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Richard Shelley of Warminghurst and the English Catholic Petition for Toleration of 1585

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 September 2015

Roger B. Manning
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Extract

On 23rd November, 1584, the fifth Parliament of Queen Elizabeth introduced a bill against “Jesuits, seminary priests and such other like disobedient persons,” which proposed to order all Catholic priests ordained since the feast of the Nativity of St. John the Baptist, 1559, to leave the country within forty days after the end of the current session of Parliament or suffer pain of death for high treason, their aiders and abettors to be adjudged felons and condemned to death as felons. This bill passed its third reading in the House of Commons on December 19, 1584, but it was not taken up by the House of Lords until after the Christmas recess.

Type
Research Article
Information
British Catholic History , Volume 6 , Issue 6 , October 1962 , pp. 265 - 274
Copyright
Copyright © Catholic Record Society 1962

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References

Notes

1. 27 Eliz., Cap. 2.

2. Sir Neale, John, Elizabeth 1 and Her Parliaments, 1584…1601 (London: Jonathan Cape, 1957), pp. 53–54.Google Scholar

3. English Protestants Plea, and Petition, for English Priests and Papists, to the Present Court of Parliament, and all persecutors of them [S. Omer] 1621 (A & R 159), preface. This pamphlet written anonymously by Richard Broughton, contains the text of the petition presented by Shelley. There are also contemporary MS. copies in Westminster Cathedral Archives, MS. IV no. 4, and in the Rushton Papers (B.M. Add. MSS. 39 & 28-38), partially printed in Godfrey Anstruther, Vaux of Harrow den (Newport, Monmouthshire: 1953), pp. 154-156. The petition as found in English Protestants Plea was printed from the copy now in the Westminster Archives, and the information in the preface comes from a contemporary note still attached to this copy.

4. Challoner, Richard, Memoirs of Missionary Priests . …, ed. Pollen, J. H. S.J, (London: Burns Oates; New York: P. J. Kenedy and Sons, 1924), p. 107.Google Scholar

5. S.P. Dom. Eliz. 177, no. 17 and B.M. Lansdowne MSS, 45, fol, 177.

6. Fr. Anstruther has a brief account of the presentation of this petition, but he says little of Richard Shelley's background except that he has been previously imprisoned, op. cit., pp.156-7.

7. Antony Lower, Mark, The worthies of Sussex (Lewes: 1865), pp. 128–129.Google Scholar The case of Wolfe vs. Shelley—or Shelley's Case was before the courts from 1579 until a decision was handed down in 1581. All the reports of this case go into great detail about the legal principles involved, but give no biographical information. It is not known which of the Warminghursts Shelleys was the person of that surname actually involved in that case. However, it seems quite likely that Edward Shelley the elder married twice, although neither wife is known by name, and that Henry Shelley was the issue of a first marriage, while Richard, Edward, Mary and Elizabeth were the issue of a second marriage. The last four children appear to have been quite close to one another, while Henry Shelley (although he may have died previously) was not.

This suggestion seems to be in accord with Sir Edward Coke's statement that the case centered around the question of whether the heir of the part of the mother should inherit the estates or the heirs of the part of the father. It would appear that the heirs of the father won the case and presumably Richard and his brother lost. Richard Shelley and his brothers continued to live at Warminghurst possibly by lease or pending a further appeal. Cf. Sir. William, S. Holdsworth, A History of English Law (1923), III, 107,Google Scholar quoting Sir Edward Coke's Reports, I, f. 104a; Sir Edward Coke, Institutes, I, cap. 1; William, E. Burby, Handbook of the Law of Real Property (St. Paul, Minn.: 1954), p. 314.Google Scholar

8. Strype, John, Annals of the Reformation … (Oxford: 1824), V. 183.Google Scholar

9. Rape of Bramber (London: 1832), II. 2, 77, 244.Google Scholar

10. West Sussex County Record Office (Chichester), Ac 542 vol XVIII, f. 71.

11. Sussex Genealogies (Cambridge: 1931), IV, 247.Google Scholar

12. S. P., Dom., Eliz., CLXXXV, no 46. There was also a Richard Shelley of Patcham, esquire, who was a J.P. in the 1580's and of the quorum in the 1590's, and who belonged to another cadet branch. They were Protestants.

