Shakespeare, Catholicism, and : A Reappraisal of John Cottom, Stratford Schoolmaster

M ICHAEL W INSTANLEy

VER THIRTy yEARS AGO ERNST HONIGMANN ’S SHAKESPEARE : T HE O“L OST YEARS ” developed the case that Shakespeare spent time in 1580–81 as a player-actor in Alexander Hoghton’s Lancashire home, thinly dis - guised as William Shakeshafte. 1 This view has since gained credence in some academic circles and particularly in the popular imagination and has been deployed to bolster the view that Shakespeare harbored Catholic sympathies. 2 Douglas Hamer, Robert Bearman, Glyn Parry, Thomas McCoog, and Peter Davidson have subjected this narrative to detailed empirical criticism, and others have aired scepticism. 3 But no one has yet challenged Honigmann’s central prem -

I wish to thank Robert Bearman, Stanley Wells, Alison Findlay, Glyn Parry, Thomas McCoog, and Gordon Phillips for commenting on earlier or partial drafts of this essay; Angus Winchester for assistance with sources; Stephen Wilson for information about Christian names; Neil Hudson of Lancashire Parish Register Society for collecting details from parish registers; Sarah Rose for help in transcribing documents; John Thorley for assistance with translations from ; and Elizabeth Boardman for information from Brasenose College archives. The author accepts full responsibility for the evidence and argument presented here. 1 The name is variously spelt Cottam, Cottame, Cotham, Cottome, and Cottom. The herald’s spelling in family pedigree for 1613, for example, uses Cottam, but it is signed John Cottom, as are his other signatures. Cottom was clearly the family’s preferred spelling, and it is used here throughout, unless the original source cited specifically employs or refers to Cottam or Cotham. Hoghton is preferred to Houghton, but the latter is retained if spelled as such in the original text. Contemporary spellings of Tarnacre (e.g., Tarnaker) have been modernized unless cited within a direct quotation. 2 E. A. J. Honigmann, Shakespeare: The “Lost Years” (Manchester: Manchester UP, 1985); Park Honan, Shakespeare: A Life (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1998), xii, 60–70; Anthony Holden, : His Life and Work (: Little, Brown, 1999), 27, 56–61; Michael Wood (presenter), In Search of Shakespeare , miniseries (BBC, 2003; PBS Home Video, 2003), DVD; Richard Wilson, Secret Shakespeare: Studies in Theatre, Religion and Resistance (Man - chester: Manchester UP, 2004), ch. 2; Stephen Greenblatt, Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare (New york: W. W. Norton, 2004), ch. 3; Peter Ackroyd, Shakespeare: The Biography (London: Chatto and Windus, 2005), 77–82. Recent fictionalized accounts of Shakespeare’s early life also make much of this. 3 Douglas Hamer, “Was William Shakespeare William Shakeshafte?,” Review of English Stud - ies 21.81 (1970): 41–48; Robert Bearman, ‘“Was William Shakespeare William Shakeshafte’ Revisited,” 53.1 (2002): 83–94; Glyn Parry, “New Evidence on William

Shakespeare Quarterly 68.2 (2017): 172–191 © 2017 Folger Shakespeare Library SHAKESPEARE, CATHOLICISM, AND LANCASHIRE 173 ise that “John Cottom, the Stratford schoolmaster, was also linked with the Hoghton family” and that it was this personal connection that converted Shake - speare’s sojourn in Lancashire from “a possibility into a probability.” 4 This Lancashire connection is predicated on a longer established view that John, as the elder brother of Thomas Cottam—the Lancashire martyr who was executed on 30 May 1582—was a Catholic. His mere presence in Stratford has long been cited to suggest that the town as a whole had Catholic sympathies during Shakespeare’s formative years. This essay uses archival material not pre - viously consulted in order to reassess the evidence for the Cottom family’s pos - sible connections with the Hoghtons and, more widely, to challenge the gener - ally accepted assumption about John’s religious faith. The possibility that William Shakespeare of Stratford and the William Shake - shafte named in Alexander Hoghton’s will in 1581 could have been the same man had been mooted by Edmund Chambers in 1923 and developed over the next thirty years by Oliver Baker, Alan Keen, and Roger Lubbock. 5 Cottom’s alleged link with the Hoghtons was suggested by Robert Stevenson as early as 1958. Citing a land transaction of 1558, Stevenson claimed the Cottoms were neighbors of the Hoghtons in Dilworth—a township in the parish of Ribchester, a few miles to the northeast of Preston. 6 H. A. Shield, quoting an inquisition of 1619,

Shakeshafte and ,” Shakespeare Yearbook 17 (2009): 1–27; Thomas M. McCoog and Peter Davidson, “Edmund Campion and William Shakespeare: ? ,” in The Reckoned Expense: Edmund Campion and the Early English Jesuits , ed. Thomas M. McCoog, 2nd ed. (: Institutum Historicum Societatis Jesu, 2007), 165–85, summa - rized in Peter Davidson and Thomas McCoog, “Unreconciled. What evidence links Shake - speare and the Jesuits,” TLS (16 March 2007): 12–13; Terence G. Schoone-Jongen, Shake - speare’s Companies: William Shakespeare’s Early Career and the Acting Companies, 1577–1594 (Farnham, UK: Ashgate, 2008), ch. 9. Although Michael Wood’s BBC TV series of 2003 elab - orated on the Lancashire connection, his book concluded that that there was “no convincing evi - dence” for it; see In Search of Shakespeare (London: BBC Worldwide, 2003), 87. Richard Dutton refers to the “tottering edifice of speculations” about Shakespeare’s Catholic and Lancashire con - nections; see William Shakespeare: A Literary Life (, UK: Palgrave MacMillan, 1989), 7. Region, Religion and Patronage: Lancastrian Shakespeare , ed. Richard Dutton, Alison Findlay, and Richard Wilson (Manchester: Manchester UP, 2003) remains agnostic and con - centrates instead on exploring regional theatrical culture more broadly (see p. 1). Takashi Kozuka, “Shakespeare in Purgatory: A Study of the Catholicising Movement in Shakespeare Biography” (PhD diss., University of Warwick, 2003). 4 Honigmann, Lost Years , 127. 5 E. K. Chambers, The Elizabethan Stage , vol. 1 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1923), 280; and “William Shakeshafte,” in Shakespearean Gleanings (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1944), 52–56; Oliver Baker, In Shakespeare’s and the Unknown Years (London: Simpkin Marshall, 1937), 297–319. See also Alan Keen and Roger Lubbock, The Annotator (London: Putnam, 1954), 43–52. 6 Robert Stevenson, Shakespeare’s Religious Frontier (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1958), 67–84, esp. 69. 174 SHAKESPEARE QUARTERLy claimed to have identified the precise family in Dilworth as Lawrence and Ann Cottam whose land was “held of Sir Richard Houghton.” 7 Peter Milward later cited Cottom as a significant example of “a remarkable number of connections between Stratford and the part of Lancashire round Preston.” 8 However, it was Ernst Honigmann’s study that grabbed public attention and firmly established Cottom as the “essential link in the chain.” Honigmann, like Shield, claimed John’s parents were Lawrence and Ann Cottam and added their residence, High House, citing the work of Tom Smith. He also repeated Smith’s claim that this Ann later remarried William Ambrose of Woodplumpton. 9 Honigmann further claimed that John’s father not only was a tenant of the Hoghtons but also had other “long-standing connections” with them. As a result he maintained that Lawrence could well have suggested his son’s pupil in Stratford as a suitable tutor to Alexander Hoghton, and he repeated a claim made by Shield that “the John Cotham mentioned in Alexander Hoghton’s will might be the Stratford schoolmaster, even though John Cottom was still at Stratford when Alexander made his will.” He asserted that John returned to Lancashire in 1581 or 1582 and resided on an estate at Tarnacre, which his father “is thought to have made over” to him at the time, and that he maintained a close relationship with the Hoghtons into the early seventeenth century. 10 Richard Wilson elaborated on this claim, referring to John as a “business asso - ciate” named in the Hoghton family papers in the . 11 Independently, other scholars developed the case for John Cottom’s Catholi - cism. In 1929 Edgar Fripp surmised that John left Stratford because he “may

