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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 17 April 2015
This article compares and contrasts the 1580 texts A briefe discours contayning certayne reasons why Catholiques refuse to goe to Church by Robert Persons, and Gwssanaeth y Gwŷr Newydd by Robert Gwyn. Both books deal with church papism, and were written whilst the authors were in Rome together. Despite the simi-larity of theme, and the fact that the two most likely consulted each other about the work, many significant differences remain between the two texts. This article seeks to discuss these differences, and to assess what conclusions can be inferred from them as to the relative conditions of English and Welsh Catholicism, and the effect that this had on the authors’ work.
1 Gwyn was born c.1545, the younger son of the gentry family of Penyberth on the Llŷn penin-sula in Gwynedd. The family seems to have conformed to the Established Church, and Gwyn was sent to Corpus Christi, College, Oxford, from where he graduated in 1568. He was recon-ciled to Catholicism by Fr. Robert Owen, also a native of Penllŷn, and entered the English College at Douai in 1571. He was ordained priest in 1575, and was back in his native district as a missionary by the following year. Persons (1546–1610), originally from Somerset, was sent to St. Mary's Hall, Oxford in 1562, and became a fellow and tutor of Balliol College in 1568. In 1574 he was forced to resign and fled overseas to Louvain.
2 The English College at Douai in the Spanish Netherlands was established in 1569 by William Allen, as a seminary to train priests for the English mission.
3 ‘That there can be no Faith but the Old Faith’, MS NLW 15542B, pp. 62a–312a, Douai, 1574.
4 ‘The New Men's Service’, MS NLW 15542B, pp. 1a–62a, Rome, 1580.
5 MS NLW 15542B, pp. 41b, 18b.
6 The 1559 Act of uniformity of Common Prayer and Administration of the sacrament made church attendance compulsory, and punished non-attendance with fines, initially of a shilling, but later raised to twenty pounds a month. Failure to pay the fines was punished by imprison-ment, as were those found guilty of holding or attending private Mass. In 1563 it was also forbidden to defend the Papal supremacy over the Church, and in 1571 it was proclaimed treason either to publish papal bulls, or to call the monarch a heretic or schismatic.
7 Gwyn, Robert, Gwssanaeth y Gwŷr Newydd, ed., Bowen, Geraint, University of Wales Press (Cardiff, 1970)Google Scholar, Gwyn, Robert, Y Drych Kristnogawl, ed., Bowen, Geraint, University of Wales Press (Cardiff, 1996).Google Scholar
8 Gwyn, , Gwssanaeth y Gwŷr Newydd, ed., Bowen, Geraint, p. xxxiii.Google Scholar
9 From a Glamorganshire recusant family, Griffiths had fled to the continent sometime before 1574, and devoted quite a bit of money to supporting candidates for the priesthood. Whilst in exile Griffith seems to have become acquainted with Edmund Campion in Padua. His family owned a house near uxbridge which was chosen by Campion as his base of operations.
10 Catholic Record Society, vol. 39, p. 31.
11 Walsham, Alexandra, ‘“Yielding to the Extremity of the Time”: Conformity, Orthodoxy and the Post-Reformation Catholic Community’ in Lake, Peter and Questier, Michael, (eds.) Conformity and Orthodoxy in the English Church, c.1560–1660 (The Boydell Press, 2000), p. 214.Google Scholar
12 MS NLW 15542B, p. 1a.
13 Persons, Robert, A brief discours contayning certayne reasons why Catholiques refuse to goe to Church ([London Secret Press], 1580) (Scolar Press, 1972)Google Scholar, STC 19394, A&R 616, p. 6a.
14 MS NLW 15542B, pp. 19a–19b.
15 Ibid., pp. 140b–141a.
16 Persons, A brief discours, p. iii.
17 Gwyn, , Gwssanaeth y Gwŷr Newydd, ed., Bowen, Geraint, pp. 40–77.Google Scholar
18 John 2. 10.
19 see Hicks, Leo, ed., Letters and Memorials of Father Robert Persons, S.J.: vol. 1 (to 1588), Catholic Record Society, vol. 39 (1942).Google Scholar
20 MS NLW 15542B, p. 313a.
21 Walsham, Alexandra, Church Papists: Catholicism, Conformity and Confessional Polemic in Early Modern England (The Boydell Press, 1999), p. 9.Google Scholar
22 Ibid., pp. i–24.
23 Eusebius, , Historia Ecclesiastica, PG XX, 338 Google Scholar, Theodoret, , Historia Ecclesiastica, PG LXXXII, 1150.Google Scholar
24 MS NLW 15542 B, pp. 193b, 203a.
25 Council of Trent, session VI, Canons 1–5.
26 Persons, A brief discours, p. 7a.
27 Ibid., p. 24b.
28 Persons, A brief discours, p. 5b.
29 Mark 3.29.
30 Persons, A brief discours, p. 5b.
31 Gwyn, , Gwssanaeth y Gwŷr Newydd, ed., Bowen, Geraint, p. xxviii.Google Scholar
32 Thomas owen was later accused of recusancy by one of his neighbours, among the charges being that ‘Robert Wynn, Robert Owen (brother of the accused), Rees Griffith, David Evans… and other papistical Persons's lodged at his house. see Bowen, Geraint, ‘Robert Gwyn’, in Caernarvonshire Historical Society Transactions (1954), p. 20.Google Scholar
33 Houliston, Victor, ‘Robert Persons, [Parsons] (1546–1610)’, Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford University Press, 2004).Google Scholar
34 MS NLW 15542B, p. 19b.
35 Ibid., pp. 140b–141a.
36 Persons, A brief discouers, p. 21a.
37 Confirmation, Penance, Extreme Unction, Holy Orders, Matrimony.
38 op. cit., p. iiii.
39 MS NLW 15542B, p. 13a.
40 Ibid., p. 16b.
41 MS NLW 15542B, p. 15a.
42 Ibid., p. 18a.
43 MS NLW 15542B, p. 20a.
44 Ibid., p. 20b.
45 Persons, A brief discours, p. K ib.
46 Martin, Gregory, Treatise of Schisme (Douai, 1578), p. D. ii.Google Scholar
47 MS NLW 15542B, p. 24a.
48 Ibid., p. 25b.
49 As well as formally incorporating Wales into England, and removing the old distinction between the Marcher Lordships and the Principality of Wales in favour of a system of counties, the Act also banned anyone not fluent in English from holding public office in Wales. Given that the vast majority of the population, even amongst the gentry class were monoglot Welsh during this period, the Act can hardly said to have been widely enforced.
50 Persons, A brief discours, p. 16a.
51 MS NLW 15542B, p. 33b.
52 Ibid., p. 26a.
53 MS NLW 15542B, p. 25b.
54 Persons, A brief discours, pp. iia, iva–b, viiia, ixb, xivb–xvia.
55 Ibid., p. viia.
56 Bishop nicholas Robinson of Bangor was particularly zealous in this regard, actively hunting Gwyn on more than one occasion. Gwyn must have been a particular thorn in his side, as before the writer's return to Llŷn in 1576, Robinson had boasted that there were only six recus-ants in his entire diocese. Regardless, he was later forced to admit that since the summer of Gwyn's arrival, several leading families had begun to absent themselves from church, presumably under Gwyn's influence. See Bowen, , ‘Robert Gwyn’, Caernarvonshire Historical Society Transactions (1954), p. 20.Google Scholar
57 Bowen, , ‘Robert Gwyn’, Caernarvonshire Historical Society Transactions (1954), p. 20.Google Scholar
