Geographical distribution of English Catholic Recusancy, 1715–20.
In the history of England and Wales, recusancy was the state of those who refused to attend Anglican services. The individuals were known as "recusants".[1] The term, which derives ultimately from the Latin recusare (to refuse or make an objection),[2] was first used to refer to those who remained within the Roman Catholic Church and did not attend services of the Church of England, with a 1593 statute determining the penalties against "Popish recusants".[3]
The "Recusancy Acts", which began during the reign of Elizabeth I and which were repealed in 1650,[4] imposed a number of punishments on those who did not participate in Anglican religious activity, including fines, property confiscation, and imprisonment.[5] Despite their repeal, restrictions against Roman Catholics were still in place until full Catholic Emancipation in 1829.[6] In some cases those adhering to Catholicism faced capital punishment,[7] and a number of English and Welsh Catholics executed in the 16th and 17th centuries have been canonised by the Catholic Church as Christian martyrs (see Catholic martyrs of the English Reformation).[8]
After the English Reformation and establishment of the Church of England, from the 16th to the 19th century those guilty of such Nonconformity, termed "recusants", were subject to civil penalties and sometimes, especially in the earlier part of that period, to criminal penalties. Catholics formed a large proportion of recusants, and were those to whom the term initially was applied. Non-Catholic groups composed of Reformed Christians or Protestants who dissented from the Church of England were, later, also labeled "recusants". The recusancy laws were in force from the reign of Elizabeth I to that of George III, though they were not always enforced with equal intensity.
The first statute to address sectarian dissent from England's official religion was issued in 1593 under Elizabeth I and specifically targeted Catholics, under the title "An Act for restraining Popish recusants". It defined "Popish recusants" as those "convicted for not repairing to some Church, Chapel, or usual place of Common Prayer to hear Divine Service there, but forbearing the same contrary to the tenor of the laws and statutes heretofore made and provided in that behalf." Other acts also targeted Catholic recusants, including statutes passed under James I and Charles I, as well as laws defining other offences deemed to be acts of recusancy. Recusants were subject to various civil disabilities and penalties under English penal laws, most of which were repealed during the Regency and reign of George IV (1811–30). The Nuttall Encyclopædia notes that Dissenters were largely forgiven by the Act of Toleration under William III, while Catholics "were not entirely emancipated till 1829".[9]
Early recusants included Protestant dissenters, whose confessions derived from the Calvinistic Reformers or Radical Reformers. With the growth of these latter groups after the Restoration of Charles II, they were distinguished from Catholic recusants by the use of the terms "nonconformist" or "dissenter".[citation needed]
Despite being a time of great attrition for the religion in England before Catholic Emancipation in the 19th century, the recusant period reaped an extensive harvest of saints and martyrs. Among the recusants were some high profile aristocratic supporters, such as the Howards and for a time the Plantagenet descended Beauforts, amongst others. This patronage ensured that an organic and rooted English base continued to inform the country's Catholicism, despite later immigration by Irish and Poles.
In the English-speaking world, the Douay-Rheims Bible—translated from the Latin Vulgate by expatriate recusants in Rheims, France in 1582 (New Testament) and in Douai, France in 1609 (Old Testament)—which was revised by Bishop Richard Challoner in 1749-1752 (the 1750 revision is that which is printed today), was, until the prompting for "new translations from the original languages" given by Pope Pius XII in the 1942 encyclical letter Divino afflante spiritu and the Second Vatican Council, the translation used by most Catholics (after Divino afflante spiritu, translations multiplied in the Catholic world, just as they multiplied in the Protestant world around the same time beginning with the Revised Standard Version, with various other translations being used around the world for English-language liturgies, ranging from the New American Bible, the Jerusalem Bible, the Revised Standard Version Second Catholic Edition, and the upcoming English Standard Version Catholic lectionary). The Douay-Rheims Challoner Bible is still often preferred by more conservative or Traditionalist Catholics, and holds a status in the Catholic world equivalent to that held by the Authorized King James Version in the Protestant world.[citation needed]
As far as the term is used in the present day, "recusant" applies to the descendants of continuously Catholic British gentry and peerage families. Catholicism remained the majority religion in various pockets, notably in parts of Lancashire and Cumbria, and, in Scotland, in parts of the Highlands and the southern Hebrides (i.e. South Uist, Benbecula, Eriskay, Barra and Vatersay).
