Portrait of Bishop Richard Russell (1630 - 1693). With kind permission of Ushaw College Trustees and Carl Joyce (photographer).
The Lisbon Room of Ushaw College, Durham, houses an oil painting of a stout, rather grumpy looking, seventeenth century bishop. There is nothing distinctive about the portrait saving the sitter’s scarlet lined mozzetta, his pectoral cross, and his episcopal ring. A coat of arms is depicted to the bishop’s left, and a small book is clasped in his right hand, completing the full pontificalia of a seemingly obscure, albeit noble bishop.Footnote 1 Richard Russell, the subject of the painting, was far from obscure. Born in Buckland, Berkshire, of a Catholic family, he would become bishop, a career diplomat, a royal courtier, and a factotum to English and Portuguese royalty. In outlining the significance of Bishop Russell’s work, this article draws on the Letters and Papers of Richard Russell, kept at Ushaw College, Durham. The Russell Letters consist of 144 items (1667–86) and the Russell Papers consist of 55 items (1649–73).Footnote 2 In particular, this article considers Russell’s correspondence with his president and friend, Mathias Watkinson (1634–1710; president, 1672-1706). Russell and Watkinson both entered the college in 1647 as part of the second Latin mission; Richard was eighteen, and had already spent five years as the servant of President Pickford; Mathias was thirteen. Watkinson never left the college and spent sixty-three years there; Russell spent the 1660s as a diplomat and from 1671, was a bishop.Footnote 3 Watkinson’s own letters to Russell have not survived: he did not keep a letter-book of despatches, and he neglected the college’s records throughout his tenure as president.Footnote 4 Watkinson administered a college on the rise, whose fortunes mirrored the return of the House of Stuart to the British thrones. The Anglo-Portuguese alliance turned the college into a quasi-diplomatic satellite foundation where both English and Portuguese society were keen to engage. This was an age of prosperity for the English College and its place on the English Mission, with Lisbonian priests represented at the courts of London and Lisbon. The Russell Letters and Papers reveal the complications of life in exile, the patronage networks of crown and altar, and the delicate relationships between London, Lisbon and Rome.
Furthermore, this article examines life as seen by Bishop Russell and concerns his own complicated interactions as an English bishop in a Portuguese diocese. The records reveal his reforming zeal as a Tridentine bishop, a political appointment of the Portuguese Crown, as an intermediary for the English College and the English Chapter, and as a benefactor and advisor to President Watkinson. They detail his championing of episcopal authority against the encroachment of the religious and military orders, his role as ordinary of a diocese, as well as life in seventeenth century Portugal. They reveal a man who was a champion of the independence of the Church, a reformer, administrator, as well as a slave trader. Whilst no biography of this English prelate in Portugal exists, the records of his life, examined in this article, hope to go some distance in encouraging such a future endeavour.
The chronological approach taken begins with Russell’s life as a diplomat, both in Lisbon and Whitehall. The article then examines his tenure as the bishop of Portalegre (1671–85). This will consider his early canonical reforms through his visitations, his relationship with the ecclesiastical factions within his diocese, his role in the slave trade and his management of his episcopal residence. The article goes on to explore his relationship with the English College at Lisbon. It examines Russell’s role as patron of his college, detailing the relationships between palace and college, prelate and president. It concludes with the departure of Russell from those relationships and where, it is argued, he became thoroughly Portuguese. Bishop Richard Russell was a man at the centre of a series of complex political, ecclesiastical and diplomatic networks in Portugal and England. This article demonstrates his importance to the wider British Catholic Diaspora in the late seventeenth century.
Richard Russell – from servant to bishop
L.M.E. Shaw was one of the first scholars to consult the then mostly unsorted papers of Richard Russell, kept at the college of St Cuthbert, Ushaw College, Durham. Shaw focused on Russell’s role in the complex trade relations between the recently independent Portuguese Crown and the regimes of the English Commonwealth and later the restored English monarchy.Footnote 5 Whilst Shaw’s concentration is on the trade and commerce, and the mercantile infrastructure of the English communities of Lisbon, her examination introduced the role Russell played in the early promotion of trade with England and his later attempts to impede its progress.Footnote 6
The English College of SS Peter and Paul had been canonically erected in 1622 by Pope Gregory XV and paid for by the Portuguese aristocrat, Dom Pedro Coutinho, after protracted negotiations between Rome, Madrid and Lisbon. The college’s schools were not populated with students until 1628. The college served the English Mission, uninterrupted, for 350 years. Russell matriculated as a student at the college on 14 August 1647.Footnote 7 He excelled through the schools in Lisbon and, in 1651, was encouraged to join the first ‘Lisbonians’ (men educated at the college), take the Mission Oath, and return to the English Mission in Angliam revertar ad Proximorum animas lucrandas.Footnote 8 He was offered early ordination on account of his erudition. Russell initially refused and was sent to the English College at Douai, where he completed his studies, being ordained priest at Valenciennes on 20 September 1653. After two years in Paris, Russell was recalled to Lisbon to serve as the college’s procurator in 1655. For the next three decades he would work tirelessly for the advancement of the English College, his own alma mater.
The Lisbonian historian J.J. Crowley wrote that Russell ‘rapidly became a well-known and influential figure in Lisbon’ and, citing an English spy who wrote back to the Commonwealth in 1657 from Lisbon, described Russell as, ‘a certain English priest, no great politician for witt, yet was a great informer against the late treaty … a short fatt man.’Footnote 9 The description of a ‘short fatt man’ certainly seems to match the presentation in his portrait. The commercial treaty signed between Lord Protector Oliver Cromwell and João IV in 1654 set the foundations for the later marriage treaty of 1661, reinforcing the Anglo-Portuguese alliance for a further 156 years.Footnote 10 In 1657, Russell accompanied the Portuguese ambassador, Dom Francisco de Mello, to England, to continue the delicate negotiations between the English Commonwealth and the fledgling Braganza royal household. It was the start of his political career.
Portugal had declared itself independent of its Habsburg masters in 1640, but its independence was fragile and not widely recognised in Continental Europe. The complex negotiations between Lisbon and London culminated in the Anglo-Portuguese marriage alliance of 1661. This article does not seek to reproduce the work of Shaw, but it is worth noting that the college had close links with the mercantile communities of Lisbon. The recently published institutional history of the English College details the early position of the so-called ‘English Residence’ as a loosely collegiate foundation with strong links to the English consulate and mercantile interests in the city.Footnote 11
From 1657, for over a decade, Russell was diplomatic attaché to the Portuguese mission to the court of St James. His position in the office of the Portuguese ambassador, the Marquess of Sande, is evidenced in the Russell Papers. It is here where he learned realpolitik both in Whitehall and in Europe. Sande, appointed ambassador to the Court of St James in 1657 by the queen regent, Dona Luiza de Gusmão (1656–62), struggled to convince Lisbon to implement the treaty of 1654. Many of the provisions were odious to the Portuguese Inquisition, including certain liberties of religion, making the treaty unworkable in Portugal.Footnote 12 Meanwhile, the English College had done its best to frustrate British Protestant merchants seeking to trade in the city. John Robinson, a Lisbonian priest, had been appointed consul for the English nation by João IV on the recommendation of the exiled Charles II. From his appointment in 1650 until 1656, the English College effectively controlled the consulate. Robinson was, as Shaw noted, ‘not a private individual and he was at all times subject to the discipline of the college and his superiors.’Footnote 13
In England, Russell played a significant role within the governance of the English Catholic church, in the self-perpetuating oligarchy of English secular priests which was the English Chapter. Russell was a close friend of John Sergeant (1623-1707), a fellow Lisbonian priest, Secretary to the English Chapter, and ardent Blacklowist. Richard Smith, the last canonically appointed Vicar Apostolic of the English Mission had died, in exile, in Paris, in 1655. Rome had grown so tired of the failures of the Vicariate Apostolic system that it did not appoint a successor to Bishop Smith until 1685. The English Catholic communities on the English mission, in England and abroad, remained bitterly divided between the secular clergy of the colleges of Douai and Lisbon and the Ignatian colleges of Rome, Madrid, Valladolid and Seville. For the secular clergy, in the absence of a canonically approved bishop, and a hostile environment, the English Chapter was the nearest thing to ecclesiastical government one could expect. As a corporate body it effectively governed the secular clergy on the English Mission from the 1630s to the 1680s. The English Chapter also controlled the administration of the English College at Lisbon, which was itself governed by men who were almost always placemen of the same oligarchy. The college’s administration governed without recourse to the Vicars Apostolic throughout the seventeenth century. It was only with the appointment of Richard Challoner as Vicar Apostolic of the London District (1741), himself a convert of the Lisbonian catechist, John Gother (d. 1704), that relations thawed between the ecclesiastical regime in London and the administrations of presidents Edward Jones (1707–29; 1732–37) and John Manley (1729–32; 1739–55) in the first half of the eighteenth century.Footnote 14
Russell was an asset: he was young, a secular priest, and well connected. The English Chapter ruled that Russell should remain in the service of the Portuguese mission. He had a peripatetic existence between London and Lisbon, acting as an important agent between the English Chapter and the college. On 26 June 1661 Russell was appointed a canon capitular of the English Chapter and, after the Restoration, worked with de Mello (now Marquess of Sande) to secure the marriage negotiations between the houses of Stuart and Braganza.Footnote 15 Shaw related that Russell was the main intermediary between the young Infanta and Sande who hated each other with mutual passion.Footnote 16 Russell brought the portrait of the Infanta to the Stuart royal court which convinced Charles II of her suitability. He worked with Sir Richard Fanshaw, an envoy-extraordinary from the Stuart court, in drawing up the marriage treaty, which was concluded in 1661: it included a dowry of £300,000 and the Portuguese colonies of Tangier and Bombay.Footnote 17 The dowry would cripple the Portuguese exchequer for the next fifty years, marking the decline of one global empire and the rise of another. The alliance gave much needed revenue to an impoverished Britain and a first-class European ally in Portugal’s quest for legitimacy amongst the crowned heads of Europe. Dona Luísa awarded Russell with the recently vacated see of Cabo Verde in August 1661, ‘with the promise of the first vacant see in Portugal.’ This may have been suggested after a recommendation from Charles II to Lisbon.Footnote 18 The queen regent’s promise cannot have been accurate as several Portuguese dioceses were vacant, including the see of Portalegre, where Russell would eventually be consecrated bishop in 1671. Bishop João Mendes de Távora had vacated Portalegre for Coimbra in 1638, leaving the diocese sede vacante for a generation.
