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6. Thomas More to Richard Baker (Smith) (31 October 1609) (AAW A VIII, no. 169, pp. 663–6.)
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 13 October 2009
Extract
Good S.r since my return I have skantlie stirred from your dearest frend, wher, I take it, I find the kindlier welcome for your sake, he remayning stil extraordinarilie affected to the common cause, and you in particuler, for which both you & we al are too too much endebted, discharg it as we may. your poor mr is quite cassierd, and gone, I pray god it be not imputed to you, but the worst, you know is, what was meant you from the first: who succeedeth him is a Licentiat of the Lawes, and Divinitie, a sufficient man, as it seemeth, and wel practized in these our causes, as having in former times occasion to trie his wits. He seemeth staied, suerlie settled, sincerile affected, and of a verie good judgment in matters of government, he lyved latelie if you can remember him with D. Kell. I doubt not but he wil do good service, to god, and the common cause.
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References
110 Presumably Anthony Maria Browne, second Viscount Montague.
111 Matthew Kellison, secular priest.
112 i.e. George Birkhead's.
113 In a note on the transcript of this letter at ABSI, LJ. Hicks suggested that this refers to John Bavant.
114 Anthony Maria Browne, second Viscount Montague.
115 Benjamin Norton.
116 James I, An Apologie for the Oath of Allegiance.
117 Cardinal Dominic Pinelli, Bishop of Fermo (who died in August 1611). In 1602, during the second Appeal, he censured the courses of the appellant priests, but promised to do what he could for them, Law II, 16.
118 Cardinal Robert Bellarmine SJ.
119 Edward Bennett.
120 Identity uncertain.
121 Not identified.
122 Identity uncertain.
123 Elizabeth Dacres, daughter of Francis Dacres, the brother of Magdalen, dowager Viscountess Montague.
124 Birkhead had sent Smith a letter from her on 20 July 1609 and remarked that she ‘remaineth with us to her comfort’, AAW A VIII, no. 130 (p. 555).
125 Robert Ubaldini.
126 CSPV 1607–10, 319Google Scholar.
127 i.e. Prurit-anus, vel nec omne, nee ex omni, published under the pseudonym Horatius Dolabella. See ARCR I, nos 304—6. The reissue of Prurit-anus contained an appendix ridiculing James I's ‘Praefatio Monitoria’ in his Apologia pro Iuramento Fidelitatis (1609)Google Scholar; STC 14405; CSPV 1607–10, 288, 300, 307, 313–14, 322Google Scholar; Salisbury MSS XXI, 100Google Scholar; Harris, , ‘Reports’, 203Google Scholar. Information from William Udall led to searches for it at the Venetian ambassador's house where the ambassador's chaplain was storing this and other Catholic books, Harris, ‘Reports’, 203, 245—7. It attacked not just puritan errors but also, in personal terms, Henry VIII, Elizabeth and James. It was explicitly anti-Scottish, CSPV 1607–10, 322–3Google Scholar. Sir Henry Wotton reported that the chaplain was an English subject, a pupil of the Jesuits at Douai, and formerly resident in the archduke's ambassador's house in London, CSPV 1607–10, 323Google Scholar. He was William Law (or Low), a son of Thomas Law, the bursar of Douai College. He was taken to Dover to be banished before 18 October 1609, Anstr. II, 203–4. On 29 August 1609 Birkhead recorded the recent incineration in St Paul's churchyard of 700 copies of the book, on which occasion there were two sermons preached, AAW A VIII, no. 144; CSPV 1607–10, 319Google Scholar. See also Owen, Lewis, The Running Register (1623)Google Scholar, sig. C3v; STC 6991.5.
128 Birkhead, on 3 October 1609, wrote to Smith of ‘the book of queres and another in french (as they say) worse then it’. Birkhead thought the creation of xx bb [bishops] wold not vex them so much', AAW A VIII, no. 166 (p. 654). Like More, he attributed the recent activity of the pursuivants against Catholics to the appearance of these works.
129 Both Tobie Mathew and Thomas Worthington were also rumoured to be the author, Salisbury MSS XXI, 100Google Scholar; Belvederi, 146. William Udall, the informer, at first attributed authorship in part to William Wright SJ and later claimed that the authors were Wright and his ex-Jesuit brother Thomas. Udall said that the book was ‘performed’ at Sir Francis Lacon's house at Kinlet, Shropshire, where Thomas Wright had his residence, Harris, ‘Reports’, 203–4, 255.Google Scholar
130 Guido Bentivoglio, Archbishop of Rhodes.
131 John Livingstone, Master of Livingstone, son of the first earl of Linlithgow.
132 For the grant, see Morris, J., The Troubles of our Catholic Forefathers (3 vols, 1872–1877), III, 460Google Scholar. Cf. PRO, SP 14/56/27A, fo. 53r, for Thomas Felton's allegation that, in the recent grant ‘of Nichilled Recusantes in all Yorkeshire, Northumberland, Cumberland and the Bishoppricke’ to the ‘L of Livingston’, the exchequer clerk Henry Spiller committed ‘all the whole execucon of that service’ to two Catholics who compounded with the listed recusants for very small sums.
133 For ‘nichilled’ debts in the exchequer, see BL, Lansdowne MS 156, no. 110.
134 On 15 October 1609 More wrote to Smith that ‘Mr Brugh and his brother’ were following Smith's progress in Rome, AAW A VIII, no. 164 (p. 650). It is possible that ‘Brugh’, elsewhere written also as ‘Brough’ (AAW A XI, no. 184), indicates ‘Broughton’, i.e. suggesting perhaps that the ‘two Brughes’ are the secular priest Richard Broughton and his brother.
