason (as they were often associated, in the minds of the Privy Council and the queen’s ministers, as agents of a foreign power, notably, Spain).
Following legislation by Parliament, Catholics could no longer officially be buried in Anglican churchyards. In practice, recusant gentry were still interred in family vaults and commemorated by memorials in parish churches. An example is the chapel of the Fermor family at St. James’ Church, Somerton, Oxfordshire. This was probably because they were Lords of the Manor of Somerton and had the right to appoint the vicar. Other Catholics in the parish were buried in a Catholic graveyard elsewhere in the village. There is evidence that Catholics could sometimes be buried in the churchyard at night, usually with a blind eye turned by the clergy or church wardens. In the absence of civil registration, Catholics often had their children christened by the vicar and the clandestine Catholic priest. Similarly, Catholics might sometimes undergo an Anglican wedding to provide confirmation of legitimacy. Anglican sacraments might help to provide a veneer of conformity and respectability, which might help them retain legal rights to land and property. Occasional conformity to the Church of England was practiced by some Catholics, especially particularly the male heads of families, as this was seen as a means of sheltering and shielding themselves and their wives and families from fines, sequestration, and imprisonment. The term ‘Church Papist’ was used to describe those who outwardly fully conformed to Anglicanism but were secretly convinced Roman Catholics. Jesuit priest and polemicist Robert Persons, in his “A Brief Discourse Concerning Certain Reasons why Catholics Refuse to Go to a Church,” stated that non-absentee Catholics who decided to at least outwardly conform were in fact to be seen as schismatics. Catholic recusant wives, widows, and daughters were something of a mystery for local authorities, because their recusancy was not regulated by law in the same way as it was for men. There are several reasons for this. During the Tudor period, husbands controlled their wives’ property and were responsible for their actions. In practice, however, women enjoyed a greater interest in their marital property than the law gave women, both during marriage and as a widow. Unmarried women’s responsibilities were also not clear-cut in practice. Unmarried women and widows who had reached their ‘majority’ were deemed responsible for their own actions and, therefore, punishable for any actions contrary to common law. Access to wives’ property could only occur at their husband’s death when a will was proved. Depending on the case, the government could tentatively seize two-thirds of their combined assets at his death because of her recusancy, should they so wish to do.
Contemporary records reveal that there were around four hundred and fifty seizures of property and assets by 1593. Conforming husbands had responsibilities for their recusant wives to a limited extent. Still, it was difficult for the magistrates to enforce recusancy fines if the husband attended services in the local parish church. One difficulty the authorities had in enforcing fines on women for non-attendance at church was that women did not legally hold any property in marriage. The man held property and wealth, as, through Christian marriage, they were assumed to have become one entity, with the man being the head of the family. Under sixteenth-century English common law, an individual wife could be charged and convicted by a court. Still, nothing could be levied against her in fines or property forfeiture, as her husband would have to bear the cost of the penalties imposed on her. A wife was regarded in law as her husband’s property, but the wife had certain financial protections. One of these protections was a ‘jointure,’ meaning a marriage settlement, such as property, to give income to a widow for the rest of her life should her husband predecease her. This became an important issue for the Privy Council when dealing with recusant women. The Privy Council was willing to allow some female recusants to maintain both their freedom and their recusancy, so long as they did not ‘pervert’ (that is, convert) others. The Privy Council ordered recusant women to be kept from influencing others, especially their children. This was supposed to prevent the creation of another generation of Roman Catholics, which would only continue the problem for another generation. We know from examples of Catholic gentry families in Oxfordshire that a certain level of recusancy was tolerated, for example, the Fermor family of Somerton in north Oxfordshire and at Stonor in south Oxfordshire. So long as they did not try to convert others and kept out of politics, they could be ignored. Priests moved in secret, often at night, to minister to their flock.
