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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 April 2018
This article revisits a locus classicus of British Catholic History, the interpretation of the coin-hoard found in 1611 by the Lancashire squire William Blundell of Little Crosby.1 This article offers new information, approaching the Harkirk silver from several perspectives: Mark Blundell offers a memoir of his ancestor William Blundell, as well as lending his voice to the account of the subsequent fate of the Harkirk silver; Professor Jane Stevenson and Professor Peter Davidson reconsider the sources for William Blundell’s historiography as well as considering wider questions of memory and the recusant community; Dr Dora Thornton analyses the silver pyx made from the Harkirk coins in detail, and surveys analogous silverwork in depth.
1 The classic discussion of this event is Woolf, D. R., ‘Little Crosby and the Horizons of Early Modern Historical Culture’, in D. R. Kelley and D. M. Sacks, eds. The Historical Imagination in Early Modern Britain (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 93-132 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Amplifications and revisions are offered by Jensen, Phoebe, ‘Religious Identity and the English Landscape: William Blundell and the Harkirk Coins’, in Arthur F. Marotti and Chanita Goodblatt, eds. Religious Diversity and Early Modern English Texts: Catholic, Judaic, Feminist, and Secular Dimensions (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2013), 55-76 Google Scholar, and Sena, Margaret, ‘William Blundell and the Networks of Catholic Dissent in Post-Reformation England,’ in Phil Withington and Alexandra Shepherd, eds. Communities in Early Modern England: Networks, Place, Rhetoric (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1997), 54-75 Google Scholar
2 Malcolm Gratton, ‘Blundell, William (1620–1698)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004, online edn (hereafter, ODNB) [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/ article/2715, accessed 27 March 2017]; D. R. Woolf, ‘Blundell, William (1560–1638)’, ODNB [http://ezproxy-prd.bodleian.ox.ac.uk:2167/view/article/68216, accessed 27 March 2017].
3 Fishwick, Henry, The History of the Parish of Kirkham in the County of Lancaster (Manchester: for the Chetham Society, 1874): 180 Google Scholar. See also ‘Townships: Little Crosby’, in A History of the County of Lancaster: Volume 3, ed. William Farrer and J. Brownbill (London, 1907): 85-91.
4 John J. La Rocca, ‘Vaux, Laurence (1519–1585)’, ODNB [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/ article/28161, accessed 3 May 2017].
5 Catholic Record Society, Miscellanea IV (London: for the Society, 1907), 198 Google Scholar.
6 Douay Diary, quoted in Gibson, Thomas Ellison, ed. Remains, Historical and Literary, Connected with the Palatine Counties of Lancaster and Chester, 12 (Manchester: for the Chetham Society, 1887), ix Google Scholar.
7 Gibson, Thomas Ellison, ed. Crosby Records: A Chapter of Lancashire History (Manchester: for the Chetham Society, 1887), ix Google Scholar.
8 Blundell, , A Cavalier’s Note Book, being Notes, Anecdotes and Observations of William Blundell (London: Longman’s, Green, & Co., 1880), 176 Google Scholar.
9 Gibson, , Crosby Records, 31 Google Scholar.
10 Thomas Bell, a seminary priest who had been a member of the northern mission, was captured by the authorities, and recanted: his report on the Little Crosby community is in Archives of the Archbishop of Westminster, Series A, vol. 4, no. 38.
11 Hamilton OSB, Adam, ed. The Chronicle of the English Augustinian Canonesses Regular of the Lateran, at St. Monica’s in Louvain (Now at St. Augustine’s priory, Newton Abbot, Devon) 1548-1644 (Edinburgh and London: Sands & Co., 1904), 153 Google Scholar.
12 Blundell, , A Cavalier’s Note Book, 13 Google Scholar.
13 Blundell, , A Cavalier’s Note Book, 13–14 Google Scholar.
14 ‘Townships: Little Crosby’, n 52, n 56; Transactions of the Historic Society of Lancashire and Cheshire... Third Series, 7 (Liverpool, 1879: hereafter, THSLC): 45.
15 Blundell, , A Cavalier’s Note Book, 13 Google Scholar.
16 Acts of the Privy Council of England (London: HMSO, 1905), 29: 607.
17 Gibson, , Crosby Records, 24 Google Scholar.
18 THSLC, Third Series, 7, 46; Blundell, A Cavalier’s Note Book, 14.
19 Smith, J., ed., Lancashire Records I: The Fylde 1, ed. J. Smith (London: for the Catholic Record Society, 1913), 312 Google Scholar.
20 Gibson, , Crosby Records, 32 Google Scholar.
21 Acts of the Privy Council of England (London: HMSO, 1905), 30:543.
22 See for example Tyrer, Frank, ‘A Star Chamber case: Assheton v. Blundell, 1624-31’, Transactions of the Historic Society of Lancashire and Cheshire 118 (1966): 19–37 Google Scholar.
23 Gibson, , Remains, Historical and Literary, 24 Google Scholar.
24 Blundell, , A Cavalier’s Note Book, 15 Google Scholar; Gibson, , Remains, Historical and Literary, 24 Google Scholar.
25 Gibson, , Crosby Records, 32 Google Scholar.
26 THSLC, Third Series 7, 47. See also ‘Townships: Little Crosby’, n. 52.
27 For a rounded account of the context in which the Harkirk burial ground was created, see D. R. Woolf, ‘Little Crosby.’