The Portuguese Restoration War or Guerra da Restauração was a ‘phoney’ war, starting with the Braganza ‘acclamation’ of independence from Spain in 1640 and ending with the Treaty of Madrid of 1668. The treaty, partially brokered by Britain, formally recognised Portugal as an independent kingdom. The appointment of bishops during the war was problematic as Spanish influence in Rome managed to block several Braganza recommendations to bishoprics. As a result, several of Portugal’s thirteen mainland dioceses lacked a resident bishop, suffered from canonical irregularities, sacramental deprivation, and the political and financial consequences of sede vacantism. Russell refused the offer of Cabo Verde and awaited a more lucrative see in mainland Portugal. This was a brave move on his part. The Portuguese appointment system for bishoprics was complex: it was a snub to the monarch to refuse a benefice offered, but also an affront to a candidate to be offered a bishopric considered below their dignity. José Pedro Paiva observes that: ‘Offering a position regarded as substandard would have been considered an insult instead of as a distinction, compensation, or privilege, and the king would run the risk of the candidate declining the post, which was always a situation to be avoided’.Footnote 19 Cabo Verde, remote, poor, and culturally isolated, was a renowned slave trading post with limited scope for episcopal advancement. The island had been colonised by the Portuguese in 1462 and acted as a base for maritime traffic to Portuguese possessions in the East. Its primary settlement, Ribeira Grande, had been sacked by Sir Francis Drake twice in 1585, and was a notorious base for pirates. For a man who had been so instrumental in Anglo-Portuguese diplomatic relations it was a bit of a snub. It is more likely that the complicated nomination process, hampered by Habsburg influence in Rome, had made Cabo Verde the only vacancy that was immediately in the direct gift of the Crown, as the Crown retained its undisputed right to episcopal appointments in its imperial possessions (but not on the mainland). Russell was wise to wait.
Throughout the 1660s, Russell retained his diplomatic credentials, acting as a factotum between the Braganza and Stuart courts. Catherine of Braganza was accompanied to Whitehall by Russell and Thomas Tilden, her confessor and preceptor, and the eighth president of the college between 1654– 61.Footnote 20 A record of the Infanta’s household, in the Infanta’s own hand, survives in the college’s archive, and includes Russell’s name.Footnote 21 Russell was deputed to act, on behalf of the English Chapter, to represent them as the Catholic priest at the private wedding ceremony.Footnote 22 That same year he was ‘appointed’ bishop of Portalegre, a frontier diocese on the border with Castile: he was not consecrated for another decade. During his time as bishop-elect Shaw notes that Russell ‘was greeted as bishop by everyone, including Clarendon, and that his manners had lately assumed grandezza.’Footnote 23 During this time, he acted as agent for the college, worked at both courts in London and Lisbon, and sat on the English Chapter as a canon capitular. He spent the 1660s as a peripatetic diplomat and agent: ‘… he continued to travel between Lisbon and London, dealing with difficult diplomatic problems, while the English chapter hoped he would soon resign his Portuguese see and become head of the English clergy as the position of vicar-apostolic in England had long been unfilled.’Footnote 24
Russell was finally consecrated bishop of Portalegre on 27 September 1671 in the chapel of the English College at Lisbon, although Portuguese sources state that this took place in the royal chapel in the Ribeira Palace on the Terreiro do Paço. The principal consecrator was the Archbishop of Braga, Dom Veríssimo de Lencastre (1670–77), who would later be Inquisitor General of Portugal, the college’s Protector, and a close friend of Russell.Footnote 25 The two co-consecrators were Francisco Barreto, bishop of Faro (1671–79) and João de Melo, bishop of Elvas (1671–73). Russell took canonical possession of his see in January 1672. As bishop, he was an active reformer and championed ordinary episcopal authority against the interests of the powerful military orders and the religious. Pedro II (o Pacifico, ‘the Pacific’) (1668–83 [regent], 1683–1706) awarded Russell for his work and, in 1685, he was elevated to the bishopric of Viseu, a larger, richer, and more important diocese. Russell brought the same reforming zeal to Viseu, immediately setting up a diocesan synod to reform the diocese.
The Russell Letters and Papers
Russell has been characterised by his chroniclers as austere, modelling his episcopal household on the English College. A biographical account of Russell by Maria Leonor Machado de Sousa, noted that Russell kept, ‘a strict but simple household […] He refused to wear silk and forbade the display of his coat of arms on public buildings.’Footnote 26 The accepted English biographical account of Russell is based on three sources. The earliest is that of Joseph Gillow, whose Bibliographical Dictionary is dependent on Dodd, Kirk, and records from the English Chapter. The Lisbonian priest William Croft was responsible for the college’s first historical account (1902) and is typical of the Victorian historical narratives of the time. Whilst Croft goes some way to romanticise Russell, his account is largely that of Gillow, whose register he appended to the book.Footnote 27
Russell’s own correspondence reveals a more complicated figure, a doyen of the Council of Trent, a politician, a general factotum, and a man who might have played a greater part in the course of the English Mission had he not been so useful to the Portuguese. Russell’s correspondence challenges this accepted narrative of saintly episcopalism. He was prone to French fashions, kept a large cellar and enjoyed the finest tobacco. Whilst Russell has been romanticised by his supporters, Shaw had no such admiration, albeit her damnatio memoriae was based on his role in frustrating English mercantile endeavours, based on the treaty of 1654. As a man who frustrated English trade with the Portuguese, Shaw wrote that Russell, ‘did much to damage English interests and became entirely Portuguese.’Footnote 28 Shaw presented him as an agent hostile to English interests in Portugal, despite his political work in securing the 1661 alliance. Russell could provoke both admiration and condemnation and remains a figure of conflicting interests, indicative of his life both as an English Catholic priest but more importantly as an English bishop in a Portuguese diocese. Despite this considerable scholarship, Russell remains an absent figure in English Catholic historiography, partly because, unlike Cardinal Howard and his Dominican apologists, no one has championed his role within the English Mission.
In Portugal he is better known as an English bishop who fascinated the Portuguese imagination. In Portuguese the accepted biography is based on a manuscript in the Viseu City Archives (MS 1767).Footnote 29 The interest in Russell may be due to the uniqueness of his position. It was almost unknown for a cleric from outside Portugal to take up episcopal office in Portugal. The crusader-monk Gilbert of Hastings (Gilberto de Hastings) was appointed bishop of Lisbon (1147–66) almost by accident, after the Second Crusade took Lisbon from Islam in 1147. In the early modern period, non-Portuguese bishops in Portugal were extremely rare: ‘Between 1495 and 1777, foreigners filled only seventeen of 505 vacancies: nine Spaniards, three Italians, two Englishmen, and one from France, Austria, and China’.Footnote 30
The English College at Lisbon acted as the gatehouse for the exchange of episcopal business between Russell’s palace in the city of Portalegre and the archdiocese of Lisbon. The college acted as a conduit between Rome, London and Lisbon. As a British institution in Portugal the college was at the centre of important ecclesiastical and political networks not least those of the Inquisition, the Archdiocese (later the Patriarchate) of Lisbon, and the various houses that made up the British Catholic diaspora in the city. The college had inherited all the ecclesiastical and political responsibilities that the English Residence had managed, since its foundation in the city by Robert Persons (c. 1594).Footnote 31 Lisbon was home to a large English Catholic community, including the laity, as well as Jesuit and secular priests; later this community was joined by Bridgettines and Irish Dominicans. Lisbon’s centre as a mercantile entrepot also attracted a large English Protestant community, centred around the consulate.Footnote 32 The ‘British Factory’ would eventually become the centre of English Protestant political and mercantile interests from the 1660s. The ‘Residence’ served as a collegiate foundation for British Catholic interests (its superior was known as a ‘rector’) of secular and regular English clergy. They sustained themselves financially by working for the Portuguese Holy Office, the cabido (Dean and Chapter of the cathedral or Se) and serving as confessors to the British exile houses in the city. There was also an Irish college in the city, founded in 1590.Footnote 33 The Irish Dominicans had houses at Corpo Santo (1634) and Bom Successo (1639), which had good relations with the English College.Footnote 34 The English Bridgettines continued their peripatetic narrative by establishing themselves in Lisbon in 1594 and the English College enjoyed close familial relations throughout its time in the city. Russell had several relatives in the convent, including his sister.Footnote 35 President William Hargrave (1634–37) had a former abbess amongst his relations at Syon.Footnote 36 A letter from the Bridgettine lay brother John Marks to the college’s administration in December 1669 complained of too frequent visits to the convent sisters by the college’s staff, citing the canonical censures of frequentatores monialia to prohibit further visits.Footnote 37 The correspondence provides a detailed insight into the ecclesiastical, political, and economic networks of the English Catholic communities of seventeenth century Portugal.
