THERE EXISTS, in Harleian MS. 7553 of the British Library, a set of seventeen Spiritual1 Sonnettes to the honour of God and hys Sayntes by H. C.. In his 1812 edition of the manuscript, Thomas Park attributed these poems to the Elizabethan courtier-poet and later recusant Henry Constable on the grounds of the ‘regular Italian structure, and the sainted names of those addressed’.’ Three years later, in his Heliconia, Park substantiated his attribution by reference to Constable's known Roman Catholicism and to a recantation found at the end of his secular sonnet cycle Diana in Dyce MS. 44: ‘When I had ended this last sonet and found that such vayne poems as I had by idle houres writ did amounte iust to the climatericall number 63, me thought it was high tyme for my follie to die and to employe the remnant of my wit to other calmer thoughts lesse sweet and lesse bitter’. The Dyce manuscript-like the Harleian-is not in Constable's own hand, and one scholar has recently thrown doubt on the authenticity of the recantation. Nevertheless, the Spirituall Sonnettes have without question continued to be considered as Constable's following Park's broad biographical and stylistic outline. The Harleian manuscript appears to date from the early years of the seventeenth century, and this has been assumed to be the likely date of composition for the sonnets as well.

IN THE CHANCEL of Dumbleton Church, Gloucestershire, there is a monument bearing the following inscription:

MUCH recent research has examined Catholicism in early Stuart England and some has discussed the contribution of anti-Catholicism to the outbreak of the Civil War—but how well-founded were the fears underlying the rhetoric which surfaced in parliament? This paper1 addresses one aspect of that question by looking at certain financial features of Catholic non-conformity (as demonstrated by absence from Anglican services and/or refusal of the oath of allegiance) in the first half of James I’s reign, chiefly between 1606 and 1612. The significance of this period is that it begins just after the attempt to blow up king and parliament and ends with the death of Robert Cecil, Earl of Salisbury who, during his term of office as Lord Treasurer from 1608 onwards, was grappling with an intractable royal indebtedness which he managed to curtail but not to cure and whose own effectiveness waned following the failure of the Great Contract in 1610.2

NOT FAR from Cadiz there is an English property that has remained Catholic for close on five hundred years. Its history goes back to pre-reformation days, indeed to the thirteenth century when the port of Sanlucar de Barrameda was recaptured from the Moors by the Guzman family who later became the Dukes of Medina Sidonia. Strategically Sanlucar was an important port because it was at the mouth of the Guadalquivir and as well as capturing the Seville trade it also commanded the traffic from the Mediterranean to Northern Europe and eventually it was the point of departure for ships leaving for the New World. Among the various nations using the port the English were conspicuous and their merchants were granted various privileges by the Dukes of Medina Sidonia during the fifteenth century. By the early sixteenth century there is evidence of a sizeable colony in the town; in fact the English were the largest single group of foreigners and many English names appear in the baptismal registers as both parents and godparents. At least one of them held high public office in the town. On the accession of Henry VIII to the throne of England, the situation further improved as he abandoned the neutrality of his father and allied himself with Spain against France. So it was that in 1517 a new charter of privileges for the English merchants in Sanlucar was drafted. A grant of land by the river was made so as to provide a chapel and a burial place for Englishmen. The chapel was dedicated to St. George and it was to be looked after by a confraternity. The chaplain was to be appointed by the Bishops of London, Winchester and Exeter, since it was from these dioceses that most of the merchants came. Although there have been rebuildings, this site has remained English ever since.