7 H. A. Shield, “A Stratford Schoolmaster,” The Month , n. s. 26, no. 2 (August 1961): 109–11. 8 Peter Milward, Shakespeare’s Religious Background (London: Sidgwick and Jackson, 1973), 39–42, esp. 41. Unfortunately Milward also wrongly states that Cottom returned to , while his suggestion that Cardinal was a humble usher in the Stratford school after he lost his Oxford principalship seems hardly credible. He has further developed his views in “Shakespeare’s Jesuit Schoolmasters,” in Theatre and Religion: Lancastrian Shakespeare , ed. Richard Dutton, Alison Findlay, and Richard Wilson, (Manchester: Manchester UP, 2003), 58–70; and Shakespeare: The Papist (Ave , FL: Sapientia Press, 2005), 21–42. 9 Honigmann, Lost Years , 41–42; , A Literary and Biographical History, or Bibli - ographical Dictionary of the English Catholic. From the Breach with Rome, in 1534, to the Present Time . Vol. 1 (London: Burns and Oates, 1885), 574; Tom C. Smith, A History of Longridge and District (Preston, UK: C. W. Whitehead , 1888), 140–44; Tom C. Smith and Rev. Jonathan Shortt, The History of the Parish of Ribchester (London: Bemrose and Sons, 1890), 242. Smith was totally confused. He linked Thomas Cottam the martyr to Knowle or Cottam Hall, quoting Gillow at length but without corroborating evidence, and then transposed some of Gillow’s infor - mation onto a family of the same name at High House. The inaccuracies and confusions in Smith’s pedigrees were even recognized by Gillow; see his notes to “A list of convicted recusants in the reign of Charles II; Lancashire,” in Miscellanea , vol. 6 (Catholic Record Society, 1909), 155n2. 10 Honigmann, Lost Years , 40–49, 126–27. Quotations are from pp. 42, 47–48. 11 Wilson, Secret Shakespeare , 57–63, 69, esp. 63. SHAKESPEARE, CATHOLICISM, AND LANCASHIRE 175 have been suspect . . . after his brother’s execution.” 12 In 1944 Thomas Baldwin identified John as having graduated from Brasenose College, Oxford, three years before Thomas, and speculated that he might have been the brother who had allegedly committed an offence in London the year before his appointment at Stratford. Baldwin argued that when Thomas arrived from the Continent in the summer of 1580 he planned to visit his brother in Stratford. 13 Baldwin also obtained apparent proof of John’s Catholicism from Joseph Gillow, the Victo - rian Catholic historian of Lancashire, who stated that John, his wife, and only daughter all “frequently appear in the Recusant Rolls.” 14 More recently, Wilson has claimed that John continued to practice as a Catholic schoolmaster and to distribute “as late as 1604.” 15

John Cottom’s central importance, therefore, both for the Lancashire con - nection and for our understanding of Stratford, rests on four crucial proposi - tions. First, that John Cottom of Tarnacre was the brother of Thomas Cottam, the Catholic martyr. Second, that John of Tarnacre was also the same man as the Stratford schoolmaster. Third, that the Cottom family was not only a neighbor and tenant of the Hoghtons but also had “long standing con - nections” with them. Finally, and fundamentally, that John, like his brother, supported the Roman Catholic cause. The first of these propositions can be proven; the second is perfectly feasible, but the other two are not borne out by the evidence. John Cottom of Tarnacre and Thomas the martyr were indeed brothers, sons of Lawrence and Ann Cottam. This can be confirmed by independent sources: (1) the family tree returned by John Cottom in 1613 on the occasion of a tour undertaken by the king’s herald to register the coats of arms of promi - nent families and to record their family descent (usually referred to as St. George’s Visitation of Lancashire), and (2) a seventeenth-century account of Thomas Cottam by the Jesuit Daniello Bartoli. Both of these documents name the same parents. 16 Honigmann’s research also discovered that there was an older brother, James, who died in 1594. 17

12 Edgar I. Fripp, Shakespeare, Man and Artist (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1938), 92n6. 13 T. W. Baldwin, “The King’s Free at Stratford,” in William Shakespere’s Small Latine and Lesse Greek , vol. 1 (Urbana: Illinois UP, 1944), 481–83. 14 Gillow, Bibliographical Dictionary Vol. 1 , 574. 15 Wilson, Secret Shakespeare, 65. 16 British Library (BL), Harleian MS 1437, fol. 100; and F. R. Raines, ed., The Visitation of the of Lancaster Made in the Year 1613, by Richard St. George, Esq., Norroy King of Arms , o. s. 82 (Chetham Society, 1871), 100; Dal. P. Daniello Bartoli, Dell’Istoria Della Com - pagnia di Giesv L’Inghilterra (Bologna, 1676), 260. 17 Honigmann, Lost Years , 42–45. 176 SHAKESPEARE QUARTERLy Baldwin’s evidence for linking John Cottom of Tarnacre to the Stratford schoolmaster was, as Honigmann noted, circumstantial and not “proof absolute.” Since a positive identification was crucial for Honigmann’s argument, he repro - duced three signatures from 1579, 1606, and 1613, which he claimed proved “beyond reasonable doubt” that John Cottom of Stratford and of Tarnacre were the same man. 18 He acknowledged that the signatures were not identical, most notably the change from italic to secretary hand for the capital “C.” But he attrib - uted this to the fact that they spanned thirty-four years, and he stressed several marked similarities that were evident in the formation and style of the other let - ters. These signatures fall short of the “proof absolute” that Honigmann desired, but they are sufficiently similar to support the view that they could have been written by the same man. Given that other Stratford schoolmasters were Oxford graduates and that a John Cottom and Thomas Cottam the martyr both gradu - ated in the 1560s from Brasenose, a college with strong Lancashire connections, it is reasonable—and necessary for the purposes of this analysis—to assume that John of Tarnacre and John the schoolmaster in Stratford were the same man. 19 It is worth stressing, however, that if this was not the case, then there is no justi - fication for claiming that the Stratford schoolmaster was Thomas Cottam’s brother, that he was Catholic, or that he could have been responsible for intro - ducing Shakespeare to Lancashire Catholic gentry. The third proposition, Honigmann’s crucial argument that the Cottoms were neighbors, tenants, and associates of the Hoghtons in Dilworth, is seri - ously flawed. First, John and Thomas’s father was not, as Shield and Honig - mann claimed, Lawrence Cottam of High House, Dilworth, who held land from the Hoghtons. This man’s postmortem inquisition in 1619 states that his son Thomas was about thirty at the time of his father’s death, and he could not, therefore, have been the martyr. 20 The wife of Lawrence is not named in the inquisition. However, if she was the Ann who gave birth to Thomas the martyr in 1549, then she would have been in at least her nineties when she married William Ambrose. Honigmann simply dismissed this problem as one of the “confusions not uncommon in early pedigrees.” 21 But the error lies in his