28 Gibson, , Crosby Records, 45 Google Scholar.
29 Hamilton, , Chronicle of the English Augustinian Canonesses, 153 Google Scholar.
30 Crosby Records, 46-47.
31 William Blundell II, quoted in Woolf, ‘Little Crosby’, 104. A copy of the Harkirk broadsheet found its way into the collection of the Oxford antiquary Bryan Twine (d.1644), Corpus Christi College, MS 255, f.82, r and v. The manuscript account of the Harkirk find (similar in phrasing to the broadsheet, but more detailed and less formal in expression) now on loan to the British Museum, is contained in a small octavo notebook bound in a reused vellum leaf probably from a book of hours. The main text appears to be the Benedicite, omnia opera from which it can be conjectured that the vellum leaf contained part of the office of Lauds for a Sunday or a Feast. Obsolete vellum devotional books were widely used for binding: it is just possible here that the choice of a leaf bearing the ‘Benedicite’ to bind this notebook is in harmony with Blundell’s perception of the Harkirk find as providential.
32 Woolf, ‘Blundell, William (1560–1638)’, ODNB (online).
33 Cf. p. nn below.
34 Mark Netzloff considers this new phenomenon in ‘The English Colleges and the English Nation: Allen, Persons, Verstegan, and Diasporic Nationalism’, in Corthell, Ronald, Dolan, Frances E., Highley, Christopher, and Marotti, Arthur, eds. Catholic Culture in Early Modern England (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2007), 236-260 Google Scholar.
35 Woolf, ‘Little Crosby’; Jensen, ‘Religious Identity and the English Landscape’.
36 Heal, Felicity, ‘What Can King Lucius Do for You? The Reformation and the Early British Church’, The English Historical Review 120 (2005): 593-614.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
37 Retha M. Warnicke, ‘Nowell, Laurence (1530–c.1570)’, ODNB (online): and see Brackmann, Rebecca. The Elizabethan Invention of Anglo-Saxon England: Laurence Nowell, William Lambarde, and the Study of Old English (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012)Google Scholar.
38 Gibson, , Crosby Records: A Chapter of Lancashire History (Manchester: for the Chetham Society, 1887), 55 Google Scholar.
39 A Restitution of Decayed Intelligence (Antwerp: Robert Bruney, 1605), 246.
40 Britain, or A chorographicall description of the most flourishing kingdomes, England, Scotland, and Ireland, and the ilands adioyning (London: Eliot’s Court, 1610), 88.
41 Dekesel, C. E, Bibliotheca nummaria : bibliography of 16th century numismatic books (London: Spink, 1997)Google Scholar, and Bibliotheca nummaria II (London: Spink, 2003) reveal that sixteenth-century English contributions to the literature of coins is 13 items out of 1,148, and from the seventeenth century, there are ten British items as against 130 from France and 170 from Germany. On Cotton, see Dolley, R.H.M., ‘The Cotton Collection of Anglo-Saxon Coins’, The British Museum Quarterly, 19, 4 (1954): 75-81 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
42 Speed, John, The historie of Great Britaine vnder the conquests of the Romans, Saxons, Danes and Normans (London: William Hall & John Beale, 1611), 304-384 Google Scholar.
Interventions in the copy at St Alban’s College, Valladolid indicate that his text was considered highly tendentious there: this may explain why the historically-minded Blundell did not use it (see fn. 63 below).
43 Acta Sanctorum, March III (Antwerp: Joannes Maersius, 1668), 127, where it is printed as a supplement to the life of St Cuthbert.
44 Gesta Regum Anglorum, II, ch. 4, in Rerum Anglicarum Scriptores Post Bedam Praecipui: Willielmi Monachi Malmesburiensis de gestis regum Anglorum lib. V. Eiusdem Historiae Novellae lib. II. Eiusdem de gestis Pontificum Angl. lib. IIII. Henrici Archidiaconi Huntindoniensis Historiarum lib. VIII. Rogeri Hovedeni Annalium pars prior & posterior. Chronicorum Ethelwerdi lib. IIII. Ingulphi Abbatis Croylandensis historiarum lib. I., ed. Henry Savile (Frankfurt: Wechel, 1601), 49.
45 Parsons, Robert, A treatise of three conuersions of England from paganisme to Christian religion: The first vnder the Apostles, in the first age after Christ: the second vnder Pope Eleutherius and K. Lucius, in the second age. The third, vnder Pope Gregory the Great, and K. Ethelbert in the sixth age ([Saint-Omer: François Bellet], 1603), 417-422 Google Scholar. See Gibson, , Crosby Records, 50 Google Scholar: ‘I finde it in the treatise of ye three Conversions of Englande, pte 2, 6 nu. 20’. Blundell’s text from ‘about five hundred ... on p 50 to ‘Iornalensis and others more’ on p. 52 is a direct transcription of Parsons’ pp. 418-22.