Bishop of Portalegre (1671–85)
In the early modern period, unlike Spain and France, Portugal retained a system of nominations and preferments that had not yet been streamlined from medieval antecedents. In 1671, when Russell took the see of Portalegre, the nomination was, de facto but not de jure, the gift of the Crown. The bishop was agent of the Crown and one of the most effective client-patron agencies in early modern Portugal:
Typically, during the Old Regime, episcopal control within their territorial divisions was much more effective than that of the king. Thus, in the context of strengthening a state that was consolidating its borders, this well-established structure became an essential vehicle for communicating news and sending orders from the political centre to peripheral regions.Footnote 38
The Braganza apologist, Manuel Rodrigues Leitão, in his defence of the Restoration of 1640, wrote that bishops had ‘incredible power over the spirit of the people through piety and religion, and the spiritual empire was very powerful at the secular level.’Footnote 39 In Portugal, royal authority was ecclesiastical authority. Paiva, quoting Charles Boxer, noted: ‘the alliance between the Crown and the altar was fundamental in the structuring and consolidation of Iberian empires.’Footnote 40
Pope Alexander VI in his Cum te in praesentia gave Manuel I (o Venturoso, ‘the fortunate’) of the House of Aviz (1495–1521) the promise that he would ‘in the future’ be given the right to appoint bishops in his kingdoms.Footnote 41 This was formalised by Leo X in the bull Dum fidei constantiam in 1514, which gave Manuel and his successors the right of padroado backdated two years to 1512 and in relation to all the dioceses established since 1512 in Portuguese imperial possessions overseas. In 1516 this right was granted in perpetuum and extended to the new dioceses erected by João III (1521–27) (o piedoso, ‘the pious’) which included Portalegre. Russell was therefore directly appointed by the Crown. This was a muddled canonical system, and did not include de jure the majority of Portuguese dioceses including the ancient sees of Lisbon, Évora and Braga: ‘in the so-called “ancient dioceses,” which composed the majority and remained the most important ones, the kings of Portugal never had the right of patronage that the Spanish and French monarchs enjoyed.’Footnote 42 Russell’s appointment was therefore ‘supplicated’ to Rome (ad supplicationem) as opposed to being ‘nominated’ (ad nominationem) or ‘presented’ (ad praesentiationem) though, to all intents and purposes, the Crown did control appointments. During the Dual Monarchy of (1580–1640) when the Habsburgs wore the crowns of Portugal, episcopal appointments were made according to the more robust Spanish system of appointment. After Portuguese independence was proclaimed in 1640, episcopal nominations fell into disarray. Mainland Portuguese dioceses suffered the malaise of sede vacantism: the system only rectified itself in the 1670s and Russell was one of those bishops charged with bringing mainland dioceses back into canonical conformity. João V (1706–50) (o Magnânimo, ‘the magnanimous’) remedied this perceived indignity of being unable to control its own mainland dioceses, in 1740 with Benedict XIV. João had, earlier in his reign, bullied the Papacy in elevating Lisbon to a Patriarchate in 1716 and secured the title ‘Most Faithful Majesty’ from a beleaguered Benedict XIV in 1748. Joao, Portugal’s very own Sun King, was not to be outdone by his brother monarchs in Versailles and the Escorial.
Portalegre was a relatively ‘new’ diocese on the eastern extremity of Portugal, a frontier territory with Spain. It was erected by Pope Julius III in 1550, carving up territories from the archdiocese of Évora and the diocese of Guarda. The diocese had not had a resident bishop since 1638, two years before the Braganza declaration of independence from Madrid. The diocese had been sede vacante for over thirty years when Russell took his cathedra in the cathedral of Nossa Senhora da Assunção. The Portuguese Restoration War (Guerra da Restauração) of 1640 – 68 between Lisbon and Madrid caused a canonical headache for the Portuguese church. When the Braganza seized political power from the Habsburgs in 1640, Portuguese territories on the border with Spain suffered a further twenty-eight years of internecine (albeit intermittent) conflict with their neighbour. Madrid continued to exercise its diplomatic powers in Rome to veto Braganza episcopal appointments, leaving several mainland Portuguese dioceses vacant. As a result of this plurality of sede vacantism, canonical irregularities grew, episcopal visitations were irregular or absent. The diocese of Portalegre, under the metropolitan of the archdiocese of Lisbon, struggled to control its privileges and dignities. The religious and the military orders quickly filled the void, claiming canonical privileges long dormant, in open defiance of the office of the bishop. This was the situation Russell faced in 1671.
Portalegre was an expansive diocese whose eastern reach bordered Castile: to the north there was the town of Nisa, to the east Castello de Vide and Marvão, to the south Arronches, and the western frontier stretched as far as Ponte de Sor. Lisbon was 120 miles away from Russell’s seat at Portalegre, roughly three-days journey on foot; under two on horseback. The diocese was poor and had suffered from mismanagement and the deprivations of frontier raiding. Russell entered a diocese plagued by canonical irregularity, clerical laxity, poor catechesis, and rampant factionalism from ambitious religious orders. Russell was quick to establish his episcopal residence as a headquarters for reform. He soon settled into the civil and ecclesiastical life, establishing good working relationships with the civic governors of the province, Manoel Lobato and Diaguo Frões, who he refers throughout his correspondence to Watkinson as being of great help and encouragement to his office.Footnote 43
Bishop Russell immediately set about a visitation of his diocese writing to President Watkinson at the English College in May 1672 from Nisa, having spent the previous week visiting the faithful of Alpalhão.Footnote 44 He detailed the ecclesiastical makeup of the diocese which included Cistercians, the military orders and the Jesuits. Lisbonian priests had an institutional mistrust of the Jesuits from their earliest antecedents, stemming back to the 1620s, regarding the foundation of the college. This ‘anti-Jesuitism’ has been overplayed in the college’s historical accounts where, outside of Lisbon itself, Lisbonian priests worked closely with the Society in England, Brazil and Portalegre.Footnote 45 Russell wrote that the work of the Jesuits in Portalegre was done, ‘in great secrecy as they act all in a mystery or rather a mist.’ He thanked the Society for sending Manoel Dias to serve as rector in Portalegre which he called, ‘for my sake a mighty favour.’Footnote 46
The absence of Watkinson’s own hand in the Russell Letters naturally make the ‘correspondence’ very ‘Russell-centric.’ However, the unheard narrative of President Watkinson is of a character who was astute, capable, a skilled administrator, but also a man plagued by that most onerous of achievements, a successful alumnus. The letters examined here show Russell as a micro-manager, a prelate who sought to defend his alma mater but often interfered, and one whose patronage would come with strings attached, which the college’s Council of Superiors (its governing body) was eager to avoid. The relationship between president and prelate remained supportive until it ultimately collapsed over an endowment from Russell, which the college sought to release itself from. Despite this later deterioration, the letters reveal tenderness, compassion, and humour between the two men. They reflect genuine care for the college, and detail the lengths Russell was prepared to travel to help Watkinson.
Russell was not the first successful alumnus who thought he could do better than his superiors at the alma mater. At times his letters are patronising yet overall, they are cordial and amicable. Typical of this relationship was Russell’s letter to the president in October 1672, concerning the latter’s administration:
for I have [an] agreed mind that you should, when time is [good], up that charge leaving the house in a more prosperous condition than you found it which ought to be the ambition of every president, each one leaving some improvement as a monument to posterity of his industry and skill in augmenting what he found.Footnote 47
President Gerard Bernard (1756–77) wrote that Watkinson’s administration was a time of great prosperity which culminated in his own administration’s continued growth, despite the Great Earthquake of 1755 demolishing some of the recently refurbished college buildings. Writing to Bishop Challoner in England, Bernard wrote that the college at Lisbon, never had a dawn but, ‘shone out with all the splendour of meridian day.’Footnote 48
The city of Lisbon was the seat of the Crown, and every bishop needed a pied-à-terre in the city for himself and his court. This was, for Russell and his household, the English College. The Paço da Ribeira, the royal palace of the Braganza and their court, was only half an hour’s walk from the college, in Lisbon’s Bairro Alto district. Russell would utilise the college’s networks, particularly with the archdiocese, the royal family, and the Inquisition to serve his own canonical needs in Portalegre. Russell’s letters provide an invaluable picture of life as an English bishop in exile, the work of an English president in Lisbon, and the rich tapestry of canonical, economic and political networks that linked the English College at Lisbon with the episcopal palace at Portalegre in the last quarter of the seventeenth century. Having an alumnus as a Portuguese prelate was an advantage for the college in what was a complicated ecclesiastical context. Moreover, as bishop of Portalegre, Russell was the only Catholic Englishman at that point who exercised ordinary episcopal authority over a diocese. This made him a precious commodity within the English Mission and a champion of the English secular clergy whether he liked it or not. Russell’s personal relationships with the Portuguese ecclesiastical elites undoubtedly helped Watkinson’s administration. The Dominican Inquisitor General and Protector of the college, Dom Diego Velho, was also a close friend of Russell.Footnote 49
Russell’s visitation of Portalegre highlights his apostolic zeal and attention to canonical reform. He wrote to Watkinson of his plans to visit the town of Montalvão, the fortified town on the eastern frontier of his diocese, controlled by the knights of the Order of Christ (one of Portugal’s three military orders). He always wrote positively of his visitations to Watkinson: ‘You cannot imagine what a day ‘tis to me to see with how much devotion these people receive me and how tractable they are in things of Church Discipline.’Footnote 50 Much of Russell’s self-aggrandisement might be dismissed with a pinch of salt. Nevertheless, after years without a bishop, it is clear his first visitation was welcome:
Last night I came to this place and performed the usual ceremonies in the church, this morning I had no sooner began my visit in the church but I presently found a priest and a beata Footnote 51 accused beyond all doubt whom I laid up in prison and presently, after another and about noon, returning to my quarters from the church, I received such an universal applause of the people who presently knew of it as though I had destroyed a common enemy whom they universally detested in isto não é Cabido, ia não valem prodigious, vicca a Sñr Bispo with the like acclamations I got through the throng ‘till I came to my lodging, where I hear ever since, nothing but such noises.Footnote 52
Russell’s reforms as bishop also represented the Crown as chief arbiter of political, social, and religious orthodoxy. After years of disorder, the imprisonment of the odd errant cleric was good for morale. He had inherited a degenerate chapter (cabido) at Portalegre, and clerical laxity was rife: here he noted in Portuguese that he had been, ‘praised as prodigious by the chapter who blessed their Lord Bishop.’ Canons, used to governing themselves, were not always welcoming of reform: the parallels, in the 1670s, with the ‘bishopless’ English Chapter in London may not have gone unnoticed by Russell or Watkinson.