18 Honigmann, Lost Years, esp. 41 and figure 9 in the illustrations following p. 30. 19 The entry for John is from the unpublished Vice Principal’s Register held by the college, which refers to him as Johanni Cottom not Cottam as in the published register. Thomas is not named in this list. Information from Elizabeth Boardman, college archivist, personal correspondence, 2005. 20 J. Paul Rylands, ed., Lancashire Inquisitions Returned into the Chancery of the Duchy of Lan - caster , vol. 16 (Record Society of Lancashire and , 1887), 115–16, 232. For further details of the family, see The Registers of the Parish Church of Ribchester in the County of Lancaster, 1598–1694 , ed. J. Arrowsmith Wigan, vol. 26 (Lancashire Parish Register Society, 1906), 78, 80. 21 Honigmann, Lost Years , 42, 48. SHAKESPEARE, CATHOLICISM, AND LANCASHIRE 177 reliance on Gillow’s misleading description of Lawrence and Ann as of “Dil - worth and Tarnaker” who were from an “ancient family” that “had been seated at Dilworth for many generations,” and on subsequent misidentifications by Smith, Stevenson, and Shield of the family there. The original pedigree returned by John Cottom in 1613, on which Gillow based his statements, does indeed show that the family originated from Dilworth, but it also clearly describes Lawrence simply as “of Tarnaker,” some ten miles away to the north of Preston in the parish of St. Michaels on Wyre, not as “at Dilworth” or “of Dil - worth and Tarnaker.’” 22 The family’s residence in Tarnacre from at least the , and their social importance there, can be demonstrated from records held in the Westminster Diocesan Archives, , and National Archives and from sources reproduced in the publications of antiquarian societies. Thomas Cottam is assumed to have been born circa 1549, and the unpublished catalogue of English martyrs drawn up in 1628 by Richard Smith, Catholic of Chalcedon, Vicar-Apostolic, unambiguously stated his birthplace as “Parochia S Michaels propre Garstang,” the parish in which Tarnacre is situated. 23 Lawrence Cottom of Tarnacre was a man of some substance. In 1544 he had been granted the right to appoint the next vicar “for one turn.” 24 He headed the list of residents in the township liable for the lay subsidy in February 1546. 25 There is nothing to sug - gest that he or his sons were tenants of the Hoghtons. 26 Furthermore, in a court case of 1577, Lawrence’s son James states that his father had made his will during the reign of Edward VI. 27 His widow was also dead by the 1560s. “Anne dau of

22 Gillow, Bibliographical Dictionary Vol. 1 , 574; BL, Harleian MSS, 1437, fol. 100, repro - duced in Raines, The Visitation of 1613 , 100. 23 Westminster Diocesan Archives, Kensington AAW/B28, “A catalogue of martyrs, com - piled by Dr Rochard [sic] Smith, Bp of Chalcedon AD 1628. A letter to the Cardinals of the S. Congregation of Propaganda, an Introduction and List of Martyrs from John Felton AD 1570 to William Southerne AD 1618.” 24 The National Archives London (TNA), PL15/241 (19 Eliz I Assumption 1577), Cottom v. Worsley, Wolfenden, and Downham , Palatinate of Lancaster Court of Common Pleas. James Cottam claimed the right to appoint the vicar. He maintained that John Hussey, the master of Battlefield College (in Shrewsbury), had granted his father (Lawrence) the right to appoint “for the next turn” before the dissolution of the chantries at St. Michaels. Victoria History Lancaster wrongly states it was John who was plaintiff (7:265n62). 25 TNA, E179/130/131, February 1546, Lay Subsidy Rolls. 26 As Honigmann noted, James Cottam’s leases in 1594 are listed in TNA, DL4/52/30 (5 James I), Cottam v. Walton , : Court of Duchy Chamber (see Lost Years , 43). They do not include the Hoghtons. John is listed as a freeholder in “A list of the Freeholders in Lancashire in 1600,” vol. 12 (Record Society of Lancashire and Cheshire, 1885), 232–33, based on BL, Harleian MS 2042. 27 TNA, PL15/241. James states that his father made his will during the reign of Edward VI and died soon after. The precise year is not given. 178 SHAKESPEARE QUARTERLy . . . Brewer, wydow of Lawrence Cotham, juxta Mighells churche” (which is situ - ated in Tarnacre) was described as William Ambrose’s deceased “fyrst wyf” in the pedigree that William returned to a herald’s visitation of Lancashire as early as 1567 (for the Cottom family tree, see figure 1). 28 The early deaths of John’s parents and their residence in Tarnacre undermine key components of Honigmann’s thesis. The Cottoms were neither neighbors nor tenants of the Hoghtons, in Dilworth or elsewhere. Lawrence had been dead for nearly thirty years in 1581. So, he could not have suggested his son’s pupil in Stratford to Alexander Hoghton, nor could he have “made over some Tarnacre property to John . . . when John left Stratford in 1581 or 1582.” Honig - mann’s claim that John “returned c.1582 to Tarnacre” is purely supposition, unsupported by any evidence. 29 The activities of John’s older brother James are documented in various court cases there in the 1570s and , but John him - self has not been identified as living in the area until the mid-, after he had inherited half of his late brother’s personal estate in 1594. 30 Given their social status and the circumscribed nature of local communities at the time, the Hoghtons and Cottoms must have come into contact, but there is no evidence to support the view that the families were on particularly close personal terms. While various Lawrence Cottams are named in conjunction with Alexan - der’s father, Sir Richard Hoghton, in the decades before the 1560s and as tenants of Thomas Hoghton, Alexander’s fugitive brother whose lands were seized by the state in 1571, they are variously described as of Thornley, Dilworth, Ribchester, or Lea, never of Tarnacre or St. Michaels. 31 Honigmann’s optimistic and unsub -

28 Revd F. R. Raines, ed. The Visitation of the County Palatine of Lancaster, Made in the year 1567, by William Flower, Esq, Norroy King of Arms , o. s. 81 (Chetham Society, 1870), 46. The original, held by the College of Arms in London, confirms that the details and spelling of names in this transcription are correct, although precise wording differs marginally; Coll. Arm MS D3/39v. 29 Honigmann, Lost Years , 5. 30 TNA, PL15/241; Exchequer Records E133/3/493 (20 Eliz Trinity), William Eccleston and James Cottom v.[blank] ; E134/20 and 21Eliz/Mich12, William Eccleston, James Cottam v. Robert Worsley ; E134/26 Eliz/East9 (1584), William Eccleston, James Cottam et al v. Robert Worsley et al .; BL, MS Add. 32115, Breviates of Richmond wills (microfilm copy in Lancashire Archives), Will of James Cottam, 1594. James’s widow Jane inherited the other half. 31 J. H. Lumby, A Calendar of the Deeds and Papers in the Possession of Sir James de Hoghton Bart of , Lancashire , vol. 88 (Record Society of Lancashire and Cheshire, 1936), no. 518 (Lawrence Cottam of Thornley); Henry Fishwick, The History of the Parish of Kirkham in the County of Lancaster , o. s. 92 (Chetham Society, 1874), 203–4 (Lawrence of Lea, gentle - man and steward to Sir Richard, 1536); Tom C. Smith, History of the Parish of Chipping in the County of Lancaster (Preston, UK: C. W. Whitehead, 1894), 19–21, 268 (Lawrence of Dil - worth). This could be the same man as Lawrence, son of Edmund, named in Lumby, Hoghton Deeds , no. 513, 515, 517. Stevenson, Religious Frontiers , 69–70 (quoting Lumby, Hoghton Deeds , no. 907). The valor of Thomas Hoghton’s lands taken in 1571, when he was declared fugitive and his estate forfeited to the Crown, lists five Lawrence Cottams in Dilworth including a miller SHAKESPEARE, CATHOLICISM, AND LANCASHIRE 179

Lawrence Cottom of Tarnacre (d. pre-1553) m. Anne Brewereth of Brindle (d. pre-1560s)

John (ca. 1547–1616) James (ca. 1546–94) m. Catherine Dove Thomas (ca. 1549–82) m. Jane ? of Birtwood martyr no issue (Brentwood), Essex

Priscilla (n.d.) m. Thomas Walton Mary (d. pre-1613) Martha (c. pre-1608) of Walton le Dale m. William Duddell m. James Ellis ca. 1599

