Once a Catholic: Recusancy in Chorley and Leyland in Tudor and Stuart Times
On 31 October 1517, a German monk named Martin Luther nailed a sheet of paper to the chapel door of the University of Wittenburg. It was a document that became known as the ’95 Theses’, and was the first iteration of what would become Protestantism. Luther’s ideas struck a chord among Europeans who were tiring of the authoritarianism, hideboundness and corruption of the medieval Catholic Church. By the end of the 16th Century, Protestantism was rivalling Catholicism across Europe.
The rise of Protestantism was not, of course unchallenged, and where it became dominant, Catholicism did not disappear. In England, Lancashire became a refuge of the Catholic faith, and the old religion continued below the surface of the county throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In this article I will outline the changing relationship between Protestantism and Catholicism in Tudor and Stuart England, and will focus on the survival of Catholicism in Lancashire in general, and in Chorley and Leyland in particular.
The Growth of Protestantism in Tudor England
In 1517, when Luther was starting to make his mark, England was ruled by Henry VIII (r. 1509-1547). Henry was no supporter of Protestantism, writing a best-selling book refuting Luther’s ideas and gaining the epithet ‘Defender of the Faith’ from the Pope. Protestants were persecuted, with the Lord Chancellor Sir Thomas More responsible for many executions by burning at the stake. By the 1530s, however, Henry had fallen out with Rome over the Pope’s refusal to allow him to divorce his first wife, Catherine of Aragon, in favour of Anne Boleyn. Henry broke with Rome, establishing the Church of England, and requiring all citizens to sign a pledge of loyalty - Thomas More refused to sign and was beheaded. At the same time, Henry’s chief advisor Thomas Cromwell brought about the dissolution of England’s monasteries, with their substantial lands and revenues going to the Crown. The Church of England was not, however a radically Protestant entity under Henry, retaining much of the Catholic Church’s rites and traditions.
Henry was succeeded by his nine-year old son, Edward VI (r. 1547-1553). His mother was Henry’s third wife Jane Seymour, who died shortly after giving birth. During Edward’s short life, England was governed by a Regency, dominated by nobles who, like Edward himself, leaned towards Protestantism. The Church of England, under the leadership of the Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Cranmer, became more Protestant in nature. Cranmer introduced the Book of Common Prayer, setting out the format that Anglican church services should follow. However, Edward died of tuberculosis at the age of 14, and following the nine-day reign of his Protestant cousin, Lady Jane Grey, was succeeded by his eldest sister Mary, who like her mother Catherine of Aragon, and her husband King Phillip II of Spain was a committed Catholic.
Mary I (r. 1553-1558) tried to return England to Catholicism, using methods derived from Thomas More. Some 300 Protestants were burned at the stake in just three years, including the former Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Cranmer. But the bulk of the aristocracy, many of whom had benefited from gifts of land taken from the monasteries, were reluctant to go back to the old ways, and on Mary’s childless death at the age of 42, England’s final period of Catholicism came to an end. Mary’s successor was her sister Elizabeth I (r. 1558-1603), daughter of the Protestant-leaning Anne Boleyn.
In 1559, the first full year of Elizabeth’s reign, Parliament passed the Act of Supremacy, making the monarch the ‘Supreme Governor’ of the Church of England, and the Act of Uniformity, which reintroduced the Book of Common Prayer in a revised form. The changes aimed to make it more acceptable to Catholics, and to encourage them to join the Anglican Church. At the same time, the Recusancy Laws were brought in. A recusant was an individual who refused to attend Church of England services, and recusancy was punishable by a fine, initially 12 shillings but later £20 per month. Priests who refused to embrace the Book of Common Prayer were removed from their parishes and were liable to imprisonment if they held Catholic services. Attempts to reintroduce Catholicism from abroad were regarded as treasonable acts, punishable by death. During the reigns of James I (r. 1603-1625) and Charles I (r. 1625-1649) the recusancy laws were re-confirmed and strengthened, sometimes in response to suspected Catholic insurgencies, such as the 1605 ‘Gunpowder Plot’. The laws were not repealed until the late 18th Century. Thus was English Catholicism driven underground for over two hundred years.
