Physical boundaries: The creation and adaptation of harbouring households

Richard Topcliffe’s unease regarding ‘evil’ Catholic women came at a time when English men and women witnessed a multitude of political, religious, and economic tensions that affected the position of Catholics in the realm. As a reaction to Catholic rebellions and plots, both real and imagined, Queen Elizabeth I and her Privy Council created several laws that penalized the practice of Catholicism. The ‘Act to Retain the Queen’s Majesty’s Subjects in Their True Obedience’ in 1581 made it treasonous for the newly arrived missionary priests from the Continent to draw English subjects away from loyalty to the queen, while increasing fines for nonattendance at parish churches and threatening fines or imprisonment for those who celebrated or attended Mass. The ‘Act against Jesuits, Seminary Priests, and such Other like Disobedient Persons’ in 1585 declared it treason to shelter priests in England or go abroad to seminaries or convents. Despite the laws, missionary priests continued to roam the English countryside, having to disguise themselves and hide with trusted Catholic families. The use and construction of priest holes emerged in rudimentary forms in the 1580s and experienced a surge following the 1585 Act.^{Footnote 10} Either adapted from natural gaps in existing architecture, or cleverly designed and created in new construction, these hides harboured priests between floors, within fireplaces, amidst roof rafters, and between walls. Despite the ingenuity, between 1585 and 1601, 143 Catholics were executed for harbouring priests or for similar crimes; three of whom were women.^{Footnote 11} The fact that women made up only two percent of Catholics executed could suggest that either Topcliffe was wrong in his assertion regarding the threat of women, or that considerations of gender influenced the prosecution and punishment of women.

While this article does not further an argument of female exceptionalism within the English Catholic community, it does purport that gender, marital status, and class could and did provide different opportunities for subversion in the Catholic community, due to the various legal, economic, and social statuses that accompanied the early modern female experience.^{Footnote 12} This section will argue that widowhood provided a greater degree of economic and social autonomy, different from that of married women, which some widows used to adapt or create new households in which to harbour priests. In regards to economic independence, for the general population in early modern England, ecclesiastical law of intestate inheritance (in place for when husbands died without making a will) maintained that widows were entitled to one-third of the husbands’ personal property.^{Footnote 13} Amy Erickson found that women whose husbands left a will generally received more than their allotted one-third of the estate required by ecclesiastical law. In addition, in a study that compared wills from fourteen English locations from the fourteenth to the early eighteenth centuries, Erickson showed that one quarter of the wills specifically mention the dwelling house, and she suggests that the widows of the 75 percent of men who do not mention houses still occupied the original house.^{Footnote 14} Thus, most early modern widows occupied and controlled a house after the death of their husbands.

In addition to economic autonomy, social independence from a male-controlled household was also unique to widowhood. Wealthy widows, more than single women, had the legal status and economic means to maintain a private household. In fact, Amy Froide shows that widows headed 12.9 percent of households in early modern England while single women only headed 1.1 percent, yet there were twice as many single women in England than widows.^{Footnote 15} Widows enjoyed financial security and domestic autonomy, and they functioned as heads of households in the absence of their husbands. In fact, widows were the only women in early modern England who could maintain economic independence without formal male supervision.^{Footnote 16} By dimming the focus on generic statistics regarding widowhood and property acquisition and instead highlighting the experiences of individual Catholic widows, it does appear that widowhood provided a unique degree of independence, which some widows used to create and adapt houses or rooms for the purpose of priest harbouring – a tangible, physical benefit gender and marital status afforded to widows.

The individual widows in this study maintained houses that shared similar traits, suggesting a pattern in priest-harbouring locations that could be accommodated through widows’ financial and social autonomy. These houses had a size and design beneficial to harbouring priests, and they were solitary in their location, oftentimes protected by riverbends and vegetation. It must be conceded that while the freedom to control domestic space in such a way was a condition specific to widowhood, it was not a universal guarantee. Aristocratic and country gentry are almost exclusively featured here, due to the economic means, social status, and corroborating sources that accompany such individuals. But while wealth, sex, and social status have all been recognized by previous historians, it is the remarkable prominence of marital status as a factor that is highlighted here.