Figure 1. Cottom family tree. Sources: Heralds’ Visitations 1567 (n. 28) and 1613 (n. 16); Palatinate court case 1577 (n. 24); James Cottam’s will (n. 30); Duchy court case Cottam v. Walton (n. 26); Chalcedon catalogue (n. 23); Bartoli, 1676 (n. 16). Precise dates of most births, marriages, and deaths are not known. It is possible that John was the John Cottham who mar - ried Katherine Darby [sic] at Dartford on 2 May 1568 and the John Cottam whose daughter Priscilla was baptized there on 3 January 1569: Holy Trinity Parish Registers, Dartford. It has not been possible to ascertain any further details. stantiated assertion that the Stratford schoolmaster was the same man as the ser - vant John Cotham cited in Alexander’s will in 1581 relied entirely on the fact that he knew of “no other John Cotham similarly connected with the Hoghtons at this time.” But he did not look particularly deeply for alternatives, discussing only one, a man of that name who was “of the age of 25 or thereabouts” in 1600 whom he could easily dismiss as being too young to have been John Cottom of Stratford. 32 Had he consulted the local parish registers, postmortem inquisitions, and con - and several called Robert, Richard, and Edmund—but no James or John; TNA, E178/1195, Valor of the possessions of Thomas Hoghton of Hoghton Tower, a fugitive (14 Eliz.). Thomas was not listed as owning any land in St. Michael’s. Several Lawrence Cottams/Cottoms of Clitheroe and Ribchester also appear in Chancery court records of the Duchy of Lancaster and Quarter Sessions records throughout the period. Ducatus Lancastriae Vol.4 (London: Public Records Commission, 1834), 72 (22 Eliz); 227 (31 Eliz); 246 (32 Eliz); 263 (32 Eliz), 265 (32 Eliz), 318 (35 Eliz); Lancashire Archives, QDD/9m19, (1596), “Lawrence Cottam of Sailburie, husbandman, son and heir of John Cottam of Ribchester, decd.” 32 Honigmann, Lost Years , 48–49. 180 SHAKESPEARE QUARTERLy temporary lists of Hoghton’s tenants, however, he would have identified several more potential candidates for Hoghton’s servant. 33 Wilson also singularly failed to notice that one John Cottam whom he identified as a “business associate of the Hoghtons” signed his name with a mark, and the John Cottam from Ribchester was still alive in May 1618, nearly two years after John Cottom of Tarnacre had died. 34 The two men were clearly distinguished in Quarter Sessions records and lists of inquest jurors in the early 1600s. 35 Other claims that the Hoghton and Cottom families were on intimate terms are tenuous and unconvincing. Honigmann was correct in identifying John Cottom as a witness to an “indenture” of 1606 involving Sir Richard Hoghton, Felix Gerard, and Leonard Hoghton, but the document itself was nothing more than routine leasing of land to a husbandman in Walton-le-Dale where Cottom’s daughter then lived. And Cottom was one of several local witnesses, none of whose relationships to the various parties was stated. 36 That Richard Haughton of Grimsargh left a bequest in 1614 to Alexander’s nephew, Sir Richard Hoghton, whom Honigmann assumes was his half-brother, and to “William Walton, gent; and to his wife,” whom he took to be John Cottom’s in-laws is, at best, a dubious and distant connection: the Waltons were two of thirty individ - uals named in this will. Futhermore, the evidence collected for a chancery dispute of 1607 between William Walton and John Cottam—vividly described by Honigmann—portrays acrimonious personal and financial disagreements

33 Garstang Parish Registers , vol. 63 (Lancashire Parish Register Society, 1925) lists several John Cottoms/Cottams; William Farrer and J. Brownbill, eds., The Victoria History of the Coun - ties of : Lancashire , 8 vols. (London: Constable, 1901–14), 7:331, John Cottam of Bils - borrow; Lancashire Archives, QDD/9/m19. 34 Wilson, Secret Shakespeare , 63, 69; Lumby, Hoghton Deeds , nos. 520, 521. “John Cottam of Ribchester, gent,” was also deponent in a s urvey of the possessions of the Archbishop of Can - terbury in Lancashire in 1616; Lancashire Archives, PR50, 20 September 1616. 35 J. Paul Rylands ed., Lancashire Inquisitions, Stuart period, Part 1 , vol. 3 (Record Society of Lancashire and Cheshire, 1880), 22, 148, 240; James Tait, ed., Lancashire Quarter Sessions Records: Vol.1 Quarter Sessions Rolls, 1590 –1606 , n. s. 77 (Chetham Society, 1917), 128, 139, 147, 157, 187. 36 Honigmann, Lost Years , 46–47; Lancashire Archives, DDH/710, Houghton, Craven and Co, solicitors, “lease for 3 lives at 36s 2d a year: for £60”: “Sir Richard Hoghton of Hoghton, , Felix Garrard of Graise Ine, co. Middlesex, gent., and Leonard Hoghton of Rohyt well, co. york, gent., to John Cowper of Walton-in-Le-dall, husbandman—a messuage and tenement in Walton-in-Lea-dall” (11 April 1606). Felix Gerard was nephew of Sir Gilbert Gerard (Elizabeth’s first attorney general, later Master of the Rolls, vice- of the Duchy of Lancaster, and judge in the chancery court of the county palatine of Lancaster) and therefore a cousin of Richard Hoghton’s wife Catherine; he was also attorney in Duchy of Lancaster courts. Hoghton’s property in Walton-le-Dale was later managed by trustees for Catherine’s benefit as a result of a legal arrangement enforced by the Gerards. This latter arrangement was not witnessed by Cottom; Lancashire Archives, DDCL/916, Clifton of Lytham papers. SHAKESPEARE, CATHOLICISM, AND LANCASHIRE 181 between the in-laws. 37 Indeed, it is ironic that Honigmann ever sought to prove a connection between John and Alexander’s nephew Sir Richard Hoghton, who inherited the estates, since he acknowledged that Richard was “a notable hunter of recusants” in the 1590s who apprehended a seminary later executed at Lancaster in March 1601. Elizabeth knighted Richard Hoghton for his services, and he became MP for the county. 38 There is no reason to believe, therefore, that Cottom could have been the crucial personal conduit between Stratford and Alexander Hoghton’s Catholic household in Lancashire. Even more fundamentally, there is no evidence to support the final and widely held assumption that John Cottom was a Roman Catholic. Although his brother was a martyr, his sister-in-law was a recusant, and a grandson became a Catholic priest, none of these family relationships can be seen as proof of his own beliefs. 39 As Stevenson noted, “religious zeal pitted father against son, brother against brother, wife against husband, in a monotonously recurring pat - tern.” 40 Nowhere is this more evident than in the contrasting beliefs and actions of Henry VIII’s three children. The “responsa,” a series of autobiographical essays written by new recruits to the English College in Rome from the 1590s, also reveal that many of these recruits had heretical (i.e., Protestant) parents or siblings. 41 Even the Jesuit , the organizer of the mission to Eng - land in 1580–81, and , the Warwickshire traitor exe - cuted in 1584, had relatives who were staunchly Protestant. 42 Thomas Hes -