Questier and Lake have examined the more famous example of Margaret Clitherow in the context of divided communities and martyrdom. In 1970, she and the other English martyrs of this troubled period were canonized by Pope Paul VI on October 25, the day designated as their collective feast day. Brought up as a Protestant in York, she converted to Roman Catholicism in 1574, was imprisoned three times for her faith, and died as a martyr on March 25, 1586. Margaret was born in Middleton, York, in 1556. Her father, a local businessman, was at one time the Sherriff of the city and a church warden of St. Martin’s in Coney Street. Brought up in the state church, she married John Clitherow, a widowed butcher with two children, when she was still a teenager. By the early 1570s, she had decided to convert to Catholicism, possibly under the influence of Dr. Thomas Vavasour, a well-known Catholic sympathizer in the city. This created a problem for her husband as it was his job to report Catholics known to prefer the old faith to the state-imposed Church of England. Margaret soon fell afoul of the authorities, who noted her non-attendance at church. For this offense, she was imprisoned in York Castle. After release, she still refused to attend divine service, and twice more she was imprisoned, the third time for a period of twenty months. This deprivation of her liberty only seemed to make Margaret even more determined to follow her conscience and refuse to go to the local Anglican church. One good aspect of her incarceration was that she is said to have learned to read in prison. Between 1582 and the following year, five priests were executed at the gibbet at Knavesmire nearby for continuing their ministry under the noses of the authorities. Margaret was said to have made visits to the place of execution under cover of darkness to pray for their souls and to ask that she, too, could be a martyr for the faith. Margaret herself was instrumental in hiding priests either at her own home or elsewhere in the city. She had a trap door fitted in the attic of her house, which led into the attic of the next house. Her husband must have known exactly what she was doing but chose to keep quiet. However, in March 1586, the authorities pounced on the family. A teenage Portuguese boy staying with them was threatened with terrible punishment unless he cooperated with them. He revealed the secret chamber, but by then, the priest, who was staying with them, had fled. Margaret was indicted and tried at the Guildhall in York. Margaret refused to plead either guilty or not guilty, possibly so she could avoid a trial by jury. She might have gotten off lightly, but for this refusal. She was known to be stubborn and headstrong. She faced her accusers and did not appear frightened of the consequences. The penalty for not pleading was horrific. She was warned that she would be pressed to death under a large piece of timber the size of a door. Her reasons may be that she wanted to protect other Catholics in the city, as she would be cross-examined and witnesses would be called. The authorities would have wanted to find evidence against others of the same faith, and at this time, torture of suspects was not uncommon. No matter what the authorities tried, it failed to bring about a change of heart. Whilst awaiting sentence in York Castle, she sent her stockings and shoes to her daughter, bidding her to walk in her footsteps.
On March 25, 1586, Margaret was led barefoot from the Castle to the city toll house on Ouse Bridge. The officials who were delegated to execute her could not be persuaded to carry out the sentence of death. After all, she was the daughter and daughter-in-law of prominent citizens. Instead, they found some beggars who were persuaded to carry it out. Stripped naked and laid on her back on the floor of the toll house, a sharp stone was placed under her spine, and her arms spread out like a crucifix. A wooden door was placed on top of her, and heavy weights were added. It took fifteen minutes for her to die. Her last words were reported as “Jesu, Jesu.” One can only imagine what effect this had on her family. Her daughter Anne Clitherow ran away from home and was imprisoned at Lancaster on account of her religion in 1593. She later became a nun at St. Ursula’s in Louvain in 1598. Henry Clitherow studied at the English colleges in Rheims and Rome and temporarily joined the Capuchins in 1592, then the Dominicans. William, her stepson, became a seminary priest in 1608, and the other stepson, Thomas, a draper, was imprisoned for recusancy and died in Hull Prison in 1604. Their family had their fair share of suffering for the faith.
Another example of suffering for her faith was Ann Teche, who was also imprisoned in York in 1583, around the same time as Margaret Clitherow. Her reason for refusing to attend church was “for there is neither priest, altar nor sacrament there.” Her husband conformed, but she steadfastly refused. She was released at some point after that because she was arrested again on March 10, 1584, after attending a mass at Margaret’s home in the Shambles, York. She later spent many years imprisoned at York Castle before finally being released when James I came to the throne.
While other stories were less dramatic, other recusant women in England also drew attention from the likes of the Privy Council, Anglican bishops, and local authorities such as sheriffs and magistrates. Women took on various roles in maintaining links between Catholics at home and abroad. These roles were significant and often effective enough to ensure constant monitoring and attention from the authorities over the activities of females in the recusant community.
