The Role of Women in the Survival of Catholicism in Post Reformation Lancashire and Yorkshire, 1559-1603
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THE ROLE OF WOMEN IN THE SURVIVAL OF CATHOLICISM IN POST REFORMATION LANCASHIRE AND YORKSHIRE, 1559-1603 by Elizabeth Ferguson, B.A. (Hons) A thesis submitted to the Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts Department of History Carleton University Ottawa, Ontario 9 June 2006 © copyright 2006, Elizabeth Ferguson Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 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The author retains copyright L'auteur conserve la propriete du droit d'auteur ownership and moral rights in et des droits moraux qui protege cette these. this thesis. Neither the thesis Ni la these ni des extraits substantiels de nor substantial extracts from it celle-ci ne doivent etre imprimes ou autrement may be printed or otherwise reproduits sans son autorisation. reproduced without the author's permission. In compliance with the Canadian Conformement a la loi canadienne Privacy Act some supporting sur la protection de la vie privee, forms may have been removed quelques formulaires secondaires from this thesis. ont ete enleves de cette these. While these forms may be includedBien que ces formulaires in the document page count, aient inclus dans la pagination, their removal does not represent il n'y aura aucun contenu manquant. any loss of content from the thesis. i * i Canada Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. ABSTRACT This thesis examines women’s involvement in the preservation of Catholic practice in Lancashire and Yorkshire beginning with the passage of both the Acts of Uniformity and Supremacy in 1559 until the death of Queen Elizabeth I in 1603. It assesses how Catholic women who adhered to the ‘old religion’ in the post-Reformation period were able to cope with religious change and develop methods that enabled them to function successfully in preserving elements of their faith within their environment. As Catholic practice was removed from the parish church, Catholic women applied their skills pragmatically and, together with lay men, became effective agents in the preservation of Catholicism. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to thank my supervisor David Dean for his encouragement and support; Professors Susan Whitney and Micheline White for agreeing to read this thesis and for their comments and suggestions; and Joan White for working on my behalf in setting up a timely examination. I would also like to thank my family for their unyielding confidence in me, and in particular parents who listened to my frustrations and offered words of encouragement at crucial moments. Lastly, I would like to express my gratitude to Andrew Wilson for his patience, understanding and love. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ABSTRACT ii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS iii TABLE OF CONTENTS iv LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS v NOTE CONCERNING NAMES AND SPELLING vi INTRODUCTION 1 Female Activist Piety 3 Sources 14 Timeframe 15 Geographical Restrictions 16 CHAPTER ONE Setting the Stage: The Rise of Protestantism 19 The Decline of Catholicism 23 The English Catholic Community 37 CHAPTER TWO ‘These be but women who... thus dared to live according to their conscience Women’s Public and Private Displays of Resistance 44 Lay Catholic Belief 45 ‘Domestic’ Resistance 50 Recusancy 60 CHAPTER THREE ‘If God’s priests dare venture themselves to my house, I will never refuse them Harbouring priests in Elizabethan England 67 Marian Priests 68 The Seminarians 80 The Jesuits 94 CHAPTER FOUR ‘God’s will be done: I think I may suffer for this good cause Persecution 108 Penal Fines 109 Imprisonment 118 Capital Punishment 123 CONCLUSION 129 BIBLIOGRAPHY 134 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS Add. Additional Manuscripts APC J.R. Dasent, ed. Acts o f the Privy Council o f England, 32 vols. (London, 1890-1963) BL British Library, London E Records of the Exchequer CRS Catholic Record Society Publications, 80 vols. (London, 1904- 2003) HMC Historical Manuscripts Commission PRO Pubic Records Office, London RH Recusant History Salis. MSS HMC, Calendar o f the Manuscripts o f the most Hon. The Marquis o f Salisbury, K.G., Preserved at Hatfield House, Hertfordshire (London, 1883-1976) SP State Papers, Public Records Office Troubles J. Morris, ed. The Troubles o f our Catholic Forefathers Related by Themselves, 3 vols. (London, 1872-1877) Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. NOTE CONCERNING DATES AND SPELLING All quotations from and citations of contemporary manuscripts printed primary sources retain original punctuation, capitalization and spelling, with the exception that i is transposed to j and u to v. Spelling of person and place names vary greatly in contemporary manuscripts and printed primary sources: outside direct quotations, I have used the current versions of persons’ names and places. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 1 INTRODUCTION With the passage of both the Acts of Uniformity and Supremacy in Parliament in April 1559 Protestantism was established as the official religion in England. While religious conversion was by no means immediate at the parish level in the months and early years following the Elizabethan settlement, with the gradual implementation of the government’s religious reforms in English communities churches would become ‘protestantized’ in their services and furnishings by the end of the reign of Elizabeth I in 1603.1 Indeed, in the latter decades of Elizabeth’s reign Protestant prayer book services were implemented with much more rigour and the traditional forms of worship associated with the ‘old religion’ would progressively disappear.2 Parish churches throughout the country would be stripped of their relics, saints, high altars and images of the Virgin Mary and the Crucifixion. The Latin Mass would no longer be celebrated, plates, crosses, copes and chalices were removed and communion tables were erected. Roods would be dismantled, books and images were burned and the vestments would be sold for cushions and bed-hangings. Patron statues, latten pyxes and paxes and holy water stoops were destroyed in parish churches throughout the country in the later decades of the sixteenth century and altar stones and sepulchers were broken up. Moreover, the vibrant Catholic culture of rural and urban communities gradually disappeared. By 1603, the religious 1 A series of comprehensive studies pertaining to religious change in particular communities or counties have been undertaken. See H. Aveling, Northern Catholics: The Catholic Recusants of the North Riding of Yorkshire, 1558-1790 (London, 1966); idem,Catholic Recusancy in the City of York (London, 1970); R. Manning, Religion and Society in Elizabethan Sussex (Leicester, 1969); C. Haigh,Reformation and Resistance in Tudor Lancashire (Cambridge, 1973); E. Duffy,The Voices ofMorebath: Reformation and Rebellion in an English Village (New Haven, CT, 2001). The phrase ‘protestantized’ was taken from C. Haigh, “The Continuity o f Catholicism in the English Reformation,” Thein English Reformation Revised, ed. Christopher Haigh (Cambridge, 1987), p. 179. 2 The shift in the effectiveness of religious conversion at the parish level will be detailed in Chapter One. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. processions, feasts and festivals were no longer observed by the majority of the population; the devotion to religious images was outlawed and the elaborate internal structure of the Catholic Church. However, a small, but vibrant and dynamic Catholic community persisted despite the Elizabethan government’s religious programme. Its members remained committed to Catholicism, undertaking measures as best they could to safeguard their faith. Refusing to accept the conditions of the religious laws, these individuals preserved traditional rituals and observances outside of the parish church as Catholic practice progressively disappeared within the church. The household became an important space in which spiritual elements of the Catholic Church could survive and indeed it