Russell, in the spirit of the reforming bishops in Portugal of the 1670s, represented the model Tridentine bishop. His humour, which is often lacking in his correspondence, comes out in his relationship to his own cabido. He joked with Watkinson that his cabido was trying to poison him, in protest against his reforming agenda: ‘Be not solicitous for me for though no bishop must die for the […] many years yet, without suspicion of help from his Chapter:Footnote 53 god almighty has taken from me all manner of appreciation of danger that way and placed in my clergy a fear and dread of me’.Footnote 54
Russell took clerical reform very seriously. He found the clergy of Portalegre to be ill-educated and lacking basic rudimentary education. He wrote to Watkinson that he had sent some of his priests back to school, some forcibly, under canonical suspension:
I have made a combustion amongst my clergy by examining all who were suspected of insufficiency and committing such as were most enormously so to grammar school some, many cases under pain of suspension which will make a noise, will reach to you at Lisbon and I shall have many a good wish and prayer backwards for my pains.Footnote 55
Russell had procured one of Watkinson’s students to act as his secretary (escrivão) and took him to Portalegre. Daniel Fisher (1646–86) was a protégé of Bishop Russell who had paid for his education himself: he had arrived at the college as a boy of fifteen in February 1662.Footnote 56 Russell spent the summer of 1672 on his diocesan visitation, where Fisher chronicled his episcopal perambulations.Footnote 57 He returned to Lisbon via the Porto de Muge to update Watkinson on the bishop’s affairs.Footnote 58 At Arronches, in the southern extremity of his diocese, Russell encountered his first major test as bishop in imposing his clerical reforms on his clergy. In the small frontier town, a local priest Luis de Fores had, ‘caused very great confusion amongst the people despising the censures I had thundered against him, to the high contempt of ordinary [episcopal] jurisdiction.’ Russell wrote that he feared de Fores had friends in Lisbon who were encouraging him in his opposition to Russell’s jurisdiction as ordinary. He does not mention who these detractors were, but it was a dispute between his own cabido and those of another ecclesiastical authority in what could only have been the regular or military orders. Augustinian canons were resident in Arronches as were the Barnabites, and Russell suspected their involvement in encouraging de Fores:
in defence of my own jurisdiction and to protect my chapter from a most manifest injury, I resolved having used first all peaceable means to reduce Luis to reason to put the last hand to his work by my preference and if no reason would prevail, violent hands and imprisonment remitting him to his.Footnote 59
The priest soon came to his senses, recanted, and fell into canonical line with Russell. Whilst he may have overstated the success of his interventions in Portalegre, it seems that the people were in favour of clerical reform. The de Fores case demonstrated this when Russell threatened him with imprisonment:
I should put a stop to his exorbitances, but it pleased providence to dispose him better for the very next day after he was well informed and satisfied. That he was executing orders from a person who called himself judge and had as much jurisdiction in the case as you have, he owned his fault, submitted to my censures, desisted from the execution, and begged absolution which I bestowed on him only to have a hand over him still in case the devil shall prevail with him to redire ad vomitum.Footnote 60
Russell’s care for detail is indicative of his general desire to use his correspondence to Watkinson as a propaganda tool. President Watkinson was the head of an administration that had well established and influential links within the elites of Lisbon, both sacred and profane. In this case, Russell positioned himself as the conquering hero – Caesaresque – in his triumph over canonical irregularity:
So the things being thus adjusted I raised the interdict and the next day, being Sunday, I made my entrada Footnote 61 in usual manner to the great joy and content of the people. I may say with Caesar, if it be lawful, magnis componere parum – veni, vidi, vici Footnote 62 for what I am bound to render infinita Footnote 63 thanks to almighty god, for had it succeeded otherwise I had been forced in defence of my jurisdiction to have run myself into very great disquiet and much danger but now all is well and all honest men content and satisfied.
A postscript to the letter of 29 November 1672 noted that the priest provoking Luis de Fores against Russell was an Augustinian friar, who ‘returned, submitted to mercy and craved pardon, signing terms to be good for the future and not to dispute church censures which he thought cheaper than to make his appearance with his faults at the Menza de Conscientia.’Footnote 64
The Mesa da Consciência e Ordens or ‘table of conscience and of the [military orders]’ was the most visible representation of the relationship between the Crown and altar in early modern Portugal. It was a royal council founded by João III (1521–57) in 1532: he was known in Portuguese royal nomenclature as o Piedoso or ‘the pious.’ The mesa was an institution of government that dealt with matters of the king’s conscience. In 1551 Julius III issued Praeclara clarissimi which united the three main Portuguese military orders of Santiago, Avis, and the Order of Christ under the Crown.Footnote 65 The Mesa da Consciência was an extraordinary department of the early modern Portuguese state and managed religious nominations, finance, legal affairs pertaining to the commanderies of the military orders, and certain obra pio (pious works): it even managed the university of Coimbra.
Russell’s household dealt with the Mesa regularly, though it is rarely mentioned directly in the Russell Letters. In contrast, the Misericordia (or Santa Casa da Misericórdia) was a distinct instrument of state, separate from the Mesa. The Misericordia, founded by Queen Leonor in 1498 dealt with charitable works, religious benefactions, and what might loosely be described as pious inheritance. It managed benefactions created as purgatorial insurance policies; and as such it had oversight of funds relating to the college.Footnote 66 Dom Pedro Coutinho, the founder and patron of the English College at Lisbon, left his foundation to the Misericordia to administer, ensuring that his investment was ringfenced and that the college would continue as a seminary for the good of souls in England. The Misericordia, still in existence today, had regional offices, responsible for such work in the provinces, including at Portalegre.
