A brief account of our diocesan history
This section was added in October 2004, containing chapters in the history of the Diocese.
At present we cover the period 1500 - 1844. The history has been written by Rev David Milburn
- Under the Earlier Tudors (1500-1558)
- Elizabeth I (1558-1603)
- James 1 (1603-25)
- Charles I (1625-49)
- The Protectorate (1649-1660)
- Charles II (1660-1685)
- James II (1685-88)
- 18th Century (i)
- 18th Century (ii)
- 19th Century
3.Catholicism in Northumberland and Durham during the Stuart period - James 1 (1603-25)
James I duly compensated the hard-pressed English Catholics for their support of his claim to the English throne by removing the main threat that hung over them, namely execution. But alarmed at the resurgence of Catholicism which followed this, he introduced new penal legislation, thus provoking a few Catholic hotheads to devise the plot of 1605 to blow up king and parliament.
Here in the north east one of the conspirators, Thomas Percy, a relative and employee of the Earl of Northumberland, was killed whilst resisting arrest, and the earl himself committed to the tower of London where he remained for several years. Some time later two other prominent northern gentlemen, Francis Radcliffe of Dilston and his son-in-law Roger Widdrington of Cartington (alleged to be the most dangerous recusant in Northumberland), were charged with having been accessory to the plot. The case against them was later quietly dropped.
The plot brought such further misery to the Catholic community that the priest Humfrey Sicklemore captured at Corbridge the next year expressed the fear that English Catholics might never be freed from persecution. Others agreed, including the Jesuits who in 1624 testified to continuing persecution especially of the poor.
However, in the rural heartland of the north it would seem that the laws were rarely enforced. None of the 33 Northumbrian Catholics, many of them well-known, summonsed between 1614 and 1617 to the court of the Ecclesiastical High Commission sitting at Durham ever bothered to present themselves. Indeed, we can go further and say that a biblical astuteness (which included the right marriage alliances) along with remoteness from central government and a closeness to those who counted in local government, allowed the Catholic gentry to live in a style to which they long had been accustomed, not only possessing vast estates, but also having the means to improve them.
Of the then leading 18 Northumberland families 12 were Catholic, including the Radcliffes at Dilston and their relatives the Widdringtons of Cartington. Both incurred considerable expense improving their properties during these years, Francis Radcliffe audaciously providing even a separate (and therefore public) chapel in 1615/6. It is said that half of the Northumbrian recusants during James' reign lived in this southern part of Tynedale.
But James' reign also witnessed a falling away of many wealthy Catholics, some of them certainly to prevent the loss of their property. Nevertheless, many remained Catholic at heart, despite their return to politics at national and local level. Sometimes they took steps to see that their children were brought up in the Faith. The pro-Catholic Howard’s though mainly courtiers, acquired estates in Northumberland where the number of recusants increased from 150 to 358 during the years 1600-1620. Similar increases were observed in Durham.
However, despite this resurgence, Catholics remained a tiny minority, less than 2% of the total population of the two counties. Demographically they tended to group into pockets away from the towns, where the gentry could provide not only protection but also, in the absence of bishops, spiritual leadership. From Cleveland to Northumberland Catholic gentlemen helped to organise Mass centres. The priests themselves, tired of constant harassment as they moved from place to place, also gravitated to the rural retreats of the gentry to act as their chaplains. By way of exception the more populated region of Tyneside also possessed Mass centres about this time. Dorothy Lawson's new house of 1632 at St Anthony's was built to accommodate more than one priest. Some years later Gateshead House, the new home of the Riddells on the site of the medieval chapel of St Edmund in Gateshead High Street also housed priests. The same can be said of the area around and including Durham city.
Though King James must take some responsibility for the on-going persecution of Catholics, he continued to stop short of the death penalty, if only to further his plans for marriage alliances with the two great Catholic countries of Spain and France. When in 1618 the priest William Southerne who had been working in Newcastle from a room (which doubled up as a chapel) on the upper floor of a house on the quayside was tried and summarily executed, it was done on the orders of the anti-Catholic Lord Sheffield, president of the council of the North whom the king swiftly dismissed from this high office.
Copyright 2004 Roman Catholic Diocese of Hexham and Newcastle