Consider the exploits of Elizabeth Vaux and her harbouring house at Harrowden. In 1600, Elizabeth Vaux, the widow of George Vaux and sister-in-law to the harbouring female duo Anne Vaux and the widow Eleanor Brooksby, used her wealth and independence to have a new three-story addition built at Harrowden Hall for the use of priests John Percy and John Gerard.^{Footnote 17} Harrowden became a sort of ‘Mission Headquarters’, used as both a Catholic school and meeting place for Jesuit priests. Vaux commissioned Nicholas Owen to build a priest hole in the original building, further solidifying Harrowden as a hub of Catholic activity.^{Footnote 18}

The creation and adaptation of Harrowden as a Catholic refuge came on the heels of numerous manoeuvres by Elizabeth Vaux, each one contingent on her economic and social status as a widow. According to the Jesuit John Gerard, once Elizabeth’s husband died, she vowed to remain a widow and devoted her material wealth to the Catholic cause.^{Footnote 19} Upon her widowhood, she settled at Irthlingborough. Gerard remarked that the house was poorly appointed and unsuited for their plans to create a Catholic centre. Harrowden, also a family seat, sat three miles from Irthlingborough, although at this point it was also in poor condition. Gerard described Elizabeth’s motivations and aspirations for a Catholic house in his Autobiography and in doing so, gives a set of requirements for such a building. He maintained:

Gerard’s misgivings about Harrowden suggests that his idea of an effective Catholic household required seclusion and protection away from prying eyes and invasive searches. It needed to be well appointed, so that it could receive numerous visitors in an appropriate fashion. The house also needed to be large enough to accommodate priests and provide ample space to perform necessary worship and instruction. Thus, location, size, and level of privacy were vital characteristics for a successful Catholic house.

Elizabeth Vaux tried to rent such a house in London, although her proximity to the Privy Council and the lack of privacy afforded in the city drove Vaux to the countryside. Gerard wrote, ‘A house in or near London, of course, had the great advantage that it would be much better placed for apostolic work, but, on the other hand, London was too dangerous for me at the moment. In any case, she would have no privacy there, and it would be unsafe for her.’^{Footnote 21} It appears that accessibility was deemed important for the spread and strengthening of Catholicism, but not as vital as the protection afforded by a secluded location. Elizabeth Vaux’s public interactions with officials and bailiffs as the manager of her minor son’s estate meant that Vaux had to remain accessible and visible. Unlike the childless widow Anne Line, who Gerard commissioned to maintain a secret household in London, Elizabeth Vaux could not disappear into the city under the cover of a pseudonym. Though she needed to remain in the public eye, she also needed to be cautious. As a known Catholic, she was under careful watch by the Lords of the Council.

While a country location for Vaux lessened accessibility for other Catholics, it did provide the necessary protection required for priest harbouring. Gerard wrote, ‘We searched everywhere for the perfect house, looking over many in this county, but they all had some feature that made them not quite suitable for our purpose.’^{Footnote 22} The time and care Vaux, with perhaps the help of her Jesuit confessor, took in choosing a house reveals the importance of both location and structure. Vaux’s social autonomy and economic independence meant she had both the time and resources to find a house that met her needs. Eventually Vaux chose Kirby Hall, a large house in Northamptonshire that ‘stood remote from other dwellings, surrounded by fine orchards and gardens – people could come and go without anyone noticing them.’^{Footnote 23} Thus, privacy in movement took precedence over ease of movement.