46 Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum III, ch. 28. There were many Latin editions of Bede’s History from 1475 onwards, English and Continental, and Blundell read Latin with ease; but he may have used Thomas Stapleton’s translation, The history of the Church of Englande. Compiled by Venerable Bede, Englishman (Antwerp: John Laet, 1565), 109.
47 Asser’s biography is printed in Ælfredi Regis res gestae [London: John Day, 1574], and also in Anglica, Normannica, Hibernica, Cambrica, a veteribus scripta (Frankfurt: Marnius, 1603).
48 In Gibson, Crosby Records, 58, for example, he cites him directly: ‘Malmesb. lib. 2. c. 7’. Woolf observes that Blundell used the Frankfurt edition of Ingulf (‘Little Crosby’, 124, n. 63), so he presumably used this edition of William of Malmesbury.
49 See William J. Connell, ‘Vergil, Polydore [Polidoro Virgili] (c.1470–1555)’, ODNB, and Carley, James, ‘Polydore Vergil and John Leland on King Arthur: the Battle of the Books’, in E.D. Kennedy, ed. King Arthur: a Casebook. (New York: Garland, 1996), 185–204 Google Scholar.
50 Vergil, born in Italy, was mostly in England from 1502, and naturalised there in 1510. He wrote his History at the behest of Henry VII. The first edition was of twenty-six books, concluding with the death of Henry VII (Basel: Bebel, 1534). An enlarged version was printed there by Michael Isingrinus in 1546. A twenty-seven book edition, going down to the birth of Edward VI in 1530, appeared posthumously (Basel: Michael Isingrinus, 1555). This last version was subject to a number of reprints (Basel 1556/7, Ghent 1556/7, Basel 1570/1, and Leiden, 1651).
51 Polydori Vergilij Vrbinatis Anglicæ historiæ libri uigintiseptem (Basel: Michael Isengrinus, 1557), books 4 and 5, 89-91, 105.
52 He cites it; Gibson, Crosby Records, 60: ‘yow may see [it] in his lyfe written by Surius in his sixte tome’ (De probatis sanctorum historiis: partim ex tomis Aloysii Lipomani, doctissimi episcopi, partim etiam ex egregiis manuscriptis codicibus, quarum per multae antehac nunquam in lucem prodiere (Köln: Gervinus Calenius, 1570-1581), 6:466-72). Surius seems to have been of special interest to English Catholics, for copies of his books appear in several private Catholic libraries, including those of Anthony Babington, the conspirator, and the prominent recusant, George Cotton. See Earle Ashcroft Havens, ‘Printers, Papists and Priests: Roman Catholic Print Culture and the Religious Underground in Elizabethan England’ PhD diss., Yale University, 76, n. 155.
53 De translatione imperii Romani a Græcis ad Francos, aduersus Matthiam Flaccium Illyricum, libri tres (Antwerp: Christophorus Plantijn, 1589).
54 Catalogus Sanctorum et gestorum eorum (Lyon: Jacques Giunta, 1543): f. CCIIIIv.
55 Thomas Bell (see fn. 10), reported that visiting priests ‘hath many times brought books from beyond the seas’ (Archives of the Archbishop of Westminster, Series A, vol. 4, no. 38., 446-7).
56 The history of the Church of Englande. III, ch. 9, 85.
57 This is discussed at length by Jensen, ‘Religious Identity and the English Landscape,’ 60-61.
58 Britannia siue Florentissimorum regnorum, Angliae, Scotiae, Hiberniae, et insularum adiacentium ex intima antiquitate chorographica descriptio. Authore Guilielmo Camdeno (London, 1594), 581 (Gibson,Crosby Records, 55 misreads 581 as 981.)
59 Gibson, , Crosby Records, 55 Google Scholar.
60 Camden, , Britannia, 461 Google Scholar, Britain, or A chorographicall description, 597. See Stancliffe, Clare, ‘Where Was Oswald Killed?’, in C. Stancliffe and Eric Cambridge, eds. Oswald: Northumbrian King to European Saint (Stamford: Paul Watkins, 1995), 84–96 Google Scholar.
61 Walsham, Alexandra, The Reformation of the Landscape: Religion, Identity, and Memory in Early Modern Britain and Ireland (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 211–212 CrossRefGoogle Scholar
62 For a full discussion of these paintings, cf. Davidson, Peter, ‘Opposing Elizabeth’ in Alessandra Petrina, ed. Queen and Country (Bern: Peter Lange, 2010), 173-190 Google Scholar.
63 The Valladolid library contains to this day Protestant histories of Britain with manuscript erasures and refutations, particularly savage on the pages of William Camden’s Annales and Speed’s The Historie of Great Britaine. Peter Davidson has written of these in detail elsewhere: ‘Donec Templa Refeceris: British Catholicism, Roman Antiquity, Historical Contention’ in Sicca, Cinzia, ed. William Talman (New Haven and London: Yale University Press), 77–96 Google Scholar.
64 Robert Persons founded a sister college to St Alban’s, Valladolid, St Gregory’s College, in Seville in 1592, perhaps where these were first hung. There is a depiction of a Scottish King, similarly dressed, possibly King Achins, mythical founder of the Scottish monasteries in Bavaria, perhaps from the Scottish Benedictine abbey at Regensburg, which is now preserved at King’s College, Aberdeen.