Episcopal Visitation – Portalegre
Russell’s administrative labours as bishop were detailed in his letters to Watkinson. Writing from the Ponte de Sor, Russell noted that his delegates had arrived at Lisbon to reside at the college.Footnote 67 Several letters detail Russell’s episcopal business conducted through the college:
My honest canon-penitentiary is now with you and I doubt not but he will manage all excellently well. He has letters for the Nuncio, the Auditor and the archbishop and many more. This is the fourth day I have been at Ponte de Sor with my hands full of business all day people flocking for confirmation from all corners of the world. Not only mine but those of the dioceses of Lisbon, Evora, Elvas and Guarda; 7 leagues about come in every house.Footnote 68
Russell was o feituras (‘a creature’) of the Crown, with whom he was expected to maintain ‘a relationship of loyalty and subordination, and for whom [he] was expected to provide certain services.’Footnote 69 Towards the end of summer 1673, he had nearly completed his first visitation of his new diocese, culminating in Portalegre itself. Russell had expected trouble from the knights of Malta, who had a church dedicated to St James in the city. He expressed relief that he escaped interference from the knights. He did, however, detail an exorcism which he described as part of the findings of his visitation:
We suffer this moment a great heat as any time this year, if not greater, and I am more than ordinarily busy in my visitation and have finished half this city. I thought I should have had some trouble with St. Iago a church of Malta, but the prior wanted courage when he perceived I went about my business briskly and would not endure to be baffled. I have matter enough to furnish you with more pleasant stories of a merry devil, two or three, who play here pranks in a woman they have possessed.Footnote 70
The involvement of the English College in Russell’s affairs, wanted or not, was extraordinary. It even included the purchase of stationary for the recording of diocesan visitations. President Watkinson probably had better things to do, but, like all superiors, he had to deal with matters secular and profane. Nevertheless, the Russell correspondence details the workings of an early modern visitation from an administrative, ‘month by month’, point of view, and is valuable as a source for how such a visitation was conducted. Russell wrote:
Now I want, in order for the better government of my flock, and more speedy execution of justice and therefore I desire it may speedily be sent. A book, a paper book, of no less than a whole ream of paper – good strong paper that may bear ink without drinking it up bound in vellum, the same manner your great books of accounts merchants use as are used in the contos or alfandega. Footnote 71 ‘tis a long story to tell you the use of this, in short ‘tis for the speedy execution of offenders, which in the general visits I make are found tripping. And being now next week to begin my visit, I should be very glad to have it before I have done with the City and out-parishes that I may have it along with me about the rest of my diocese.Footnote 72
Russell used the college’s networks to procure the latest books for the reform of clergy after his investigations into the state of their education. He asked for a full set of Spondanus’ Annalium Baronii Epitomes (Rome, 1660): ‘I want Spondanus’ six volumes to rectify my peoples understanding (my clergy I mean) in ecclesiastical abuses and show them the grounds on which canons were built which only is seen in Ecclesiastical History’.Footnote 73
The canonical irregularities that Russell was finding in his diocese were not uncommon: clerical ignorance of canon law, sexual immorality, witchcraft, usury, drunkenness, and violence:
I have been now eight days here and have made such a rout amongst churchmen and lay people as has not been seen many years before this place is damnably deep in usury. I have five persons in prison for the contract of mohatra Footnote 74 and nigh fifty obliged livramento.Footnote 75 Charges for fighting, drinking and wenching more than enough besides many other more venial of senses.Footnote 76
Russell also related the need for reform amongst his own cathedral canons (cabido conegos). Decades without a bishop had emboldened cabidos throughout Portugal, who had often benefited from sede vacantism. Russell related such a case to Watkinson of a cantor of his cathedral who he described as becoming more ‘a galley than a cathedral’, and criticised members of his household for incompetence, arrogance, or neglect. He blamed these laxities solely on the crisis caused by the Habsburg interference with Braganza nominations to mainland bishoprics:
These helps to such as were admitted Sede Vacante furnish us with a learned and exemplar choir scarce fit to govern hoggs and yet as senators. Since I returned from Castello de Vide and Marvão I have visited my church chapter and parish, and now visiting the next which I suppose will give employment until Christmas.Footnote 77
There is yet another sense that Russell included the detail in his letters to Watkinson in the hope Watkinson would relate his news, and his work in Portalegre, to the college’s networks in Lisbon. Given the demands on Russell’s time, he may have hoped that his news to Watkinson would be disseminated in Lisbon. He was also politically, ecclesiastically, and intellectually isolated in Portalegre so needed Watkinson to relate his position in the provinces. The reforms he was implementing in his own cathedral, and amongst his own household take up much of the narrative. The correspondence reveals what Russell had inherited and the energetic approach to reform, in his diocese, his cabido, and his episcopal household. An incident in Russell’s own cathedral had caused scandal amongst the congregation and the new bishop was keen to assert his authority. Russell had his mestre scholla Footnote 78 arrested by his Vicar General, Garro Muito Engadado, when the former had forced the Mass to proceed faster than the celebrant was prepared to accept. This made good reading for the college’s networks and represented how rigorous Russell was with reform, even of the most minute of misdemeanours:
The story is this. The Mestre Scholla being at the altar singing Mass on the third Sunday of Advent; and the sermon that day seeming long, the chaplains at the end desiring to make an end, prevailed with Mestre Barrato that they might begin to sing Sanctus before the Mestre Scholla had sung the Preface, which they doing accordingly the Mestre Scholla interrupted them by clapping his hand on the altar they still continued notwithstanding and amongst them such a confusion was made that it caused scandal in the church. Mass ended, my vicar general expostulated the case with the Mestre Scholla, he owned he had done ill; but withal asked him what he had to do with it, he answered that as my vicar he was enabled to punish it, the other replied that as vicar he had nothing to do with any disorders in the choir whereupon Garro Muito Engadado commanded him to his house prisoner under pain of excommunication which he obeyed.Footnote 79
The prosecution of the mestre scholla seemed a little harsh but Russell was keen to assert his own authority over the cabido and its members. It was a matter of principle for Russell, eager to rationalise and delineate the canonical and juridical parameters of his authority:
Presently he [the mestre scholla] sent me a petition wherein he complained of Garro, and that he could not punish such disorders but the person who presided in the choir. I sent him word by Syl: Correa that the Presidents power of punishing faults of the choir did not take away any power of my vicar general that if he could make it appear that my vicar-general had no such power I was ready to reprehend him, ‘till then I should not endure what he had done. Since I have signified to him that either he should show that my vicar had not power to imprison him or own he did ill in openly denying he had any such power. He is too stiff and beg to do the former; the latter he cannot show and this is our present case. How long ‘twill last god knows. Either of the two expedients will give him liberty, but by humility he will not purchase it; and by texts of canons he cannot.Footnote 80
There were thirteen dioceses in mainland Portugal as well as those in its vast imperial possessions abroad, from Pernambuco to Goa. The three great archbishoprics of Lisbon, Braga, and Évora, controlled vast territories, and were the main agencies between the Crown and Altar. Russell’s position had been in the gift of the queen regent, who had awarded him for his ‘singular assistance and fidelity in promoting the interests of her kingdom.’Footnote 81 With the visitation of his diocese completed, Russell was recalled to Lisbon to provide his report. His summons to court (the cortes) at the Paço da Ribeira was detailed in his correspondence to Watkinson. The relationship between the Crown and mitre was, however, deeply personal: Paiva observes that this informal relationship between individuals sometimes even infringed ‘formal laws’.Footnote 82 The summons was thus Russell’s opportunity to present himself to Pedro II, a chance to prove himself as a servant of the Crown. He was uncharacteristically nervous. Russell would travel with his episcopal retinue, including his canon penitentiary (conego penitentiario), and stay at the college, where he had built himself a small self-contained residence, within its compound. He felt that he had not made sufficient progress in Portalegre to determine a favourable meeting at court:
I perceive by his Highnesses letter that I must come to Cortes by the first of December and though to tell you the naked truth I had rather give a good thing to be excused yet since I cannot make any excuse that will not be liable to be misinterpreted a backwardness in his highnesses service and want of zeal to the public good. I resolve to put myself to an unnecessary expense in a time and circumstance I am not well able to bear it, rather than that I will be thought disaffected to his Highnesses Service. So that with your licence and permission to trespass on you for my abode in the College, I resolve to be with you by the 20th of November a day or two more or less […] I have signified to Mr. Pro[curator] my desire, as I also have to […] the archbishop who now is as much concerned in it as myself for since I have got an Acórdão da Relacaõ Footnote 83 in my favour, all Bishops of Portugal are concerned to make good that sentence for their own sake.Footnote 84
Russell’s self-doubt was unjustified. Pedro II would later elevate Russell to the prestigious see of Viseu in recognition of his work in Portalegre.
The Military Orders and Episcopal Jurisdiction
There were three Portuguese military orders active in Portalegre during Russell’s episcopate, in addition to the knights of St John (Malta). The most prestigious was the Order of Christ (Ordem Militar de Nosso Senhor Jesus Cristo) instituted by Denis (1279–1325) the ‘farmer king’ (rei lavrador). It was to succeed the Knights Templar in 1312 when, elsewhere in Christendom, the military order was violently dissolved. Rather than suppress the order, the Portuguese Crown made it their own, enriching itself with Templar possessions. The Order of St Benedict of Avis (Ordem Militar de São Bento de Avis) was instituted in 1162 by Afonso Henriques (1139–85) (o Conquistador, ‘the conqueror’) as an order of chivalry that followed the Rule of St Benedict and was ‘supervised’ by the Cistercians. The Order of St James (Ordem Militar de Santiago da Espada) was originally a Spanish order, founded in 1170, after Santiago de Compostela. In 1290, the knights chose their own Portuguese Grand Master, separating themselves from their Spanish confraters. In the early modern period, these military orders were effectively middling elites, although their commanderies were the preserve of the nobility. The commanderies were collections of assets controlled by high-ranking members of the orders, and often passed on through heredity. Olival noted that: ‘It is almost impossible to arrive at the exact number of commanderies of the three Portuguese orders. The Order of Christ accounted for around 450, the Order of Avis for 48, and the Order of Santiago for 85. Income from these varied greatly. There were large, small and middle-sized commanderies in all three orders.’Footnote 85 The orders were an instrument of royal power to promote social mobility, rein in the power of the higher nobility, and implement royal authority in a far-flung empire and, ‘masked the real needs of the extensive and ancient Portuguese colonial empire.’Footnote 86 Olival noted that, whilst the military orders had long ceased to be active as a military force, the Crown continued to find them useful: ‘Portugal had a vast empire to run and could not afford to waste servants or goodwill.’Footnote 87 They were an elite who controlled vast swathes of land, sinecures, revenues, and consequently had undue influence; in the frontier dioceses they were often unregulated by outside agencies, and it would require a strong bishop to stand up to them. This Russell did. The military orders were a self-perpetuating oligarchy keen on their own privileges, ‘characterized by having few rejections and many dispensations.’Footnote 88 The military orders and the episcopate were both royal agents that competed in the exercise of their perceived rights.
Russell complained of disputes with the mestrados, masters of the military orders, and of the knights of Malta in particular who had filled the gap caused by the vacantist crisis in frontier Portugal: ‘I am up to the ears with contests with friars of the Mestrado whom for I must quell or perish in the attempt.’Footnote 89 Russell took his position seriously and his reforming zeal comes through consistently in correspondence to Watkinson. He was adamant that the decrees of the Council of Trent be fully implemented in his diocese and that the office of the bishop be respected by the military orders and the religious. He defended his stance to Watkinson:
Which I choose rather than that episcopal jurisdiction should further deteriorate in my hands for which I live and am placed in governance of the Church and propter vitam vivendi perdere causas is the part of a spirit not fit.Footnote 90 Chiefly in our days so hard be jurisdiction almost destroyed by warring pastors in times military orders usurped what they pleased of vacancy when for all was but little enough.