37 BL, MS Add. 32115, Breviates of Richmond wills (microfilm copy in Lancashire Archives), Will of Richard Haughton of Grimsargh, gent, 22 June 1614; TNA, DL4/52/30; Honigmann, Lost Years , 42–47. 38 Honigmann, Lost Years , 14; Mary Anne Everett Green, ed., Calendar of State Papers Domestic Series, of the Reign of Elizabeth, 1598 –1601 , vol. 5 (London: Longman HMSO, 1869), 8, 474 summarizes TNA, SP12/266/18, 14 January 1598; SP12/275/83.1, October 1600. On the priest’s fate, see , Memoirs of Missionary (Manchester, UK: Printed by Mark Wardle, 1803), 215. 39 His sister-in-law Jane was an indicted recusant, and various members of other Cottom and Cottam families elsewhere in Lancashire appear regularly in diocesan and Exchequer lists of recusants from the late 1590s; TNA, E377/11; E377/16; E377/20; E377/23; E377/24, Exchequer Pipe Office: Recusant Rolls (Pipe Office Series). John’s grandson, James Walton, entered the English College in Rome in 1627 and used the alias of Thomas Cottam; Godfrey Anstruther, The Seminary Priests: II. Early Stuarts 1603 –1659 (Great Wakering, UK: Mayhew- McCrimmon, 1975), 335–36; Anthony Kenny, ed., The Responsa Scholarum of the English Col - lege of Rome, Part II, 1622 –1685 (Catholic Record Society, 55 1963), 395–96. 40 Stevenson, Religious Frontier , 79. 41 Kenny, Responsa , passim. 42 Persons had two Protestant brothers, one of whom became a clergyman; see Victor Houliston, “Persons [Parsons], Robert (1546–1610),” in Oxford Dic- tionary of National Biography (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2004; online edition), http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/21474 (accessed 16 April 2016); Patrick Collinson, “Throckmorton, Job (1545–1601),” in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: 182 SHAKESPEARE QUARTERLy keth, mentioned in Alexander Hoghton’s will as his “loving brother-in-law,” had one brother who was questioned in relation to Edmund Campion’s mission and another who was later executed as a traitor. But Thomas himself was a close and trusted associate of Elizabeth’s chief advisers, the Cecils, and was always regarded as “sounde in religion and forwarde in service.” 43 Alexander Nowell, the Dean of St. Paul’s, who disputed with Edmund Campion in 1581 and twice toured Lancashire to preach against Catholicism, had an obstinately Catholic half-brother. 44 Gillow and the nineteenth-century Jesuit historian Henry Foley also maintain, although it not clear on what basis, that Thomas’s parents were Protestants, and accounts of Thomas Cottam himself claim that he was only converted to Catholicism in the 1570s by Thomas Pounde. 45 Like earlier schoolmasters, John Cottom did not stay long in Stratford. Some scholars, however, have sought to derive deeper Catholic meaning from this, arguing that the reason for his departure sometime between Michaelmas 1581 and 1582 was that he was dismissed as a result of suspicion or gossip about his relationship to a known Catholic martyr. Given the circumstances, this is feasi - ble, but there is nothing in the documentary record to substantiate it. There is also no foundation to Anthony Holden’s claim that there was “a secret Catholic bond” between Cottom and the Shakespeares, or to Wilson’s and Milward’s assertions that Cottom and the Shakespeares were linked in some way to the Jesuit mission of that year and to Campion’s journey to the north of England. As Parry, McCoog, and Davidson have demonstrated, there is no proof that Cam - pion visited William Catesby at nearby Lapworth in 1580. 46 Thomas Cottam may have been planning to visit Stratford in June 1580 to deliver a letter and tokens to Robert Debdale’s parents in Shottery, but Baldwin claims that this was obviously only arranged because he intended to visit to his

Oxford UP, 2004; online edition, 2015), http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/27391 (accessed 16 April 2016). 43 TNA, SP12/235/4 (ca. 1590), Calendar of State Papers Domestic, Elizabeth , reproduced in Thomas Ellison Gibson , Lydiate Hall and Its Associations (London: privately published, 1876), 250. Robert Cecil was named in his will. Thomas’s elder brother Bartholomew was suspected of harboring priests, and a younger brother, Richard, was executed as a traitor. David Brinson, “Hes - keth, Richard (1553–93),” in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2004; online edition, 2008), http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/13126 (accessed 16 April 2016). 44 Stanford Lehmberg, “Nowell, Alexander (ca. 1516/17–1602),” in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2004; online edition, 2008), http://www.oxford dnb.com/view/article/20378 (accessed 16 April 2016). 45 Gillow, Bibliographical Dictionary Vol. 1 , 574; Henry Foley, Records of the English Province of the (London: Manresa Press, 1875), 2:145. 46 Holden, William Shakespeare , 58; Wilson, Secret Shakespeare , 50; Milward, “Shakespeare’s Jesuit schoolmasters,” 61. For alternative views, see Parry, “New Evidence”; McCoog and David - son, “Edmund Campion and William Shakespeare,” 178–81. SHAKESPEARE, CATHOLICISM, AND LANCASHIRE 183 brother in Stratford. Whatever his motivation, it cannot be used as proof of John’s Catholicism. As Baldwin observed, John must have conformed to the new religion at the time of his appointment at Stratford because he was certified by the bishop, , in September 1579. 47 Such certification, as J. H. Pollen acknowledged, was “almost unquestionable proof of .” 48 Indeed, Bearman has recently stressed that Stratford Corporation supported a succession of zealous vicars who pursued an increasingly radical Protestant agenda from the 1570s. Cottom’s appointment could well have been part of this emergent Protestantism rather than a reflection of alleged Catholic sympathies of the town’s authorities as others have claimed. 49 “Given that the appointments of both the vicar and schoolmaster also required the consent of both Ambrose Dudley and the bishop of Worcester,” Bearman concluded that “it would seem very unlikely that is was ever the intention of the authorities that the school should be managed by anyone not of a similar outlook.” 50 In view of the lack of evidence for Cottom’s Catholicism in Stratford, Baldwin finally concluded that Cottom must have converted to Catholicism after he left the town. 51 Wilson indeed has claimed to have found evidence that John “continued to ‘receive into his charge youths to be educated’ as late as 1604, and to ‘send cate - chisms and books’ to ‘other gentlemen of Lancashire and certain priests,’” but this interpretation is fabricated by extracting quotations (in bold below) from an entry in the calendared Salisbury papers. 52 A letter to Mr. Thomas Lancaster written by F. H. wherein he gives him notice of a letter sent to him from the Lady Rogers, whether he can receive into his charge youths to be educated . He wishes him to send catechisms and books, that will be well sold, and specially wishes him to send hither the Old

47 Baldwin, Small Latine , 482–85. Cottom’s licence to teach at Stratford is recorded in Worcester Episcopal Register for 28 September 1579. 48 J. H. Pollen, “A Shakespeare Discovery II: His School-Master Afterwards a Jesuit,” The Month 641 (November 1917): 402, although he was referring to Hunt’s appointment in 1571. 49 As well as recent biographies, this view of a Catholic Stratford is supported by Patrick Collinson, “William Shakespeare’s Religious Inheritance and Environment,” in Elizabethan Essays (London: Hambledon Press, 1994), 219–52. 50 Robert Bearman, “The Early Reformation Experience in a Warwickshire Market Town: Stratford-upon-Avon, 1530–1580,” Midland History 32.1 (2007): 68–109, esp. 105 . For other criticisms of Stratford and the Shakespeares’ alleged Catholicism and links to the Jesuit mission, see Robert Bearman, “John Shakespeare: A Papist or Just Penniless?,” Shakespeare Quarterly 56.4 (2005): 411–33; Robert Bearman, “John Shakespeare’s ‘Spiritual Testament’: A Reap - praisal,” Shakespeare Survey 56 (2003): 184–202; Glyn Parry, “The Context of John Shake - speare’s ‘’ Re-examined,” The , Shakespeare Yearbook 16 (2007): 1–38; McCoog and Davidson, “Edmund Campion and William Shakespeare” and “Unreconciled,”; Parry, “New Evidence.” 51 Baldwin, Small Latine , 485. 52 Wilson, Secret Shakespeare, 65. 184 SHAKESPEARE QUARTERLy Testament, and to write his letters for the dispersing of these books to Mr. John Gage, Mr. Edward Gage, Mr. Richard Carye, Mr. John Cotten, and to other gentlemen of Lancashire and the North, and also to certain priests .53 This description is part of the calendared catalogue of “letters intercepted to Brussels, &c.” Thomas Lancaster, to whom the request about schooling was addressed, was the alias of Dr. Thomas Worthington, the President of Douay College. 54 The John Cotten referred to was almost certainly John Cotton, a member of a prominent Catholic family in London and Hampshire who was regularly reported as supporting the Catholic cause; he was a relative of the Jesuit Robert Southwell and probably the John Cotton who had been arrested with Campion a quarter of a century earlier. The Gages and Caryes were also well- known recusants from London and areas, also linked to Southwell. Another letter, written in December 1603 to the same Thomas Lancaster, com - mended “the family of the Cottons” for helping him after his arrival in London. 55 This John Cotten, therefore, was an intended recipient of these books, not the distributor, and totally unconnected in any way to John Cottom of Lancashire. The most frequently cited proof that John Cottom was a recusant Catholic, however, is Gillow’s statement that he and his wife Catherine and “their only child Priscilla” “frequently appear in the Recusant Rolls,” the Exchequer’s annual lists of recusants compiled from the early 1590s that also recorded leases of land from recusants and fines imposed on them. 56 Gillow’s statement, however, is incorrect and not just because, as Honigmann discovered, Cottom had not one but three daughters: Priscilla, Mary, and Martha. 57 More important, although a search of the lengthy annual Recusant Rolls for Lancashire between 1592 and 1616 identified several Cottoms elsewhere in Lancashire, neither John nor his wife and daughters were ever listed as recusants. 58 Nor are they named in the