The recusant Howard family, also known as Fitzalan-Howard, the Dukes of Norfolk, is the most prominent Catholic family in England. Recusancy has been historically focused in Northern England. The Acton (also known as Dalberg-Acton and Lyon-Dalberg-Acton) family is a well-known recusant family.
Other recusant families, or branches thereof, include(d) Ainscough, Anne (of Frickley), Arden (of Longcroft), Arundell, Bedingfeld, Berkeley (of Spetchley), Blount, Blundell, Clifford (of Chudleigh; since 1673), Coates, Constable, Constable-Maxwell, Errington, Eyre, Eyston, Fairfax (of Gilling), Feilding, Fenwick, Fermor (of Tusmore), Fitzherbert (of Swynnerton), Fitzherbert-Brockholes, Fortescue-Turville, Gerard (of Bryn), Gillibrand, Gillow, Glover, Hesketh, Holden, Holman, Hornyold, Huddleston, Jerningham, de Lisle, Mattingly, Payne, Petre, Perkins (of Ufton Court), Riddell, Scarisbrick, Scrope (of Bolton), Smythe, Stonor, Stourton, Talbot, Tempest (of Broughton), Throckmorton, Towneley, de Trafford, Tichbourne, Trappes-Lomax (Trappes of Nidd), Tresham (of Northamptonshire), Vavasour (of Hazlewood), Ward, Waterton (of Walton), Weld, and Weld-Blundell.
The will of a William Latewise who died in 1603 in Goosnargh – part of the parish of Kirkham – which states he was "of Culcheth in the parish of Winwick". One of those preparing his inventory in 1608 was John Sterrope, possibly his son-in-law. Around this time the area around Goosnargh was home to several Catholic families – Keighley, Beesley, Hesketh, Marsden, and Threlfall. Records show that various members of the Latewysse (of Goosnargh) family were fined for recusancy. In Wales, the few recusant families include the Mostyns (of Mostyn), the Herberts (of Treowen), the Morgans (of Llantarnam) and, most notably, the Vaughan family (of Courtfield, near Ross-on-Wye; the family of Cardinal Vaughan).[citation needed]
Since the 18th century, particularly during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, some wealthy or ennobled families embraced Catholicism, including branches of the Asquith, Bellingham (Ireland), Bowyer (England), Calvert (Maryland), Cary-Elwes/Elwes (since 1872), Feilding (England), Forbes (Ireland), Leslie (Ireland), Fraser (Scotland), Lane-Fox, Meynell, Noel (Gainsborough), Ashton Case (or Ashton-Case; England), Radcliffe (England), Monckton, Pakenham (Ireland), Pontifex (England), Crichton-Stuart (Scotland) and Strickland (Counts of Catena, Malta)[10] families. They provided a resurgent English Roman Catholic Church with much-needed financial support. Conversely, some old recusant families, such as the earls of Shrewsbury, the viscounts Gage, and the Giffards of Chillington, embraced Anglicanism.[citation needed]
The principal growth in the numbers of Catholics in modern Britain has been through immigration. In the past Catholic immigrants were Europeans, most notably Irish, and, later in the 20th century, from Poland and Lithuania. There was a steady flow of Anglican lay people and clergy into the Roman Catholic Church over the last decade of the 20th century and, to a lesser degree, since then. Clerical converts include Monsignor Graham Leonard (former Anglican Bishop of London); Alan Hopes (a present-day Auxiliary Bishop of Westminster) and several hundred priests who were received into the Church, mostly from the Church of England.
Katharine, Duchess of Kent; her son and grandson, Lord Nicholas Windsor and Edward Windsor, Lord Downpatrick, respectively, both of whose wives are Catholic, and her granddaughter, Lady Marina-Charlotte Windsor, as well as politicians such as Baroness Masham of Ilton and Ann Widdecombe, and, most recently, former Prime Minister Tony Blair, whose wife and children are Catholic, are prominent among laypeople who have converted.