The military orders were a disparate group of nobles. They were an asset for the Portuguese Crown in exercising royal control outside of the major cities.Footnote 91 Consequently, the military orders frequently came into friction with civil and ecclesiastical authority and constituted an important part of the complicated client-patron network of early modern Portugal. Russell explained his position to President Watkinson:
Sure I am bound to defend my jurisdiction and beyond it I shall not nor have I gone one step. But a long vacancy in these bishoprics have given opportunity for the military orders and their ministers to usurp upon the ordinary power which chapters were negligent to defend which is the cause of these disputes now. God forgive those visiting in rochets is a ridiculous thing and procured, but were never accepted by any bishop in the world. And yet the Menza de Consciencia has given out provisos that their friars shall not be imprisoned I doubt not but am sure no bishop shall endure the insolence of an inferior pastor his subject, for all those provisos. Let them keep within the bounds of their privileges and I shall not touch them. But if they deny me my authority ‘tis not ten Menzes de Consciencia shall secure them.Footnote 92
Russell’s conflicts with the military orders deserves greater research. It is clear from his correspondence to Watkinson that he was determined to implant ordinary episcopal authority. His position as an Englishman elevated him above the factionalism of the military orders that complicated the episcopal-diocesan relationships of sees where the incumbent was Portuguese. Russell had no such baggage.
Russell and slavery in Portalegre
Bishop Russell was active in the procurement of enslaved people for his own household and for others under his charge. References to slaves are numerous in his correspondence and details of the financial exchanges and interactions between his household and slave traders is recurrent. References are made of boca negras (black mouths), as well as derogatory references to men and women of African heritage.Footnote 93 His correspondence describes the procurement of slaves for his own household and for the convent of São Bernardo, a Cistercian daughter-house of the great Abbey of Santa Maria in Alcobaça. ‘Portalegre Abbey’, as it was known to Russell, was a convent in his diocese, to which he had rights of visitation. It was founded in 1518 and had English nuns amongst its inmates: Anne Radcliffe is mentioned by Russell and there is reference made to other nuns of the Radcliffe family. Already an important administrative and economic centre, Portalegre became a city under João III who further established the diocese of Portalegre and ordered the building of the cathedral. Russell also owned slaves as part of his own household at the episcopal residence at Portalegre. In correspondence with Watkinson in 1675, he discusses a man and a woman whom he was keen to protect. Russell sought to buy the freedom of the enslaved woman, belonging to a Captain Passasino. It seems she had some form of sexual relationship with a male slave of the bishop’s household. Russell sought to avoid any sense of scandal on his own household:
I must not omit to tell you for news such as ‘tis my Master Pretto (black) falling in league with a black woman belonging to Captain dos Passasino. I resolved to purchase her and marry them to avoid sin and scandal of my family. But she being deposited in order to her sale by justice in Dioguo Froes’ house; was delivered some days since of a mulatto which has changed the state of the blessing. But still so as to avoid the occasion for sin she must not return to Passasino. So that I am forced to pay for her and give her liberty, with condition she return not to Portalegre under the forfeiture of the liberty I gave her. Which in brief is great, I part with my money to purchase credit to my family and keep my black out of the state of sin.
Russell was equally concerned at reaction this incident might have caused amongst polite society in Lisbon. His correspondence to Watkinson is further evidence of the bishop using the college’s networks to amplify his messages, from distant Portalegre: ‘In case you chance to hear any complaints, this is the true sense of the business. I shall send the black lady to Lisbon to provide for herself which in a few days Mr. Reynolds can provide you with this story at large’.Footnote 94
Russell’s act in securing the woman her liberty, and sending her to Lisbon, might be considered some mitigation, however it remains clear that Russell’s household contained slaves. It seems that the scandal that was more concerning to Russell’s credit was sexual. There is no evidence that the English College at Lisbon ever had slaves, though President Watkinson was very aware of the process of procurement and the trade between Lisbon and the Portuguese provinces. Watkinson and Mr. Reynolds, a Lisbonian priest, were clearly engaged with Russell and may well have been directly involved in the purchase of enslaved men and women themselves.Footnote 95 There is, however, no evidence of such transactions in the extant college’s account books for this period.Footnote 96 Russell wrote often of the matter, with some frustration, in his attempt to find a female slave for the nuns at the convent at São Bernardo:
By your last which is of the 15th September I see you let slip an occasion of a negra of the right age for my use. Elder are commonly corrupt which is not so fit a present to bestow on a person in a monastery.Footnote 97
Russell provides an insight into female conventual life at São Bernardo’s and the life an enslaved person might have entered in provincial Portugal. The convent was poor and both Russell and Watkinson supported the institution financially:
Anna Ma: Ratcliff took the habit at St. Bernard’s last. There is only bed, escritorio or contador and the rest wanting.Footnote 98 You little think that the stay of these things behind reflects on her, and me and they (that is some wise ones within) were it her and her sister with bim se deixa vero cazo q della farz o Bispo q a Meta sem ter em q dormer ou em q meta hum fato. Footnote 99 To you and men of principles these things are easily to be solved but amongst the weaker sex in a convent they are convincing and concurring objections.Footnote 100 Antonio will tell you I must have another negra and for what I have writ to my comprador for one if he has none. Send me word if a serviceable one and sound be to be got where I bought Antonio and you Dorothea who is the princess of blacks and has as many tricks as a monkey – but more innocent ones. She gives wonderful content, and you have good wishes, by dozens for her.Footnote 101
‘Dorothea’ was an enslaved woman of African descent, possibly from Cabo Verde, who Russell knew and was in the service of the Cistercian nuns of São Bernardo. Whilst a detailed examination of the papers concerning Russell and the slave-trade is needed in its wider gendered context, Russell was no more enlightened than any other prelate of his time regarding slavery. The work of Dr Elizabeth Goodwin, of York St John University, has begun to shed light on slavery and female enclosure in Russell’s papers.Footnote 102
Frustration at the inability of Watkinson to send Russell’s slave, via his servant Viola, is telling in the letters of late 1672:
I am now to tell you that Viola appeared yesterday but without anything from you except the periwig for Mr. Ratcliffe, the negra we were great in expectation of, and other things I want now it begin to be cold escaped him though he tells me he was diligent to call at the College for them.Footnote 103 What concerns me and my vicar general is that you send a negra by Viola and his [Manho Guaresmal] for Sunday begins Advent. All the encomendados came well.Footnote 104 […] ‘tis not seasonable to say more of a negra for if she comes not by Viola all the fat is signified and I suppose he is already on his way and well-nigh Portalegre. I sent as in my last I told you last week by the prior of St João de Castello de Vide 20 moedas of gold for the purchase of the negra which by this I hope you have received.Footnote 105
Russell’s slave never arrived at Portalegre. Watkinson was blamed for the delay, and for the damage it was doing to the bishop’s reputation with the Cistercians at the convent. Russell was jealously defensive of his reputation and saw perceived inefficiency as a personal affront to his credit. Russell wrote to Watkinson regarding the matter:
I received yours of the 23rd by the last ordinary on Saturday in the evening and Viola appeared here Sunday morning with the chest of earthenware, a chest and a box from my commander and for all that though the chest came without so much as one broken dish and the chest for which I thank you was very excellent good he was not at all welcomed by me for want of a negra which made me in a very peevish mood and so quarrelsome that I scolded apace with him. Thus you see what a dangerous thing ‘tis to have ones expectation fail one. And in sober sadness in this conjunction I had rather paid 100 for a negra than that she should have failed to come by Viola. For after you had writ me you had bought one and I had given order to Viola to bring her which his divulging made public. So that not only the family she is for expected her by him, but ‘twas generally by all reported as certain. He coming without her has done me some discredit and my word is thought a patarata Footnote 106 not to be relied on. Which is of no good repute of one in my position and circumstances which if you had fully apprehended, though Viola brought not the gold which I sent soon after by the Prior de St. João, I am confident you would not have let him come without her. I telling you I could not expect the fleet, and had rather have one seasoned to the country. I confess I had a desconfiança Footnote 107 ‘twas for want of sending the money by Viola made you take little notice of what I said on the subject, which indeed seemed odd. But what is past is past remedy what I must desire you to take notice of is that every day I am without seeing this negra, my reputation decreases what I cannot but be very sensible of as you will also be, if you have that respect for me I deserve of you. More I cannot say.Footnote 108
It is apparent that there were external factors playing on Russell’s temperament that need to be considered in this case. As bishop, Russell had many episcopal plates to keep spinning in the air, not least his delicate relations with the military orders and the religious. Russell was also keen to protect his reputation amongst his episcopal peers as a man who could be trusted.
Russell and the English College
The Russell Letters provide a comprehensive account of his role as bishop, as reformer, as royal agent, as factotum and arbiter, as well as a central agency between the college and the wider English Catholic diaspora, both in Portugal and back home in England. The English College was well established as a British institution during President Watkinson’s long administration (1672–1706). Successive administrations had built on the importance of the college to Anglo-Portuguese trade and though it had lost its control of the English consulate, it maintained its soft power, enjoying political and royal favour. The college was a conduit between the courts of the Ribeira and Whitehall and the Portuguese elites were keen to establish and maintain close relations with the institution. The confraternity of St Thomas of Canterbury, whose relic adorned one of the college’s many chapels, attracted aristocrats from Lisbon society to its membership. The Livro da Irmandade do Bemaventurado Santo Tomas de Cantuari (the Brotherhood of the blessed St Thomas of Canterbury), was established in 1657 under President Thomas Tilden. Tilden frequently preached in Portuguese and did much to integrate the college into the city’s social and political elites.Footnote 109 President Watkinson continued his predecessor’s policy and Lisbonians, affectionately known in the diminutive as os Ingelsinhos (‘little Englishmen’), became a familiar presence in the city’s urban landscape. Bishop Russell was, however, concerned that Watkinson was taking on too much.
