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Anstruther Analysed: The Elizabethan Seminary Priests1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 September 2015

Patrick McGrath  and
Joy Rowe
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Extract

THE FIRST VOLUME of Fr. Godfrey Anstruther's TheSeminary Priests: A Dictionary of the Secular Clergy of England and Wales, 1558-1850 appeared in 1968, and in subsequent years it was followed by three other volumes. For various reasons, Fr. Anstruther did not complete the fifth and final volume, although he had collected a great deal of material for it. His achievement was remarkable, all the more so because it was carried out single-handed, not with the assistance of a team of scholars, and he used a great range of source-material in foreign as well as in British archives. This major contribution to the history of post-Reformation Catholicism has not always received the credit it deserves, and it is a sad comment on the historical awareness of the English Catholic community that the volumes did not sell as well as they should have done. Inevitably in a work of such magnitude, there were a number of errors, but those who are ready to point out details which Fr. Anstruther got wrong must never forget how much he got right and how his monumental and much-used dictionary has provided scholars with a solid foundation on which to build.

Type
Articles
Information
British Catholic History , Volume 18 , Issue 1 , May 1986 , pp. 1 - 13
Copyright
Copyright © Catholic Record Society 1986

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References

Notes

1 This is based on a paper which we read at the Conference on post—Reformation Catholic History held in St. Anne's College, Oxford in July 1985.

2 Godfrey Anstruther, O.P., The Seminary Priests: A Dictionary of the Secular Clergy of England and Wales 1558–1850, 1 Google Scholar Elizabethan 1558–1603 (St. Edmund's College, Ware and Ushaw College, Durham, 1968) hereafter referred to as Anstruther.

3 We are indebted to Dom Dominic Aidan Bellenger for lending us a xerox copy of the MS. corrections and additions made to Anstruther by the late Fr. Smith, W. V.. See also English and Welsh Priests, 1558–1800 (ed. Bellenger, Downside Abbey, 1984).Google Scholar Some corrections are noted in the copy kept in the Westminster Diocesan Archives Office and some appeared in reviews. It would be extremely helpful if the Catholic Record Society or some other organisation would undertake the task of recording corrections and additions.

4 Anstruther, p. 111.

5 Anstruther, p. 340.

nstruther, pp. 279–80.

7 Anstruther, p. 95. He does not appear in Field, C. W., The Province of Canterbury and the Elizabethan Settlement of Religion (privately produced by the author, 1972).Google Scholar

8 Anstruther, p. 366.

9 Anstruther, pp. 309—10.

10 Anstruther, p. 235.

11 Anstruther, p. 11.

12 Anstruther, p. 143.

13 Foley, H., Records of the English Province of the Society of Jesus (1878) 3, p. 502.Google Scholar

14 Anstruther, p. 69.

15 Anstruther, pp. 132–3.

' nstruther, p. 59.

17 Anstruther, p. 161.

18 Anstruther, p. 170.

' nstruther, p. 114.

20 Anstruther, p. 70.

21 Anstruther, p. 79.

22 Anstruther, p. 24.

23 Anstruther, p. 81.

24 Anstruther, pp. 28, 282, 320..

25 Anstruther, p. 10.

26 Anstruther, p. 19.

27 Anstruther, p. 97.

28 Anstruther, p. 131.

29 Anstruther, p. 276.

30 Anstruther, pp. 351–2.

31 31Anstruther, p. 324.

32 Anstruther, pp. 20–1.

33 Anstruther, p. 45.

34 Anstruther, p. 160.

35 Anstruther, p. 140.

36 Anstruther, p. 177.

37 Some of the evidence has been considered, but only for a limited period. Michael Hodgetts, looking at the years up to 1586, estimated that some 300 priests had come to England by that date. Of these, 33 had been hanged and 8 died in prison. Nearly 50 more were in prison in 1586 and 60 had been banished. He concluded that it was unlikely that more than 130 priests were still at work in England in July 1586: Hodgetts, M., ‘Elizabethan Priest-Holes, 1’ Recusant History, 11, no. 6, October 1972, pp. 279-80.Google Scholar

38 A great deal of work needs to be done on Catholics in Elizabethan prisons. Fr. Anstruther himself collected a considerable amount of material. We are much indebted to Miss Justine Stone for some of the information included here.

39 John, Strype, Historical Collections of the Life and Acts of the Right Reverend Father in God,John Aylmer (Oxford, 1821) p. 69;Google Scholar Anstruther, p. 156, quoting B. L., Lansdowne 38, no. 87.

40 Anstruther, pp. 234′–5.

41 Anstruther, p. 275.

42 Anstruther, pp. 228–9.

43 Anstruther, p. 18.

44 Anstruther, p. 279.

45 Anstruther, pp. 368–9.

46 Anstruther, p. 174.

47 Anstruther, pp. 252–4.

48 Anstruther, pp. 380–1.

49 A study of this group is in preparation.

50 Adrian Morey, The Catholic Subjects of Elizabeth I (1978) p. 184.

51 Anstruther, pp. 30–31.

52 Anstruther, p. 108.

53 Anstruther, pp. 391–393.

54 Meyer, A. O., England and the Catholic Church under Queen Elizabeth (translated by J. R. McKee, 1915) p. 408;Google Scholar Philip, Hughes, The Reformation in England (1954) 3, p. 396;Google Scholar Watkin, E. I., Roman Catholicism in England (1957) p. 59;Google Scholar Aveling, J. C. H., The Handle and the Axe; The Catholic Recusants in England from reformation to emancipation (1976) p. 65.Google Scholar

55 Haigh, C., ‘The Continuity of Catholicism in the English Reformation’, Past and Present, 93 (1981);CrossRefGoogle Scholar ‘From Monopoly to Minority: Catholicism in early modern England’, Trans. Royal Historical Society, 5th series, 31 (1981); Patrick, McGrath, ‘Elizabethan Catholicism: A Reconsideration’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 35, no. 3 (1984);Google Scholar Haigh, C., ‘Revisionism, the Reformation and the History of English Catholicism’, with brief reply by Patrick, McGrath, Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 36, no. 3 (1985.)CrossRefGoogle Scholar

56 Anstruther, p. 284.