135 Cf. AAW A VIII no. 145 (Benjamin Norton's account in August 1609 of statutes recently passed in Scotland).
136 John Chrysostom Campbell.
137 See Letter 7.
138 Cf. Harris, , ‘Reports’, 239Google Scholar, for William Udall's list (17 November 1608) of priests released for money. Corrupt high commission officials were prosecuted in Star Chamber in July 1610, PRO, STAC 8/15/8.
139 Nicholas Wadham, who had married Dorothy, the daughter of Sir William Petre.
140 Wadham College; cf. Foley II, 397–8; Briggs, N., ‘The Foundation of Wadham College, Oxford’, Oxoniensia 21 (1956), 61–81Google Scholar; Davidson, , 640–1Google Scholar; McCoog, T.M., ‘Apostasy and Knavery in Restoration England: The Checkered Career of John Travers’, Catholic Historical Review 78 (1992), 395–412, at p. 402Google Scholar. On 9 April 1611 (NS) Francis Hore wrote to More that Wadham had left £17,000 ‘in monie to buy lands’ for the college, ‘and his widow gives 7 thousand pounds more’, AAW A X, no. 32 (pp. 77–8); cf. Downshire MSS II, 275.Google Scholar
141 Anthony à Wood related an unlikely story that Nicholas and Dorothy Wadham had first decided to found a seminary in Venice, Davidson, 639.
142 Geoffrey Pole.
143 Cardinal Edward Farnese. Arthur, son and heir of Geoffrey Pole (snr) of Lordington, Sussex, was taken to Rome aged seven and placed with Farnese. Geoffrey Pole, Arthur's younger brother, subsequently entered Farnese's household as well, BL, Harleian MS 7042, fo. 166v; Salisbury MSS XVII, 67, XIX, 221.Google Scholar
144 Birkhead noted in mid-December 1609 that Geoffrey Pole wrote that Farnese ‘wilbe our assured frend, yf we be confident with him’ but both Farnese and Bianchetti, the vice-protector, were ‘greived’ because Smith had already ‘sought for helpe at the handes of so many other Card, besides’, AAW A VIII, no. 191 (p. 715).
145 i.e. in Rome.
146 In the 1590s Geoffrey Pole was one of the seminarists at the English College in Rome who was supposedly accused of sexual deviance by Edmund Harwood SJ, AAW A V, no. 112.
147 For Edmund Thornell, a canon at Vicenza, see Anstr. I, 352–3; CRS 51, 277; CRS 41, 72–3; PRO, SP 14/17/102 (an undated discourse by him in Italian against SJ's dangerous politics). Thornell was regularly cited as a friend of the anti-Jesuit secular priests, particularly by Benjamin Norton, e.g. AAW A XI, no. 170, though he was less well regarded by some of them, e.g. Edward Bennett, AAW A XI, no. 69; see also Letter 10. Thornell was Thomas More's confessor, Shanahan, D., ‘Thomas More IV Secular Priest 1565–1625’, Essex Recusant 7 (1966), 105–14, at p. 106.Google Scholar
148 Nicholas Fitzherbert, first cousin of Thomas Fitzherbert.
149 William Percy, a doctor of the Sorbonne, Anstr. I, 272. He was an opponent of Robert Persons SJ, AAW A VI, nos 19—20, but was antagonistic in 1603 towards the appellants John Mush, Anthony Champney and John Cecil while they were in Rome, Law II, 4, 5, 26, 235–42; cf. Persons, Robert, A Briefe Apologie (Antwerp, 1601)Google Scholar, fo. 126r. In 1595 Percy, with Worthington, had written a memorial to the protector, Henry Caietan, praising the Jesuit administration of the English College in Rome, Kenny, A., ‘The Inglorious Revolution 1594–1597’, Venerabile XVI (1957), 240–58Google Scholar, XVII (1958), 7–25, 77–94, 136–55, XX (1961), 208–23, at vol. XVII, pp. 77–8. In December 1596 Percy signed an attestation in favour of William Holt SJ during the agitation against him in Flanders, AAW A V, no. 99.
150 Identity uncertain. In 1591 Robert Weston, an informer, reported that a priest whom he called ‘Bruarton’ had stayed at the Gages' residence at Bentley, Sussex in early December 1590, Foley I, 382.
151 Thomas Heath. He had travelled to Rome with Smith and More and acted as Smith's servant, AAW A IX, no. 16.
152 By ‘Augustine’ the secular priests generally indicated John (Augustine) Bradshaw OSB alias White (for whom see Lunn, EB, passim), though the Cassinese Edmund (Augustine) Smith OSB was involved in trying to set up a convent in Paris which some of Geoffrey Pole's sisters intended to enter, Lunn, ‘English Cassinese’, 63–4. Possibly here More meant to write ‘Anselm’, i.e. Robert (Anselm) Beech OSB who was in Rome; neither Bradshaw nor Edmund Smith were.
153 Christopher Isham was the father of Francis and William, students respectively at Rome and Valladolid. Christopher had been refused admission as a convictor at the English College in Rome by its Jesuit administrators. He had been a member of Cardinal Allen's household, Kenny, ‘Inglorious Revolution’, XVII, 18, 141; Foley VI, 19f; Anstr. I, 184. The Ishams were relations of the priest Richard Newport, executed at Tyburn in 1612, AAW A XI, no. 113, and were in regular contact with the secular priest Robert Pett. William Isham was dissatisfied with his lot. Pett implies that he was not really inclined to take the secular clergy's part in the current ecclesiastical disputes in England, AAW A XII, no. 158.