The bulk of the population of England accepted the compromise between Protestantism and Catholicism that Elizabeth’s laws and the Book of Common Prayer represented, and England was spared the religious wars that raged elsewhere in Europe. Many Catholics became ‘Church Papists’, attending C of E services while privately maintaining their beliefs. But Catholicism did not disappear entirely. Recusancy prevailed in parts of the country throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Recusants were infrequently prosecuted and fined; local magistrates and officials often preferring to maintain good relationships with their neighbours, or sometimes harbouring Catholic sympathies themselves. During Elizabeth’s reign, former Catholic priests who escaped imprisonment or foreign exile (so-called ‘Marian priests’) kept the old religion alive, and they were later joined by ‘seminary priests’ who were trained and ordained in Europe and made clandestine returns to England. These priests were sustained and concealed by English supporters and ministered to their flocks in the face of capture and execution if discovered by the authorities. Some 350 priests and lay Catholics were executed during the reigns of Elizabeth and her Stuart successors, and are now recognised as martyrs by the Catholic Church.
Catholicism needed the support of the gentry to survive. The gentry retained an almost feudal control over those who lived on their land, and Catholic gentry would be more likely to permit or encourage their tenants to follow the old religion. Also, it was the gentry who had the resources to sustain and conceal the seminary priests who came to England to minister to devotees. Some high-profile individuals and families were more or less openly Catholic. At the same time, the majority of Catholics were from the labouring classes. Catholic recusancy was also sometimes more visible among women. It was not uncommon for a husband to attend the Church of England, to avoid paying recusancy fines, while his wife absented herself.
The Survival of Catholicism in Lancashire
The pre-1974 county of Lancashire had the greatest proportion of Catholics in England, though overall numbers were not large. Anthony Hilton estimates that around 4% of the overall population of Lancashire were Catholic (recusant or church papist) by 1600. They were unevenly distributed across the county, with few in the eastern and northern hundreds of Salford, Blackburn and Lonsdale, and more in the western hundreds of West Derby, Amoundeness and Leyland, which embraces modern Chorley and South Ribble. Historians still argue about the reasons for Lancashire having greater numbers of Catholics than other areas of England. One factor may have been its remoteness from the centre of power in London, but (modern day) Cumbria, which is even more remote, had few Catholics. Catholicism was sustained by the gentry, and Lancashire had a fair proportion of Catholic-leaning landowners, but the county’s leading family, the Stanleys, Earls of Derby, were committed Anglicans. Presumably a combination of a fairly tolerant gentry and a relative lack of interest in the county on the part of he national authorities allowed Catholicism to flourish in Lancashire to a greater extent than elsewhere, although embracing a minority of the population.
Lancashire became a point of focus for the remaining Marian clergy and the seminary priests. Particularly influential was Laurence Vaux (1519-1589). He was born in Blackrod, between Chorley and Bolton, and during the reign of Mary I became Warden of the Manchester Collegiate Church (now Manchester Cathedral). Following Elizabeth’s accession, Vaux fled to Louvain, but subsequently returned to Lancashire at the bidding of the Pope, to carry out missionary work and promote recusancy over ‘church papacy’. He was captured by the authorities in 1580 and died in prison. From time to time, other seminary priests and their helpers were captured, convicted and put to death, including the fifteen ‘Lancaster martyrs’, executed at Lancaster Castle between 1584 and 1646.
During the English civil wars of 1642 – 1651, politics and religion became intertwined. While primarily conflicts over the relative power of the monarch and parliament, the wars were also fought on religious lines, with Anglicans and Catholics broadly supporting King Charles I and Puritans and other dissenters supporting Parliament. In Lancashire, the west and north, including the Catholic gentry families, supported the Royalists, while the more industrialised east came out for the Parliamentarians. Puritanism and dissent became established in those areas following Parliament’s victory. At the same time, probably half of all gentry families (and their tenantry) remained neutral during the troubles.
Catholicism in Chorley and Leyland
In 1588, Mary I’s widower, King Phillip II of Spain, attempted an invasion of England, with the aim of restoring Catholicism to the country. The invasion, which became known as the Spanish Armada failed, and no further attempts were made. However, in the aftermath of the Armada, Elizabeth I’s Secretary of State William Cecil, Lord Burghley commissioned a map of Lancashire, to provide a strategic plan of the county in the event of a future Spanish invasion. The map showed the county’s leading gentry families, and Burghley marked with a cross those who were known or suspected of having Catholic sympathies, and who might support the invaders.
