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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 16 February 2015
The first decade of James I's reign saw a wave of high-profile clerical conversions to the Church of Rome. Among the best-known cases are those of James Wadsworth, who travelled to Spain with Sir Charles Cornwallis's embassy in 1605, where, as William Bedell's biographer Alexander Clogie disgustedly recalled, he was ‘cheated out of his religion by the Jesuits and turned apostate’; Theophilus Higgons, a member of Christ Church, Oxford, who converted in 1607; his friend and Oxford contemporary Humphrey Leech, who followed him in 1609 and later joined the Society of Jesus; and Benjamin Carier, a royal chaplain and prebendary of Canterbury, who converted in 1613. As the work of Michael Questier has taught us, religious conversion was by no means an uncommon phenomenon in early modern England. Yet these cases had the potential to inflict serious damage on the Jacobean church, not only because they threatened to neutralise the propaganda advantages to be gained from Roman Catholic converts to the Church of England such as Marc’ Antonio de Dominis, but also because they drew unwelcome attention to doctrinal divisions within the Church of England over such issues as anti-popery and the theology of grace.
1 On conversion in general, see Questier, Michael, Conversion, Politics and Religion in England 1580–1625 (Cambridge, 1996);Google Scholar on Wadsworth, see Shuckburgh, E.S., ed., Two Biographies of William Bedell (Cambridge, 1901), pp 81, 89;Google Scholar on Carier, see Questier, ‘Crypto-Catholicism, Anti-Calvinism and Conversion at the Jacobean Court: the enigma of Benjamin Carier’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 47: 1 (1996), pp 45–64.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
2 The latter point is made by Questier, ‘Crypto-Catholicism’, p. 59, and Milton, Anthony, Catholic and Reformed: the Roman and Protestant Churches in English Protestant Thought 1600–1640 (Cambridge, 1995), p. 53.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
3 Milward, Peter, Religious Controversies of the Jacobean Age (1978), pp 165–171,Google Scholar provides a helpful summary of the pamphlet exchanges.
4 John Sanford to Sir Thomas Edmondes, 6 March 1611: British Library, Stowe MS 171, ff 370–1.
5 Questier, Michael, ed., Newsletters from the Archpresbyterate of George Birkhead (Cambridge, 1998), p. 100 Google Scholar n. 373.
6 George Calvert to Sir Thomas Edmondes, 7 March 1611: BL Stowe MS 171, ff 374–5.
7 Bossy, John, The English Catholic Community 1570–1850 (1975), p. 153.Google Scholar
8 Cary, Elizabeth, The Tragedy of Mariam, ed. Weller, Barry and Ferguson, Margaret W. (Berkeley and London, 1994), pp 11–12.Google Scholar On Cary's participation in religious controversy, see Serjeantson, Richard, ‘Elizabeth Cary and the Great Tew Circle’, in Wolfe, Heather, ed., The Literary Career and Legacy of Elizabeth Cary, 1613–1680 (2007), pp 165–82.Google Scholar
9 Guilday, Peter, The English Catholic Refugees on the Continent 1558–1795, vol 1: The English Colleges and Convents in the Catholic Low Countries (1914), p. 360.Google Scholar
10 For a genealogy of the Roper family, see Annals of the English Benedictines of Ghent (1894), p. 184,Google Scholar and Trapp, J.B. and Herbrüggen, H.S., The King's Good Servant: Sir Thomas More (1977), pp 8–9.Google Scholar On the Catholic gentry in Kent, see Clark, Peter, English Provincial Society fromthe Reformation to the Revolution: Religion, Politics and Society in Kent 1500–1640 (Hassocks, 1977), p. 179.Google Scholar
11 Some sources give the name of Lady Lovell's husband as Sir Nicholas Lovell, but Christina Lovell's entry in the Register Book of the English Nuns at Brussels describes her as ‘Daughter of Sir Robert Lovell of Martine Abbie in the Countie of Surrey’: Hansom, Joseph S., ed., ‘The Register Book of Professions, etc., of the English Benedictine Nuns at Brussels and Winchester, now at East Bergholt, 1598–1856’ (CRS 14, Miscellanea IX, 1914), p. 182.Google Scholar
12 On the Norfolk Lovells, see Patrick Ryan, SJ, ed., ‘Diocesan Returns of Recusants for England and Wales, 1577’ (CRS 22, Miscellanea XII, 1921), p. 56,Google Scholar and Petti, Anthony G., ed., Recusant Documents from the Ellesmere Manuscripts (CRS 60, 1968), pp 106–7.Google Scholar
13 ‘Illustrations and Venerable Proofs for the Pedegree of the Family of Roper’, BL Add MS 34812. Lady Lovell appears on f. 9v.
