Good morning, everybody, and I'm here, I suppose, well, because I was very generously invited,
but I'm also here to provide a sort of historian's eye view.
And by way of sort of disclaimers and caveats, I don't know anything about maps.
I can't read them. I'm completely reliant on the sat nav when I drive and the little blue dots on my phone.
But as Peter was speaking just then, you know, I learnt a lot in that in that paper.
The context that we're thinking about together today rests a lot on words with double meanings.
And I was thinking, Peaches, you're speaking about the double meanings around the word house.
And when someone in the 16th century refers to a house, they're referring not only to their seat,
their residence or one of their seats in residences, they're also referring to their family.
So, you know, the House of Sheldon is western, but it's also his his forebears.
So. So I think it's instructive just to hold that in our minds.
So there they lack the credentials of Lancashire or Yorkshire as a Catholic stronghold,
the Midlands were home to several prominent Catholic families in the 16th and 17th centuries.
Accounts of the Gunpowder Plot tend to bury in biographical notes and conspiracy theories.
The fact that the plot is, with the exception of Ambrose Rookwood,
were kinsmen who hails from the Midlands and who had cut their teeth in an earlier thwarted rebellion.
That's what the Earl of Essex in. What came to a head on the 5th of November six five was, in essence, a monster born of Elizabethan problems,
albeit unleashed by Jacobean politicking that there were not the wild, ungovernable north.
The Midlands then may be said to have had a certain notoriety.
It was, after all, in the Midland County of Northamptonshire that Mary Queen of Scots was imprisoned at Fotheringham.
And if a conspiracy can have a specific geographical locus,
we can locate the Throckmorton and Babington plots two of the blockbuster conspiracies of Elizabeth's
reign in the Midlands and indeed in the very kinship circles in which we find ourselves today.
Yes, it was not the case that the region was overrun with families who'd held fast to the old face,
as well as the myriad Catholic families I'm about to discuss.
So the Midlands were home to some of Elizabeth's most trusted counsellors, most Orthodox adherence to the Protestant settlement.
These include Sir Christopher Hatton at Kirby Hall and Home be sort of mild May at eight Thorpe and the Dudley SEALs of Warwick and Leicester.
Even William Cecil would barely had his roots in the East Midlands and Stamford, Lincolnshire.
Northamptonshire, as Bill Shields and more recently, Peter Lake of Shome was also home to a number,
Pearsons was not there for the case that the English Catholics in the Midlands enjoyed anything resembling safety in numbers there.
Rather, that they were a visible minority and it's that visibility that I want to talk to you about today.
So in order to situate our discussion of the Shelden tapestries,
I'd like to spend the next half an hour or so introducing the Catholic Midlands, offering local colour, if you will,
the people on their society, and to give an impression of Catholic visual culture sharing some of my
research on the building projects of Sir Thomas Trash and its Northamptonshire.
So I'm going to start with geography, not my strong suit.
These are one of the five sets of proof maps made for John Speed,
about whom we've already heard a little, although I now think I should have chosen Sexton.
But thankfully, due to the beneficence of another British university, we we have the digitised proof maps and they really are rather wonderful.
So I hope that the Sexton experts will forgive me for choosing choosing speed instead.
I just wanted to highlight that the portion of the Midlands that I'm going to focus on,
it's this little sort of horizontal slice that gives this Worcestershire, Warwickshire and Northamptonshire.
And I've also included to make up for my lack of expertise on maps and wonderful
image images of these engraved maps that feature showing the counties and heraldry,
which I'm going to speak about later a sort of language, a rather odd language, but a language of lineage.
And if credit on it. And this is Northamptonshire.
And that's a blank slide for now, the families I treat in this paper were related by marriage as well as by religion and by geography.
In the mid 16th century,
three of the daughters of Sir Robert Throckmorton of Coercion Course Workshop from his two marriages were paired with local Catholic gentlemen.
And the families are Throckmorton, Kate Spade and Sheldon.