Several prominent former and or current newspaper editors and publishers have become Catholics as well – Charles Moore (The Daily Telegraph), John Wilkins and Clifford Longley (The Tablet) and Dr William Oddie (The Catholic Herald).
The term "recusant" is also used in a more general context to refer to non-compliance with a perceived innovation of questionable orthodoxy, which had become the status quo. Some traditional Catholics have used the term following Vatican II, particularly in defence of the Latin mass and sacred tradition.[11]
William Shakespeare was born to a Catholic recusant family. His parents were raised in a time when Catholicism was the faith of England. Shakespeare's mother, Mary Arden, descended from a staunch Catholic family, and his father, John Shakespeare, was listed as a Catholic recusant.[12]
A notable English Roman Catholic, possibly a convert,[13] was composer William Byrd. Some of Byrd's most popular motets were actually written as a type of correspondence to a friend and fellow composer, Philippe de Monte. De Monte wrote his own motets in response, such as the "Super Flumina Babylonis". These correspondence motets often featured themes of oppression or the hope of deliverance.
The Jacobean poet John Donne was another notable Englishman who was born into a recusant Catholic family.[14] He later, however, wrote two anti-Catholic polemics and, at the behest of King James I of England, was ordained into the Church of England.
Guy Fawkes, an English soldier, along with other recusants or converts, including, among others, Sir Robert Catesby, Christopher Wright, John Wright and Thomas Percy, was arrested and charged with attempting to blow up Parliament on 5 November 1605. The plot was uncovered and most of the plotters were tried and executed. Sir Thomas More was a particularly notable English recusant and martyr from the 16th century who was later canonised and has descendants to the present day (through descent from his son John More of Barnborough) in the families of Eyston and Waterton.[citation needed] Other recusants and martyrs are represented in the Forty Martyrs of England and Wales and amongst the Jacobites, such as the Earls of Derwentwater, particularly those ennobled in the Jacobite Peerage.[citation needed]
The phenomenon of recusancy is primarily applied to English, Scottish and Welsh Roman Catholics, but there were other instances in Europe. The native Irish, for example, while subject to the British crown, were overwhelmingly opposed to the Anglican and dissenting churches, and almost all remained Roman Catholic, suffering the same penalties as recusants in Great Britain, albeit exacerbated by various ethnic and other issues.[15]
The recusancy in Scandinavia did not survive until freedom of religion was re-established there in the 1800s, with almost all Roman Catholics, throughout the 20th century, being converts or immigrants from other countries.[citation needed]
- ^ New Catholic Encyclopedia section on 'recusants'
- ^ Recuse at Online Etymology Dictionary
- ^ Collins, William Edward (2008). The English Reformation and Its Consequences. BiblioLife. p. 256. ISBN 978-0-559-75417-3.
- ^ Spurr, John (1998). English Puritanism, 1603–1689. Palgrave Macmillan. p. 117. ISBN 978-0-333-60189-1.
- ^ See for example the text of the Act of Uniformity 1559
- ^ Wood, Rev. James. The Nutall Encyclopædia, London, 1920, p. 537
- ^ O'Malley, John W. et al (2001). Early modern Catholicism: Essays in Honour of John W. O'Malley, S.J.. University of Toronto Press. p. 149. ISBN 978-0-8020-8417-0.
- ^ Alban Butler; David Hugh Farmer (1996). Butler's Lives of the Saints: May. Burns & Oates. p. 22. ISBN 0-86012-254-9.
- ^ Wood, Rev. James. The Nutall Encyclopædia, London, 1920 p. 537
- ^ The Stricklands of Sizergh were a Catholic family from at least the reign of James I and probably earlier. The Maltese title of Count della Catena was acquired in 1882 from a Maltese marriage
- ^ See second paragraph from bottom of Society of St Pius X website
- ^ [1]
- ^ John Harley. "New Light on William Byrd", Music and Letters, p. 79 (1998), 475–88
- ^ Schama, Simon (2009-05-26). "Simon Schama's John Donne". BBC2. http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbctwo. Retrieved 2009-06-18.
- ^ Burton, Edwin, Edward D'Alton, and Jarvis Kelley: 1911 Catholic Encyclopedia, Penal Laws III: Ireland.
