A noteworthy feature of the Recusant Rolls is that they invariably cite authorities for their statements, most of the references being to another series of Exchequer records known as the Memoranda Rolls of the Lord Treasurer's Remembrancer (2). The latter are the official record of the business of the Court of Exchequer (L.T.R. side) in each Law term, and provide a rich but largely unexplored field of inquiry for the student of recusant biography.

Father Constantine was a notable member of the Capuchin Province of Paris at the end of the sixteenth and the beginning of the seventeenth centuries. Known as Polydore Morgan before joining the Capuchins, he was brought up a Catholic and having completed his studies on the Continent was ordained a secular priest. His identity has never been established with certainty for there were at least two contemporaries with the same name, but it is probable that he was one of the Morgans of Llantarnam in Monmouthshire. According to J.B. Wainewright (1), he was the nephew of Thomas Morgan, the agent of Mary, Queen of Scots, If this opinion be true, then Fr. Constantine, after his ordination in Rome, visited the English College at Rheims, where he arrived on May 12th, 1562; he left the College on the 28th of the same month, presumably with the intention of going to England; he returned to Rheims on November 2nd, 1582, and left the College again on March 22nd, 1585 (2). Fr. Gilbert, O.F.M. Cap., however, states that Fr. Constantine was the cousin of the agent Thomas Morgan (3). This cousin was a prisoner in the Gatehouse on July 29th, 1580; he was released from prison on August 8th, 1582. Marcellin de Pise (1594–1656), the Capucnin annalist, on whose account of Fr. Constantine we rely for much of what follows, after stating that the friar was of good family and was ordained a secular prieat, goea on to say that immediately after his ordination the young priest aet out for England before he had aaid hia firat Maas. On hia arrival, he adds, he waa arreated and oaat into priaon and it was as a prisoner that he celebrated hia first Mass (4). This must have been an unusual, if not unique, occurance even in those unsettled times.

The distinction of putting into print the first book ever produced within the principality of Wales has recently been proved to belong to a group of Catholic outlaws operating in North Wales. Their book bears the date 1585 and though it was perhaps really printed in 1586 or early 1587, it antedates by over one hundred and thirty years the two ballads with which Isaac Carter inaugurated the modem press inside Wales at Trefhedyn in Cardiganshire in 1718 (1). The evidence for this press has gradually been pieced together over a number of years (2), but it is scattered in books and periodicals, and may here be brought together and compared with the bibliographical evidence of the book itself.

Joseph Gillow in his “Bibliographical Dictionary of the English Catholics” gives a notice of Giles Hussey, the Artist, and refers to other members of the family only en passant. Following, no doubt, Hutchins “History of Dorset” and Burke's “Landed Gentry”, he gives Elizabeth Hussey’s maiden name as Walcot and states that she was the daughter of Charles Walcot of Waloot, Salop. This statement has been repeated many times; but Charles Walcot had no daughter named Elizabeth. An attempt is made here to set out the genealogy of the Marnhull Husseys on the basis of memoranda written in 1740 by a grandson of the George Hussey who purchased Marnhull Manor in 1651. These memoranda appeared in “Notes and Queries for Somerset and Dorset,” Vol.xv, 1916–7, pp. 220–224 (cited here as N, & Q.).

The accounts that have appeared in various volumes of the Catholic Record Society by way of introduction to the registers of Catholic missions are obviously of some considerable value to the historian and indeed to all those – their number appears to be growing – who are interested to learn what they can of the records of their Catholic fore-fathers. It seems worth while therefore, when fresh information is available, to supplement such accounts, as far as may be possible. That this is f easible in the case of Major Richard Trappes-Lomax’s careful Introduction to the registers of Lea gram and Chipping (C.R.S. xxxvi: Lancashire Registers, VI) is mainly owing to the survival of two folio volumes of accounts kept by the steward of the Stonyhurst Shireburns in connection with their Lancashire estates. These volumes, evidently unknown to the editor, range from 1717 to 1749 and from 1754 to 1766; the second of these volumes brings us after a few pages to the transference of the Shireburn estates to the family of Weld of Lulworth. Besides other matters of interest the accounts include the payments, usually quarterly, of the missioners both at Stonyhurst and at Leagram Halls and it is here especially that can be f ound more precise dates of the comings and goings of successive missioners.

This handlist is compiled from the notes of the late Canon E.H. Burton, deposited after his death in the Westminster Archives. No attempt has been made to undertake the formidable task of checking Canon Burton’s references or of bringing them up to date. in some cases the sources which he used have been printed since he compiled his notes, e.g. The Valladolid Diary (C.R.S. Vol. 30), and Kirk's Biographies, 1909, One of the most valuable features of the list is that it contains references to the Archives of the English Chapter, which have generally been difficult of access. in cases where biographical notices have already been published, which appear to include all the material gathered by Canon Burton, and which are easily available, a mere reference is supplied to the published article. Instances of this procedure in the present instalment are the notices of John Abbot, and V. John Adams.

One of the most distinguished bishops of the Catholic church in Belgium in the 17th century was without doubt the Englishman, George Chamberlain, who occupied the see of Ypres from 1627 to 1634, the year of his death.