THE PERPETUAL Curate of Allendale, an active participant in the Jacobite rebellion of 1715 who later turned king's evidence, said of William, fourth Lord Widdrington, a leading rebel, ‘it had been happy for him, and so we thought would have been better for us, if he had stayed at home’.’ The comment referred both to Widdrington's military incompetence and to the ruin of his house consequent upon his attainder. For Widdrington was one of the wealthiest Northumbrian Catholics, with estates in Lincolnshire, Northumberland and Durham, none of which was heavily mortgaged or encumbered with major debt, as so many northern Catholic estates were. Moreover, his estates at Stella and Winlaton (in the north-west Durham parish of Ryton) incorporated coal-bearing lands which were ripe for development. The shallow coal seams in Whickham and Gateshead, east of Ryton, were virtually worked out and, in order to satisfy the increasingly demanding London market, northern coal-owners were about to extend operations. Widdrington's estate in north-west Durham lay in the middle of the expanding coalfield and would undoubtedly yield substantial profits. As a result of his involvement in the, ‘Fifteen, however, Widdrington forfeited what was described by an acquisitive coal-owning competitor as this ‘very improvable estate’, and, of course, any future profits its coal-mines might earn. Widdrington was fortunate, even so, in having agents in Durham who were prepared to do all in their power to ensure that he did not lose everything. Albert Silvertop and Joseph Dunn, fellow-Catholics and experienced colliery managers (or ‘viewers’), rightly supposed that whoever took over the Stella estate would work quickly to exhaust its coal reserves before the property could be restored, for the entailed estate would revert to Widdrington's heir at his death. Silvertop and Dunn therefore embarked on a remarkable campaign to deprive the new ownership of the benefits the estate promised. The struggle that ensued was long, and often bloody; it became a trial of strength between the powerful coal magnates and independent entrepreneurs, but it also developed into a contest between Protestants and Catholics in which the Catholics were conspicuous for their aggression in defence of their property and reckless in their defiance of possible repercussions under the penal laws.

THE CONSEQUENCE of the Cisapline attempt to ‘grapple with the social and intellectual transformation of the modern world” and to bring about a ‘revision of the pyramidal structure of the Tridentine Church” was the greater assimilation of English Catholics into contemporary society. Encouraged by a new sense of freedom, clergy and laity participated more actively in English public life’ and dismantled much of the closed élite community of the recusant period. This led to a brief phase in which both clergy and laity exercised their new-found freedoms, but which was dogged by disputes. Arguments raged between liberalism and authority, and between sectarian ideals and non-denominational activities. They were eventually resolved in a restoration, by 1850, of the pyramidal structure of the Tridentine Church, in which the role of the laity was subject to the authority and guidance of the clergy.

THE ROLE of the laity in the Church is a topic of great interest today. Since the second Vatican Council the part which the people could, and should, play in the Church has been discussed at length, and the shortage of priests has led to demands for the laity to become more actively involved in spiritual affairs. Some, however, still maintain that spiritual tasks must be left to the ordained, but would like to see the laity take a much more active role, as Catholics, in the secular sphere, representing and defending Catholic values in public life. In the light of the current debate, it is interesting to look at the role of the laity in the Catholic Church in Yorkshire during the last century. At that time, too, there was a shortage of priests, while the role of Catholics in public life did not always fulfil the desires of Church leaders.

MARY WARD, foundress of the Institute of the Blessed Virgin Mary (I.B.V.M.) and so indirectly of the Loreto nuns, was born in 1585 and died in 1645. In addition to some autobiographical writings in English and Italian, there are a significant number of Mary Ward's letters preserved. Early lives were written by Winefrid Wigmore in English (there is a seventeenth century manuscript of this in Loreto college, Manchester), by Pageti in Italian in 1662, by Bissel in Latin in 1667 or ‘68 and in German by Lohner in 1689. The Pageti and Lohner Mss. are in the Institute's archives at Nymphembourg, but in addition to these documentary sources the Institute possesses at Augsburg a remarkable collection of fifty large canvases called ‘The Painted Life’. As a series of paintings on the life of a single individual from this period these would seem to be almost unique. There is a short cycle by Rubens on Marie de’ Medici, and some baroque series on the lives on the saints in Roman churches. But there does not seem to be anything comparable to this ‘Painted Life’ from the seventeenth century. Some account of it will therefore be of interest both to the historian and the art critic and, since certain incidents in Mary Ward's life are alluded to in connection with the paintings, a brief outline-biography is provided by way of introduction.