Watkinson was supported by a Council of Superiors who advised him on matters relating to the constitutions and rules of the house, but constitutionally, he was primus inter pares and, in effect, ruled alone. The Mission Oath, which Lisbonians took prior to departing for the English Mission, had a proviso that Lisbonians would remain under the authority of their president who might recall them should he require. With limited direction from the Vicars Apostolic in London, even after 1685, the position of president was one that rivalled an archbishop in its influence, patronage, and authority. The peculiar foundation of the college, with its loose acknowledgement of the authority of the Vicar Apostolic (or its legitimate successors), made the president largely untouchable. Watkinson’s position in Lisbon was of a high status. Russell was supportive of his colleague and encouraged Watkinson to take his doctorate, as befitting his status as president (it was customary for presidents of the college to take their doctorates, awarded internally by the Protector.) The Coutinho dynasty continued to support the college, founded by their kinsman Dom Pedro Coutinho. Doña Joãna Coutinho was working on Russell’s business in Lisbon, concerning a land dispute with the Conde de Miranda, and the Coutinhos continued to be involved in the British institution throughout Watkinson’s administration. Russell had placed one of his nieces with Doña Joãna, ‘to learn the language and manners and to be looked after.’Footnote 110 Russell’s letter of May 1673 suggests the Miranda case was occupying much of Watkinson’s time in Lisbon. The president had progressed the case to the Mesa de Consciência, where Russell’s agent, Sylvestre Correa was acting on the bishop’s behalf:
I accept myself very happy in the Monteiro Mor, his being President of the Mesa de Consciência, but my suit with the Conde de MirandaFootnote 111 has obliged me to send Sylvestre CorreaFootnote 112 to Alpalhaõ where his stay will be yet some days so that I can note.Footnote 113
Russell also entered into a dispute with Alexandre da Silva Botelho, bishop of Elvas:
My neighbour, the bishop of Elvas, does not deal neighbourly with me. I shall be forced to have a suit at law with him I see, for he is not fair conditioned, and I am not of a temper to quit my right for his huffing though he be an Alexander and valiant. He was taken at Lisbon for a man of learning which I cannot find by his working.Footnote 114
Although one side of the correspondence is missing, from Russell’s letters alone it seems that the exchange was not emotionally reactive or frustrated. The correspondence suggests that Watkinson’s own replies were comprehensive, detailed, and responsive. The two men knew each other well, so well that Russell knew what kind of spectacles the president was wearing in the 1670s after he ordered a similar pair for the prioress of São Bernardo.Footnote 115 Russell treated the English College as his base in Lisbon, for him and his household; this made sense and there was nothing particularly unusual about that setup. Towards the end of the correspondence, however, we see Russell as increasingly frustrated with Watkinson’s own administration and the two saw different paths for the future of the college. Overall, however, much of the correspondence is mundane or simply reflective of political events.
The Russell Letters provide an insight into the economic and political events of Portugal, England and the wider European theatre of the 1670s. Three letters between Russell and Watkinson illustrate that Russell was well informed in matters well beyond Portalegre. The first concerned a tragedy, the slaughter of twelve English members of the British Factory, the centre of English economic and political power in Lisbon. The English consulate had been controlled by the college in the person of John Robinson (1650–56), the Lisbonian priest, favoured by Charles II, whilst in exile.Footnote 116 Thomas Maynard (1656–89), his successor as consul, had successfully disentangled the consulate from the college in the 1650s and consolidated his independence as a Protestant merchant representing the British Crown in Portugal. Russell, as an attaché to Sande, was involved in the contested implementation of the 1654 trade agreement between London and Lisbon. Relations between the college and the factory remained strained. In October 1676, Russell lamented the recent massacre that had taken place at the British Factory:
Our worthy friends the merchants of the noble factory of Lisbon have very good cause to resent the slaughter of 12 of their brethren of the Reformation.Footnote 117 Others will laugh at their weeping and think they are well served and deservedly suffer for their pride, rebellion and heresy wishing them as many great strokes of fortune as will convert them and make them honest men and good Christians.Footnote 118
Shaw argues that the college never recovered from the loss of the consulate, which had financial benefits, as well as controlling the mercantile communities in Lisbon. Russell and Maynard had worked together during the marriage treaty, but the two men did not get on. Maynard saw Russell as an impediment to the 1654 treaty leading Shaw to conclude that, ‘their relationship can have been, at best, an armed neutrality.’Footnote 119
The second example concerned news about European matters, which reflected Russell’s continued interest in continental affairs from his days in the Portuguese mission. Russell wrote of the Siege of Phillipsburg in the Franco-Dutch wars:
I expect another battle in Germany where the Duke of Luxembourg was approaching Phillipsburg besieged by the confederates with resolution to raise that siege or fall in the attempt as he had orders to do from his master the Most Christian King.Footnote 120
The third example concerns the state of the English Mission in November 1676. Russell and Watkinson were concerned at the growing persecution against the English Catholic community in England and worried about Lisbonians, particularly in the English Chapter. In 1676, the Bishop of London, Henry Compton (1632–1713), began the so-called Compton Census to determine how many Nonconformists and Catholics were resident in England and Wales. Russell knew Compton whilst at court, and wrote to Watkinson:
I wonder how the bishop of London has grown so zealous. He was a very modest civil gentleman when I knew him before he was bishop: ‘tis the Earl of Northampton’s brother Dr. Compton was thought inclined to popery – maybe to redeem himself out of the captivity of that opinion held generally of him he bestirs himself now. Things look ill, and ‘tis to be feared this February session will open with a storm of persecution: god help poor Catholics with his grace.Footnote 121
Lisbonian placements at Catherine’s court at Somerset House consolidated the sound governance of presidents Tilden and Perrot with access to patronage, influence, and revenues; these men built on what former administrations had achieved. Lisbonians likewise consolidated their influence in England within ecclesiastical government by controlling the English Chapter. The presence of a Lisbonian dean from 1658–1714, the former presidents Humphrey Waring (1658–76) and John Perrot (1676–1714), strengthened the college’s influence within English ecclesiastical government. The college was, after all, directly answerable to the English Chapter’s authority. It made sense that Lisbonians sought to control the body of twenty-four canons and the important office of dean.
Events in England continued to trouble Russell and in particular the increasingly precarious position of the new dean, John Perrot. Watkinson had proposed that he himself travelled to England, to ascertain the situation of the Lisbonian mission and Perrot’s administration of the English Chapter. Russell explained the situation to Watkinson:
Only that content me is that we have our noble friend honest Mr. Barnesley for our dean in place of Dr. Waring.Footnote 122 Dr. Francis Gage were proposed but not residing in England ‘twas thought expedient to put them that made his abode here which truly is very necessary.Footnote 123 I consider my friend Jo: [John Perrot] now as busy as a hen with one chick and so all to be pestered with business that he does not know which way to turn himself. As for a letter from him which was always difficult and ever in haste now ‘twill be impossible altogether.
Russell, in consideration of the deteriorating political situation, was against Watkinson travelling to England. He assured the president that the college’s agents in England were well placed to ensure Perrot could cope with his new position:
Mr. Fish: also speaks of a thundering proclamation to come out against poor papists and expectations of great doings against them at the session of parliament to be in February next but it seems you have a mind to share in that tempest since you intend spring for a voyage that way you say for three months.Footnote 124 But when you are there you may change your mind and set up your rest there which I shall expect ‘till I see you back again. ‘tis not good advising without being called on and so I say no more on that point you are in the hands of your own liberty and are old enough to dispose of yourself and govern your own affairs.Footnote 125
It was clear that Russell was well briefed on collegiate life and often gave Watkinson advise on how to manage affairs. Russell advised Watkinson not to travel to England because of the ‘thundering proclamation’ emanating against the English Catholic communities. He was also keen to protect Watkinson against factions amongst his own. The college’s procurator, Roger Hesketh (1643–1715), had sown dissent amongst the college’s students by favouring his fellow Lancastrian students with privileges. Russell disapproved of this as unbefitting of college morale.Footnote 126 He advised Watkinson against the move:
Get Mr. Hesketh to banish out of his mouth the word ‘countryman’ that endearing word and call his (no not his) the Lancashire youths by their names the rest is indiscretion and tending to faction and as such to be carefully avoided in a community.Footnote 127
Hesketh was engaged in work for Russell at the legacia, concerning the bishop’s legal disputes with the military orders.Footnote 128 On behalf of his own legate, the conego penitentiario of Portalegre, Russell thanked Watkinson for allowing him access to his superiors to settle episcopal business: ‘wherein your helping hand and interest was very opportune as well as prevalent for which he (the conego penitentiario) renders you his thanks and I for him and myself (as concerned in whatever of the kind happens to him) do the same.’ Russell was grateful to Watkinson for his assistance in managing his affairs and generally complementary.
