The Hidden Fire . . . How The Faith Endures Behind Closed Doors

By JAMES MONTI

The English scholar Alison Shell has described the underground Catholic Church in post-Reformation Britain as “a catacomb culture, defined by secret or discreet worship” (Shell, Catholicism, Controversy and the English Literary Imagination, 1558-1660, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2006, p. 16). For English Catholics living under the reigns of Queen Elizabeth I (1558-1603) and King James I (1603-1625), the “Recusants” as they were called, the only available venue for divine worship in most cases was one’s own home or that of a trusted Catholic neighbor. For many generations, the only church that could be attended was that of the “Domestic Church.”
This was no easy matter, for there were those outside who were determined to shut down even this private domain of Catholic worship. British government records for this period are filled with reports of raids upon Catholic homes, during which agents known as pursuivants would routinely break open walls and pull up floor boards in a fanatical effort to find priests in hiding and the least bit of what they contemptuously referred to as “popish trash” — altar vessels, vestments and furnishings, rosaries and other religious objects, and Catholic books and Bibles.
The accounts of “underground” Masses in English Catholic homes speak largely of celebrations in the habitations of wealthier Recusant families. Their larger homes, more spacious grounds and retinues of servants who could act as watchmen, as well as their financial ability to provide fitting altar furnishings, made their dwellings a more peaceful and successful venue for these secret Masses.
In their 1991 study, “The Imprisonment of Catholics for Religion under Elizabeth I,” Patrick McGrath and Joy Rowe observe that there was a pronounced tendency among the Recusants to make their underground Masses as beautiful as possible even though the extreme and dangerous circumstances under which they were living did not necessitate such an effort:
“. . . It would seem that both in prisons and in private houses Elizabethan Catholics were prepared, possibly for the sake of morale, to use vestments and other things that were not strictly necessary for the celebration of Mass.” McGrath and Rowe add that it may well have been a matter of striving to preserve even “the outward signs of the Old Religion” (McGrath and Rowe, “The Imprisonment of Catholics for Religion under Elizabeth I,” Recusant History, volume 20, October 1991, p. 426).
Sacred music played an important role in the Recusants’ underground Masses. In his autobiography, the Jesuit Fr. William Weston (+1615) tells of the attention given to this dimension of the sacred liturgy at the home of the English gentleman and convert Robert Bold in Berkshire:
“. . . They had a chapel for the celebration of the Divine Mysteries, an organ likewise and other musical instruments, and, moreover, singers of both sexes belonging to the family, the master of the house being singularly experienced in the art. Thus, during the course of those days we celebrated, as it were, a long octave of some magnificent festival.
“Mass was sometimes sung by Father Garnet. We preached also in our turns, and heard many confessions, and devoted the first half of the day almost entirely to these occupations” (autobiography of Fr. Weston, in Fr. John Morris, The Troubles of Our Catholic Forefathers: Second Series, London, Burns and Oates, 1875, p. 145).
Not surprisingly, Fr. Weston met in the Bold home the famed English composer William Byrd (+1623), a Recusant who had previously enjoyed a prosperous career as a musician in the service of Queen Elizabeth I, but who subsequently sacrificed his position for the sake of his Catholic faith.
In his 1609 biography of the Viscountess Magdalen Montagu (+1608), the Vicar Apostolic Bishop Richard Smith (+1655) describes the chapel she built in her Battle Abbey home in Sussex:
“She constructed a chapel in her home, which in such a persecution is astonishing, where she set a most beautiful stone altar, to which ascending steps were made, and put railings around it, and lest anything should be wanting, also built a choir for cantors, and finally erected a pulpit for the priests . . . on solemn feasts, the holy Sacrifice was celebrated with singing, and musical instruments, and sometimes with a deacon and a subdeacon. So great was the concourse of Catholics, that at times there were present one hundred twenty together, and at the same time sixty were refreshed with the Sacrosanct repast [Holy Communion]” (Vita illustrissime, ac piissimae Dominae Magdalenae Montis-Acti in Anglia Vicecomitissae, Rome, Jacobus Mascard, 1609, p. 53).
The household of Eleanor Brooksby (+1625) of Huddington Hall in Worchestershire, displaced for a time to Warwickshire, possessed relics of St. Sebastian and St. Thomas Becket, as well as two relics said to have been from the Crown of Thorns, a large gold crucifix, a gold cross enclosing multiple relics, and an image of St. Ignatius of Loyola. For the celebration of Mass there was a chasuble and a cope of cloth of gold, as well as a chasuble of cloth of silver, the latter with a golden cross embroidered on it. The Jesuit Fr. John Gerard (+1637) provides a detailed picture of the household’s secret chapel and its furnishings:
