A HISTORY OF CUMBERLAND 



had never been out of England, except for five years in Scotland, when 

 he sojourned at Edinburgh, Lord Seton's, Fernihurst, and other places, 

 but the greater part of his life, since he first arrived at Hartlepool from 

 abroad, was spent in the northern counties. 1 It must be acknowledged 

 that the seminarists as a rule took high ground in their assaults on the 

 church of England. Bost arrayed the whole force of his dialectic in 

 proving that the established religion had none of the marks of a true 

 church, inasmuch as it wanted antiquity, universality, and consent. His 

 writings on the claims of the church of Rome to the sympathies of his 

 brethren were full of earnest piety and eloquence. But the political 

 position which he sought to defend was very curious in view of the 

 papal bull which deposed the Queen as a heretic and usurper. He 

 maintained that he loved the Queen and would take her part if the pope 

 himself should send an army against her majesty, but if the pope by his 

 Catholic authority deposed her as a heretic, then he could not err, nor 

 could the church, and all Catholics were bound to obey the church. It 

 was little wonder that Topcliffe told lord keeper Puckering that the 

 seminarist was ' full of treason as ever wretche was.' a It may be men- 

 tioned, however, that the burden of the arguments contained in the 

 seized letters and papers belonging to the priests and their Cumbrian 

 sympathizers was chiefly taken up with denunciations of the church of 

 England and with praise of the church of Rome. The main thesis of 

 the controversy was, as Andrew Hilton from his prison in Carlisle urged 

 on his friend Lancelot Bost, that the Roman communion was the ark of 

 God, outside of which there was no salvation. The propaganda went 

 on and the local authorities bent their energies to catch the agents. In 

 time of danger the fugitives were hidden in caves in the ground or 

 secret places where it was impossible to find them. In the opinion of 

 one of Cecil's spies, 3 expressed in October 1593, many were 'converted 

 unto popery ' within the past two years, but especially among tenants in 

 Westmorland. He was able to report the names of twenty-one ' preistes 

 yt ar now in ye North ' and there were many more that he could not 

 name. 4 But the North was getting too hot for the papal sympathizers, 

 and many of them began to withdraw to the Low Countries and else- 

 where. 



By proclamation in 1580 certain places in each diocese were 

 specially appointed for the restraint of the principal recusants, as the 

 ordinary prisons to which they were accustomed to be committed only 

 rendered them more obstinate in their recusancy. 5 This new policy was 

 no doubt recommended with the view of showing more leniency to those 



Lansd. MS. 75, f. 22. 



* S.P. Dom. Eliz. Add. xxviii.58. (viii.); S.P. Dom. Eliz. ccxlv. 124. 



3 Ibid, ccxlv. 131. 



4 The examination of Lancelot Bost, Andrew Hilton, and James Harrington, together with the 

 documents found in their houses, may be seen in S.P. Dom. Eliz. Add. xxviii. 58, i. ii. iii. vi. vii. viii. 

 59, i. ii. iii. The State Papers of 1583-4 contain much interesting matter about recusancy in the 

 diocese of Carlisle. 



6 Peck, Desiderata Curiosa, iii. 11-12, 39-40; Egerton Papers, Camden Soc., pp. 83-6. 



84 