14 Petition from Jane Lovell, n.d. [before August 1604]: Hatfield House, Cecil Papers, Petitions 1900.
15 ‘The examynation of the La: Louel the xix of November 1605’: National Archives, SP 14/16/93, calendared CSPD 1603–10, p. 260. Lady Lovell's servants John Tuttye and John Sell, and her waiting-woman Mrs Anne Percy, were also questioned by the authorities: see HMC Hatfield XVII, p. 499.
16 Lady Lovell to Cecil, [1605]: Cecil Papers, vol. 114 no. 85, calendared HMC Hatfield XVII, p. 614.
17 Lady Lovell to Salisbury, [1605]: Cecil Papers, vol. 114 no. 84, calendared HMC Hatfield XVII, pp 613–4. On Fr Pullen, see HMC Hatfield XVII, p. 501, Foley, Henry, ed., Records of the English Province of the Society of Jesus, 7 vols (Roehampton and London, 1875–83), vol. vii, p. 615,Google Scholar and McCoog, Thomas M., English and Welsh Jesuits 1555–1650 (CRS 75, 1995), p. 273.Google Scholar
18 Questier, ‘Crypto-Catholicism’, p. 46 n. 2. Benjamin Carier similarly pleaded ill-health when he went to Spa in April 1613. In his case the excuse was probably well-founded, as he died less than a year later, but his Protestant opponent George Hakewill accused him of having made the journey ‘rather for the fuller & safer discovering of the sickenes of your mind, than the recovering of that of your body’: Hakewill, An Answer to a Treatise Written by Dr Carier (1616), d3v.
19 Lady Lovell to Cecil, 1606: Cecil Papers, vol. 199 no. 31, calendared HMC Hatfield XVIII, p. 419.
20 Lady Lovell to Cecil, 1606: Cecil Papers, vol. 199 no. 32, calendared HMC Hatfield XVIII, p. 419. On the introduction of the Oath of Allegiance, see Patterson, W.B., King James VI & I andthe Reunion of Christendom (Cambridge, 1997), pp 77–84.Google Scholar
21 Lady Lovell to Cecil, [1606]: Cecil Papers, vol. 199 no. 33, calendared HMC Hatfield XVIII, pp 419–20.
22 Jean Beaulieu to William Trumbull, 6 July 1606: BL Add MS 72248, f. 15r, calendared HMC Downshire II, p. 12.
23 Croft, Pauline, ‘The Catholic Gentry, the Earl of Salisbury and the Baronets of 1611’, in Lake, Peter and Questier, Michael, eds., Conformity and Orthodoxy in the English Church, c. 1560–1660 (Woodbridge, 2000), pp 262–81.Google Scholar
24 Lady Lovell to Cecil, [Aug. 1608]: National Archives, SP 77/9, ff 126–7. Lady Lovell to Cecil, 20 Aug. [1606]: National Archives, SP 14/23/11, calendared CSPD 1603–10, p. 329.
25 ‘The Lady Lovewell’ and ‘Sir William Roper of Kent’ are both included in a contemporary ‘note of such as dwell in St Omers and Macklyn & Brussells’: National Archives, SP 77/7, f. 348. This document has been assigned to 1603 (Guilday, p. 360), but it is undated and cannot be earlier than 1606, when Lady Lovell arrived in Brussels.
26 Lady Lovell to Cecil, 20 Aug. [1606]: National Archives, SP 14/23/11.
27 John Brownlow to Trumbull, 2 April 1608: BL Add MS 72263, f. 1r, calendared HMC Downshire II, p. 48.
28 Luisa de Carvajal y Mendoza, Epistolario y Poesias, ed. Don Jesus Gonzales Maranon & Camilo Maria Abad (Madrid, 1965), pp 192, 208. My thanks to Peter Davidson for his help in translating these passages.
29 Beaulieu to Trumbull, 18 Aug. 1608: BL Add MS 72248, f. 67r, calendared HMC Downshire II, p. 71. Edmondes to Cecil, 10 Aug. 1608: National Archives, SP 77/9, ff 112–13.
30 Lady Lovell to Cecil, [Aug. 1608]: National Archives, SP 77/9, ff 126–7.
31 Edmondes to Cecil, 21 Sept. 1608: National Archives, SP 77/9, ff 136–9.
32 Edmondes to Cecil, 13 April 1609: National Archives, SP 77/9, ff 249–52. Edmondes's retained draft of this dispatch is BL Stowe MS 171, f. 29r, showing that he initially described Lady Lovell's state of mind as ‘perplexed’ before altering this to the stronger ‘distracted’.