Elizabeth Vaux enlisted the help of Thomas Mulsho, one of the trustees for her son, to rent Kirby Hall in his name in April 1599. With a payment of £1,500, Vaux began altering the building to better suit her needs, which included contracting Nicholas Owen to build priest holes so that she could better hide the religious outlaws. However, loose-lipped servants and a wary local community ensured that Vaux’s stay at Kirby Hall was short lived. Gerard stated, ‘Already there was talk in the whole county that she had taken this splendid mansion because it was a remote place where she could entertain priests freely and in large numbers. This gossip had some foundation.’^{Footnote 24} As a result, in July 1599, authorities unsuccessfully searched the house. While Owen escaped capture, and Vaux avoided prosecution, Kirby Hall was no longer a safe refuge since it was situated in a county where numerous justices and residents were Puritans, eager to push Vaux from Kirby.^{Footnote 25}

Kirby Hall had met the desired requirements for a Catholic house. It was private, secluded, protected, and large enough to accommodate and hide numerous priests. However, the house was situated in a community that was hostile towards Catholics. Gerard wrote, ‘Though they frustrated the move, she did not give up her purpose, and started at once to adapt her present house [Harrowden].’^{Footnote 26} Elizabeth Vaux had a new three-story wing built at Harrowden to provide ample privacy; so much that Gerard boasted that they could step out into a private garden and take walks in nearby fields without observation.^{Footnote 27} It appears that the community surrounding Harrowden was either more amenable, or Harrowden provided more seclusion than Kirby Hall, since the house became a centre of operations, housed numerous Jesuits, provided education for Catholic boys, and kept an elaborate altar and vestments for Mass. However, the protection afforded by Harrowden was short-lived. In November 1605, a letter incriminated Vaux in the Gunpowder Plot, which led to a brief arrest. In April 1606, Vaux was able to return to Harrowden until another arrest in 1616, which resulted in crippling fines and the eventual abandonment of the house.^{Footnote 28}

Dorothy Lawson is another example of a woman who used her widowhood, financial independence, and social status to create an effective harbouring house. On 10 March 1597, Dorothy Constable married the lawyer Roger Lawson, esquire, the Protestant son and heir to Ralph Lawson of Brough Hall. His estate was worth 3,000 pounds a year, thereby ensuring Dorothy Lawson a comfortable life in the north of England.^{Footnote 29} Her seventeen-year marriage to Roger ended with his death in 1614. Left with fifteen children and her house at Heaton, Lawson became a widow with inherited property.^{Footnote 30} Lawson’s Jesuit chaplain of seven years, William Palmes, recounted in her biography that in 1623, Lawson’s father-in-law, Sir Ralph Lawson, wanted to sell Heaton, but he was unable to do so without Dorothy’s permission. Eventually, Lawson granted permission, and she moved to Newcastle-on-Tyne where she had the means to build a new house called St. Antony’s.^{Footnote 31} Here she employed Catholic servants, harboured priests, and held Catholic services in her house, converting family members and neighbours to the Catholic faith. Lawson lived at St. Antony’s for fifteen years until her death on 26 March 1632 at the age of 52.^{Footnote 32}

The location of St. Antony’s was arguably one of its greatest assets. The house was relatively secluded, and sat on the banks of the Tyne River, which provided easy access to merchants and missionaries from the continent. A lease dated 21 April 1623 between Robert Riddell, a merchant in Newcastle-on-Tyne, and Dorothy Lawson gives a hint as to the exact location of St. Antony’s, since the building does not exist today. It appears that at this time, Riddell was leasing one-third of his land holdings to Lawson, who paid 4 d. per annum, and paid one-third of the charges in building wharves, houses, and hedges along this portion of the Tyne.^{Footnote 33} In the lease, she is already referred to as ‘Dorothy Lawson of St. Anthony’s’, and the lease shows joint control of land along the Tyne river at the low-water mark in the lordship of Byker in an area called the Salt Grasse. Next to the electoral ward of Byker in Newcastle today is a suburban area named St. Anthony’s, near the banks of the Tyne. This location is indeed at a sharp bend of the river, as described by Palmes, roughly eight miles from where the mouth of the river opens to the North Sea. By comparing Palmes’ description with these modern divisions of Newcastle, it appears that St. Antony’s did indeed sit at an easy access point, relatively secluded around the bend of a river.