The section of the map that depicts Leyland Hundred is reproduced below. While not strictly accurate (and with west at the top) familiar local features can be seen, including the rivers Yarrow, Lostock and Ribble (in the far left of the picture); Leyland, Chorley and Brindle churches, and Hoghton Tower, with its enclosed deer park, that could be used for mustering troops. Several gentry families are depicted with crosses indicating suspected Catholicism, including the Charnocks of Leyland Hall, the Andertons of Euxton Hall; the Hoghtons of Park Hall, Charnock Richard, and the Faringtons of Worden Hall. Loyal families included the Duxburys of Duxbury Hall, another branch of the Andertons who lived at Clayton Hall (though by the time of the Civil War they had come out as Catholics) and the Hoghtons of Hoghton Tower, whose support of the establishment was rewarded in 1617 by a visit by James I, during which he reputedly knighted a particularly fine loin of beef (hence ‘sirloin’).
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| The
section of Lord Burghley's map of Lancashire that includes Chorley and
South Ribble. West is at the top of the map. Those gentry families
suspected of having Catholic sympathies are marked with a cross. Link to original map |
We noted above that Catholicism was supported materially by the gentry. The Chorley and Leyland area appears to have had a relatively high proportion of Catholic-leaning gentry families. The Faringtons were a leading family in Leyland and acted as local officials and magistrates. Outwardly, William Farington, lord of Worden Hall in the late 16th century was a pillar of the establishment, but was strongly rumoured to have Catholic sympathies, hence the black cross by his name on Lord Burghley’s map. His grandson, also William, lord of the manor during the Civil Wars, was Anglican and a staunch Royalist – unlike his neighbour Edward Robinson of Buckshaw Hall, who was a leading Parliamentarian.
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| Old Worden Hall, in Buckshaw Village, was once the seat of the Faringtons, prior to their removal to Shaw Hall, later renamed as Worden Hall (the grounds are now Worden Park). Link to photograph |
Particularly devout were the Charnocks of Leyland Hall (now Old Hall, on Balcarres Road). A member of the family, John Charnock, was involved in 1586 with the Babington Plot, a conspiracy to assassinate Elizabeth I and replace her with the Catholic Mary Queen of Scots. The failure of the plot led to the executions of both John Charnock and Mary. The Charnocks were occasionally convicted of recusancy. Despite this, in 1686, Robert Charnock attempted to secure Leyland Hall in his will for the future use of secular Catholic priests. At trial, this bid was rejected and the land forfeited and given to the (Anglican) vicar of Leyland. Reputedly, when the hall was rebuilt in the 19th century, ‘priest holes’ to conceal Catholic clergy were discovered. The dispossession of the Charnock family seems to have contributed to a decline of Catholicism in Leyland.
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| Leyland Old Hall, now two private houses on Balcarres Road, was the residence of the strongly Catholic Charnock family. Link to photograph |
In 1641, Chorley had three Catholic gentry families, the Chorleys, Gillibrands and Rishtons. All supported the Royalists during the Civil War and had their lands sequestered during the Commonwealth. The Andertons of Euxton Hall remained devout Catholics throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and Hugh Anderton also fought for the Royalists during the Civil War, as did James Anderton of Clayton Hall.
The presence of a relatively high number of Catholic gentry families was reflected in a similarly high prevalence of Catholicism among the rest of the local population. In 1642, shortly before the outbreak of the Civil War, all males in England over the age of 18 were obliged to take an oath to uphold the established Anglican Church. Around a quarter of men in Chorley parish refused to take the oath, indicating covert Catholicism, while in Euxton, 27 out of 100 refused the oath and in Leyland, 87 out of 189 - compare this to Hilton’s figure of around 4% Catholics in Lancashire as a whole during this period. By the 18th century, Chorley seems to have had a higher proportion of Catholics than Leyland, with around 200 identified by a survey of 1766.