53 M. S. Giuseppi, ed., Calendar of the Manuscripts of the Most Hon. Marquess of Salisbury Part XVI (London: HMSO, 1933), 33 (30 January 1603/4). The letter is calendared with others addressed to Dr. Thomas Worthington. 54 TNA, SP14/36/8, 7 September 1608, quoted in Mary Anne Everett Green, ed., Calendar of State Papers Domestic Series, James I 1603 –1610 (London: HMSO, 1857), 455. 55 , Edmund Campion: A Biography (London: Williams and Norgate, 1867), 227; Christopher Devlin, The Life of Robert Southwell, Poet and Martyr (London: Farrar, Straus, and Cudahy 1956), 11–14, 28; Dom Bede Camm, Forgotten Shrines (London: MacDonald and Evans, 1910), 87–90; Salisbury Papers XVI , 33–34, 1 December 1603. John Klause, Shakespeare, the and the Jesuit (Cranbury, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson UP and Associated UP, 2008), 90–91. 56 Gillow, Bibliographical Dictionary, Vol. 1 , 574. 57 Honigmann, Lost Years , 42–43; TNA, DL4/52/30 (5 James I), Cottam vs. Walton , Duchy of Lancaster: Court of Duchy Chamber, evidence of Thomas Parkinson of Tarnacre who iden - tified Priscilla, Mary, Martha, and their husbands. 58 TNA, E377/1 (Mich. 1592–Mich. 1593)–E377/24 (Mich. 1616–Mich. 1617) Excheq - uer Recusant Rolls (Pipe Office Series) 24 rolls. The first four rolls have been transcribed: SHAKESPEARE, CATHOLICISM, AND LANCASHIRE 185 correction books among the even more numerous recusants, noncommunicants, and malefactors whom the clergy and churchwardens presented to the diocese and whose names were recorded for each parish. In 1604 eighty-nine individuals were identified in St. Michaels (forty-one of them in the small township of Tar - nacre alone), including members of many prominent local families. But no member of the Cottom family was identified. A further fifty-nine were listed in 1605 and over eighty in 1610. 59 Nor is John named among the many known or suspected Catholics in the State Papers from the 1570s or in the personal papers of Lord Burghley and his son. 60 Gillow may have confused the Tarnacre family with a John Cottom or Cottam of Kirkland in the neighboring parish of Garstang, possibly the younger man to whom Honigmann referred. 61 This man’s wife was called Katherine, and they both appear regularly in the diocesan returns and Recusant Rolls for that parish in the 1600s. 62 Had John Cottom of Tarnacre been a Catholic recusant he is hardly likely to have escaped the attention of the assiduous parish officials in St. Michaels because he lived “juxta St Mighells church.” From 1575 until 1598, the lay rector was Robert Worsley, keeper of the Fleet prison in Manchester where trouble - some Catholics were imprisoned; after 1598 the rectory was farmed by William Cooke, who coincidentally was Sir Thomas Lucy’s grandson-in-law. 63 Adam

Muriel M. C. Calthrop, ed., Recusant Roll No. 1, 1592 –1593 , vol. 18 (Catholic Record Society, 1916); Dom Hugh Bowler, Recusant Roll no. 2 1593 –1594 , vol. 57 (Catholic Record Society, 1965); Dom Hugh Bowler, Recusant Roll no 3, 1594 –1595 and Recusant Roll no 4, 1595 –1596 , vol. 61 (Catholic Record Society, 1970). For earlier recusants in , see Dom Hugh Bowler, Recusants in the Exchequer Pipe Rolls, 1581 –1592 , ed. Timothy J. McCann, vol. 71 (Catholic Record Society, 1986). 59 Cheshire Archives, Diocesan Correction Books, EDV 1/12a, Sept/Oct 1598; EDV 1/12b, October 1601; EDV/1/13, October 1604; EDV1/14, Oct–Feb 1605–6; EDV 1/15, Oct/Nov 1608; EDV 1/16, Oct 1611. Another list of recusants in St. Michael’s submitted to the Consistory Court in October 1610 is reproduced in full in Henry Fishwick, The History of the Parish of St Michaels-on-Wyre in the County of Lancaster , n. s. 25 (Manchester, UK: Chetham Society, 1891), 12–15. In 1610 Wolfenden made a separate return of the recusants in the household of Henry Butler; see Fishwick, History of the Parish of St Michaels-on-Wyre , 151–53; Honigmann, Lost Years , 51. This did not include Henry himself. 60 Most of the State Papers listing recusants in Lancashire were reproduced in Gibson , Lydi - ate Hall . See also “A Book of Recusants,” in Miscellanea , vol. 53 (Catholic Record Society, 1961), transcribed from the Cecil papers in the British Library. 61 Honigmann, Lost Years , 48–49. 62 Cheshire Archives, EDV/1/13, Correction book October 1604; Chester Diocese Consis - tory Court, List of Recusants in Garstang, 1610, submitted by the vicar George Mitton, EDC5; TNA, E377/19, E377/23. 63 Worsley was granted the rectory at the request of Henry Carey, Hunsdon and sup - ported by the Vicar of Rochdale; Fishwick, St Michaels , 47; Revd F. R. Raines, The Vicars of Rochdale Part I , ed. Henry H. Howorth, n. s. 1 (Manchester, UK: Chetham Society, 1883), 52. For Worsley, see J. Stanley Leatherbarrow, The Lancashire Elizabethan Recusants , n. s. 110 186 SHAKESPEARE QUARTERLy Wolfenden, the vicar appointed by the Crown, had previously been curate at Wigan under Edward Fleetwood, Lancashire’s most prominent clerical anti- papist and a close relative of William Fleetwood, recorder of London. 64 There was even a particularly zealous and literate government informer resident in the St. Michaels and Garstang area in October 1595 (soon after John Cottom returned to the district) who supplied names of recusant gentlewomen in the parish and recommended courses of action to deal with them. 65 Far from being named as a recusant, Cottom is identified in the Recusant Rolls as one of a select number of individuals to whom the Exchequer granted favorable leases of land confiscated from recusants. 66 The Recusant Roll of December 1596 records his lease of properties that the commissioners had seized in lieu of fines from his widowed sister-in-law, Jane Cottam, who had inherited property from her late husband James in 1594. 67 It is scarcely credible that the brother of a Catholic martyr and brother-in-law of a convicted recusant would have been so privileged had the Exchequer’s officials harbored any suspi - cions about him. Not only was it a condition “that the lessee (and his assigns) should conform to the established religion,” but also many lessees were drawn from the loyal and trusted ranks of the queen’s household, government officers (particularly those in the Exchequer itself), London-based lawyers and finan - ciers, and individuals who enjoyed the support of a patron in government. 68