Not only was its location significant, but Palmes states that Lawson outfitted the house to be a beacon to passing Catholics. She had ‘JESUS’ written in large letters on the end of the house that faced the water, so mariners and missionaries would know that hers was a house where Catholics could gather in privacy.^{Footnote 34} While authorities could not reasonably punish Lawson for posting Jesus’ name, as this would not have been an exclusively Catholic sign, the writing could have signalled the presence of the Society of Jesus at the house to knowing individuals, a sort of dual-meaning protection while proclaiming the location of a Catholic refuge. Due to its secluded yet accessible location, Jesuits frequently used Lawson’s house as a meeting place. Palmes writes that once a year, members of the Society of Jesus met for eight days to discuss the mission in England.^{Footnote 35} Elizabeth Vaux and Dorothy Lawson present two examples of solitary widows who capitalized on their newfound economic independence, and autonomy in the eyes of society and law, to create new domestic space for maintaining priests.

Not only did widowhood provide the financial opportunity to create harbouring space in the household without interference, but also it gave a culturally acceptable reason for women to live in solitude; a lifestyle well-suited to harbouring priests. The purpose of dower houses, for instance, was that they be used by widows to remove themselves from the main house to make room for the heir and his family. These socially isolated, independent dwellings were in fact perfect for the use of priests desirous to avoid the public eye.^{Footnote 36} Jane Wiseman of Essex capitalized on the social solitude that accompanied widowhood and established a dower house designed to harbour priests. Wiseman was known by Protestant authorities to be ‘a great harbourer of priests and other bad persons,’ in her house at Northend in Essex.^{Footnote 37} John Gerard encouraged Wiseman to retire to her dower house, away from her son and his estate, presumably in order to capitalize on her social solitude. Anne Dacre Howard, the widow of the now sainted Philip Howard, moved four times between 1616 and her death in 1630.^{Footnote 38} She spent her final two years at a secluded manor house at Shifnal, Shropshire. In this house covered by trees, Anne hosted Mass, kept priests, and provided charity to the poor. The widow Lady Magdalen Montague had control of three houses upon her widowhood: Montague House in London, Cowdray House in West Sussex, and Battle Abbey in East Sussex. She spent most of her time at Battle, the house furthest from London and protected by rolling hills and trees. While Montague’s house in London was searched numerous times by authorities, her house at Battle was searched only once, and she lived in relative peace and seclusion even though her house was known as ‘little Rome.’^{Footnote 39} Here, in the house four miles from Hastings, Montague built a chapel, kept three priests, and hosted Mass. According to John Ellys, a tailor in Dorset, a widow called Mrs. Jesope had nine priests at one time in her house in East Chickerell, because the structure ‘hath conveiances in it to hide the priests and massing priests in,’ and it sat ‘solitary by itself.’^{Footnote 40} While not much else is known about Mrs. Jesope, it is notable that Ellys attributes Jesope’s success to the location and structure of her house. Its apparent location away from other buildings no doubt added an element of security and secrecy, while the house itself must have included a variety of spaces to conceal priests.

The physical and social seclusion from male authority enjoyed by widows, together with the availability of monetary resources, are perhaps why widows are prominent not only in Jesuit biographies, as shown above, but also in confessions, witness statements, arrest warrants, and state papers, since some widows were able to use and create households for harbouring without interference or competing allegiances. For example, a servant’s statement revealed that after the death of her husband Sir John Stourton, Lady Stourton moved to Chideock in Dorset, further isolating herself. Priests followed her there and stayed for more than a year.^{Footnote 41} Edmund Campion’s confession in 1580, as recorded by Lord Burghley, lists an immense network of harbourers in which gentlemen feature prominently, although seven women are listed as well. Three were known widows, while the marital status of the other four is unknown.^{Footnote 42} In 1581, a servant betrayed the location of seminary priest John Payne at the house of the widow Lady Petre, which resulted in his arrest.^{Footnote 43} Authorities charged Payne with high treason and executed him in 1582, yet available documentation suggests that the punishment imposed on Lady Petre was minimal. The widow Eleanor Hunt harboured the priest Christopher Wharton until authorities apprehended, tried, and executed him in 1600.^{Footnote 44} Eleanor herself avoided execution, although she was imprisoned in York Castle for harbouring a priest.^{Footnote 45} A 1605 letter from Thomas Wilson to the Earl of Salisbury lists thirty-one priest harbourers, of which ten were women. Of those ten, seven were widows.^{Footnote 46} The prominence of widows in these sources suggests that priests frequently trusted and used widows’ houses as sites of refuge.

