Francis Young’s volume on the Rookwood family papers is a valuable transcription and clear analysis of the documents the family produced during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. This work compliments Young’s earlier book The Gages of Hengrave and Suffolk Catholicism, 1640-1767 (2015), though it can be read and appreciated independently. A prominent Catholic family whose estate was Coldham Hall in the parish of Stanningfield, Suffolk, the Rookwoods only minimally exemplified a typical English recusant family. Young demonstrates from their papers that the family endured severe punitive and financial hardships, especially during the seventeenth century, and yet they emerged as Suffolk’s most prominent Catholic family by the end of the eighteenth century, adding to the picture of how recusant families traversed tumultuous times. Young reveals the resourcefulness and ingenuity that (some) Rookwood men and women utilised in order to survive religious persecution. The majority of the documents that Young has included in the book are now in collections at the Cambridge University Library, as part of the Hengrave Manuscripts, and the Suffolk Record Office. Young also makes use of documents held at The National Archives and Downside Abbey, to compliment the larger collection.
It may be beneficial to add a few lines on the two most infamous members of the Rookwoods, to demonstrate the uniqueness of this family. Two Rookwood men were executed for treason. Firstly, Ambrose (I) (c. 1578-1606) in 1606 for his involvement in the Gunpowder Plot, hence why the source material for this edition begins at this year, as earlier documents were ransacked and presumably destroyed in the wake of the Plot. Secondly, Ambrose’s great-grandson, Ambrose (IV) (1664-1696), was executed in 1696 for attempting to assassinate William III in the Barclay Conspiracy. The seventeenth century ended as it began for the Rookwoods, with the burden of treason, and the reader is left wondering how the family could have possibly thrived in the following century with such blemishes.
Young argues that the Rookwoods used several tactics to manoeuvre through the penalties of recusancy. Firstly, they relied on networks of intermarriage with other prominent Catholic families, as did other of their co-religionists, and they aligned themselves with Jesuits to strengthen their Catholic resolve. Secondly, their Protestant neighbours were largely sympathetic to the Rookwood family. And thirdly, most interestingly, the family manipulated the law in order to survive the financial hardships of religious persecution. Young points to evidence in a Court of Chancery attainder that Robert Rookwood (d. 1679), who had been living at Coldham Hall as tenant rather than owner because of his father’s treason, argued that the seizure of the estate by the crown was unlawful because Ambrose (I) had put much of the estate in the trust of Sir Philip Tyrwhit, a recusant. It took a legal battle of thirty years, but Chancery eventually sided with Robert. The family never forgot this stratagem, and the Rookwoods continued to appoint trustees as the actual owners of Coldham Hall, usually Protestants, so that neither harsh fines nor treason could cleave the estate from the family.
While the Rookwood family suffered the financial consequences of recusancy and treason, Robert’s will implies that although the family’s grandeur of the sixteenth century was a memory, they were not reduced to a life of penury. Robert also managed to gain the trust of James I after his father’s execution, and was knighted by the king in 1624. Robert’s son, Ambrose (II) (1622-1693) was the only Rookwood to dabble in local government, serving as a justice of the peace and member of the Bury St Edmund’s Corporation during the reign of James II. Ambrose continued the family’s patronage of Jesuits, and at least eight of his children entered religious houses on the continent, demonstrating a sophisticated network. In his will, like that of his father’s, Ambrose revealed an accumulation of wealth uncommon for typical recusant families.
Ambrose (II)’s heir, Thomas (1658-1726), exiled himself to the continent after his brother Ambrose (IV)’s execution. The family estates were near ruin when Thomas’s daughter, Elizabeth (1684-1759), took management of Coldham Hall. Elizabeth is set up in contrast to the two Ambroses who suffered execution. Young argues that the documents suggest they were both angry, rash men, while Elizabeth appears as a sturdy heroine. Indeed, the most interesting of the documents are not those concerning the family’s more infamous members, but rather a domestic inventory of the estate, and a collection of Catholic books in the library that Elizabeth complied in 1737, now both held in the Hengrave Collection at the Cambridge University Library. The domestic inventory demonstrates that Elizabeth collected Catholic works of art and devotional material objects from across Europe, during a time when most recusant households were decorated discreetly. The inventory of 1,889 Catholic books is fascinating, and anyone concerned with what recusants themselves were reading must consult this list, which has been published for the first time in Young’s book. Because of these two documents, Young argues that Coldham Hall was not a typical recusant household, and suggests that the estate may have been the de facto headquarters and library of the Jesuit College of Holy Apostles. It was also Elizabeth who collected and preserved the family papers, solidifying the family history that was very nearly eradicated twice in the previous century. Young demonstrates convincingly that Elizabeth Rookwood did more than anyone else to preserve the family’s legacy.
This volume should be applauded for bringing to publication relatively obscure documents of a well known recusant family, and will be of interest to local historians of East Anglia, historians of post-Reformation Catholicism, and scholars interested in material objects and devotional books, on account of the documents transcribed by Young.