65 Williams, Michael E., ‘Paintings of Early British Kings and Queens at Syon Abbey, Lisbon’, Birgittiana 1 (1996): 123-134 Google Scholar.
66 For these, see McCabe, William H., ‘Music and Drama on a 17th Century College Stage’, Musical Quarterly 24 (1938): 313-322 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Shell, Alison, Catholicism, Culture, and the English Literary Imagination, 1558-1660 (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1999)Google Scholar.
67 Burton, E. H. and Williams, T. L., eds. The Douay College diaries, third, fourth and fifth, 1598–1654, 2 vols (London: for the Catholic Record Society, 1911), 1:372 (Latin text, 1:148)Google Scholar.
68 This was considered important by contemporaries: The Jesuit Jacobus Pontanus writes, ‘Videmus praetera parentes admodum desiderare, ut filii doceantur bene gestum agere, moderari manus, vultum, corpus totum, ac vocem etiam inflectere atque variare, et his omnibus posthabito pudore subrustico liberi esse, nihil metuere.’ [‘Moreover we see that parents demand that their sons are taught to gesture well, to control the movements of their hands, their face, their whole body, and also to modulate and change their voices and in all these things, without having any peasant-like shame, to be free and to fear nothing’]. Progymnasmata Latinitatis, 2 vols (Ingolstadt: Sartorius, 1589), 1:457.
69 McCabe S. J., William, An Introduction to the English Jesuit Theater (St. Louis: The Institute of Jesuit Sources, 1983), 81-115 Google Scholar.
70 Woolf, , ‘Little Crosby’, 95 Google Scholar. Woolf’s view of Blundell as a remote and isolated figure is also challenged by Sena, ‘William Blundell and the Networks of Catholic Dissent’, 68: ‘Blundell’s collection of letters in the ‘Great Hodge Podge’ suggests an awareness of national politics that is not often attributed to provincial Catholics’.
71 Thompson Cooper, ‘Drury, William (ba 1584, d. in or after 1643)’, rev. Ross Kennedy, ODNB [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/8103, accessed 20 May 2017]
72 … ‘exhibita in Seminario Anglorum Duaceno ab eiusdem Collegii Iuventute, Anno Domini MDCXIX’. The Diary mentions two performances, but not a third, though if the public performance was repeated, the fact would not necessarily attract comment.
73 Burton, and Williams, , Douay College Diaries, 1:148 Google Scholar.
74 Aluredus, sive Alfredus. Tragico-Comœdia ... Mors, Comœdia ... De venerabili eucharistia ab apibus inventa ... carmen: (Douai: Jean Bogaerd, 1620); Dramatica Poemata ... Editio secunda ab authore recognita, et ... auctior reddita (Douai: Pierre Bogaerd, 1628); Dramatica Poemata ... Editio secunda ab authore recognita, et ... auctior reddita (Antwerp, Pierre Bellère, 1641).
75 Balthasar Bellère, who moved from Antwerp to Douai c. 1590, was presumably related to the Jean and Pierre Bellère who remained there.
76 Act IV, sc. 6 (1786-95):
CUTH. Panem indigenti reddi perituro fame, Nomine roganti te redeptoris Dei.AL. Huic oro, mater, profer ex nostro penu,Si quid supersit panis, ut detur inopi.Christi petenti nomine negare est nefas.Miseria quid sit novi, et exemplo meo Afferre miseris disco misericors opem,Ne mihi petenti sit negaturus Deus. (1620-7)
Drury in fact doubles the episode; there is an earlier encounter, Act II sc. 5 (794-803). The translation is by Robert Knightley, with the title ‘Alfrede or Right Reinthron’d’, and dated 1659 (Oxford: Bodleian Library MS Rawlinson poet. 80).
77 Historia Anglica IV, ch. 12. Vergil brings Rollo, ancestor of the dukes of Normandy, to England (V, ch. 8): and also introduces a Dane called Gormo (V, ch. 11): neither of whom are named in pre-conquest sources in this context. Both of these are included in Drury’s dramatis personae.
78 Act IV, scene 12, lines 1740-50.
79 Act IV sc 1:
I am nowAccompanied onely with Adelvolde,Going to Neothus, a man verryEminent for sanctity and of a Neere relation to myselfe, for whomI have a pious regard (1572–7)
80 London, British Library, Harley 1437, f. 69b.; see The Visitation of the County Palatine of Lancaster, 1613, by Richard St George, Norroy King of Arms, ed. F.R. Raines (Manchester: Chetham Society, 1871), 76-7. The Blundell genealogy was not completed until the following year, 1614 (xv).
81 Act III, sc. 9, ‘Sic Christi mei / Ad amaena duco pascua errantes oves’ (1323–4).
82 Act IV, scene 4.
83 Lancashire Record Office, DDBl Acct. 6121, Woolf discusses this manuscript in ‘Little Crosby,’ 108-10.
84 Gibson, Crosby Records, 45.
85 Small brass reliquary boxes which held straws from Garnet’s execution are in the collections of Stonyhurst College, Lancashire, Campion Hall, Oxford, and the English Province of the Society of Jesus, Mount Street, London. The text of Blundell’s anagram of commemoration reads, ‘Pater Henricus Garnet/anagram/Pingere cruentus arista.’[‘bloodstained to paint the grain’]
86 Baker, Geoffrey, Reading and Politics in Early Modern England (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000), 106, 138 Google Scholar.