Catholic women in the early modern period may have had a very special role. Before the Reformation, some women, especially those with some level of education, could become nuns. Nuns were generally well respected in late medieval society. They could pray the offices of the church, pray for the living and the dead, and even be involved with the education of girls. All that changed with Henry VIII’s suppression of all monasteries, priories, and nunneries. With the growing pressure to conform to the Established church under Edward VI and later Elizabeth I, some Catholic women had to become leaders in the shrinking recusant community. They still had a devotional and spiritual role, but now it might be as a wife and mother to a possible future generation of Catholics. The faith had to, at all costs, be kept alive. Rather than being the simple-minded frail women that the period sometimes describes them as, recusant women sometimes proved themselves to be far more quick-witted, organized, and capable of great sacrifice and leadership, as we have seen with the example of Margaret Clitherow. Remaining Catholic in a Protestant state sometimes led to developed recusant women’s roles rather than shrank them because of the political and family situations caused by government actions against them. The Catholic families, especially the gentry and their servants, such as the Fermor family of Somerton and Tusmore in Oxfordshire, had to work together as a unit to resist the forces oppressing them. Thus, we see that Catholic women might have a spiritual and devotional role but also often an organizational and communal role, depending on circumstances and social status. In some parts of the country, such as the Midlands and Lancashire, Catholicism continued to survive due to the part played by Catholic gentry and landowners. Despite cruel and harsh legislation, Catholicism survived in England because of a deliberate national strategy originally devised in a manor house near the River Thames. In July 1586, a clandestine and highly treasonous meeting was held at Harleyford Manor near Great Marlow. It agreed that priests would be based in ‘safe houses’ throughout the countryside. A network of Catholic missions based in manor houses would keep an ember of the ‘Old Faith’ glowing, in the hope that at some time in the future, the flames of Catholicism would be fanned back to life. Harboring a priest could incur the death penalty, and merely being a priest constituted high treason. Women were often primarily responsible for the home and family, so they had an important job in these Catholic manor houses. Hiding priests became a top-secret activity which Catholic women must have had a role in. Yet, in the frequent absence of a priest, mothers must have been involved with the spiritual life and piety of the household as well as its day-to-day maintenance. Arranging for a visiting clandestine priest to celebrate mass must have given women a community role. Attending Mass distinctly helped give a devotional foundation for the spiritual community as well as the family. Women interacted with other recusants, fugitive priests, and, occasionally, Catholics from abroad. Individuals could exchange information, devotional literature, sacramentals, goods, and money at this time to support and strengthen the Catholic community. Acts of individual Catholic piety in the home, while against the law, did not necessarily affect outsiders and so might be excused. Still, if it led to the conversion of children or a spouse, it was a far more serious offense. This, of course, could be dangerous for individual Catholics and threatening to the authorities. It can be argued that Catholic wives married to Anglicans provided an opportunity for conversion and, thus, a possible enlargement of the Catholic community. The loss of a family chaplain must have been a blow to Catholic women, but it also gave them new opportunities.
These recusant women must have assisted each other and used other resources, such as servants and relatives, to maintain links between families and friends throughout the country and in continental countries where Catholicism was allowed, such as France, Spain, and the Low Countries. Servants and tenants were often carefully chosen from good Catholic families either locally or elsewhere in the country. More importantly, the women must have helped to make sure members of their families had some relief from outside pressures from the authorities to conform.
Another example of brave recusant men and women was the Throckmorton family of Coughton Court. The Throckmorton name appeared in records of known Catholic recusants during Elizabeth’s reign. Before Sir Francis Throckmorton plunged into violent plotting under King James, his family had made a far different sort of impact in England, one of service to the crown and country. Sir George Throckmorton, Sir Francis’s grandfather, was a strong-minded man who had the courage to disagree with Henry VIII and Thomas Cromwell over the dissolution of the monasteries in the 1530s.
Another possible factor in George Throckmorton’s traditional stance was sympathy for the fate of his aunt, Elizabeth. She was the abbess of a house of Poor Clares in Cambridgeshire. A woman of considerable ability, she exchanged letters with the famous humanist Erasmus. After her nunnery was destroyed, Elizabeth, by now more than sixty years old, went to live at Coughton Court, perhaps bringing one or two nuns with her who had nowhere else to go. She also helped to feed the local poor, and her name was carved above a ‘dole gate’ set up for the purpose. Her tomb is today found to the left of the altar in the Anglican parish church adjacent to Coughton Court. The practice of the Throckmorton family’s staunch Catholic faith went in and out of fashion, depending on the Tudor ruler. After Cromwell was executed, religious traditionalists felt a little safer in England. The reign of Edward VI was so difficult that some left the country to live in exile. Mary’s reign was a brief respite for Catholics. George’s seventh son, Sir John, was active in her Parliament and a witness to the queen’s will. During the reign of her successor, Elizabeth I, they fell into a defensive position again, and a priest hole was built in Coughton Court, where priests could hide during inspections. The family became known as Catholic sympathizers. The family could afford to pay the fines levied for non-attendance at a parish church, unlike others who were detained in prison.
