Catholicism and Community in Early Modern England: Politics, Aristocratic Patronage and Religion, c. 1550–1640 (review)

Despite a title reminiscent of Bossy's magisterial study of many years ago, Questier's study is deliberately different.¹ It focuses not, as Bossy's did, on the internal social relations of the post-Reformation Catholic community as it adapted to a hostile world and took on some of the behaviors of a sect, but on the aristocratic entourage, its internal dynamics and its relationship with the larger community of the realm. As he notes, "Catholics tended to portray themselves as being a 'gathered' community of all right-thinking people who had a conscience in matters of true religion and the courage to express it," but what structured such a gathered community, he argues, was the network of relations based on the aristocratic entourage (9). The entourage that he chose as a case study is that of the two Viscounts Montague of Cowdray in Sussex.

The Brownes of Cowdray were gentry who had tied their fortunes to that of the Tudors and had been richly rewarded with a series of monastic gifts and purchases, mostly in Sussex, including Battle Abbey. Sir Anthony Browne, the father of the first viscount, was one of Henry VIII's Privy Counselors, and his son, another Anthony, succeeded to his father's position in Edward's and Mary's reign, being dismissed from that post only at the outset of Elizabeth's reign. He cemented his reputation as a conservative Catholic by his public opposition to the Oath of Supremacy in the House of Lords. Browne, who was elevated to the peerage at the marriage of Philip and Mary, was reputed to have had a landed income in excess of £2,000 p.a. in the 1560s.

What is particularly important for Questier's purposes is the vast network, mostly but not entirely Catholic, created by the marriages of three generations of Brownes. The first viscount married successively a Ratcliffe, daughter of the Earl of Sussex, and a Dacre, daughter of Baron Dacre of Gisland. His grandson, the second viscount, married a Sackville, daughter of the Earl of Dorset, who gave the viscount a certain degree of political protection until his death in 1608. The kin network included Gages, Dormers, Wriotheselys, Arundells, and on and on—a vast kin that was by no means limited to Sussex and Surrey (it is no accident that the index runs to thirty-two pages of small print).

The two viscounts played different roles in their respective Catholic communities. The first was publicly loyal, declaring that his religion was a private matter, and he conspicuously raised a large force of armed retainers to defend the realm in the Armada year. His chaplains and much of his household staff were Marian clerics until that generation expired. The second favored the seculars and later the Benedictines. Richard Smith, the second Bishop of Chalcedon, who was supposed to bring order out of the chaotic clerical scene, had been a family chaplain. The second viscount attempted to assert leadership by taking an uncompromising stand for his faith, and faced a swinging fine in consequence of his refusal to take the Oath of Allegiance.

The story that Questier tells is well known in outline but appears unfamiliar and fresh not only for its massive detail assembled but also for its viewing through the lens of a single, if important, aristocratic family. Historians frequently tend to ignore the Catholic community, a small minority by the end of the sixteenth century, but Questier's study provides grounds for reconsidering such an easy dismissal. It reveals a community still bent on the conversion of England, or at least of finding a secure place for itself under a Stuart king. It is a story dense in detail with veritable thickets of footnotes, enlivened by a vigorous style and by a fair-minded consideration of the views of other historians. It makes a convincing case for...