A resident gentry family was not necessarily needed for Catholicism to thrive. Gordon Blackwood notes that there were 35 Catholics in Whittle-le-Woods in 1642, despite there being no Catholic gentry in the township. A local manifestation of Catholic belief in Whittle was the reverence given over many centuries to St Helen’s Well – wells were supposed to have powerful associations to their related saints. 19th century maps also frequently depicted ‘Base[s] of Stone Cross[es]’ by the side of roads around Chorley and Leyland. These once acted as signposts to parish churches and were devotional points in their own right. Following the civil war, the Puritan victors demolished many of the crosses, leaving the heavy stone bases behind.
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| St Helen's Well is now buried under the M61 motorway, but is commemorated by this monument in Whittle Spinney. Link to photograph |
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| The stone cross in the centre of Leyland was restored in the 19th century, having been taken down during the Puritan years. Link to photograph |
Catholic Martyrs from Chorley and Leyland
Dozens, if not hundreds of foreign-trained ‘seminary priests’ must have worked in Lancashire during the Elizabethan and Stuart periods, either undetected or tolerated by the local authorities. Sometimes, however, a priest or his supporter was discovered or betrayed. Between 1584 and 1646, fifteen Catholics were executed at Lancaster, and have become known as the ‘Lancaster Martyrs’. Four had connections with Chorley or South Ribble. John Finch, a yeoman farmer from Eccleston, was executed in 1584 for concealing priests and acting as their guide. Roger Wrenno (or Wrennall), a weaver from Chorley was executed in 1616 at the same time as a priest he had been assisting, Father John Thules. Father Edmund Arrowsmith was born in Haydock and was ordained as a priest at Douai, before returning to Lancashire. By tradition he administered Mass at a house in Gregson Lane, now known as Arrowsmith House. He was hanged, drawn and quartered at Lancaster in 1628. Then in 1646, John Woodcock, born and brought up in Leyland and a Franciscan, was executed in the same fashion, having been discovered saying Mass at Bamber Bridge. Finally, another Chorley man, John Rigby, was executed for treason in London in 1600 after refusing to attend Church of England services. He is known as one of the 40 Martyrs of England andWales, along with Edmund Arrowsmith, and both were canonized by Pope Paul VI in 1970.
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| Arrowsmith House, on Gregson Lane, where Edmund Arrowsmith reputedly held Masses. Link to photograph |
Catholicism following the Restoration
During the Commonwealth, between 1648 and 1660, the Anglican Church was disbanded, and while religious tolerance was supposedly promoted, England became dominated by Puritanism. Following the death of Oliver Cromwell (the ‘Lord Protector’ of England) in 1658, and the short Protectorate of his son Richard, the monarchy was restored with the return to England from exile of Charles II (r. 1660 – 1685). Those whose lands had been confiscated, such as the Chorleys, Gillibrands and Andertons, had them returned. The Church of England was also restored, but had to compete with the legacy of Puritanism and the growth of dissenting Protestant sects. Charles himself was sympathetic towards Catholicism, and his wife Catherine of Braganza was a Portuguese Catholic, but he made no moves towards promoting Catholicism in England and during the 1660s and 1670s Parliament passed laws to strengthen the Anglican Church. Holders of public office had to swear an oath to uphold the King as head of the Church, and attending a Catholic or Non-conformist service could, as before, result in a fine or imprisonment. In 1676 a religious census was carried out in England and Wales, which estimated around 2.5 million of the population to be Church of England, with 108,000 Protestant Dissenters and just 13,000 Catholics.
Anthony Hilton sums up the lot of the Lancashire Catholic gentry during this period:
“…life went on as it had for the past hundred years, intermittently subject to arrests, fines and imprisonment, trying to increase the value of their property by good management, overseas trade and good marriages, weaving the protective networks of kinship and friendship with Catholics, Church Papists and neighbours, fond of country sports, sometimes dedicated to antiquarian and scientific studies, and pious with a strong grasp of the essentials of religion…”
Lancashire was spared the hysterical excesses of the 1678 ‘Popish Plot’, in which a number of Catholics were tried and executed as traitors on the false testimony of Titus Oates, a sociopathic failed Jesuit priest who convinced the authorities of a Catholic plot to assassinate Charles II. Following this embarrassing witch-hunt, treason charges against Catholics became rare, and no Catholic martyrs were executed in Lancashire after 1646.