Widowhood provided autonomous control over money, time, and domestic space in a way unavailable to most married and single women in early modern England. These financial resources and accompanying spatial autonomy provided at the death of husbands resulted in a variety of responses from Catholic widows intent on harbouring priests. Some, like Dorothy Lawson, created new spaces, built with the specific aim to harbour priests. Others adapted old places, such as the widow Jesope and Elizabeth Vaux. The level of privacy and seclusion, combined with accessibility, found in the above examples suggests that the creation and placement of such spaces itself was intentional. Dorothy Lawson chose to build St. Antony’s around the bend of the river – a location that was both private and accessible. Elizabeth Vaux searched for the ideal house and eventually settled on creating one from the remnants of the existing Harrowden. The bricks and mortar of place depended on the funds, planning, and execution of such women; factors that were in turn dependent on the societal structures that accompanied widowhood. In this way, gender, marital status, and class influenced the creation and use of households as centres for harbouring priests.

Cognitive boundaries: The cover of vulnerability

The physical boundaries of protection afforded by the location and structure of households present only part of this analysis on the opportunities for subversion inherent in widowhood. This section investigates an additional layer of privacy connected to widows’ households in particular; one based on cognitive boundaries. Such boundaries were not dependent on social or economic independence or the physicality of priest holes and houses, but instead on the accepted cultural stereotypes associated with widowhood; most notably that of vulnerability and piety. These gendered stereotypes provided widows with a certain degree of invisibility while harbouring priests, since the perception of widows appears to have influenced the actions of priest hunters and Protestant authorities. This study’s understanding of gendered stereotypes relies on extant early modern English texts. When analysing the use of the word widow in texts within the Early English Books Online database (EEBO), the two words most commonly associated with the term widow are fatherless and poor.^{Footnote 47} This suggests that the rhetorical language associated with widows in early modern literary conventions in large part invokes an image of destitution and isolation from male support. This frequent stereotype of widowhood exists largely in Biblical commentaries and literary representations, which generally depicted widows as vulnerable. Another common stereotype of widowhood is the ‘ideal widow’, as reflected in conduct books, sermons, and other prescriptive literature. Early modern English authors depicted the ideal widow as a woman who exhibited self-control, chastity, and obedience to God in her solitude. For example, the terms most associated with the word widowhood in EEBO are virginity, perpetual, chaste, and vow, which shows that the theme most often associated with the state of widowhood was that of sexual control. By prescribing how a widow should or should not act, male authors attempted to assert control over a female demographic that was socially and economically autonomous – an inversion of the desired gendered hierarchy. A third popular stereotype portrays the lusty widow, commonly featured in comedic representations such as ballads, broadsides, and plays. Contemporary portrayals of the lusty widow depict a rich, independent, and worldly woman with an insatiable sexual appetite who preyed on young men.^{Footnote 48} Such widows were the antithesis of the pious widow. They were out of control, threatened the patriarchal hierarchy of society, and led God-fearing men to sin.^{Footnote 49}

Yet, despite the popularity of the lusty widow on the stage, the stereotype of threatening widows appears to have had little impact on the view of individual widows in reality. Instead, sources suggest that a perception of vulnerability followed widowhood, and acted as a cover for subversive action, rather than an advertisement for culpability.^{Footnote 50} The Catholic widows in this study exemplified the common stereotypes of piety and vulnerability and avoided the trope of the ‘lusty widow’, which eased anxieties surrounding the power and authority inherent in their marital status. They vowed to remain widows, built or adapted dower houses in solitary locations, gave money to the poor, fed the hungry, and devoted themselves to God. In this way, they stayed within the parameters of the existing patriarchal society and thereby avoided or hindered detection from authorities. Ironically, patriarchal stereotypes of widows provided a sort of cultural camouflage over subversive actions.