Connected families is I'm going to show.
That's Robert Throckmorton, might my GCSE and a.m. not wasted on me, Elizabeth Hussey and Muriel to his wife, had an emeritus, William Kate.
Muriel, who marriage to Thomas Strachan. And Emma, who marries Ralph Sheldon.
So these families are intimately connected, and these marriages happen within a couple of years of each other.
They represented the doubling of family ties over several generations, in some cases going back as far as the 15th century.
So why was it important that Catholic families strengthen the ties that bound
them bonds between natal and marital kin provided essential support in moments
of difficulty in a society which valued lineage and affinity following the
terminology coined by John Bossi and his now canonical English Catholic community.
Scholars have emphasised ties of unity and examples of steadfastness,
and a focus on the missionary clergy and its politics has characterised internal divisions within this community,
along factional lines drawn by particular clerical debates around the reticent sea or the organisation of an English arch Presbyterians.
Contemporaries recognised the importance of strong marital bonds within the Catholic community.
A successful marriage, might there certain hallmarks?
Healthy children, especially males surviving to adulthood and the protection of a family's good name and estate.
Other markers might include local standing and a reputation for piety, charity, good governance and generous entertainment.
None of these was conventionally bounded, and indeed it was considerably easier to perform all of these duties if you were not constantly
being hunted and fired by government officials who are worried about your Catholicism.
Mutual support within Catholic circles, though, was sometimes hard won.
The English Catholic community had both happy and unhappy families.
Sacred bonds of shared religion and experience might be shaken by more earthly concerns over money and land and marriage.
In this way, English Catholics were just like their Protestant counterparts.
So what kinds of trials did English Catholics face, and I'll focus on the reign of Elizabeth, since that's the rain that showed a new best.
Elizabeth's government established legislative and administrative ways of defining conformity and
for exacting loyalty from her Catholic subjects in fifteen fifty nine and fifteen sixty three.
With particular fervour from fifteen eighty one laws against Catholics hinged initially upon reticence,
the most visible sign as nonconformist identity dramatically increased penalties for reticence.
See an act of Parliament. Fifty one and ninety three,
with refinements made to the receipt of fines in fifteen eighty seven intensified associations between reticence and
disloyalty and made the decision to refuse to attend the services of the Church of England more and more consequential.
From fifteen eighty one non-attendance would be punished by £20 fine per lunar month.
So there are 13 lunar months in a year. I discovered in the course of writing my thesis, so they get an extra twenty pounds out of you,
which is thousands and thousands of pounds in today's money.
And offenders who persisted beyond 12 months have to present themselves to the
appropriate authorities bound with two sufficient sureties in the sum of £200,
at least to good behaviour by fifteen ninety three.
Persuading others to pursue reckless since he was punishable by imprisonment until a public
declaration of conformity was made and those who refused to do so would be made to abjure the realm.
That is to say, to leave their home country and never to return unlicensed return or the refusal to adhere,
and a corporal oath that is one sworn on a sacred object became a felony, which meant it carried a capital punishment.
Is subject to any duration of the round. Forfeited their goods and their chattels in perpetuity if their children and their children's children.
Until their death. A further act in the same year gave represents 40 days to return home and restricted their movement to within a five mile radius,
which I like to think of the point of 15 90s equivalent of those electronic bracelets that they give to people with our space.
Those without goods and chattels worth more than a certain amount would suffer maturation.
And their attendance at church on Sundays and feast days have been mandated by the 15 59 settlement of religion,
the religious policies the 50s and 60s had sought to manage the expectation of competing confessional groups and to mollify Catholics in particular.
Legislative developments marked a concerted effort to place considerable economic and
personal strictures on English Catholics to compel them to conform in each statute,
the same point was made if the accused would attend church is the manifestation of their obedience.
All would be forgiven. Evidently, then there were impossible choices to be made throughout an individual's life as a result of the seismic
changes that we now call the English Reformation and the attendant refreshing of politics and culture.
