Charlie Fenton > Recent Status Updates

‘Dutch sailors had brought the birds back from their voyages to the Canary Islands, and adopted them as their favourite pet. When they came to Norwich they brought their canaries with them... The canary has become a symbol of the way in which the life of the city has been enriched by incomers, as well as the emblem of Norwich City Football Club.’

‘the immigrant communities were entirely responsible for looking after their own poor and sick. One proof of that is the Norwich Census of the Poor of 1570: none of the poor named in the census is an immigrant. In fact, the incomers had a double burden placed on them: they had to pay for the care of their own needy, and also to contribute to the poor rates raised in the parish in which they lived.’

‘How she came to understand that you could only protect your child through watchfulness and love, that you must tend a child as you tended a garden, fertilising, weeding, and yes, occasionally pruning and thinning, as much as that hurt. She would tell him that sometimes it was better for a child - particularly a delicate child like Eddie - to think he was sick than to really get sick.’

‘original wills sometimes survive, such as that of John Hovenagle, made 19 January 1603: he describes himself as ‘Drapier, inhabitant and allient within the cittie of Nortwhich in the kingdom of Inglornd’. Hovenagle, a draper ‘by vocation’ as he says in his will, was clearly a wealthy man: he left the very large sum of £20 to the poor of the Dutch congregation, and made monetary bequests of £25 to various people.’

‘The bishop of Norwich supported the request, saying that the incomers wanted a church where they could hear the word of God ‘according to their former manner in the town of Sandwich’. He had spoken to the mayor but found him ‘somewhat strange therein’ so he was writing directly to the archbishop. The archbishop agreed that the Strangers should be granted a vacant church in the city’

“I can remember something he said once - I don’t remember where we were or what we were doing, at least not yet, but I think it was toward the end of things. He said he could stand to be scared, but he hated being dirty. That seemed to me the essence of Stan. Maybe it was just too much, when Mike called. He saw his choices as being only two: stay alive and get dirty or die clean.”

‘As freemen, they could not only trade in the city but also buy property, as de Solemne and de Hem both did... In 1598, members of the Stranger community born in England were admitted to the freedom for the first time, and once freemen, could buy and sell as readily as an English freeman.‘

‘The great majority of the incomers were connected with the weaving industry, with wool-comber as the most common single occupation. The others had an enormous variety of trades. No fewer than 204 of the Dutch heads of households were wool-combers or weavers. The next largest groups were merchants (23), tailors (18), smiths (12) and carpenters (11).‘

‘The invitation to the 30 families was made in June 1566: a year later, there were not just 300 incomers but almost 2,000. These were refugees, fleeing from the upheaval and persecution in the Spanish Netherlands described in Chapter 1. We do not know when the first invitees arrived, but by the middle of 1567 the city was probably feeling full of incomers.’

‘Medieval Norwich was heavily dependent upon one industry, weaving. By the middle of the sixteenth century the city appeared to some to be in terminal decline... According to John Pound, the number of worsteds exported from the city via Yarmouth was between 1,000 and 3,000 a year in the period between 1535. The number fell rapidly over the next quarter-century and was a mere 38 in 1561.‘

‘The English authorities kept a wary eye on the refugee communities. In October 1571 the archbishop of Canterbury wrote to the Norwich authorities, telling them to make a count of the number of Strangers attending divine service in their own languages, and also the ‘number of evil disposed people (under colour of religion and piety)’ who might corrupt the ‘natural good subjects’.‘

‘From 1404, Norwich was a city and county in its own right. For administrative purposes the area within the medieval city walls was divided into twelve petty wards, grouped together into four Great Wards. It was run by an ‘upper house’, a court consisting of the major and aldermen, and a common council. The 24 aldermen were elected for life by the freemen of each ward (two for each ward)’

‘He did not like the thought that he was to blame, but the only alternative he could think of to explain their behaviour was much worse: that all the love and attention his parents had given him before had somehow been the result of George’s presence, and with George gone there was nothing for him... and all of that had happened at random, for no reason at all.’

‘Elizabeth was distraught by her cousin’s sudden passing. Her doleful state was remarked upon by many of her visitors and she used her own funds to pay for an elaborate - almost royal - funeral at Westminster. The payments by warrant of the privy seal for the year running from 20 July 1568 to 9 July 1569 list a payment of £640. 2s. 11d. for her burial.’

‘True to Elizabeth’s word, both Francis and Catherine received lucrative positions immediately upon their return from Germany. Catherine was appointed chief lady of the privy chamber and Francis was named vice chamberlain and appointed to the privy council. Coveted positions in the household were also given to daughters Lettice and Elizabeth Knollys.’

