Mainly
about the Shakespeares' Catholicism
There seems
very little doubt to me and many others that they were. So many early reports
stated this explicitly and so many other documentary details associate him explicitly
with known Catholics. It might be appropriate to mention here (at the risk of
repetition elsewhere) that I was reared in a Congregationalist community, with
a fairly solid Non-conformist ancestry (in some cases back to Shakespeare's
life-time), including a strong Methodist element, and was even (I regret to
report) discouraged from playing with local Catholic children, not that they
were too thick on the ground in our street. I hope that this already
establishes that I have no Catholic axe to grind and am just interested in the
facts and whatever final story might emerge from these.
Let us take
as our starting point the bare documentary facts reported by Schoenbaum, who is regarded (quite
rightly) as one of the most authoritative scholarly commentators in the late
20th century on Shakespeare biographical details. He approached all from a
scrupulously secular stance and, perhaps inevitably, came to non-sectarian
conclusions.
(5) One
piece of hard evidence is John Shakespeare's 'Spiritual Testament', hidden in
the rafters of the Shakespeare house in Henley Street in Stratford, presumably
sometime in the late 16th century during the most virulent anti-Catholic
campaigns, but in any case found there in 1757 during renovations. The full
text and story is in Schoenbaum, who
reports on various previous doubts but concluded that there was no longer any
doubt that it was authentic. Despite reporting the facts above he concluded
they were conforming Anglicans. What he neglected to report was:
It hardly seems to require a great leap of imagination, in
the light of the facts above, to conclude that the Shakespeares might well have
been Catholic and if you put together all the dates, we find not just isolated
incidents but a lifelong commitment that was well known to a large number of
people. The surprising thing is that it has taken so long for so many to accept
this. I can only conclude and explain this because of a general reluctance for
so long to accept the importance of Catholicism and various Catholic
individuals in the mainstream of English history. They were excluded from any
public functions during Elizabeth's reign unless they swore the Oath of
Allegiance, which many committed Catholics found difficult or impossible, as it
placed Elizabeth above the Pope. Similar laws were enforced after the Glorious
Revolution, and they continued to suffer until the Catholic Emancipation Act of
1829, and even long after this from prejudice if not before the law. The way
they survived with their beliefs intact was mainly by keeping their heads down
and not attracting too much attention. All this, it seems, led to a reluctance
by Victorians to accept that the National Poet was not an adherent of the
national religion, even as all the facts listed above become known, and this
prejudice has lingered on until today.
Mary's
ancestry provided her with endless kinsmen who were Catholic and Jesuit
priests, including John Arderne, who escaped from the Tower with Jesuit John Gerard (another
kinsman), brother of one of the closest friends (Thomas Gerard of Bryn) of
Mary's cousin (Thomas Arderne), who both accompanied the Earl of Derby to
France in 1585 (Coward). The history of a
Catholic network throughout the country is well documented and well known (Fraser), but it was never known until now quite
where Mary's family fitted in. One important set of relatives were these
Gerards of Bryn near Wigan, notorious recusants involved in several plots to
free Mary, Queen of Scots (Baines, Farrer); their daughters married into all the
local Catholic gentry families, including the Ardernes and the Hoghtons (Ormerod, Baines,
Farrer). Another important family (who were
Mary's ancestors and close kinsmen via other Stanley-Arderne marriages) was the
Stanleys of Hooton in Cheshire, the senior line of the family whose junior line
became the Earls of Derby (Ormerod).
The most famous/ notorious Elizabethan member of this family was Sir William Stanley 'The
Adventurer/ Traitor' (depending on which side you were on), who provided the
Catholic sword when Cardinal
William Allen (from Lancashire) provided the Catholic word from the
community in exile.
As mentioned
above, the Catholic network ensured that many of them did stay in regular
contact. Anyone who has studied the history of this period and taken a close
look at Visitation Pedigrees knows that these families made sure they stayed
allied by arranging a marriage every few generations with the same families.
This was partly for ancestral reasons and, of course, partly financial, by
raising the chances of lands staying in the same families even in the case of a
male line dying out. Bearing or quartering the same coat of arms also provided
affinities, and several Stanley families quartered the Arderne arms, including
the Stanleys of Weever in Cheshire and Elford in Staffordshire (Ormerod). There is documentary proof of these
families staying in touch over generations, including Mary's great-grandfather
Thomas popping back to Cheshire from Leicestershire in 1500 for a Stanley land
transaction, marrying his son and heir to a Gerard of Bryn, the Cheshire family
retaining a memory of their branch in the Midlands in 1580 when they added them
to their own Visitation Pedigree (Ormerod, Earwaker, Rylands)
and the public acknowledgement of Mary's ancestry in the Cheshire family in the
coat of arms grant of 1599 (Gough Nichols,
Howard).
No other
conclusion makes sense of the facts above but that the whole family was
Catholic and Mary's Midlands family stayed very much in touch with their
relatives in Lancashire and Cheshire.
Return to Helen Moorwood’s Shakespeare
Index