While widowhood was not a veil that completely protected a house from authorities, state papers and correspondence suggest that it was a culturally understood taboo to infiltrate a widow’s privacy. At the very least, widows expected a sense of decorum from the men who approached their doorstep. Consider the search of Baddesley Clinton, as narrated in the autobiography of Jesuit John Gerard. At the time of the search in October 1591, five Jesuits and two seminary priests were meeting at Baddesley Clinton over the span of a few days under the protection of the widow Eleanor Brooksby and her sister, Anne Vaux, when at five o’clock in the morning, four priest-hunters approached the door. Gerard recounts that the pursuivants took the priests by surprise, and so they quickly stripped the altar, gathered personal items, and turned their beds over so they would not be warm to the touch of the searchers. They also had to hide their boots and swords since it would have aroused suspicion had the searchers found such articles without the presence of men.^{Footnote 51} While Gerard only details his own haste, Brooksby and Vaux could have had their own items to hide in the hurried moments before the searchers crossed the threshold. A list of items belonging to the two sisters from 1606 details numerous Catholic items, from reliquaries, pictures, vestments, crucifixes, and various relics such as Mr. Robert Sutton’s thumb, St. Stephen’s jawbone in gold and crystal, and a piece of hair shirt from St. Thomas of Canterbury.^{Footnote 52} Gathering items, flipping beds, stripping altars, and fitting seven men into a hide would have taken some time, especially since they were presumably still in their beds when the searchers approached the door. Gerard’s account gives a clue to the strategy used to keep the searchers at bay in order to provide more time for the priests to conceal themselves. He writes, ‘Outside the ruffians were bawling and yelling, but the servants held the door fast. They said the mistress of the house, a widow, was not up yet, but was coming down at once to answer them. This gave us enough time to stow ourselves and all our belongings into a very cleverly built sort of cave’.^{Footnote 53}

A letter written by Jesuit Henry Garnet in 1593 recounts that the unmarried sister, Anne Vaux, then met the searchers pretending to be Eleanor, the widow and mistress of the house. Eleanor Brooksby is said to have been timid and found it difficult to deal with authorities, so she frequently hid in a separate hiding place and left Anne to talk to searchers.Footnote ⁵⁴ Garnet states that when Anne met the searchers, she said, ‘Do you think it right and proper that you should be admitted to a widow’s house before she or her servants or children are out of bed? Why this lack of good manners? Why come so early? Why keep coming to my house in this hostile manner? Have you ever found me unwilling to open the door to you as soon as you knocked?’Footnote ⁵⁵ While Anne Vaux’s chastisement of the affront to a widow’s house might bring the reader to assume that she was a feeble, old woman, Eleanor Brooksby was in fact thirty-one at the time of the search, and twenty-one when widowed.

The case of Eleanor Brooksby shows that old age and widowhood did not always go hand in hand, and it was the vulnerability associated with widowhood itself that contributed towards this cultural camouflage.Footnote ⁵⁶ In addition, searchers were often social inferiors, and displays of hesitation or deference as they entered the house would not be uncommon. They also could have paused before searching the house to avoid endangering the widow’s honour.Footnote ⁵⁷ Whatever the reason, Anne’s authority in reprimanding the searchers, posing as mistress of the house, and questioning their disrespect to a widow’s house signals a potential benefit to widow priest-harbourers. Instead of breaking through, the searchers waited for the ‘vulnerable’ widow, and this action cost them. After four hours of searching, they left the house empty handed.Footnote ⁵⁸

