In the history of England and Wales, the 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 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The "Recusancy Acts", which began during the reign of Elizabeth I and which were repealed in 1650,[4] imposed a number of punishments on those who did not participate in Anglican religious activity, including fines, property confiscation, and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 Catholics were still in place until full Catholic Emancipation in the 19th century.[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 List of Catholic martyrs of the English Reformation).[8]
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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".
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.[10]
In the English speaking world, the Douay-Rheims Bible, translated from the Latin Vulgate by recusants in 1582, and revised by Bishop Richard Challoner in the mid-1700s, was, until the Second Vatican Council, the translation used by most Catholics.[11] It is the translation still reportedly preferred by present-day more traditional or traditionalist Catholics.[10]
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 Ainscough, Almond, Arden (of Longcroft), Arundell, Bedingfeld, Berkeley (of Spetchley), Blount/Blunt, Clifford (of Chudleigh; since 1673), Coates, Constable, Constable-Maxwell, De Lisle (or de Lisle), Eyre, Eyston, Fermor (of Tusmore), Fitzherbert (of Swynnerton), Fitzherbert-Brockholes, Fortescue-Turville, Gillibrand, Goss, Hesketh, Holman, Hornyold, Huddleston, Jerningham, Kerr (Scotland), Mattingly, Payne, Petre, Riddell, Scarisbrick, Scrope (of Bolton), Smythe, Stonor, Stourton, Talbot, Throckmorton, Towneley, De Trafford (or de Trafford), Tichbourne, Trappes-Lomax (Trappes of Nidd), Tresham (of Northamptonshire), Vavasour, Ward, Weld, and Weld-Blundell (or 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).
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)[12] families. They provided a resurgent English 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.
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.[13]
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.[14]
A notable English Catholic, possibly a convert,[15] 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.[16] 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.
Saint Thomas More is another famous English recusant and martyr from the 16th century.
Other recusants include a large proportion of Jacobites, such as the Earl of Derwentwater, and particularly those ennobled in the Jacobite Peerage.
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 English crown, were overwhelmingly opposed to the Anglican and dissenting churches, and almost all remained Catholic, which had tragic implications for the later history of Ireland (such as the Irish Penal Laws). The Catholics of Ireland suffered the same penalties as recusants in England, which were exacerbated by impatience with the rebellious nature of the Irish, contempt for a subject race and desire for Irish land and property.[17]
The Recusancy in Scandinavia, however, was much shorter-lived and less extensive, and 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.