And is the brief overview of Catholic legislation above has, I hope,
intimated a choice made in 15 59 might demand to be revisited in 50 and 70 in 15, 80 in 50 90.
So for this reason, and I'm thinking I've had to return as work on off Sheldon.
It's not satisfactory to group Catholics into the categories of either staunch reticent or quiescent sort of wheat.
Flipped conformist just doesn't bear out.
This lesson is particularly important in the case of Sheldon and the other families that I'm going to discuss in this period.
We sometimes imagine wrongly I think of exemplary piety and personal sacrifice.
No one was ever allowed to change their mind.
And I should point out here that it's not simply about the categorisation of Catholics as particular kinds of Catholic.
It's simply not satisfactory to describe a family as a Catholic family or not, said the Throckmorton.
And what particularly interesting because they were so polarised they had amongst their number and very,
very strongly convinced Puritans and very, very strongly convinced Catholics, even Catholic conspiracies.
So really, you've got the whole spectrum of sort of confessional fidelity and belief and within this one family.
And, you know, examples of marriages between Protestants and Catholics,
notwithstanding my earlier claims about the fact that Catholics preferred to marry their children to other Catholics for
support for the good of the faith and so that they could bring up Catholic children and nurture the next generation.
It's very much the case that you have, you know, children turning against the religion of their parents and vice versa.
Catholics drew support from Kith and Kin, neighbours and friends,
but they also relied on the kinds of patronage relationships that governed early modern society.
Wealthy and respected magnates could extend a degree of protection to their dependents, not only younger family members, but tenants and servants.
And because of the survival of records and usually when we're talking about Catholics of this period,
we're talking about elites talking about gentian ability simply because they leave behind records that we can use.
And when we do have let it let us, not the surviving documents bearing the testimony of those lower down the sort of
social strata that mediated because they're writing to someone in a position of power.
So it's not so much that, you know, I'm saying only the experience of Catholic elites is important.
It's that, you know, that's all I've got to go on. I prefer not to and obviously make things up.
In turn, sympathetic acquaintances of high status and influence could be called upon to ease the experience of anti-Catholic legislation.
Excellent correspondence demonstrates men and women writing letters of petition to privy councillors or to other courtiers,
often those with whom they shared a keen relationship, however distant.
Local ties could also be drawn upon in this regard. Prospective patrons needn't be sympathetic to Catholicism but the crypts,
but the rumours of crypto Catholicism that followed men like Sir Christopher Hampton,
I think unfairly was really because they supported Catholics, and this itself gave grist to the remnant.
The social hierarchy was not always characterised by horizontal or downward beneficence, however,
it is now commonplace that anti-Catholic legislation, especially the anti residency statutes,
were inflicted incredibly haphazardly in the counties,
depending on the particular zeal with which the justices of the peace were prepared to turn in their neighbours.
And it's worth saying at this point that the eye watering sum of £20 per million a month,
though it was ruinous to the financial and social health of several prominent families,
was actually very rarely enforced consistently month after month, year after year.
And Simon Haitis work on the exchequer records has actually shown that by the time Elisabeth died in sixty three,
you can count on your two hands the number of families who are actually still paying this,
this fine regularly and consistently and as Hillary has shown for shelter.
You know, you can pay represent sea fines for small period of time, but that doesn't mean that you are always a wreck.
Isn't that always being fined? It does, however, mean that you can still be a Catholic.
Research by Susan Cogan and Laura Verna has gone some distance to mapping out the networks of influence,
which base protected and scuppered Catholic prospects.
It's Morton's Kate Spese and Chechens benefited from successful petition to Christopher Hatten and Robert Thomas Cecil.
The sources, of course, were as responsible for punishing Catholics as helping them perhaps more responsible.
So Walter Miles may already mentioned debates hope in the region was an enthusiastic anti-Catholic actor.