‘Catherine’s death seems to have left a large void in Francis’s life. He spent the remaining years of his bachelorhood focusing on service to Elizabeth and advocating for his many children. The fact that he lived another twenty-seven years after Catherine’s death and never remarried reinforces the idea that, however their marriage came about, it was truly a love match.’

‘The family returned to England upon the ascension of Catherine’s cousin, Elizabeth, and both were immediately appointed to positions at court. Catherine was named chief lady of the privy chamber and Francis attained the post of vice chamberlain of the queen’s household. It had been some time since husband and wife were both in attendance on the reigning monarch’

‘If Mary was sleeping with both the king and her husband, the most likely scenario is that the paternity of Catherine was simply unknown. DNA tests didn’t exist in Tudor times and there was no reason for the king to claim a female child that may not have been his. He most certainly would not have been willing to risk his burgeoning relationship with Mary’s sister or undermine the legitimacy of any future heirs’

‘Thomas Cranmer was utterly alone. Likely in the full throws of Stockholm Syndrome, his collapse to his abusers was complete. Under great physical strain, Cranmer fainted. Upon arousing, Cranmer sobbed uncontrollably, overheard by his guards. Hearing this turn of events, Nicholas Woodson returned, and Thomas Cranmer agreed to sign his first written recantation of faith.’

‘he engaged in active high treason. Although his signature on King Edward VI’s “Devise of the succession” was boldly signed while Edward was still king, it was never approved by Parliamentary decree. Once the king died, Cranmer engaged in overt activities to prevent Queen Mary’s succession, thirty suits of armour at the very least provided to John Dudley’s troops’

‘The Book of Common Prayer was rewritten in far less ambiguous terms in 1552, most particularly defining straight out a highly reformed communion service that effectively abolished the Eucharist made. Thus, along with a revised Act of Uniformity, changes to canon law, and the established Forty-two Articles of Faith, England became a truly Protestant nation - at least on paper.’

‘In reality, a complete silence wrapped around Margarete Cranmer during her stay in England throughout the 1530s. For all intents and purposes, she was invisible. For the politically naive Thomas Cranmer, this was an outstanding accomplishment. In fact, the feat was “astonishing”, claims historian Diarmaid MacCulloch.‘

‘Beyond the religious discussions Thomas Cranmer and Andreas Osiander enjoyed, which influenced both men’s theological development, Osiander, as well as other Lutheran priests in Nuremberg, was happily married with children. He introduced Cranmer to his niece, Margarete... He ignored his vows of clerical celibacy and married yet again, a Lutheran woman at that. The risks was incalculable.’

‘Upon earning a Master’s degree in Divinity, Thomas Cranmer was offered a fellowship at Jesus College. Initially the fellowship was short-lived. As would later become synonymous with his theological belief system, self-serving as some might find it, Thomas Cranmer fell in love and entered into the first of his two marriages with a woman named Joan... both Cranmer’s wife and baby died in child-bed.’

‘Yet adherence to Rome was a very costly choice. There was what Bishop Aylmer called ‘pecuniary pain’; the monthly recusancy fines of £20 for richer Catholics, who grew steadily poorer. Some suffered long imprisonment; what Sir Thomas Tresham called ‘the furnace of our many years’ adversity’. Nonconforming Catholics were excluded from Parliament, from office holding, and from university education.‘

‘The population of England had expanded at a startling rate: perhaps by 1 per cent every year between 1576 and 1586, and by as much as 35 per cent during Elizabeth’s reign - from 3.3 million in 1571 to 4.15 million in 1603. The growth of London had been more spectacular still... by Elizabeth’s death the population of the growing metropolis, extending beyond its ancient walls, may had been as many as 200,000.‘

‘Determining to be the Virgin Queen no longer, Elizabeth chose the worst suitor in Europe; the faithless, feckless Duke of Anjou, his reputation as blemished as his pock-marked face. The Catholic heir-presumptive to the French throne, half the Queen’s age - she was forty-five - was nowhere trusted; not in France, not in England.‘

‘The Douglas birch had told Henry he had flunked both English and math. She was passing him, she said, but he would have to take four weeks of summer make-up. Henry would rather have stayed back. If he’d stayed back, his father would have beaten him up once. With Henry at school four weeks of the farm’s busiest season, his father was apt to beat him up half a dozen times, maybe even more.’

‘The rebellion of the northern earls was fateful for all English Catholics. When so few had answered the call to rise for the old faith, it seemed certain that if the Catholic Church were to be restored to England, it would not be by rebellion. Yet the crisis of 1569-70 transformed all those who thought of themselves as Catholics into potential enemies of the realm: traitors within.’