13. WSCRO (Chichester), Ac 542, vol XVIII, f. 71.

14. Diocesan Record Office (Chichester), Registers of Churchwardens' Presentments, DRO Ep. 1/23/1, f. 63v.

15. DRO Ep. 1/23/4, f. 21.

16. S.P., Dom., Eliz., CXVIII, no. 15, printed C.R,S., Miscellanea XII, 80-81:

17. DRO (Chichester), Return of Nonconformists, DRO Ep. 1/37, no. 2.

18. Hatfield MS. 238, f. 1, printed in C.R.S. vol. 53, p, 5.

19. S.P., Dom., Eliz., CLXXXV, no. 46.

20. WSCRO, Ac 542, vol. XVIII, f. 71.

21. Ibid.

22. Burton, E. H. and Pollen, J. H. S. J. (eds,), Lives of the English Martyrs, Second Series (London: 1914), 1, 416–420.Google Scholar

23. Not to be confused with John Apsley of Thackham, who was a J.P. that year.

24. P.R.O., Chancery 202/Box 144.

25. DRO (Chichester), Ep. 1/37, no. 56.

26. Ibid., no. 3.

27. Acts of the Privy Council, ed. Dasent, XI, 77, 88.

28. DRO (Chichester), Ep. 1/37, no. 9.

29. Ibid., no. 27.

30. B. M. Harleian MS. 360, f. 1. Cf. my thesis, “The Episcopate of Richard Curteys, Bishop of Chichester, 1570-1582: An aspect of the Enforcement of the Elizabethan Religious Settlement in Sussex,” Georgetown University, 1960. I am currently working on a book which will study the enforcement of the Elizabethan religious settlement in Sussex.

31. Acts P. C., XII, 152. Two days later it was noted that the Gage brothers were in the Fleet, while the two Shelleys were in the Marshalsea B.M. Harleian MS. 360, f. 1. Although there may be a scribal error somewhere among these records, Richard Shelley was definitely in the Marshalsea.

32. DRO (Chichester), Ep. 1/37, no. 2.

33. Michelgrove is in the parish of Clapham.

34. DRO (Chichester), Ep. 1/37, no. 9.

35. “Abstract of the Privy Council Registers,“ B. M. Additional MS. 11, 402, f. 30.

36. S.P., Dom., Eliz., CLV, no. 27. “Richard Shelley of Worminghurste” also appears on another prison list in Losely MS. Bundle 1380 printed in St. Hyland, G. K., A Century of Persecution under Tudor and Stuart Sovereigns from Contemporary Records (London: 1920), pp. 389–390.Google Scholar

37. S. P., Dom., Eliz., CLXIII, no. 86. II, This report was written by Thomas Bishop, later a baronet, to the Privy Council from Warminghurst.

38. B. M. Harleian MS. 703, f. 19, printed in “Sussex Religious Houses and Recusants, Temp. Hen. VIII and Elizabeth,” Sussex Archaeological Collections (1860), XIII, 197-202. The MS. number is 703 instead of 705 as printed.

39. B. M. Harleian MS. 703, f. 20.

40. C.R.S., II, 240.

41. S.P., Dom., Eliz., CLXXVII, no. 17; Anstruther, op. cit., p, 157:

42. English Protestant Plea …, pp. 37-38.

43. S.P., Dom., Eliz., CLXXVII, no. 17, printed Anstruther, op, cit., p, 157.

44. B. M. Landsdowne MS. 45, ff. 176-179.

45. S.P., Dom., Eliz., CLXXXIII, no. 38; CLXXX1V, no 45.1.

46. B.M. Harleian MS. 703, f. 68v. B. M, Add, MS, 5702 (Burrell MSS), ff, 93v-94 is an 18th Century copy of the same list.

47. His trial was held on February 12, 1585, in Westminster Hall. The text of the trial is in B. M. Landsdowne MS. 45, ff. 164-175. He was eventually pardoned and died in 1598.

48. B. M. Harley MS. 7042, f. 209v.

49. Lives of the English Martyrs,!, 416-420.

50. HM.C. Salisbury, IV, 263.

51. Loseley MS. V, no. 28, printed Hyland, op. cit., p. 402.

52. Lives of the English Martyrs, I. 417.