It is clear and that the complex picture of Catholics and Protestants of various
hues is a rather messy web one which would take several symposia to untangle,
which has thankfully benefited from recent research by Catherine Ennis, Richard Cust, John Broadway, Susan Cogan and Laura Vernice.
If you want to learn more. I strongly recommend you keep that published works.
I'd like to move on now to talk about visual culture. You'll be pleased to hear and the religious symbolism employed in early modern visual arts,
architecture and horticulture belong to a consideration of social, political, cultural and religious activities.
In the political context of their creation, buildings could take on the qualities of resistance, and the obvious example here is the term stretching.
The gentry in the military found that the improvement of their states through building and the commissioning of
great works like shells and tapestries were significant vehicles for the values they and their peers held most dear.
Throughout the 16th century,
English men and women developed an appreciation of architecture as a form through which identity might be conveyed through travel and reading.
English elites were able to learn about and be influenced by architectural fashions.
It was incumbent upon them to inform themselves of the artistic, geometric and practical aspects of architectural design and the building process as
part of the cultivation of gentility and the competent management of their estates,
and on the nature of records. Since he found some examples of English Catholics who were just appalling with money abound.
Thomas Kretschmann is not one of them. He was. He was actually really good with with money.
Tom Strachan was part of this social and cultural milieu,
and it was a sphere of local society and gentry culture in which he was able to participate at a time when
his Catholicism closed off the usual avenues of involvement and advancement that brought an officeholder.
He was unable to travel as his peers did, but he was able to travel through his books and he built the most astonishingly large library,
which I don't have time to talk about today. The last. And in doing this, he he displayed his identity to his peers.
He impressed them with his very erudite learning.
And he also left a rather permanent mark on the local landscape.
Is he really interested himself in the practical and mathematical elements behind these designs?
It's not just that, you know, he commissioned an architect and wrote a check at the end,
and we have his copy of Euclid's Elements of Geometry in Cambridge University Library,
which is full of his marginalia, showing his really close engagement with the text.
So the first example is of Catholic visual and material culture I'd like to show you is perhaps the most.
What we would imagine is a more traditional Catholic form of artistic patronage.
Oh drat, I forgot my maths. This is a map. Google Maps has provided yet again.
I wanted just to show you these the families that I mentioned who married each other and where they are folks apart.
And I don't have time to discuss the very, very close kin of the trash.
And so. So they span quite a distance, actually. So he's a crucifixion scene now at Rushton Hall Hotel and Spa.
You can go to afternoon tea there or play a round of golf or have a massage, as I'm sure Tom Strachan would have wanted.
It's still in an oratory on the first floor, commissioned in 15 77.
You can see the date at the top there. And it's important that we know that this was commissioned in 15 77 because all of our evidence for that
time tells us that traction was probably conforming to the statutes on church attendance at that time.
And yet he commissioned this painted plaster sculpture depicting the crucifixion likely to act as a barrier dance for an oratory at Rushton Hall,
his principal residence of all the works of artistic or architectural patronage associated with oppression.
It has received the least attention, perhaps because its interior location and its function make it the most private.
Its hues of blues and greens with red for the garments in a contemporary red and black
frame with pressions arms at the bottom six trifles incorporated into the base.
A coat of arms is surrounded by the remnants of a motto which is now unfortunately indiscernible, discernible.
So like crucifixion scenes, it shows Christ's passion its crosses central in the foreground, with the label nailed above his head by pirates.
Jesus of Nazareth came the Jews, the two thieves crucified with him, or to either side with contrasting postures turning in to the crucified Christ.
Their knees bend inwards to the centre of the scene and the gazes forward out of the picture.
The dying Christ is nailed without ropes and is looking down at Mary Matalin.
Centre left, three women stand aghast, supporting the fainting Virgin Mary with a force looking up at the cross.
Mary Matalin kneels, clinging to the cross. Her eyes cost upwards. Christ in her head moves and uncovered in mourning to the right of the scene.