87 ‘That evening about 7 o clock wee went downe to the backe porch we sawe the moone in a full cleare orb over the Chapell chamber chimney or thereabouts. It appeared higher to our sight than we had ever seene the sunne in the longest daye. . . the moone was upp at least 2 houres together – I think the prodigie is very remarkable and the greatest that I ever sawe.’
88 Cited by Wolfe, ‘Little Crosby,’ 108. Typically, the recusant Blundell locates the beginnings of Christianity in England as Gregory the Great’s mission to the Saxons, recounted by Bede, rather than in the Romano-British period with the protomartyr St Alban.
89 Circignano, Niccolo, Ecclesiae Anglicanae Trophea, sive Sanctorum martyrum qui, pro Christo catholicaeque fidei veritate asserenda, antiquo recentiorique persecutorum tempore mortem in Anglia subierunt, passions. (Rome: B. Grassi, 1584)Google Scholar
90 Work in progress by Janet Graffius FSA, Stonyhurst College, will offer new evidence that relics may have been displayed in a similar way at the English College in St Omer.
91 Now Oxford, Corpus Christi College, MS 255, f.82, r and v. Wood, Anthony à, The history and antiquities of the university of Oxford, ed. John Gutch (Oxford, 1796), II, 909 Google Scholar.
92 London, British Library, Harley 1437, f. 204.
93 Gibson, Remains, Historical and Literary.
94 Woolf, , ‘Little Crosby,’ 93-132 Google Scholar.
95 Dora Thornton and Gareth Williams, ‘In the Field of Harkirk’, British Museum Magazine (Autumn 2014): 54–5.
96 Oman, C. C., English Church Plate 597-1830 (London, Oxford, New York and Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1957)Google Scholar, 266, n. 3.
97 CH35.
98 Oman, English Church Plate, 265 and plate 153a.
99 UCHR3.
100 UCHR2. By the mid-1630s, greater local confidence for Catholics in their worship meant that a silver chalice could be dated and hallmarked: one displayed at Liverpool Metropolitan Cathedral, another locally used example, is fully marked for London with date letter for 1637 and maker’s mark RM over a rose; the marks are easily visible as they are clearly stamped on the outside of the rim. The foot is engraved with the Cross and the instruments of Christ’s Passion, while the accompanying silver paten is engraved with the Jesuit IHS and nails. This fine chalice came from an old-established parish of St Marie, Standish, and was later entrusted to St Joseph’s College at Upholland in Lancashire by the Standishes of Standish Hall, near Wigan, when they left the Hall in the 1930s. The chalice and paten came to the Cathedral Treasury when St Joseph’s College closed in 1991.
101 Mark Blundell, pers. comm. to Dora Thornton, 27 January 2017.
102 The Burse has been kept by the Blundell family in a white leather pouch with red leather trim, made specially for it, which is probably nineteenth or early twentieth century.
103 A similar cartouche on a fragment of a tapestry map of Oxfordshire made for the recusant Ralph Sheldon around 1588 is shown in fig. 7 of Bate, Jonathan and Thornton’s, Dora Shakespeare: Staging the World (London: British Museum, 2012), 61 Google Scholar.
104 Frere, W. H., ed., Visitation Articles and Injunctions of the Period of the Reformation, Alcuin Club, 16 (1910): 16 Google Scholar, injunction 23, cited in Hamling, Tara, Decorating the ‘Godly’ Household: Religious Art in Post-Reformation Britain (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2010), 41, 46 Google Scholar.
105 MOL B783a; Glanville, Philippa, Silver in Tudor and Early Stuart England (London: V&A Publications, 1990): 377 Google Scholar and fig. 225.
106 Peacock, E., ed., English Church Furniture, Ornaments and Decorations, at the period of the Reformation. As exhibited in a list of goods destroyed in certain Lincolnshire Churches, AD 1566 (London: Hotten, 1866), 55 Google Scholar.
107 Walsham, Alexandra, ‘The Pope’s Merchandise and the Jesuits’ Trumpery: Catholic Relics and Protestant Polemic in Post-Reformation England’, in J. Spinks and D. Eichberger, eds. Religion, the Supernatural and Visual Culture in Early Modern Europe (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2015), 370–410, 398-399 Google Scholar.
108 Williams, R. L., ‘Collecting and Religion in Late 16th Century England’, in E. Chaney, ed. The Evolution of English Collecting: Receptions of Italian Art in the Tudor and Stuart Periods (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2003), 159–200, 183 Google Scholar.
