172
SPAIN AND THE JACOBEAN CATHOLICS
tions to the Justices of the Peace than in the past concerning the presentment of all recusants above the age of nine years and the collection of the two reales for each Sunday that they were absentfrom the church and the search for and arrest of Jesuits and priestsabout whom the judges held certain public hearings in different provinceswhich will be the cause of the total ruin of many. It was for the purposeof these hearings that the judges were assembled on Saturday the 24th of August in the county of Essex.. In the city of Chester 46 persons were charged with having heard mass and three with having sheltered priests in their homes , which is treason , and 4 with having persuaded others to become Catholics. This same occurred in the other province of York when two women ] , sisters, were charged and condemend to death last July for havingsheltered priests, and they are keeping them there in prison for the execution is stayed according to the approval of the judge. All the ecclesiastical courts are engaged in excommunicating Catholics . The Pursuivant Cross, 5 who is the most important of all, has gone with a warrant to visit various houses of gentry. By special directions many orders have been issued from the Royal Treasury to all the counties of Englandand the province of Wales wherein they strictly enjoin the sheriffs that they should confiscate the lands solely to the king's use and sell the property and arrest the persons of the Catholics . The number of names contained within these orders reaches to at leasteight thousandso that, considering the severity of the judges, the speed and harshness of the Justices of the Peace , the number of proceedings that have been begun through the informers in London and throughout the kingdom in general , the host of accusations in general, the excommunications by the bishops, the orders that, in one instance , have proceeded from the treasury against eight thousand Catholics , it is evident that the persecution is at present much greater than in times past and many are bound to leave the kingdom and countless others to dissimulateand to attend the churches .
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1
The English ambassador explained to the French court: His Majestie doth " nothing but remitt things into the state in which they were at what tyme his Majestie beganne to treat with Spaine (P.R.O 36/53/5 f. 66v Lord Herbert to ..." Calvert , Paris , 15/25 March 1623/24 ) . 2 It was said that the king's order, in mid-June, to the Justices was for the enforcement of all laws while instructing them that he did not desire blood nor extreme severity " (P C 60 n. fol. Van Male to Isabella , London, 28 June 1624 ).
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3 Steele, Tudor and Stuart Proclamations , vol. 2 n . 1374 , Proclamation of 6 May 1624 . 4 i.e. 12 d.
5 For Yorkshire at this time see Aveling, Northern Catholics pp . 221-22 ; for