The accession of Charles’s Catholic brother James II (r. 1685-1688) led to a brief period of greater tolerance towards Catholics, but James failed to take Parliament with him and was deposed by the ‘Glorious Revolution’ of 1688, when William of Orange (r. 1689-1702) and his wife Mary II, James II’s Protestant daughter (r. 1689-1694) took the throne. Catholicism was suppressed again, with laws forbidding the monarch to be a Catholic (still the case today) and imposing new taxes and restrictions on those Catholics who refused to take oaths of loyalty to the Crown – Protestant dissenters were subject to far fewer restrictions. William Anderton of Euxton Hall (son of Hugh) was imprisoned for a time after the revolution for suspected involvement in a Jacobite plot.
This situation remained for much of the 18th century. As before, the laws were lightly enforced in Lancashire, and Catholics were largely left alone, except during the Jacobite uprisings of 1715 and 1745. In 1715, the decisive battle was fought at Preston, and some local Catholics supported the Jacobites. Richard Chorley of Chorley Hall and his son Charles were on the losing side at the battle of Preston and were detained following the Jacobite defeat. Charles died in prison and his father was executed as a traitor, and his lands confiscated. William Anderton’s son Hugh also had lands forfeited temporarily for his involvement in the 1715 uprising.
The Road to Catholic Emancipation
The defeat of ‘Bonnie Prince Charlie’ at the battle of Culloden in 1745 ended the Jacobite threat, and persecution of Catholics became uncommon. While still officially supressed, their numbers began to grow. In 1778, the Catholic Relief Act allowed Catholics to join the army and purchase land if they took an oath of allegiance, and a subsequent Act of 1791 allowed freedom of worship and the right to establish schools and to hold junior public office. Finally, the Catholic Emancipation Act of 1829 allowed Catholics to vote, to sit as MPs and hold most senior offices (though not to become monarch).
Catholics in Chorley and Leyland quickly took advantage of these concessions. Between 1755 and 1770, Father John Chadwick, of the Chadwick family of Burgh Hall, near Chorley, held Mass in the hall’s chapel, then built a chapel at Weld Bank, Chorley in 1774. Father George Clarkson held services at Slate Delph, Wheelton, in the 1780s and in 1788 he rebuilt the informal chapel at Morris Fold, off Briers Brow. Then, following the 1791 Act, he founded St Chad’s Church at South Hill, Whittle-le-Woods. St Bede's Church in Clayton-le-Woods opened in 1822. There were fewer Catholics in Leyland at this time, and a church was not established until 1854, with the foundation of St Mary’s in Worden Lane. The influx of Irish immigrants in the second half of the 19th century increased the Catholic population in our area, and throughout Lancashire.
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| St Chad's Catholic Church, South Hill, Whittle-le-Woods, was opened in 1791, the year that Catholics were finally allowed freedom of worship. The church was rebuilt in the 19th century. Link to photograph |
Conclusion
Catholicism was officially outlawed in England for over 250 years, between the middle of the 16th century until the early years of the 19th. During this time, Catholics were unable to worship freely, and were liable to be fined, imprisoned, to have their land confiscated and even to be put to death as traitors. Numbers of Catholics shrank, but the old religion did not die out altogether. Some areas of the country became strongholds of Catholicism, with Lancashire leading the way. Chorley and Leyland retained a relatively high proportion of Catholics throughout the period, supported by determined local gentry and by brave seminary priests who risked their lives to minister to the faithful. Today, we take freedom of worship for granted, but we should remember that it was not always so.
Sources Used
Blackwood B (1976) The Catholic and Protestant Gentry of Lancashire during the Civil War period, Transactions of the Historic Society of Lancashire and Cheshire 126: 1-29
Heyes J (1994) A History of Chorley. Lancashire County Books
Hilton A (2020) The Cockpit of Conscience: Society, Politics and Religion in Stuart Lancashire, 1603-1714. Bookcase Press
Hodkinson K (1987) Heapey, Wheelton and District: A Pictorial Record of Bygone Days. A CKD Publication
Hunt D (1990) The History of Leyland and District. Carnegie Press
Lee C (1997) This Sceptred Isle. Penguin Books
Smith F (2017) The Origins of Recusancy in Elizabethan England Reconsidered. Historical Journal 60(2): 301-332
UK Parliament: Religion and Belief Pages
Victoria County History of Lancaster, volume 6 (British History Online)
