The Pearl of York, Treason and Plot – Political Intrigue in Tudor York

By Tony Morgan

Margaret Clitherow was the wife of John Clitherow, a successful businessman and butcher. Her arrest and subsequent trial for harbouring Jesuit priests in March 1586, was chronicled by Father John Mush.

As Father Mush was a Catholic priest himself, he couldn’t risk attending the court in person. Someone else had to be his eyes and ears on the streets of York and at the Lent Assizes. Could this really have been Margaret’s near neighbour, a youthful Guy Fawkes?

Margaret Clitherow was born around 1553 into a prosperous family. Her father, Thomas Middleton, was a wax-chandler, at a time when everyone needed candles, and an alderman of the city. His wife Jane busied herself looking after the family, supporting the business and running the household.

With the family firmly part of York’s merchant class, Margaret was raised a Protestant. Their conformity and position in society was confirmed in 1564, when Thomas Middleton was elected for a one-year tenure as Sheriff of York. When he died three years later, he left behind a legacy for his family, and a small amount of money for the city’s poor, with a request they’d pray for his soul.

His widow Jane quickly remarried. Her new husband, Henry Maye, was a younger man and from a lower social class, which would have been a surprise to many. He quickly transformed their home, however, into a successful inn and pursued various business interests. Over time, Henry, and his new family, prospered. His place at the heart of York’s governing class was eventually accepted, and he became an alderman, himself.

Margaret is said to have had a good relationship with her stepfather. The family would have been pleased in 1571, when she married the well-to-do widower John Clitherow, and moved to his household in The Shambles, a narrow street dominated by the city’s meat traders.

The Shambles, York

In the years which followed, Margaret raised a family and controversially converted to Catholicism. Most Catholics stayed true to their faith unobtrusively. They attended Protestant church services every Sunday, as the law demanded, before sneaking off to secretly attend an illegal Catholic Mass.

But Margaret Clitherow was no ordinary Catholic. She refused to hide her new religion. Instead, she joined York’s recusants - dissenters who shunned the official church services and objected to swearing allegiance to the queen. Over the next ten years, she was imprisoned and fined multiple times for her crimes. Once, she was even released on licence for a few weeks to have a baby.
John Clitherow remained a Protestant. For a time, he was even a church warden, responsible for naming people who didn’t attend church. But he paid Margaret’s fines, and welcomed her home whenever she returned from prison.

At the time, there was a major power struggle underway behind the scenes in York. In one corner was the Council of the North. the Queen’s official representatives in this part of England. Based in the King’s Manor in York, near the city walls, the Council was responsible for preventing and putting down religious or other uprisings in this unruly place, two hundred miles north of the Queen’s power base in London.

In another corner was York Corporation. This was effectively York city council, run by the merchant classes, rather than councillors from political parties or independents. The Corporation set local taxes and laws in the city, controlled the powerful guilds, ran correction facilities and at times gave alms to the poor. Based in the building known as the Common Hall, above the banks of the River Ouse, the Corporation was led each year by the Lord Mayor and a senior Sheriff.

There was also a third powerful body to consider, the Church of England. Headed locally by the Archbishop of York, the Church operated the city’s churches, had its own prison and an Ecclesiastical Court, which had employed Guy Fawkes’s father and grandfather in days gone by. The major locations of the Church in York included York Minster and the Bishop’s Palace, located just outside the city.

York Minster

In some ways, all three vied for the Queen’s favour, and what better way of getting this than by persecuting Catholics? Methods includes fining and imprisoning recusants and capturing and executing any Catholic priests found in the city. In addition, a new law had been introduced. Anyone found guilty of allowing Catholic Mass to be said in their house or aiding a Catholic priest in any way could be executed, as local layman Marmaduke Bowes discovered to his cost in the year 1585.
In the same year, Margaret’s mother Jane died. Following the family tradition, her stepfather Henry remarried quickly to a much younger spouse. Margaret’s stepfather’s star was on the rise. In February 1586, he was elected, with great fanfare, as the new Lord Mayor of York.

There was only one problem, Margaret’s recusancy. What sort of example did this set to the city? The representatives of the Council of the North must have been rubbing their hands together. This was something they could exploit to their own benefit. Equally, Henry Maye would have been cursing Margaret and wondering how he could wash his hands of this blot on his reputation.

Both parties then, as well as the Church, had motive enough to investigate Margaret further. When whispers went around that she might be hiding priests and allowing Mass to be said in her house, which body would have acted first? Or for once, did they act in co-ordination?

For only one month after Henry Maye’s inauguration, John Clitherow was summoned to the King’s Manor to speak to the Council of the North. As soon as he was away from his house, the Corporation acted. The Sheriff of York raided the premises. Margaret was arrested, and although no priests were found, she was sent to trial at York Lent Assizes.