The search of Kirby Hall in July 1599 likewise featured a group of searchers delayed by gendered cultural conventions. Yet again, John Gerard, one of the priests in hiding, reported, ‘There they were, straining and shouting to get through and search the house, yet they halted behind in an unlocked room just long enough to allow us time to reach the hiding-place and shut ourselves safely in.’Footnote ⁵⁹ Gerard does not provide a reason why the searchers remained in the room, apart from God’s protection. Separate from divine intervention, the fact of the matter is a group of searchers waited impatiently in a known harbouring house. The place they waited was a room that did not have a physical barrier to the rest of the house. This odd delay was likely due to them waiting for something, or someone. At the time the pursuivants arrived, the widow Elizabeth Vaux, the mistress of the house, was ill and in bed. Eventually, the searchers did tear through the house, even into Vaux’s room, but first, they waited. Perhaps, like the search at Baddesley Clinton, the searchers were waiting for the mistress to appear before conducting their search – a courtesy absent in descriptions of other searches with pursuivants who tore through ‘every corner – even womens beds and bosomes’ with such insolence that their villanies were “halfe a Martyrdome”.Footnote ⁶⁰ Potentially, cultural convention, based on gender and a respect for a vulnerable widow, created a cognitive boundary between searchers and the rest of the household.

The hypothesis that the infirmity of the household’s owner potentially delayed searchers is strengthened when considering that Elizabeth Vaux either feigned or truly fell ill a second time during a search of Harrowden in 1605. According to a letter dated 13 November, just days after the foiled Gunpowder Plot, William Tate, the Justice in charge of the search, recounted to the Earl of Salisbury:

Two points of interest arise in this letter. First, although searchers arrived at the house with Elizabeth Vaux’s son who was returning to the house ‘from town’ – this is presumably Edward Vaux, 4th Baron of Harrowden (b. 1588) – the searchers deferred to Elizabeth as the authority in the household as the matriarch of Harrowden. Second, Vaux used illness for a second time to delay searchers. Vaux may have suffered from a chronic health condition, or perhaps she used the perception of vulnerability as a tactic to delay the men. Either way, the Jesuit John Gerard had time to successfully stow away for what would become a nine-day search.

Elizabeth Vaux’s household authority, due to her widowhood, and the potential manipulation of her vulnerability influenced the first pivotal moments of the house search. A letter from Anne Lady Markham to the Earl of Salisbury in January 1606, less than two months after the search, argues that had the watch continued at Harrowden for two more days, John Gerard would have been apprehended. In return, the Earl of Salisbury sent a blank warrant to Lady Markham for Gerard’s capture, should she have opportunity.^{Footnote 62} Lady Markham would never have the chance, as John Gerard successfully fled for the continent just a couple months later with financial assistance from Elizabeth Vaux.

Cultural perceptions of both gender and widowhood not only moulded pursuivants’ actions upon entering widows’ houses, but they also influenced the prosecution of widows. At times, widows used prevailing cultural perceptions of women and widowhood as vulnerable and weak as a defence against accusations. After Elizabeth Vaux was arrested for her implication in the Gunpowder Plot, she wrote a letter to the Earl of Salisbury pleading her innocence. After denying her intimate knowledge of the suspects, she leans on her weakness as a woman and wrote, ‘For your further satisfaction I assure you there are many that will receive such persons that will not put their lives and estates in the power and secrecy of a woman.’^{Footnote 63} A letter written by the widow Jane Lovell to the Earl of Salisbury complains about a house search and asks for Salisbury’s protection ‘in the future as a gentlewoman of quality.’^{Footnote 64} She complained that the searchers claimed she was hiding priests, and they took away pictures and books while searching through her belongings. While the searchers did not find a priest on that occasion, an examination of Mrs. Anne Percye, a servant of Lovell, reports that three priests on separate occasions were in the house.^{Footnote 65} Yet, when confronted about these charges, Lovell immediately reverts to her gender to affront the charges. She promotes her vulnerability when she asks that she as a ‘poor gentlewoman’ not be ‘subject to every base constable to examine, search, and apprehend the friends that come to her and her servants.’^{Footnote 66}

