Review 'Margaret Clitherow-an Elizabethan Saint' by Tony Morgan
Power Treason and Plot in Tudor England
The first non-fiction book from Tony Morgan who lives just outside York. Mr Morgan has already had three novels published. Two concern alternative history outcomes to the Gunpowder Treason, another 'Pearl of York', is a fictionalised life of Margaret Clitherow, which also features a youthful Guy Fawkes.
Margaret Clitherow is most known for her refusal to plead either guilty or not guilty to a charge of harbouring Jesuit priests in York in 1586. Her sentence was to undergo a punishment known as Peine forte et dure . This entailed being stripped naked, a stone placed behind her back, a door laid across her, then weights were added to it. Was all carried out on 25th March 1586 at Toll Booth, Ouse Bridge, in York. Margaret Clitherow was declared a saint in 1970. It must be said that this was an exceptional punishment, and that there is no evidence that Elizabeth I was aware that this sentence was due to be carried out or would have endorsed it.
The scene was recreated in great detail in the BBC mini series Gunpowder (2017), where a fictional relative of Gunpowder Plotter Robert Catesby undergoes this punishment for refusing to plead to the same charge, around the start of the 17th century. There were a number of viewers' complaining.
We are reminded in the book that that there is no contemporary record of the trial, but that one of the priests Margaret harboured ,Father John Mush ,wrote an account of Margaret's life and death known as A True Report of the Life and Martydom of Mrs Margaret Clitherow . Mr Morgan reminds us that this is not a completely objective source.
The book emphasises the point that during Elizabeth's reign, the harbouring of Jesuits being a criminal offence was just part of a series of sanctions against English Catholics. Only the Protestant Anglican Church was permitted as a place of worship. Those who refused to attend Anglican service, known as recusants risked being fined unless they could justify their absence. It is shown how these penalties reached some quite extortionate amounts or even prison for repeat offenders.
The author summarises all the stages of the English Reformation and the impact it had on Elizabethan legislation. He also recounts how York's status as the second city of England in the 15th century began to fail, how both population and economic activity declined. York is shown as being slow to accept the different stages of the Reformation, and took the side of the Catholic rebels during the Pilgrimage of Grace (1536). There were also no Protestant martyrs during Bloody Mary's reign. However the inhabitants of York stayed out of the Northern Earls Rebellion against Elizabeth in 1569.
The readers are reminded that most citizens stayed out of trouble, and that a large Protestant community, along with its own civil and religious hierarchy was quite well established in York by the time of Margaret's death. In other words, it would be hard to advance an argument to claim that by 1586 a Protestant authority was being forced upon a largely hostile population.
Margaret was most likely born in 1553. Her father owned property and in his will, stipulated that Margaret could inherit an inn at Davygate, York after her mother died. He died when Margaret was a teenager, and her mother soon re-married and started to run the inn with her second husband Henry Maye, a Protestant who had moved to York from Hampshire. At 18 Margaret married a butcher, John Clitherow, and converted to Catholicism whilst John remained a church warden in an Anglican church. The exact date and circumstances that led to Margaret becoming a Catholic are not known. Margaret was fined and then jailed a number of times for refusing to attend Anglican services, and John, well known as a local Protestant, was also punished by the Courts on account of her behaviour.
There is a particularly interesting examination of the role of women amongst the 'recusants' . Suggesting that there was quite possibly a Catholic network amongst midwives. Also that female 'recusants' in prison, free from childcare and their other labours, used the time for religious devotions, leaving custody with their religious convictions reinforced.
One of the book's strengths is that the author does not shy away from the complexities of Margaret's character. Particularly when, seemingly without John's consent, she used her contacts with priests to send their son Henry, aged 12 abroad to attend a Jesuit college, with the full knowledge that if Henry ever returned to England, he risked a traitor's death. Also when sentenced, Margaret stated that she wished her children to undergo the same punishment. On the other hand Margaret's refusal to plead meant that many of her family and other associates could not be cajoled into giving evidence against her, and therefore risk implicating themselves.
The author also looks into theories such as whether or not Margaret was pregnant at the time of her trial. Also the fact that her stepfather Henry Maye, who had remarried after Margaret's mother died, and now became Lord Mayor of York, had a hand in getting Margaret arrested. Possibly hoping to acquire said inn at Davygate if the Courts seized her assets and resold them in lieu of unpaid fines.
The book has a lot to recommend it. The complexities of the English Reformation are summarised clearly, and the relationship between central authority 200 miles away in London, and how laws were enforced in York comes over well. Mr Morgan does in no way justify the State persecution of Catholics, but he looks at how difficult it must have been to have someone of Margaret's uncompromising and quite dangerous stubborn nature in one's family.
My only criticism of the book is that it is not clear why Margaret was declared a saint? And why in 1970? But this is only minor niggle.
Further reading
2020 interview with Tony Morgan
Guy Fawkes & the Gunpowder Plot (Public) Facebook Group.
History of York page on Margaret Clitherow
Other blogs by Michael Bully
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Brighton
6th March 2022
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