109 Rookwood, one of the Gunpowder Plot conspirators, was not a priest, but two of his brothers were. The list is preserved by the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust in Stratford, ER 27/14. See Fraser, Antonia, The Gunpowder Plot: Terror and Faith in 1605 (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2004), 173 Google Scholar; Wood, Michael, In Search of Shakespeare (London: BBC books, 2003), 283–284 Google Scholar; Hodgetts, Michael, ‘Coughton and the Gunpowder Plot’, in Peter Marshall and Geoffrey Scott, eds. Catholic Gentry in English Society: The Throckmortons of Coughton from Reformation to Emancipation (Farnham: Ashgate, 2009), 99–122, 113 Google Scholar; and Thornton, Dora, ‘Volpone’s Chest? The Tale of a Trunk’, Furniture History 51 (2015): 51-62, 53 Google Scholar.
110 Flanagan, L., Ireland’s Armada Legacy (Dublin: Gill & Macmillan, 1988), 12.6–12.10 Google Scholar.
111 A14011.
112 Forsyth, Hazel, London’s Lost Jewels: The Cheapside Hoard (London: I.B. Tauris, 2013), 215-222 Google Scholar.
113 Forsyth, London’s Lost Jewels, 192. http://www.museumoflondonimages.com/image_details.php?image_id=65070&wherefrom=viewCollection, A14066; A14067; A14005.
114 ‘Examination of Gregory Gunnis, alias Stone, priest, taken before Sir Henry Nevell and William Knollys, at Henley Oxfordshire, 8th June 1585’, cited in Swan, C. M. J. F., ‘The Question of Dissimulation Among Elizabethan Catholics’, CCHA Report, 24 (1957): 105-19, 111 Google Scholar.
115 Herbermann, Charles, ed., ‘The Venerable George Napper’, Catholic Encyclopedia (New York, 1913)Google Scholar. For Napper’s cut-out signature retained as a relic by Sir Kenelm Digby, see Walsham, , ‘The Pope’s Merchandise’, 384-385 Google Scholar and fig. 17.4.
116 Gerard, John, The Autobiography of an Elizabethan, trans. Philip Caraman (Oxford: Family Publications, 2006), 104-105 Google Scholar and 242; for all the inscriptions in Henry Walpole’s cell and in the cell occupied by Gerard, and for notes on the priests who had been held there and had carved their names on the soffit of one of the windows, see Morris, John, The life of Father John Gerard, of the Society of Jesus (London: Burns and Oates, 1881), 290-297 Google Scholar.
117 This was a plot to assassinate Elizabeth and replace her by Mary, Queen of Scots. Its principal author was a Florentine banker, but a number of high-status English and Scottish Catholics were involved, most notably the Duke.
118 Williams, Richard L., ‘Contesting the Everyday: The Cultural Biography of a Subversive Playing Card’, in Tara Hamling and Catherine Richardson, eds. Everyday Objects: Medieval and Early Modern Material Culture and its Meanings (Farnham: Ashgate, 2010), 241-256 Google Scholar, plates 7 and 8. Thus transformed the playing card would have turned into a heart emblem (the crucifix implanted in the devout heart) of a kind familiar from the Jesuit emblem books which sold in very high numbers all over Europe, the most famous of them being the Pia Desideria of Hermannus Hugo SJ, published first at Antwerp in 1624.
119 Gerard, , Autobiography, 118 Google Scholar.
120 Gerard, , Autobiography, 130 Google Scholar.
121 Oman, Charles, ‘The Swinburne Pyx’, The Burlington Magazine, 92, no. 573 (1950): 337–341 Google Scholar.
122 Oman, , ‘The Swinburne Pyx’, 341 Google Scholar.
123 For the engraving, see Metropolitan Museum of Art Accession Number 19.73.29.
124 Oman, , English Church Plate, 282-283 Google Scholar, plate 191. I am grateful to Fr Scott at Westminster Cathedral for kindly making the pyx available for study. What might be the very worn London marks of the leopard’s head crowned and lion passant are visible under magnification, but the shield with a date letter cannot be made out.
125 VAM 139-1900. I am grateful to Clare Browne for her expert opinion on the burse and related material.
126 Truman, Charles, ‘Title’, in John Browne and Timothy Dean, eds., Westminster Cathedral, Building of Faith (London: Booth-Clibborn Editions, 1995)Google Scholar: Cat. 103, 215.
127 LANCUM-6F19D5 on the Portable Antiquities Database, https://finds.org.uk/database/artefacts/record/id/708683
128 C.MSC27. According to Fr Cookson (personal correspondence, 2 February 2016): ‘I found it in a chest of drawers in the attic of the former Archbishop’s House, but other than that there is no provenance.’
129 Raguin, V. C., ed. Catholic Collecting, Catholic Reflection 1538-1850 (Worcester, MA: Catholic University of America Press, 2006), 59 Google Scholar.