(Chetham Society, 1947), 72–86, esp. 73. For Cooke’s later involvement, see TNA, E134/5Jas1/Mich16, 1607–8, Exchequer: King’s Remembrancer: Depositions taken by Com - mission. Cooke followed his father as Clerk of Liveries in the Court of Wards from 1589 and was related to Burghley. 64 Within a year of his appointment, he was being reported for failing to wear the . J. S. Purvis, Tudor Parish Documents of the Diocese of York (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1948), 157–58; BL, MS 32115, Will of Adam Wolfenden vicar of St. Michaels, 17 March 1628, in which he left money to his cousin Joshua Andrew; Victoria History Lancaster , 7:265n62. 65 Lancashire Archives, DDKE Kenyon Papers, Manuscript Memo Book (this appears to be a contemporary copy rather than the original letter), reproduced in The Manuscripts of Lord Kenyon , 14th Report, Appendix Part IV (London: Historical Manuscripts Commission, 1894), 584–86. 66 For a detailed explanation of the process and the records, see by Bowler, Recusant Roll no. 2, vii–cxiv, esp. lxx–lxxx. 67 BL, MS Add. 32115, Will of James Cottam, 1594. Full details of proceedings against Jane and Cottom’s subsequent lease of her lands by the Crown are recorded in TNA, E377/5 E377/6. His lease was two-thirds of the seized lands. She had first been indicted in 1592–93 while she was still married to James, but it was highly unusual for wives to be fined. Like most women in the Rolls, she was pursued as a widow because the properties she inherited from him in July 1594 gave her an independent income, estimated in 1595 to be worth circa £20 per annum; “A Book of Recusants” 1582–95, 105. Jane was also reported in 1599–1600 on lands in Sowerby (see TNA, E377/8) and as wife of George Browne, gent, in 1604 (see E377/14) and in diocesan returns as late as 1610. 68 Bowler, Recusant Roll no. 2 , lxxv. Descriptions of some lessees are given in the Rolls themselves; details of others’ backgrounds in the early 1590s have been obtained from a variety of sources. SHAKESPEARE, CATHOLICISM, AND LANCASHIRE 187 All this suggests that John must have been known to, and trusted by, the authorities. John’s immediate family also provides further, albeit speculative, evidence of his Protestantism. His wife Catherine hailed from Burtwood [Brentwood] in Essex, a town with strong Protestant sympathies. 69 Cottom’s daughters—Martha, Mary, and Priscilla—were named after women who championed the furtherance of Christ’s gospel. The adoption of such names was increasingly pop - ular among Protestants following Thomas Cartwright’s recommendation in 1565 that children should be named after biblical figures who were “godly and virtu - ous.”70 Cartwright himself baptized two of his own daughters Martha and Mary, the sisters who had acknowledged Christ’s gospel and welcomed him into their home. Both names were widely adopted in staunchly Protestant Pennine settle - ments from the late sixteenth century. Although less common, the name Priscilla first appears in Lancashire records from the 1580s, primarily in the east of the county. 71 For Protestants, the symbolic significance of Priscilla and her hus - band Aquila was that, after having been expelled from Rome for their beliefs, they became traveling companions of Paul. Although only “lay persons,” “a simple man & his wife,” they had invited Apollo, “a mightye learned man in the scriptures,” into their home and “expounded vnto him the way of God more perfectlye.”72 It may be significant that the radical Protestant separatist Robert Browne cited the couple to support his view that “neyther the word in the preachers mouth, nor the Sacraments can make an outwarde Church” and that God’s church existed where but “ two or three are gathered together in the name of Christ .” 73

69 Patrick Collinson, The Elizabeth Puritan Movement (London: Cape, 1967), 171, 174, 374. 70 Quoted in Stephen Wilson, The Means of Naming: A Social and Cultural History of Per - sonal Naming in Western Europe (London: UCL Press, 1998), 194–97, esp. 194. Cartwright had strong connections with the Earl of Leicester and later preached in Stratford. 71 George Redmonds, Christian Names in Local and Family History (London: National Archives, 2004), 144–45. This is confirmed by a survey of Lancashire parish registers from late sixteenth century undertaken by Neil Hudson. 72 Thomas Becon, The Gouernaunce of Vertue (London, 1566), 57; and James Pilkington, Aggeus and Abdias Prophetes, the one corrected, the other newly added, and both at large declared (London 1562), sig. Miiiv. See also Rudolf Gwalther, An hundred, threescore and fiftene homelyes or Sermons, vppon the Actes of the Apostles (1572 translation), pp. 677–81, 697–703, esp. 701; and Thomas Bentley, The sixt lampe of virginitie, usually referred to as The Monument of Matrones ([London],1582), 88–89, 214–15. 73 Robert Browne, An ansvvere to Master CartWright his letter for ioyning with the English Churches: whereunto the true copie of his sayde letter is annexed (London,1585), 13. The Jesuits discovered the tomb of St. Priscilla in Rome in 1578. Gaspar de Loarte (“newly translated into Englishe. by I. S.”), The Exercise of a Christian Life (1579), 222. Anthony Munday, the virulently anti-Catholic author and playwright (who named his daughter Priscilla), described it disparag - ingly in The English Romayne lyfe Discouering (London,1582). This almost certainly postdates Priscilla Cottom’s birth. 188 SHAKESPEARE QUARTERLy This portrayal of John as a supporter of the new Protestant regime sits uneasily with Baldwin’s deduction that he had probably committed a “certain sin” or crime in the “meat or fish market” in London in early 1578. 74 Baldwin had relied on Foley for his account of this alleged incident, but Foley’s work was no more than a loose, often inaccurate paraphrasing of William Allen’s Briefe Historie of the Glorious Martyrdom of Twelve Reverend Priests (1582). Allen’s account, based on an eyewitness account in the crowd gathered to watch Thomas’s execution on 30 May 1582, was clearly intended to quash an accusation that Thomas had engaged in “wicked and leude behaviour” four years earlier: In the meane time many wordes and sentences were vttered by M. Cottam . And a Minister amo ngst other thinges, willed him to confesse his wicked and leude behaviour which he had committed in fish-streat about foure yeres since. Cottam. What do you meane? Sherife. He would haue you to confesse the filthe you committed in fish-streat. Cottam. O blessed Iesv, thy name be praised, is this now laid here to my charg? The Minister said, no we do not charge you with it but would haue you to descharg you thereof if there be any such thing. An other Minister answered, no, it was not he but his brother. Cottam . you shal here, you accuse me for filthe committed about foure yeres since in fish streat and I was not in London this seuen yeres, and if I had done any such thing, what do you meane to lay it to my charg. With that ij or iij of the m said that it was not he but his brother. 75

Baldwin then suggested two reasons why John could have been the perpe - trator of this alleged act, whatever it was. First, Thomas “was out of England by May, 1575, at least seven years before, as he himself says.” Second, Stratford cor - poration records of 1579 describe John as “late of London.” 76 The entire pas - sage, however, is problematic for several reasons. First, contrary to Thomas’s claim that he had been out of the country for seven years, Allen’s college records confirm that he had in fact been in England four years earlier at the time the alleged behavior took place. Douay College diaries record that Thomas first sought admission to the college not in 1575 as Baldwin and Thomas himself claimed but in May 1577. More important, on

