The beginning of serious French interest in the affairs of English Catholicism falls in the first years of the seventeenth century. Since the Reformation, French kings and their ministers had usually felt that Catholicism in England was, on political grounds, to be discouraged rather than advanced; from a more recent date, they had ceased to have a foreign policy at all. Interest in English Catholicism had been left to the Spaniards, who had coped with it as best they could. Two explanations can be offered why things began to take a different turn during the reign of Henri IV. The first is that the reconstruction of what Sully described as “la faction fran9oise dans la Chrestiente” carried with it almost automatically a revival of the anti-English posture traditionally associated with it; the combination is a familiar one.

This paper deals with six documents concerning plans for the invasion of England which were put forward by Dr. Morys Clynnog in 1575 and 1576. First noted by Arnold Oscar Meyer, they have never been studied in detail. This is due in part to the lack of background material, for it is still possible to uphold Meyer’s verdict of half-a-century ago that “the diplomatic history of these plans of invasion is still far from being complete”. The Elizabethan exiles had no concerted plan of action, and each group pursued its own policies. Those that come within the scope of this survey are those of: Dr. William Allen and Sir Francis Englefield; Dr. Nicholas Sander; Thomas Goldwell Bishop of St. Asaph and Dr. Nicholas Morton; Prior Shelley, and Dr. Morys Clynnog together with Dr. Owen Lewis. The point may be illustrated by a document of 1572. Soon after the election of Pope Gregory XIII, Allen and twelve other English exiles wrote from Louvain to Cardinal Morone, the Protector of England, enclosing a memorial for the Pope, asking for Papal intervention to help English Catholics. They asked Morone to discuss the matter with Thomas Goldwell, Bishop of St. Asaph, Nicholas Sander and Nicholas Morton. Goldwell and Morton had been active in English affairs in the pontificate of Pius V. On the part of the exiles in the Low Countries, no mention was made of Dr. Owen Lewis, who as a canon lawyer was at this time pursuing a highly successful career in the diocese of Cambrai; nor did Allen suggest that Cardinal Morone should take the advice of Morys Clynnog, a Welsh exile in Rome who was high in his favour. These omissions suggest that the two Welsh exiles stood somewhat apart from Allen and his co-signatories in 1572. Clynnog, after the death of his patron Cardinal Pole in 1558, had attached himself to Cardinal Morone. He became involved in a violent quarrel in Rome with Morton in 1565, in which Morone’s support had enabled him to gain a victory over Morton and his followers in the English Hospice. There is evidence that this feud was still vigorous in 1579, and that Morton had as an ally Thomas Goldwell, Bishop of St. Asaph: and by that date Owen Lewis had ranged himself with Morys Clynnog. Lewis arrived in Rome in the summer of 1574, on legal business from Cambrai. In less than a year he had become a Papal Referendary, an office which gave him direct access to the Pope. He was thus well placed to play a leading part in the politics of the English exiles. The documents discussed in this paper lend support to the view that he embarked on his first essay in statecraft very soon after his arrival in Rome, and that the invasion-projects which now exist in the handwriting of Morys Clynnog were, in effect, proposals which had the backing of Owen Lewis, and which had among their objectives the conferring on him of a Cardinal’s hat.

In 1580 Robert Persons and Edmund Campion led the first Jesuit mission for the conversion of England. Their success in stirring up a new zeal among English Catholics and in reconciling sympathisers to the church greatly alarmed the government. The result was an intensification of the persecution of Catholics, which culminated in the passing of the statute against recusants in the Parliament of 1581. From this time those who withdrew the Queen’s subjects from their allegiance, or converted them to Catholicism for that intent, together with those who willingly allowed themselves to be so withdrawn, were judged to be traitors. The penalties against those who remained Catholics and refused to conform were drastically increased. A fine of £20 a month could now be imposed for non-attendance at church.

Even in a modern state with an efficient police force considerable use is made of informers. Indeed the most successful detective is often the one who has the best contacts with members of the underworld who are prepared to provide information in return for cash or for favours. The more primitive the machinery for preserving order in a state the greater the need for such informers. It is no wonder therefore that men of this kind proliferated in Elizabethan and Jacobean England.

The original of this narrative, kindly lent me by Lord Clifford of Chudleigh, to whom I make full and grateful acknowledgement, is a manuscript booklet of 41 pages, about 9 in. by 5 ½ in. The author, it seems clear. was Lewis Clifford, who with his twin brother Arthur was in the school year 1792/3 in the class of Poetry. These two boys were grandsons of the 3rd Baron: their father. the Hon. Thomas Clifford, of Tixall, Staffordshire, the youngest son, was married to Barbara. a daughter and co-heiress of the 5th and last Lord Aston of Forfar. She it was who inherited Tixall and at her marriage brought that estate into the Clifford family. The twins, aged 17 “le cinq du mois ventose de l’an troisieme” (23 February, 1795), after their release from Doullens reached London on the following March 3rd. and after a month or so at home spent the summer term—April to August—at Stonyhurst. Arthur then rejoined some of his former fellow prisoners at St. Edmund’s, Old Hall. Of Lewis one knows only that he died unmarried in 1806. For Arthur’s subsequent literary work. see the Dictionary of National Biography.

There has been a tradition at Harvington Hall in Worcestershire that for twelve years (sometimes given as 1666-1678) it was the home of the martyr John Wall, who was hanged at Worcester in August 1679. The stock printed accounts are those of Dom Bede Camm, O.S.B., in Forgotten Shrines (1910, 1936), pp. 253-280, and in his Life of Blessed John Wall, The Martyr of Harvington Hall (1932, 1947). More recent views can be found in my “Blessed John Wall” (The Venerabile, May and November 1960), in Fr. Howard Docherty's “Blessed John Joachim Wall” (Westminster Cathedral Chronicle, August 1960), and in Mr. Frank Davets Blessed John Wall (Office of the Vice-Postulation, 1962).

Manuscript sources. The Hassop muniments, part of the Bagshawe Collection in Sheffield City Libraries, have provided the chief source for this study. They consist very largely of deeds and related documents, but even these are not complete. A small bundle of some thirty miscellaneous papers, a number of them rough notes or mere domestic receipts, together with the parliamentary surveys of the estates, provide almost the only other estate papers in the muniments for the period covered. There are no letters, except for some half-a-dozen which have survived because the blank sheets have been used subsequently for business notes. The deeds are supplemented by two Hassop evidence books, compiled in the later 18th Century, now in the possession of Lady Stephens.on of Hassop Hall.

The present building bearing this name is a handsome three-storeyed mansion of medium size and rectangular shape, which stands in pleasant grounds at the south end of Yarm, in what was until recently a small enclave of High Worsall. The long east front of the house faces the Tees—from which it is separated by terraced lawns—and the rising ground crowned with woods on the Durham side of the river, while the main entrance on the west front is approached by a short drive from lodge gates on the Thirsk road. The south end of the house looks across ornamental lawns to a large walled kitchen garden, and at the north end there is a range of domestic buildings built a century earlier as an extension to the original house and narrower than the main building, while to the north of this there is a long courtyard flanked by stables and other outbuildings and having a lane leading to the south end of the High Street.