130 The treasure numbers of these three artefacts are TH 2016 T 1076, 10777 and 1078. They have been donated to the British Museum: 2017, 8015l1-3 For the Mawdesley family and Mawdesley Hall, see http://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/lancs/vol6/pp96-100#fnn11 [accessed 18 September, 2017]
131 I am grateful to Jane Stevenson for this suggestion.
132 For More see Seymour Baker House, ‘More, Sir Thomas (1478–1535)’, ODNB [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/19191, accessed 19 December 2016.] For the Jewel, see | Robinson, J. C., ed., Catalogue of the Special Exhibition of works of art of the medieval, Renaissance and more Recent periods, on loan at the South Kensington Museum, June 1862 (London: HMSO, 1863)Google Scholar, cat. 7,755; Tait, H., ‘Tudor historiated jewellery’, The Antiquaries Journal, 42.2 (1962): 244 Google Scholar; Evans, Joan, A History of Jewellery 1100-1870 (Boston: Dover Publications, 1970)Google Scholar, plate VIa; Rowe, D. F., ‘A “George in Gold” and Enamels of Chicago collections’, Apollo 95 (June, 1972), 472–474 Google Scholar, figs. 13–15; Armstrong, N., Jewellery: An Historical Survey of British Styles and Jewels (Guildford and London: Lutterworth, 1973): 80-81 Google Scholar, fig. 14; Hackenbroch, Y., ‘Two relics of Sir Thomas More’, The Connoisseur, 194 (January, 1977): 43–48 Google Scholar; Hackenbroch, Y., ‘Two relics of Sir Thomas More’, The Stonyhurst Magazine, 40, no. 464 (Autumn 1977): 110–114 Google Scholar; Trapp, J. B. and Herbrüggen, H. Schulte, ‘The King’s Good Servant’, Sir Thomas More, National Portrait Gallery (London, 1977): cat. 227, 118-119 Google Scholar; Hackenbroch, Yvonne, Renaissance Jewellery (London: Sotheby Parke Bernet, 1979), 272–276 Google Scholar; Tait, Hugh, Catalogue of The Waddesdon Bequest in the British Museum, Vol. 1: The Jewels (London: British Museum Publications, 1986), 70-72 Google Scholar, figs. 56–7.
133 Vertue Note Books, Volume II , Walpole Society 20 (Oxford: for the Walpole Society, 1932), 75.
134 Geoffrey Holt, ‘More, Thomas (1722–1795)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, ODNB [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/19194, accessed 19 December 2016]
135 For the Vienna jewel, see Tait, Catalogue of the Waddesdon Bequest, 70.
136 1983,1102.1; 1955,0507.1; Tait, Hugh, ‘The girdle-prayerbook or “tablett”: An important class of Renaissance jewellery at the court of Henry VIII’, Jewellery Studies 2 (1985): 30-58 Google Scholar, esp. 52-3.
137 LANCUM-371FC5.
138 See for example the hand coloured rectangular Netherlandish print of around 1490-1510 in the British Museum, 1895,0122.6 or the circular German print 1885,0509.1604.
139 Ident. Nr, KdZ 14729.
140 Quoted in Levering, Matthew, ed. On Christian Dying: Classic and Contemporary Texts, (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2004), 87 Google Scholar.
141 Hackenbroch, , Renaissance Jewellery, 273 Google Scholar.
142 Hackenbroch, Y., Enseignes: Renaissance Hat Jewels (Firenze: Edizioni Scelte, 1996), 356–357 Google Scholar.
143 Tait, ‘The girdle-prayerbook or “tablett”’.
144 Madden, F., Privy Purse expenses of the Princess Mary, daughter of King Henry VIII (London: William Pickering, 1831)Google Scholar, quoted in Tait, ‘The girdle-prayerbook or “tablett”’, 30.
145 Hackenbroch, , Enseignes, 332-341 Google Scholar.
146 SL,5308.25, Rowlands, John, Drawings by German Artists and Artists from German-Speaking Regions of Europe in the Department of Prints and Drawings in the British Museum: The 15th Century & 16th Century by Artists Born Before 1530 (London: British Museum Press, 1993)Google Scholar, cat.346i. For the identification of the portrait in Toledo, Ohio and its versions, see Roy Strong, ‘Holbein in England - I and II’, The Burlington Magazine, 109, 770 (May, 1967): 276-81, esp. 278-81.
147 Margaret Bowker, ‘Roper [More], Margaret (1505–1544)’, ODNB [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/24071, accessed 19 December 2016].
148 The National Portrait Gallery lists three early modern copies, and three engravings made from the portrait before 1728.
149 Hackenbroch’s Renaissance Jewellery describes this jewel as dating from 1550-60, incorporating two reliefs of ca. 1535. Books on More include anon, Beschreybuug[sic] des vrtheyls vnd todts weiland des Groß Cantzlers in Engenlandt, Herrn Thomas Morus, perhaps the earliest (probably printed Nürnberg: Friedrich Peypus, 1535), Expositio Fidelis De Morte D. Thomae Mori, et quorundam aliorum insignium virorum in Anglia (Antwerp: Steelsius, 1536), also anonymous, [Cresacre More], The life and death of Sir Thomas Moore Lord high Chancellour of England (probably Douai: Balthasar Bellère, 1631), Thomas Stapleton, Tres Thomae. Seu, De S. Thomæ Apostoli rebus gestis. De S. Thoma Archiepiscopo Cantuariensi & martyre. D. Thomæ Mori Angliæ quondam cancellarij vita. : (Douai, Jean Bogeard, 1588). There were also two English College plays on the life of More, both anonymous, Thomas Morus (1612), staged at the English College in Rome, and an undated Morus, from St Omer’s.
150 Judith H. Anderson, ‘More, (Christopher) Cresacre (1572–1649)’, ODNB [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/19174, accessed 19 December 2016].