33 Edmondes to Cecil, 2 Aug. 1609: National Archives, SP 77/9, ff 281–3; Edmondes's retained draft is BL Stowe MS 171, f. 139.
34 Abbot to Trumbull, 19 December 1616: BL Add MS 72242, f. 26r, calendared HMC Downshire VI, pp 70–2.
35 Matthew, Tobie, The Life of Lady Lucy Knatchbull.. now first printed from the original manuscript with an introduction by Dom David Knowles (1931), pp 30–32.Google Scholar
36 Walker, Claire, Gender and Politics in Early Modern Europe: English Convents in France and the Low Countries (Basingstoke, 2003), pp 134–42.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
37 Lady Lovell to Cecil, 3 Nov. 1610: National Archives, SP16/58/2, calendared CSPD 1603–10, p. 640. Edmondes to Trumbull, 6 Oct 1610: BL Add MS 72288, f. 91r. Lady Lovell's relationship with Baldwin illustrates Claire Walker's point that many Catholic gentlewomen formed friendships with particular clergy which they expected to carry with them into convent life, despite the fact that Jesuits were officially forbidden to act as confessors or spiritual directors to women religious: see Walker, Gender and Politics, pp 135–6.
38 Autobiography of Ann of the Ascension (Ann Worsley), in Hallett, Nicky, ed., Lives of Spirit: English Carmelite Self-Writing of the Early Modern Period (2007), pp 49–50.Google Scholar
39 See Guilday, pp 361–7, for an account of these difficulties.
40 George Birkhead to Richard Smith, 9 July 1609: Newsletters from the Archpresbyterate of George Birkhead, p. 48.
41 Hoby, Edward, A Letter to Mr T.H. late Minister: now Fugitive (1609),Google Scholar C4r-v, P3r, Q4r.
42 Sermon by unidentified preacher, 1622: Corpus Christi College, Oxford, MS 409, f. 147v.
43 The Apology of Theophilus Higgons lately Minister, now Catholique (Roan, 1609),Google Scholar epistle dedicatory.
44 The full entry reads: ‘The Afternoon Belchings of Sir Edward Hoby, or On Univocals, namely, On the Right of Kings, and On Chimeras, such as the King's Evil, the French Disease, and so on.’ See Brown, Piers, “‘Hac ex consilio meo via progredieris: Courtly Reading and Secretarial Mediation in Donne's The Courtier's Library ’, Renaissance Quarterly, 61: 3 (2008), pp 833–66CrossRefGoogle Scholar (refs to Hoby pp 846, 862–3).
45 Alison Weber has drawn attention to similar self-deprecatory remarks in the writings of Teresa of Avila, and argues that this is part of a rhetorical strategy of captatio benevolentiae designed to disarm the hostile reader: see Weber, Teresa of Avila and the Rhetoric of Femininity (Princeton, 1990).
46 ‘The Lady Faulkland her Life’, in Cary, Elizabeth, Life and Letters, ed. Wolfe, Heather (Renaissance Texts from Manuscript, no. 4; Cambridge, 2001), pp 110–11.Google Scholar N.S. [Sylvester Norris], The Pseudo-Scripturist (St Omer, 1623), F3v.
47 Stevenson, Jane and Davidson, Peter, eds., Early Modern Women Poets: An Anthology (Oxford, 2001), pp xxxiii–xxxvi.Google Scholar Vincent Canes, The Reclaimed Papist, or the Process of a Papist Knight reformed by a Protestant Lady (1655); despite the title, this is a work of Catholic apologetic in which the ‘Papist Knight’ has by far the better of the argument.
48 Crawford, Patricia, ‘Public Duty, Conscience, and Women in Early Modern England’, in Morrill, John, Slack, Paul and Woolf, Daniel, eds, Public Duty and Private Conscience in Seventeenth-Century England (Oxford, 1993), pp 70–72;Google Scholar Shell, Alison, Catholicism, Controversy and the English Literary Imagination 1558–1660 (Cambridge, 1999), pp 157–9.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
49 Willaert, L., SJ, ‘Testament de Dame Marie Lovell’, Analectes pour servir a L'Histoire Ecclésiastique de la Belgique, 3rd ser., vol. 2 (1906), pp 70–76.Google Scholar My thanks to Paul Arblaster for this reference.
