RECUSANTS 1581-1592
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Dom Hugh Bowler began transcribingthe recusant materialon the Pipe Rolls in December 1952, but he did the majority of the workduringthewinter of 1966/1967. He transferred the material he had abstracted onto cards, allotting one card to eachrecusant named in the Rolls , and arranged the cards in an alphabetical sequence . He then began typing up his material, but, became clear during the last years of his life, that he would nevercomplete the taskof editingthis volume , which would havecompleted his lifetime study of the workings of the Exchequer Departments in dealing with the offence of recusancy. By the time of his death in February 1978, Fr. Hugh had more or less completed the alphabetical list of recusants in the form in which appears in this volume , and had drafted somesuggestionsfor the annotations he wished to make , whichmainly concerned the large number of priests and prisoners who were recorded in the Rolls . It has been my task to annotate the material, to write the introduction, and to prepare the material for publi-
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Scholars familiar with thework of Dom Hugh Bowler , knowthat byyears ' of dedicated study, with almost no outside help , he had arrived at an unparalleled knowledge of the penal legislation which successive English governments had enacted against their Catholic fellow-citizens, and of the complicated network of legal and fiscal procedures which the implemen-
tation of theselaws required . His hundred -page preface to volume 57 ofthe Catholic Record Society's publications, Recusant Roll no.2 , combines such technical mastery of the whole subject with such precision of statement and clarity of presentation that it has become universally recognised as the definitive treatment of its subject 14. It was, therefore , an easy decision to determine to produce this volume in a form, as near as possible to that which Fr. Hughwould have produced had he lived to complete the task . The drafts for footnotesthat Fr. Hugh left, reveal to the careful student his particular knowledge of Berkshire recusancy, and the extent of his current reading inthe literature of recusant history. I have consciously maintained these slight emphases in his knowledge , and resisted the temptation to balance his knowledge of Berkshire recusants with any knowledge I might have of their
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counterparts in Sussex . am extremely grateful to Fr. Abbot and the Communityat Douai, who have encouraged me to complete Fr. Hugh's work , and who have helped me greatlywith their hospitality at Douai, and with their generosity in making available to me much of Fr. Hugh's library . am greatly indebted to the Editorial Committee of the Catholic Record Society for their advice and encouragement . Most of all, however , I am indebted to Fr. Hugh Bowler himself, for his friendship, his encouragement , and , above all , for his example. TimothyJ. McCann
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July 1981 14. A.F.Allison and D.M.Rogers, in R.H., vol. 15 , ( 1979 ), p.l.