“Our altar vestments and altar furniture were both plentiful and costly. We had two sets for each colour which the Church uses; one for ordinary use, the other for feast days: some of these were embroidered with gold and pearls, and figured by well-skilled hands. We had six massive candlesticks on the altar. Besides those at the sides for the elevation: the cruets were of silver also, as were the basin for the lavabo, the bell, and the thurible. There were moreover lamps hanging from silver chains, and a silver crucifix on the altar. For greater festivals, however, I had a crucifix of gold, a foot in height . . . made of wrought gold by a celebrated artist” (autobiography of Fr. Gerard, in Fr. John Morris, The Life of Father John Gerard, London, Burns and Oates, 1881, pp. 383-384).
For all the advantages of somewhat greater privacy in the larger Recusant homes, danger was nonetheless just a heartbeat away, often with very narrow escapes from catastrophe. In October of 1593, the Brookbys’ home was suddenly visited by pursuivants. In a letter dated March 17, 1594, Fr. Gerard describes what ensued, beginning with the mad dash to conceal any “incriminating evidence”:
“Rosaries, chalices, sacred vestments, all other signs of piety are, with the men [the priests], thrown into a cavern; the mistress of the house is hidden away in another hiding place….On this occasion, as often on others when the pursuivant came, the younger sister passed herself off for the mistress of the house….When she has no priest in the house she feels afraid; but the simple presence of a priest so animates her that then she makes sure that no devil has any power over her house. This proved to be true in this cruel search in particular. . . .
“For, quite miraculously, one pursuivant who took into his hand a silver pyx which was used for carrying the Blessed Sacrament from place to place, straightway put it down again, as if he had never seen it. Before the eyes of another lay a precious dalmatic folded up. He unfolded everything else, but that he did not touch” (text in Fr. John Morris, The Troubles of Our Catholic Forefathers: First Series, London, Burns and Oates, 1872, pp. 150-151).
One of the strangest ways that English Catholics managed to fly under the radar of pursuivant surveillance was by gathering for Mass in the very place where the pursuivants had dragged many of them, the local prison. In locales away from the command and control center of London, the prisons were often run by somewhat lax wardens and guards who were willing to look the other way when Catholics came to “visit” their incarcerated coreligionists.
Yet even in the prison known as the Clink, in Southwark, on the south edge of London, secret Masses were arranged, albeit with the ever-present risk of discovery. In his autobiography Fr. Weston relates:
“Sometimes also I had an opportunity of celebrating the Holy Mysteries, for from a lower room (which was inhabited by Catholics) in the dead of the night we were enabled to obtain vestments by a rope which was let down from our window, and in the early morning, before the wardens and other prisoners were awake, we returned them in the same manner” (Weston, p. 195).
In a letter dated April 28, 1602, Fr. Anthony Rivers describes a governmental raid on a Mass at the Clink that took place as the Catholic prisoners and their “guests” were celebrating the Sunday after Easter:
“. . . The Chief Justice’s men, with pursuivants and other officers, rushing in suddenly, with drawn swords, upon them, found their altars and massing stuff prepared, and three priests, Barneby, Clark, and Watson, with well near forty Catholics (most women and poor folks of the city), all assembled in the same chamber and some others adjoining, all amazed at the sudden accident” (text in Fr. Henry Foley, SJ, Records of the English Province of the Society of Jesus, vol. 1, first series, London, Burns and Oates, 1877, p. 28).

The Flame Of Faith

In their rabid obsession to prevent the celebration of Mass, pursuivants relentlessly hunted through the prison cells of Catholics not for concealed weapons but rather for the implements of Mass. In one instance, a magistrate and his assistant entered a priest’s cell, and in an effort to intimidate him, the magistrate (or his assistant) planted two hosts on the floor, after which the official turned about, and pretending to be surprised by the sight of the hosts on the ground, as if the priest had dropped them, he said, “Are these the sort of things you do here? They must no longer be tolerated. This is not all, we may be sure….”
Having been told beforehand by an informer where to look in the cell, “He forthwith began a search, and went straight up to the very spot where all the vestments and the furniture for the altar were hidden away, together with a silver chalice,” concealed beneath a floorboard (Weston, p. 197).
Of course, for many of the Recusants, Mass in their own homes was not possible, or at best a rare event, and the opportunities for attending Mass at a neighbor’s home or the local prison were scarce. It was to the rosary, to prayer books, and to spiritual reading that they habitually turned to keep their Sundays holy, and to sanctify each day of the week.
It is from these heroic men and women of the past that we in our present situation of the pandemic can learn how to keep the flame of faith alive and well in our families until we can return to our churches to see the glory of the Lord descend upon our altars once more.