74 Baldwin, Small Latine , 1:483–84. Honigmann, Lost Years , 41; Foley, English Province , 2:172. 75 William Allen, A Briefe Historie of the Glorious Martyrdom of Twelve Reverend Priests (Douay, 1582), 122; republished with an editorial by J. H. Pollen (London: Burns and Oates, 1908). In this he explains how the original text was later “abbreviated, remodelled and mod - ernised” as well as enlarged; vii–xi, esp. vii. This was the case with Foley’s account, which also introduced a few errors. The sources used by Allen are not specified, and no other account of the execution refers to this exchange. 76 Baldwin, Small Latine , 483–84. SHAKESPEARE, CATHOLICISM, AND LANCASHIRE 189 22 January 1578 he traveled back to England with the college steward, Thomas Low [“Lous”] from London [“Londinensis”], and stayed for nearly four months, only returning to the college (now at Rheims) on 14 May 1578. A subsequent enigmatic entry refers to him returning again to the college in late June of 1578 with three other men, two of whom returned to England almost immediately. 77 Given the reference to “Londinensis” in the Douay diary, in all probability Thomas stayed in London for at least part of his visit in early 1578. It is diffi - cult to imagine that he did not visit the capital where he had previously lived and where his mentor, Thomas Pounde, resided and was frequently imprisoned. Significantly, when Thomas Cottam returned to England again in June 1580 he traveled directly to London, visited an old friend in prison, and stayed there until he surrendered to the authorities in “The Star,” an inn in New Fish Street, the same street on which the alleged incident had taken place four years earlier. None of this can be taken as proof that Thomas Cottam was indeed guilty of the “wicked and leude behaviour,” but it undermines his alibi that he could not have been because he was out of the country. Second, whether or not the unnamed brother was indeed John, what is sig - nificant is that the leading English Catholic seminarian of the time portrayed the unnamed brother in an entirely negative light, fundamentally and irretriev - ably disassociating Thomas from the “filthe” and “wicked and leude behaviour.” Allen was not necessarily implying by these words that the behavior was simply lascivious or immoral. The words had contemporary religious meanings and were deployed as terms of abuse by both Catholic and Protestant protagonists to vilify those who held heretical views—that is, evil [wicked] and ignorant [leude] beliefs, contrary to what they themselves held to be the divine teaching and correct dogma. Interestingly, if Thomas’s appearance had led some in the crowd to confuse him with his unnamed brother, then other Protestant minis - ters were quick to correct this misimpression, which suggests their possible per - sonal acquaintance with the brother in question and his views. Indeed, Foley’s text identified a Martin Field [John Field]—a prominent radical Protestant

77 Thomas Francis Knox, ed., The First and Second Diaries of the English College, Douay (London: D. Nutt, 1878), 121, 132, 142: “ 22 Jan 1577/8 die in Angliam profecti sunt D. Cottamus diaconus et Thomas Lous Londinensis”; “14 May 1578 regressus est ad nos ex Anglia Mr Cottamus diaconus, quicum adventarunt ab Oxonio studiosi alii quinque et in communibus nobiscum recepi sunt”; “In festo S. Joannis Baptistae revertebatur D. Cottamus, quicum et alii viri tres advenerunt, quorum duo iterum in Angliam reversi sunt.” Foley, English Province , 2:145, refers to Cottam’s early character as “not of the most praiseworthy kind” before he was converted by Thomas Pounde. Dom Bede Camm, Lives of the English Martyrs , 2 vols. (London: Long - mans, Green, 1914), 2:537–41 quotes a letter from Cottam to Pounde written in 1575 in which he states that he “had already begun to know vice” and a report from the Father General in Rome in 1580 who noted that, although Cottam had been dismissed because he was ill, he was “moreover, not a man of great, or perhaps even, of average talents.” 190 SHAKESPEARE QUARTERLy campaigner and contemporary of John Cottom at Oxford who was patronized by the of Leicester and Warwick—as one of the ministers who confirmed the offender as Thomas’s brother, although he gave no source for this. 78

There is still much we do not know, and probably never will know, about John Cottom. We do not know where he went after leaving Brasenose, how or why he came to Stratford, or why he left. 79 Nor do we know his whereabouts after leaving Stratford until his name appears in Lancashire records in the mid- 1590s. This lack of information is not unusual. The partial nature and frag - mentary survival of sources mean that details about the lives of relatively obscure individuals like Cottom remain unknown and probably unknowable. However, there is sufficient evidence to disprove the argument that he provided the crucial link between Stratford and Lancashire, which enabled a young Shakespeare to stay with the Hoghtons in 1580–81. Neither John nor his family were neighbors and tenants of the Hoghtons in Dilworth, nor can they be identified as close personal or business associates. Not only were John’s par - ents reputedly Protestants, but also they had been long dead by 1581. So, they could not have suggested John’s promising Stratford pupil to Alexander Hoghton. John did not acquire land in Tarnacre at that time from his father; he inherited after the death of his brother James in 1594. Furthermore, at no stage in his life is there any evidence that John was a man whose known affiliations were Roman Catholic. Contrary to Gillow’s assertion, John and his family were not named as recusants in the Recusant Rolls; rather, these documents provide evidence of his favored treatment by the Crown. His daughters’ names are also potentially indicative of Protestant beliefs. Moreover, there is nothing to con - firm that he was guilty of “wicked and leude behaviour” in London in 1578. Rather than being symptomatic of Stratford authorities’ Catholic sympathies, therefore, Cottom’s appointment as schoolmaster is more likely to have been part of an increasingly radical Protestant agenda, which the reformist vicar Henry Heycroft had been pursuing with the Corporation’s approbation throughout the 1570s. As David Ellis has demonstrated, in their attempt to say something new, biographers of Shakespeare have employed strategies of greater or lesser valid - ity to compensate for the dearth of evidence. Several of these—“the argument from absence,” “minding your language,” and especially the “argument from prox - imity: joining up the dots”—are clearly evident in the literature that claims

78 Patrick Collinson, “Field [Feilde], John (1544/45?–88),” in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2004; online edition, 2008), www.oxforddnb.com/view/arti cle/9248 (accessed 13 November 2016); Foley, English Province , 2:172. 79 But see note to figure 1 for a possibility. SHAKESPEARE, CATHOLICISM, AND LANCASHIRE 191 Shakespeare stayed in Lancashire during his “lost years.” 80 Shakespeare scholars have also uncritically accepted the work of nineteenth-century writers, particu - larly Gillow, whose “interpretation of history was always coloured by his own proud Catholicism.” He was criticized at the time for lack of attention to detail, for imprecision, and for repeating information from other sources without ver - ification. His assertion that Cottom and his family were recusants would seem to reflect another trait: “He was inclined on occasion to make assumptions where the facts were wanting.” 81 This examination of original sources, therefore, has confirmed Schoen - baum’s appraisal that the argument for Shakespeare’s having spent time as a young man in Lancashire was one of those “tendentious constructs,” which “crumbles upon close inspection.” 82 It has also challenged long-held assump - tions about John Cottom’s faith and the religious and educational environment in Stratford that nurtured the young Shakespeare.

80 Eloquently and effectively exposed in David Ellis, That Man Shakespeare (Robertsbridge: Helm Information, 2005), ch. 8, esp. 273–83, 298–302 and at more length in The Truth about William Shakespeare: Fact, Fiction and Modern Biographies (Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP, 2012) . 81 Reviews of Gillow’s later volumes by T. G. Law, English Historical Review , 11.41 (Jan. 1896): 181–84; 18.71 (July, 1903): 562–65. Quotations from J. F. X. Bevan, “Gillow, Joseph (1850–1921)” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2004), http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/41282 (accessed 4 May 2016). For further reserva - tions about Gillow, see William Shannon and Michael Winstanley, “Lord Burghley’s Map of Lancashire Revisited: c.1576–1590,” Imago Mundi 59.1 (2007): 24–42. 82 S. Schoenbaum, William Shakespeare: A Compact Documentary Life (1977; Oxford: Oxford UP, 1987), 114.