Some of the family conformed to the established state church, for example, Sir Nicholas Throckmorton, a skilled courtier. Through her mother’s influence and continued example, Margaret Throckmorton became a non-conforming Catholic in the early 1590s. Her mother, a widow and recusant, maintained links with other Catholics by letter and wrote to her son Francis who was living abroad, by passing her letters through Lsady Arundel, also a recusant. A network of literate, recusant women wrote or passed on communications both at home and abroad. Immediately, her father, who chose to conform, realized what was happening and asked the Dean of Gloucester to assist in conforming his daughter in religion away from his wife. Margaret was to be cut off from anyone known or suspected to be a recusant. The family and Dean immediately implemented these actions because it became known that Margaret ‘perverted’ (that is converted) her children and other family members, just as her mother allegedly had. Her father was to provide provisions and money for Margaret’s care and give her books to assist in her conformity to the state church. Lady Throckmorton, his wife, was similarly dealt with. This case of a mother-daughter conversion attracted attention immediately because of their success in converting the family. Despite her father being a member of the Anglican church, Margaret and her mother each proceeded to convert others in the household. The bravery and determination of these women was admirable, and the Throckmorton family later narrowly avoided implication in the Gunpowder Plot. In 1605, a servant to Robert Catesby, son of Sir William Catesby and Anne Throckmorton, a key conspirator in the Gunpowder Plot and the son of Anne Throckmorton, rode directly to the Throckmorton estate, Coughton Court, to tell a group of Catholics, including two Jesuit priests, of Guy Fawkes’ arrest in the plan to blow up King James I and his Parliament. The family was wise enough to live abroad at the time, having rented the house out to another prominent Catholic. Francis Tresham, the cousin of Robert Catesby and the son of Sir Thomas Tresham and Muriel Throckmorton of Coughton Court, joined the conspiracy late and came under suspicion of having betrayed it.
The Vaux family of Northamptonshire is an example of Catholic resistance to Elizabeth I’s laws regarding their faith. The arrival in England in the summer of 1580 of the Jesuit priests Edmund Campion, formerly tutor to Lord Vaux’s son Henry, and Robert Persons, the polemicist, was seen as the spearhead of a treasonous sect seeking to inspire attempts to overthrow Elizabeth. The government’s response was systematic and unrelenting: anyone who harbored or aided the Jesuits was now liable to loss of goods and life imprisonment. Lord Vaux’s decision to shelter Campion was to change his life completely and have severe consequences for him and his family. Hitherto, the noble privilege had exempted Vaux from the Oath of Supremacy and allowed him to worship in his private chapel. Now all was to change. In 1581, Vaux, a man who was said to value his good name above any treasure, was accused of recusancy. It marked a period of increasing suspicion and investigation for the family. Vaux was examined by one of his neighbors, Sir Walter Mildmay, to determine his beliefs, worship, and connections with Campion and other seminary priests. He was subsequently imprisoned and spent many months in the Fleet Prison for refusing to cooperate. The fact that William Cecil, Lord Burghley, the advisor and chief minister to the crown, drafted the letter by Vaux to the queen which secured his release, hints at the conflicting loyalties of the age. In March 1585, an act was passed that made it a capital offense for Jesuit and seminary priests to be in England, and yet, as the threat of prosecution grew, several of Vaux’s children became active in support of the outlawed priests. Eleanor and Anne, his two eldest daughters, were seen as crucial to the Catholic mission’s success. Even when left a widow with two young children, Eleanor, at great danger to herself and her loved ones, sheltered Catholic priests in her home at East Ham in Essex. Her unmarried sister Anne devoted her life to establishing safe houses for priests and providing them with financial assistance. Her devotion to Father Henry Garnet, the Jesuit Superior in England, and the risks she took for him, even prompted a few questions as to the nature of their relationship. For younger sons such as Ambrose, who would traditionally have been destined for the church or the law, refusal to take the Oath of Supremacy barred them from graduating from university, taking up arms for the queen, or working for the state. Never out of debt, Ambrose spent his life in and out of prison, and his younger sister Merill eloped with a servant. Such reckless behavior could be said to be a result of the repressive times they lived through.