151 For Oldcorne, see Foley, H., Records of the English Province of the Society of Jesus, 7 vols (London: Burns & Oates, 1882), 7:558-589 Google Scholar. For the reliquary, see Bate and Thornton, Shakespeare: Staging the World, 192 and (for a bibliography), 292.
152 ‘A relation of the figure, which appeareth in the ear of a straw in the chaff or husk thereof’, BL Add. MS 21.203, transcribed in Foley, Records of the English Province, 4:129–31.
153 Gerard, , Autobiography, 201–202 Google Scholar and Appendix G.
154 Mackenna, Catherine, ‘Gone to Ground: Relics and Holy Wells in Medieval and Modern Ireland’, in E. Robertson and Jennifer Jahner, eds. Medieval and Modern Devotional Objects in Global Perspective (New York: Palgrave, 2008), 61–78, 74 Google Scholar.
155 Walsham, , ‘The Pope’s Merchandise’, 381 Google Scholar.
156 Williams, , ‘Contesting the Everyday’, 247 Google Scholar.
157 The antiphyon text is ‘Paratur nobis mensa domini adversus omnes qui tribulant nos’; ‘The table of the Lord is prepared for us against those who oppress us’.
158 Garnet, Henry, The Societie of the Rosarie (London, 1593-94), 68-69 Google Scholar. See also Dillon, Anne, ‘Public Liturgy made Private: The Rosary Confraternity in the Life of a Recusant Household, in Peter Davidson and Jill Belper, eds. The Triumphs of the Defeated (Wiesbaden: Harassowitz, 2007), 245-270 Google Scholar.
159 A Cistercian abbey at Holycross, near Thurles, Co. Tipperary, ruined during Cromwell’s invasion of Ireland, 1649/50.
160 For the chalice and paten see Buckley, J. J., Some Irish Altar Plate: A Descriptive List of Chalices and Patens, Dating from the Fourteenth to the End of the Seventeenth Century, Now Preserved in the National Museum and in Certain Churches (Dublin: for the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland, 1943), 22–23 Google Scholar and plates III and VI. For the pyx ‘me fieri fecit…’, see McCormack, John, North Thomond Church Silver (Limerick: The Hunt Museum, 2000), 29 Google Scholar.
161 A silver-gilt chalice and paten belonging to Our Lady of Compassion, Formby, Lancashire, and formerly on loan to the Victoria and Albert, tends to support the hypothesis that Lancashire recusants either turned to Ireland for their sacred silver, or followed Irish Catholic practice in the way they marked their plate. The paten is inscribed HEUGH MAWDSELEY AND IENNET HIS WIFE MAIDE THIS IN TIME OF ELYZABETH 1584. This object would seem to associate with Mawdesley Hall, as do recent detector finds of recusant silver at Mawdesley, discussed above, but there is no indication of where the unmarked chalice was made, but marking a marriage on a chalice or paten is an Irish Catholic practice. It is therefore possible that the Mawdesleys, in a strongly recusant county with close Irish links, had Irish connections.
162 Gibson, , Remains, Historical and Literary, 70 Google Scholar.
163 Gibson, , Remains, Historical and Literary, 80 Google Scholar.
164 Personal communication from Mark Blundell, 1 February 2017.
165 Now in the Victoria and Albert Museum, the 1590-dated Mount Keefe Chalice is inscribed ‘C. O. K.’, perhaps for a member of the O’Keefe family: see Glanville, Silver in Tudor and Early Stuart England, cat. 142. In the Hunt Museum is the Arthur Chalice, of ca. 1600 (though dated 1525 in an inscription): which is held on loan from the Roman Catholic Diocese of Limerick. See also Day, R., ‘The altar plate of the Franciscan church, Cork’, Journal of the Cork Historical and Archaeological Society Ser. 2, 3 (1897): 44-50 Google Scholar and 161-9; and Wallace, Patrick and Floinn, Raghnall Ó, eds. Franciscan Faith: Sacred Art in Ireland 1600-1750 (Dublin: Worldwell, 2011)Google Scholar.
166 HCM 128.
167 HCM 127.
168 HCM 124.
169 HCM 125. The lid is decorated with the figure of Christ on the cross and two inscriptions. One around the lid reads: IN CRUCE PENDENTEM TE IESU ADORO (‘Jesus hanging on the cross, I adore you’). The second inscription reads, on one side of the cross, FR. AN. SALL ME FIERI FECIT (‘Fr An[thony] Sall had me made’): and on the other, PRO CONVTU:STI. FRANCI. CASSI (‘For the convent of St Francis, Cashel’). The back is engraved with the Jesuit badge: the IHS, a cross, a heart and three nails.
170 BEP BM, 1968,1001.1.
171 The double-armed form was traditional for such reliquary crosses. LDL 001, LDL 002, LDL 003, LDL 004.
172 Wallace and Ó Floinn, Franciscan Faith; and Buckley, Some Irish Altar Plate.
173 Blundell, , A Cavalier’s Note Book, 44 Google Scholar.
174 Gibson, , Crosby Records, 24–29 Google Scholar; Woolf, ‘Little Crosby’, 108 Google Scholar.