Soldiers hold spears and the imperial speaker Boehner aloft.
There are more soldiers on the extreme left also carrying Spears and the Imperial Eagle banner.
See, you get the idea. The soldiers at the bottom cast lots for Christ's clothes,
and a man gestures at Christ's tunic and red shown lying on the floor in the foreground with two coins beside it.
And this rather bizarre Latin text in the middle describes the scene.
I'm going to skip forward and not spend too much time discussing this because I'm aware we're running slightly behind schedule.
But to say that as far as we know, this scene retains its original location and position.
It seems to have been constructed in this appalling photograph I took with my phone.
You can see that the event not original at the top on the glass screen, protecting it.
It seems to fit perfectly the proportions of the room, even though there was a church St Peter's on the estate,
which unfortunately they decided to level in the 18th century. Thanks, guys.
The iconoclastic hinterland, then of Chesham sculpted crucifixion renders it an act of conscious disobedience.
This would not have been acceptable to Elizabeth's bishops, even to Elizabeth herself.
We know that she was a fan of material culture in her own chapel, and her reign had begun with iconoclasm,
though not perhaps of the kind that we associate with Edward the Sex and later with the Civil War period.
The decision to commission this new piece suggests the Chechen may have envisaged turning towards private domestic worship,
and the sculpture is large but not as extravagant as, say, gilt plate or seeing carved in stone,
and it perhaps suits a man possibly beginning to place more importance on private devotion to public worship.
So that's one very sort of classical kind of Catholic artistic effort, and I now tend to a church.
I think there's much closer relation to the show and tapestries in purpose, if not inform.
And that's Russell Market Cross Unfinished begun a 15, 50, 50 and 70 75 78.
And if I have time, I'm going to move on to talk about a painted cloth.
So traction had been pictured a sheriff in 15,
73 and knighted with his brothers in law by the Queen during her visit to Kenilworth Berkshire in fifteen seventy five by that year.
He was also lauded the manner of wrathful began in fifteen seventy seven or eight the Market House or Market Cross at Rothwell.
You can see it on the left today. It houses a Salvation Army charity shop and on on the right you can see an engraving
done in the 18th century showing showing more clearly some of the heraldry,
and you can see how it's sort of open to the elements type thing.
In fact, it didn't have a roof until the local architect and architectural historian John Alfred got.
Can't you put one on? Some scholars have suggested that further work towards its completion was undertaken in the 1880s,
but it certainly remained roofless until the 19th century.
And today I'd like to focus on elements of this declaration that speak most, I think, to the kind of effect this Sheldon was going for,
which its inscription and the 89 coats of arms which adorn it was never worn when it came to decoration or the visual to do things by halves.
The Crucible structure was built from stone given to tradition by Sir Christopher Hanson from his quarries at Wilden.
And particularly striking architectural features include semi-circular arches on the lower storey, square headed malien windows on the upper story,
the inscription on the last freeze and shields on the upper freeze and temperature of the arches is the most relevant here.
I'm going to pause now to talk a bit about heraldry.
It allowed a gentleman to demonstrate the honour, tradition and validity of his family, so it had a practical function allowing identification,
proving claim, evidencing in claims of dissent, which might influence, for example,
the possession of land and the right to bear arms was not taken lightly.
To bear arms falsely had serious even capital consequences.
So heraldry was supremely important as a signifier of social and familial identity.
And employment of it was as much a natural impulse as it was a strategy for
the friendship he declared to other almajiris families could be utilitarian.
As a man recently knighted, he may have wished to advertise his membership as a county elite.
Indeed, his father in law, Sir Robert Throckmorton,
likewise asserted his family's rightful place amongst the local elite by commissioning classwork in fifteen seventy eight to nine,
around exactly the same moment to honour recent alliances. Throckmorton son in law, freshman Kate Spee,
had been elevated to knighthoods at the same time and a subsequent return back in 15 seventy
to Kanye West and where they'd been knighted to attend the Earl of Warwick Folk Gravel.