Some authorities must have seen the influence of recusant mothers, daughters, and widows as an immediate danger to the Anglican hold on society because of recusant women’s ability to convert members of the established church and give strength to other Catholics. By word and deed, recusant women must have represented those who not only refused to abandon the old faith, but actively participated in Catholic consolidation and evangelization. Thus, they were a threat to the state, and Sir Francis Walsingham’s spy network was charged with monitoring and reporting on their activities. Catholic families could trust only a small number of relatives and retainers as informers were suspected within some households. Priests could be hidden in priest holes when needed. They might pass for gardeners, traveling salesmen, tutors, or any disguise and persona they could assume. The Catholic Church was also forced to acknowledge female independence in cases of Catholic wives of Protestant husbands. But for this to occur, women had to be encouraged to act independently and confidently without the aid of a priest or male counterpart. Due to this, some Catholic women were forced, by their conscience, to go behind the backs of their non-Catholic menfolk, be they fathers, uncles, husbands, sons, or cousins. Independence of mind and conscience gave some of these women a role they hitherto had not had. The tactics and subterfuges some women developed in the late 1570s became increasingly necessary as government pressure increased. Loyalties were divided between faith, family, and crown.
A considerable number of Catholic women were imprisoned throughout Elizabeth’s reign. If Elizabeth did personally disapprove of jailing women (as some historians, such as A L Rowse, have suggested), she did not let this reluctance interfere with the governance of her realm. Several women endured prison and severe financial penalties for disobedience to the state and as a direct result of their faith. Many were obstinate in their Catholicism despite the consequences to themselves, their property, and their loved ones.
By 1590, Elizabeth I’s chief advisor, William Cecil, Lord Burghley, had singled out women recusants, especially high-ranking gentlewomen, as a special problem and had decided that one of his priorities should be ensuring that these recusant wives be indicted, condemned, and imprisoned. Cecil set the main goal of English policy to create a united and Protestant nation. The obstinacy of female recusants, especially in the north of England, was a problem he had to try to solve. Henry Hastings, the Earl of Huntingdon and the President of the Council of the North, tried to solve this problem by imprisoning more recusant females to persuade other women not to follow their example. He apparently took his task seriously and, in 1592, opened new prisons to incarcerate them. He committed twenty-three gentlewomen, including Margaret Dormer, the wife of Sir Henry Constable of Constable Burton; the wives of Thomas Metham, William Ingleby, Ralph Babthorpe, Ralph Lawson, Marmaduke Cholmeley; and Katherine Radcliffe, who was a spinster. These women were apparently not deterred by this, as one priest reported, referring to the old faith: “The gents were much fallen off, but the gentlewomen stood steadfastly to it.” However, the persecution of Catholics was not uniformly imposed, and it varied from place to place, but government efforts were sufficient to warrant clandestine activities by women for the sake of the recusant community.
It could be argued that recusant women’s family and social relationships, as well as their determination not to be coerced by the patriarchal society they found themselves in, or even, in some cases, their own husbands and fathers, must have aided the survival of Catholicism in both towns and rural areas. Without their courage, stoicism, obstinacy, and grim determination, let alone their unwavering faith in God, Catholicism may have been virtually extinguished in England during the sixteenth century. Recusant women provided the necessary social glue to keep different recusant families close together and to allow them to support each other. The sacrifice Catholic mothers made in sending their sons and daughters away to the continent to become priests or nuns cannot be underestimated either. Some of those priests returned to England to minister to the faithful. Some, such as George Napier from Oxford, and the many martyrs celebrated by the church today, traveled the roads visiting the sick and elderly, bringing the sacraments to faithful Catholics. Risking their lives daily, they played cat and mouse with the authorities. Hiding in priest holes in the houses of the local gentry, they defied the laws prohibiting the celebration of the mass and Catholic sacraments. Catholic women were clearly involved with this enterprise and must have cooperated with others to aid them. The many priest holes which have survived, such as those at Harvington Hall, near Kidderminster, are testament enough to the courage and ingenuity of these Catholic families. In addition, several recusant women were instruments in both conversion and apologetics. Certainly, their contribution was just as vital in maintaining the Catholic faith as was the work of their husbands, brothers, fathers, and friends.
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