The Catholic gentlemen of the North: Unreformed in the age of Reformation

• Author

I A. Fletcher, Gender, Sex and Subordination in England 1500-1800 (London,
1995), p. 28.
2 M. Breitenberg, Anxious Masculinity in Early Modern England (Cambridge,
1996); Breitenberg, 'Anxious masculinity: sexual jealousy in Early Modern
England', Feminist Studies, 19 (1993), 377-98; Fletcher, Gende/; Sex and
Subordination, pp. 28-9 .
3 C. Haigh, RejiJrmation and Resistance in Tudor Lancashire (Cambridge,
1975), p. 63.
4 This is an argument made by Christopher Haigh in several books and
articles, but most forcibly in 'The Church of England, the Catholics and the
people', in C. Haigh (ed.), The Reign o{ Elizabeth 1(London, 1984), p. 202,
and in 'From monopoly to minority: Catholicism in early modern
England', Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 5th series (1981),
129-47.5 Thelma Fenster, 'Preface: why men?', in C. E. Lees (ed.), Medieval Masculinities:
Regarding Men in the Middle Ages (Minneapolis and London,
1994), pp. ix-xiii, discusses the wider prevalence of this correlation between
women and gender.
6 G. R. Elton, The Tudor Constitution (Cambridge, 1975),329-68.
7 Mary reigned for only five years (1553-8) and the restoration of the
Catholic religion came to an abrupt end with the re-establishment of the
Protestant religion and royal supremacy over the church in 1559.
H Elton, Tudor Constitution, pp. 401-4.
9 A. Fletcher and D. MacCulloch, Tudor Rebellions (London, 1997).
10 C. Cross, 'The third earl of Huntingdon and trials of Catholics in the north
1581-1595', Recusant History, 8 (1965-6), 136-46; A. Dures, English
Catholicism 1558-1642 (London, 1984).
II North Yorkshire County Record Office (NYCRO), Northallerton,
ZQG/MIC 1456, fo. 2; The Memoranda Book of Richard Cholmley of
Brandesby 1602-1623 (NYCRO, 44, Northallerton, 1988), p. 29.
12 J. T. Cliffe, The Yorkshire Gentry from the Reformation to the Civil War
(London, 1969), p. 128.
13 F. Heal and C. Holmes, The Gentry in England and Wales 1500-1700
(London, 1994), p. 365.
14 J. C. H. Aveling (ed.), 'Recusancy papers of the Meynell family', in
Miscellanae, CRS, 56 (1964), pp. 42-3.
15 Ibid.,p.41.
16 See Heal and Holmes, Gentry, p. 352, for the trend towards private chapels.
17 Aveling, 'Recusancy papers', p. xv.
18 E. Foyster, 'Male honour, social control and wife beating in late Stuart
England', Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 6th Series (1996),
215-24.
19 Fletcher, Gender, Sex and Subordination, p. 205.
20 P. Lake, 'Feminine piety and personal potency: the emancipation of Mrs
Jane Radcliffe', Seventeenth Century, 2 (1987), 147-9.
21 D. R. Woolf, 'A feminine past? Gender, genre, and historical knowledge in
England, 1500-1800', The American Historical Review, 102 (1997), 645-79
(657).
22 S. L. 8astow, '''Wilful and worth nothinge": the Catholic recusant women
of Yorkshire', Recusant History, 25 (2001), 591-603.
21 E. Peacock (ed.), A List of the Roman Catholics in the County of York in
1604: Transcribed from the Original MS in the Bodeleian Library (London,
1872), p. 17.
24 Ibid., p. 64.
25 W. Palmes, 'The life of Dorothy Lawson of St. Antony's, near Newcastleupon-
Tyne in Northumberland', in J. Fenwick (ed.), Local Tracts: Tracts
Relating to the Counties of Northumberland and Durham and the Borough
and County of Newcastle-upon- Tyne, vo!. 3 (Newcastle-upon- Tyne, 1856),
pp. 17,32.26 Discussion of the feme covert can be found in J. Eales, Women in Early
Modern England, 1500-1700 (London, 1998), p. 79.
27 P. Caraman, Margaret Clitherow (York, 1986); R. Connelly, Women of the
Catholic Resistance in England 1540-1680 (Durham, 1997), pp. 48-52.
28 David Hugh Farmer, The Oxford Dictionary of Saints (Oxford and New
York, 1978; this edn 1987), p. 92.
29 Fletcher, Gender, Sex and Subordination, pp. 68-74; S. Mendleson and
P. Crawford, Women in Early Modern England 1550-1720 (Oxford, 1998),
pp. 18-30.
30 C. Talbot (ed.), Miscellanea: Recusant Records, CRS, 53 (1960), p. 279.
31 P. J. Holmes (ed.), Elizabethan Casuistry, CRS, 67 (1981), pp. 6-7.
32 Ibid., p. 119.
33 Ibid., p. 29.
34 J. S. Purvis, The Elizabethan High Commission of York: The Act Book
1561/2-1580 (York, 1979), pp. 68, 79 (68" 96V and 97).
35 J. Binns (ed.), The Memorials of Sir Hugh Cholmley of Whitby /600-1657,
YAS RS, 153 (2000), p. 61.
36 R. N. Swanson, 'Angels incarnate: clergy and masculinity from Gregorian
Reform to Reformation', and P. H. Cullum, 'Clergy, masculinity and
transgression in late medieval England', both in D. M. Hadley (ed.),
Masculinity in Medieval Europe (London, 1999), pp. 160-77, 178-96.
37 The focus on Catholic priest martyrs has been a constant theme of Catholic
historiography. The most notable Yorkshire priest martyr was Nicholas
Postgate who died in York in 1679.
38 J. S. Purvis (ed.), Tudor Parish Documents of the Diocese of York
(Cambridge, 1948), p. 80.
39 Palmes, 'Life of Dorothy Lawson', p. 45.
40 Ibid., p. 46. Palmes also stated that Dorothy was involved in the more
conventional lay Catholic activities, placing special emphasis on the seven
works of charity.
41 J. C. H. Aveling, Northern Catholics: The Catholic Recusants of the North
Riding of Yorkshire 1558-1790 (London, 1966), pp. 58-60, 136-7.
42 Heal and Holmes, Gentry, pp. 250-61, provides a discussion of the
formative nature of early education in determining the future of the
gentleman's son. This section relates to practical matters, but does indicate
that informal education was designed to train young men in gentlemanly
activities which were often designed to illustrate the differences between
themselves and their female siblings.
43 Aveling, 'Recusancy papers', p. 73.
44 M. C. E. Chambers, Life of Mary Ward, vols I and 2 (London, 1882)
provides an account of both Mary Ward and the Institute of the Blessed
Virgin Mary.
45 For a similar attitude to the roles of men and women within more recent
scholarship see, for example, J. C. H. Aveling, Post Reformation
Catholicism in East Yorkshire, 1558-1790 (York, 1960), pp. 21-46; The Catholic Recusants of the West Riding of Yorkshire 1558-1790 (Proceedings
of the Leeds Philosophical and Literary Society, 10,6 (1963», pp. 211-29;
Northern Catholics, pp. 112-98; Catholic Recusancy in the City of York,
1558-1791, CRS, monograph series, 2, 1970), pp. 14-76; The Handle and
the Axe: The Catholic Recusants in England .trom the Reformation to
Emancipation (London, 1976). Aveling places great emphasis on the role of
Catholic men in all three of his studies of Yorkshire. The idea that women
should be enclosed and passive, rather than in the world and active, was a
theme inherited from medieval Catholicism, as Meri Heinonen's essay in
this volume demonstrates.