Unfortunately, these alliances had not yet borne fruit. Rothwell Cross represents Treasury's commitment to participating in local government.
This dual purpose was not unusual, nor strengthens patronage unique.
Gotch suggested that the design of the Market House intended an open market hall on the lower floor,
the upper level probably as a public hall or town hall. Homes recently has suggested that the Market House may have been intended as a quarter
sessions house and the title that piece Tillmans in the 18th century gives it a courthouse,
I think gives this some credence. The decorative scheme then asserts family status and honour it, advertises local identity and kinship,
and a pattern is discernible interactions choices around heraldic display on the market across.
These were the families of athletes who have liked him recently attained local
precedents and now took their place alongside the ancient nobility by enablement,
inheritance, marriage or the purchase of land in the county or nearest neighbours.
Just under half of the shields represent individuals who at that time held office.
Session featured his own shield three times on its own, on the corner,
says on the tympani of the arches and one large shield bearing the quartered arms of Trashman Throckmorton to represent his marriage to Muriel.
And to skip over this part, to get to the Latin inscription, which I think I've included, this was the work of Thomas Chesham Knight.
He erected it as a tribute to his sweet fatherland and county of Northampton, but chiefly to this town, his near neighbour.
Nothing but the common wielded. He seek nothing but the perpetual honour of his friends.
He, who puts in ill construction on this act, is scarcely worthy.
So great benefit. So we don't really know what lies behind,
but rather defensive final line may imply tension that direction expected to
have his motives questioned or that he would be accused of self-aggrandisement.
The inscription testify, civic duty, local loyalty and gentry on it may also belie local fiction, and this is an important consideration.
How could neighbours of rival confessions live alongside each other in harmony?
The shields, though, I don't have time to list them,
perhaps it's rather good that I don't know is a large number and really displacement of national and even
international standing and fidelity to Catholicism was by no means common to all of these families.
I'm going to move on now just to talk, which is a very long discussion of shields that, alas, I don't have time to talk about the triangular lodge.
Go and see it on the left lane. It's great fun. And if you want to know about the numbers, you can ask me over tea.
The last thing I want to talk to is not interaction commissioner at all.
That's more than commission the popular access keep in court, which is owned still by the strong Walton family.
And we've heard already about some of the conservation implications.
This is clearly intended to be displayed. But it's another example.
And as a member of the Catholic elite who has experienced it's no it's no overstatement to call it persecution.
Thomas more from oppression and shouting brother in law, advertising his family's lineage and their prominence and their status.
He took the oath of allegiance in fifteen ninety two. He no, he didn't.
The allegiance wasn't exactly 50 92. This was commissioned in fifty ninety two and finished in fifteen ninety six.
He took the oath allegiance of allegiance at another time, a time revealed in the latter half of the sentence that I've copied and pasted.
He probably took the Jacobean equivalent and sixty six as well. Probably the result of expediency rather than some highfalutin argument.
And but it's a way, as Peter Marshall has taught us, of representing his Catholic dissidents,
his family's Catholic identity to himself and to his inner circle.
It's nine feet by seven feet. And it's based on an Elizabethan copy of mediaeval painting from the monastery at Ely,
which depicts Ely Cathedral along with the pedigrees, abbots and bishops deans at the Kings and Queens of England.
And there are also the arms of 14 knights stationed there.
By winning the first location, copy fills its bottom third with seven grouped columns containing the Karasik Arms of all the knights and
gentlemen who between 15 ninety and ninety six had been imprisoned for represent in the Episcopal Palace,
at Ely and at Broughton and Banbury Castles in Oxfordshire, with the dates of their confinement and release.
So there's a direct link here being made. I better draw things to a close there, but I hope that I've shown that I'm Catholic.
Visual culture is not limited only to the more subtle doctrinal theological aspects of their faith, but also tied very closely to the social fabric.
Thank you very much.