While utilizing the rhetoric of vulnerability appears to be a frequent tactic used by female harbourers, it was not always successful. In a 1581 letter from Henry Earl of Huntingdon to Secretary Walsingham, Huntingdon recounted a recent search at a widow’s house. He wrote:

The explicit depiction of the widow as frail denotes a stigma attached to widows and goes hand in hand with Vaux’s multiple uses of illness to distract searchers. While it did not deter Huntingdon, as he arrested her anyway, the example of the widow at Arthington falls into a prevailing pattern of manipulated vulnerability.

The use of prevailing stereotypes of widowhood as a cover for subversive actions could explain why Thomas Longe chose to harbour papists and priests in his widowed mother’s house at Ashley in Wiltshire. The mother and widow, Alice Longe, a ‘simple oulde woman’, submitted a complaint and swore that she was not acquainted with the practices of her son, and was therefore not responsible for the priests, books, and popish items found in her house.^{Footnote 68} In this instance, a harbourer took advantage of his widowed mother and chose her house as a location to hide away illegal objects and individuals. The fact that she filed an official complaint against her son suggests that she was not part of the scheme. However, what this shows is that yet again, a widow’s house seemed a beneficial place to hide people and items, even without her knowledge. It could be argued that the widow’s house itself maintained a certain character that had benefits unattached to other spaces. Presumably, the son Thomas had his own dwelling, yet he chose to use the house of a ‘simple oulde woman’.

Perceptions of the age and frailty of the owner could act as a cover over domestic space, suggesting that houses adopted the stereotypes of isolation and vulnerability associated with widowed owners.^{Footnote 69} There are numerous examples in the Records of the English Province of the Society of Jesus of priests using widows’ houses, even when there were other options available. Seminary priest James Brushford arrived in England in 1585, the same year as the statute against priests and their harbourers. He stated, ‘I found every body so fearful as none would receive me into their houses.’^{Footnote 70} He and another priest, John Taddy, maintained their own place in the woods, and then moved to the house of Mrs. Tempest, a widow. Tempest was also known to have harboured Father Weston.^{Footnote 71} In 1599, Priest Henry Chaderdon described that while he took refuge with the widow of Sir Thomas Gillorde, she offered to place him into the service of Catholic noblemen, ‘where I could freely live according to the Catholic faith.’^{Footnote 72} She offered four choices: her brother, her son, William Shelley, and Viscount Montague. After the imprisonment of his friend and a foiled plan to travel to Rome, Chaderdon decided to remain with the widow for two years.^{Footnote 73} He left the widow’s house one year after she remarried.^{Footnote 74} Amidst other choices, Chaderdon chose a widow. While his stated reasons to stay with widow Gillorde included a desire to remain with the woman who had been so kind to him, it can be assumed that her house also met a necessary degree of safety and protection.^{Footnote 75}

As shown in the above examples of house searches, widowhood did not protect a house from being searched, although it is apparent that respect for the vulnerable and weak demographic did influence the manner and speed of searches and could contribute towards a reticence to prosecute. Negotiable boundaries of penal enforcement are represented in the account that the widow Anne Dacre Howard reportedly sent a venison pie to a particular watchman every Christmas in gratitude for allowing a priest to escape her house while he was posted on guard.^{Footnote 76} Gendered conventions along with bribes, baked goods, blind eyes, and lenient local magistrates all contributed towards the invisibility of some widows’ activities to authorities. Previous historians have claimed that the coverture Catholic wives enjoyed created a legal loophole against anti-Catholic legislation, which gave them an advantage unavailable to other women. Married women were part of a duplicitous pair; while husbands outwardly conformed, wives privately supported other Catholics or priests.^{Footnote 77} Yet, it appears that widows had a sort of cultural, social, and economic coverture of their own.