What happened next had even more political intrigue, as the Council and Corporation attempted to influence events in favour of their own agenda. Father Mush watched on from the side-lines. What role did he and the Catholic Church have to play in Margaret’s downfall?

~~~~~~~~~~

Tony Morgan is an author and university academic. He lives in North Yorkshire, near to the birthplace of Guy Fawkes and Margaret Clitherow. In addition to writing historical novels, Tony gives history talks covering the events of the Gunpowder Plot and the life and death of Margaret Clitherow.
To date, all profits from his novels and talks have been donated to good causes. In 2020, Tony is supporting St Leonard’s Hospice in York.
For more details, visit Tony’s website - https://tonymorganauthor.wordpress.com/ or follow Tony on Twitter @MorgantheBook

If you want to find out more about Margaret, and Father Mush's role in proceedings, The Pearl of York, Treason and Plot is available from March 2020 on Amazon in Kindle and paperback formats. It can also be purchased locally in Yorkshire, for example at one of Tony’s history talks.

Amazon UK link 

Amazon US link 

A Recusant's Life in the 17th Century

by Deborah Swift

In 1571  a law was passed making it treasonable to be under the authority of the Pope, including being Jesuit, being Roman Catholic or harbouring a Catholic priest. The standard penalty for all those convicted of treason at the time was execution by being hanged, drawn and quartered. Nevertheless, many Catholics would not give up their faith as a matter of principle, claiming that Henry had stolen their Church, the rightful Church of England, from them.

Official records show that 5000 people were fined between 1593 and 1600, but these numbers are probably the tip of the iceberg. Many more would have escaped being fined and continued to practice their faith in secret. Women in particular, deemed to be 'the weaker vessel', with no property rights, and whose husband controlled all their wealth, were particularly difficult to fine - unless of course their husbands agreed to pay the penalty.

At the beginning of the realm of James I, many Catholics were outraged that Mary Queen of Scots's son did nothing to ease the legal persecution that they had endured since the reign of Henry VIII.But James knew that to win the allegiance of the English,who saw themselves as a Protestant nation, he must accede to the demands of  the powerful evangelical committee of the Church of England.

So a new King meant further persecution for the remaining Catholic families, who could be fined or jailed for attending Mass. Catholic Priests were concealed in 'priest holes' and led their lives in hiding, often in fear for their lives. Some people went so far as to build their houses to plans which would include multiple hiding places - Eliza Vaux arranged for Harrowden Hall to have many - something that alllowed her a virtual Jesuit college right in the heart of England.

Priest Hole at Harvington Hall

There are many tales of Priests who did not escape their pursuers - forty of the Priests who lost their lives in this period were canonised as late as 1970 by Pope Paul VI.

In the 17th Century the penalty for an ordinary person not attending the Church of England was £20 a month - an enormous sum considering that a yeoman farmer might earn £2 a year. No wonder Guy Fawkes and his Catholic friends wanted to blow up the Houses of Parliament. An anonymous letter eventually warned Parliament of the Gunpowder Plot - a letter that is still in our National Archives and causes fierce debate because nobody really knows who it was that betrayed the conspirators.

Of course Guy Fawkes and his gang were executed in the traditional way, but their plotting made life considerably worse for Catholics, as recusants were subsequently banned from practising Law, serving in the Army or Navy, and from voting in elections.

For a recusant, the objects of your faith - chalice, Bible, statuary had to be hidden in cellars or in attics. In this picture - again of Harvington Hall, the floorboards to the left of the altar can be lifted to hide away the candleabra and altar furniture.



Some Catholics had elaborate chests made that opened out to reveal an altar or shrine. This article about Mapledurham House shows a picture of a secretaire adapted for that purpose, and tells us that some priest holes were so well-hidden that they are only now being discovered.

This period fascinated me, and I set my most recent novel at this time. The Leviston family are Catholic and must go to elaborate lengths to hide their faith. At the same time, in other European countries such as Spain, it was illegal not to be a Catholic. The young woman in my novel has to travel from England to Spain in search of her lost inheritance, a journey which changes her view of English life forever.

"A Divided Inheritance achieves what all stellar historical fiction must: through the voices of imagined characters, important lessons from the past linger and haunt long after the book is finished."  

Ann Weisgarber, winner of the Langum Prize for Historical Fiction

The book comes out on Thursday, published by Macmillan - Hooray! Find out more from my website.
Thanks for reading!
Sources: The Gunpowder Plot - Antonia Fraser
Religion and the Decline of Magic - Keith Thomas
You might also like http://englishhistoryauthors.blogspot.co.uk/2011/11/religious-upheaval-during-17th-century.html