In 1678 the college was flourishing and a recent visitation by the Inquisitor General of Portugal, Veríssimo de Lencastre, the college’s Protector, had confirmed this. Lencastre had been the principal consecrator of Russell as bishop of Portalegre, in the college’s chapel, some few years earlier:
The good account of the college Mr. Hesketh gives me, and its progress in bono, is a very great cordial to me and I am very glad to see the Inquisitor General as he tells me has found so much cause of edification and so little need of reformation, a wonder, after so many years disuse of visits. For the future they will be easy to you and him and I apprehend a great ease to whoever governs. He writes to me something of the want of a Vice President and Prefect of Studies besides a Reader of Scripture which he would have me write to England about. Pray let me have your sense in the case that I may discern better whether it be fit for me or of any use that I should write.Footnote 129
The visitation had highlighted that there was a short-term need for professors and lectors. Lisbon prided itself on being able to produce its own staff from its students, something it did until its closure in the 1970s. The Russell Letters show a flourishing college, independent and mature:
Good parts and good masters never fail of making scholars, what I most of all applaud is the fortune of the college which has continually bred up within itself a succession of readers so much to its credit. A thing our mother college of Douai has often failed in and been obliged to call people bred in Spain and at Rome to fill in chairs.Footnote 130
The English College at Lisbon was the only English institution for seminarian education within the English Catholic diaspora never to have Jesuit lectors or professors on its staff, throughout its history.
The Russell Donation
In her entry for Richard Russell, in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Maria Leonor Machado de Sousa pictured a Portuguese prelate that depicted himself as austere: ‘He kept a strict but simple household, and was well known for his conversation and humour; he was also feared as a severe examiner of candidate priests. He refused to wear silk and forbade the display of his coat of arms on public buildings’.Footnote 131 This image of Russell has been accepted as the Richard Russell known to English Catholic historiography. However, the Russell Letters reveal a man who enjoyed the finest luxuries the markets of Lisbon could buy; he was a man who claimed poverty when amassing huge wealth and was very keen on forging his own identity, particularly amongst his peers. Russell was immensely wealthy; revenues, sinecures, pensions and annuities he had built up serving the British and Portuguese crowns. Shaw has examined his wealth as a diplomat, including a pension of seventy-five golden guineas a month, received in recognition of his work on the marriage treaty of 1661, as well as 10,850 cruzados for his negotiations, securing the final payment of the dowry in 1668.Footnote 132
In recognition of his service to the Crown, Russell was awarded an annuity of 150 milreis, which he transferred to the English College in 1662. This income, from the portos secos (taxes on certain goods levied on trade from a part of Lisbon’s vast port infrastructure), was a huge boost to the college’s finances, but it came with strings: Russell would have rights of nomination to bursaries, which he used to further his own family interests. In February 1673, having successfully concluded his diocesan visitation of Portalegre, Russell gifted 6000 cruzados (crowns) to President Watkinson’s administration. In his letter dated 20 February, he instructed his agent Gomes Timas, and secretary Daniel Fisher, to arrange the transfer through agents in Lisbon. The gift was executed inter vivos; a contractual arrangement, made during one’s lifetime, between two living parties. This was to benefit the college during Bishop Russell’s own lifetime.Footnote 133 He made certain provisions to the gift, which would later end in dispute between the bishop’s estate and the college and the breakdown in relations between bishop and president. The gift gave Russell unparalleled influence over the college, including powers of patronage and preferment, which he attempted to exercise from Portalegre. This was in addition to his rights of nomination to the portos secos funds, transferred to and administered by the college by Bishop Russell in 1662. Russell wrote to President Watkinson:
I desire you get such papers of donation inter vivos as may in Law stand good declaring I have no herdeiros forcados Footnote 134 and with all other clauses necessary. The conditions I require are only that I may name of my relations such as shall be maintained on it while I live and after my death and so god bless you and prosper your Coll[ege]:Footnote 135
As with many major donor prospects, particularly where alumni were involved, gifts came with strings attached. Russell’s usage of the college as a gateway into Lisbon was costly; the bishop and president fell out over accounts on several occasions. For example, in February 1675, Russell accused Watkinson of withholding money from him:
Since you will not let me have this money I made myself sure on I will be even with you and stop what money I have of yours in my hands ‘till I have paid myself, and secured a debt you owe the College which though you have abridged its payments otherwise I will not take the pains to solicit its payment that way I have it in my hand. I’ll pay myself without expecting your order or direction. If I have any sense in my head this is the genuine since and no more than your letter expresses and truly this is very hard Mr. President and so hard that if I were a bankrupt or suspected of flight you could not use me more hardly. If you had been experienced in the world you would have known that a stoppage of money is an affront next to an arrest.Footnote 136
This manner of correspondence would continue until it finally developed into a full-scale protracted dispute between the two men for a further decade.Footnote 137
In September 1685 Russell was appointed to the prestigious see of Viseu by Pedro II, in recognition of his able stewardship of the diocese of Portalegre. Russell would remain bishop of Viseu until his death in 1693. In August 1685, Russell opened a legal dispute over his donation of 6000 cruzados, made to Watkinson’s administration, for the management of the college. Russell initiated proceedings in 1685, he waited however, until he was installed as bishop of Viseu before taking Watkinson and his Council to court.Footnote 138
Nicholas Waldegrave (d. 1734) was Russell’s ‘episcopal nephew’, and one of the nominees on Russell’s donation to the college. Russell procured and enacted a papal dispensation for ordination before sending Waldegrave to the prestigious university of Coimbra, to study canon law.Footnote 139 Watkinson, who had little say over the matter of Waldegrave’s education, despite being president, felt that this benefited Russell rather than the English Mission. Waldegrave led his uncle’s legal dispute with the college.Footnote 140 The tone of Russell’s personal and pointed reproach to the president is in marked contrast to their formerly amicable correspondence. Russell wrote formally to President Watkinson and his Council of Superiors:
I am very well pleased with the paper the procurator gave me under all your hands dated the 18th current not but that explanation of the former account is far more strange than that account itself as I shall make it appear but because you now speak plain and that is made visible and palpable which was before carried about in a cloud not to be taken hold of viz Mr. Watkinson’s endeavour to put no less nor more than a manifest cheat on me (pardon an expression that cannot be avoided) in defeating me of a right I have enjoyed and made use of above 20 years: that is the time I first procured the 150 milréis paid you out of the portos secos.Footnote 141 This business has been for some time sagitta in via Footnote 142 wherewith Mr. Watkinson has wounded my credit with his reports to externs and aliens. More of late it grew to be negative, in tenebris Footnote 143 buzzed into the ears of many but most industriously instilled by many seeming arguments to yourselves and even the students of the house to my disadvantage. It gaining authority with boys and young men as coming from their master and superior, whose malice was by them unseen, as I am apt to believe but now ‘tis got into the light and grown demonium meridianum Footnote 144 not ashamed to appear and be owned by so many signatures. I doubt not but I shall so exercise it that it shall soon be discovered first by yourselves and then by others since the better half of a cure consists of perfectly knowing the nature and quality of the malady, which now being manifest I may hope well of the patient.Footnote 145
Reading between the lines, Watkinson’s administration must have grown weary at Russell’s interference in college affairs. The bishop’s ire was, however, directly aimed at the president:
What private discourse may have formerly passed of my good intentions towards the College with him and others makes nothing to the matter, though seriously bad treatment, such as you see is but too apt to make a man change good intentions.Footnote 146
As early as 1681, Russell’s chief supporter, Roger Hesketh, was stirring up trouble for his president. Hesketh, the college’s procurator, was in the Russell camp and it appears that an attempt was made by Watkinson and his superiors to discredit Hesketh and his pro-Russell line. Watkinson had appealed to the dean of the English Chapter, John Perrot, for redress, going over Russell’s mitred head. Russell interpreted this as an affront:
But chiefly the account I have from Mr. Perrott, Mr. Fish and Mr. Smith, oblige me to take notice of a complaint made by you and Mr. JenningsFootnote 147 to Mr. Perrott of me and Mr. Hesketh. Not at all to justify myself or him, for that needs not. Nor that I am at all concerned for myself or him. But that I am truly sensible you should be guilty of such a weakness as to ground a charge of that nature on the bare hearsay of so idle a head without giving any author for his hearsay. The certain sign of a whisperer and maker of dissentions. Reflect with what conceit Mr. Perrot must have of you, for making me a supplanter, who knows he has not so much as one letter from me these last three years; and that those I writ formerly have not one word to your disadvantage. Besides his knowledge of the friendly offices I have ever performed towards you, not only since you were President but since and before you began to read. He is likewise so well acquainted with Mr. Vice President to believe easily he can be guilty of either ambition or malice enough to drive on such a design.Footnote 148
The letters also reveal a growing narrative against Watkinson’s administration. Russell accused Watkinson of being too possessive of the college’s management. From 1681, Russell became increasingly critical of Watkinson’s administration. It is possible that Watkinson had simply become institutionalised. In 1701, a letter from the Vicars Apostolic in England, in an attempt to exert their authority over the college’s administration, called on the president to resign and return to England on mission.Footnote 149 They had no authority to do so, and, in any case, Watkinson did not comply. Russell clearly thought the intransigence was already noticeable in 1681:
Your friends will lament that instead of a consummate man they have after so many years of the best breeding in the world one that is jealous of his best friends and afraid of them. Stands at his own thoughts and his own shadow. Can not live fairly and friend-like with persons of known irreprehensible comportment experto crede. Footnote 150
Russell must have been impossible to work with and Watkinson, despite his own absence from the correspondence, was keen to maintain his authority in the face of the bishop’s increasingly hostile tactics. Russell used the example of President Leyburne (1652–70), of the English College at Douai, as an example of where a president could become an impediment to the governance of a college through too lengthy a tenure:
Dr. Leyburne, by his jealousy and dangling at Douai with such fiddle-faddle and tittle-tattle left him with no friends and made his commission be shamefully taken from him.Footnote 151 I shall be very sorry if you tread his steps and live in disgust. Rather I hope better things of you and that you will take in good part this my friendly advice. Which can have at end but peace and quiet and your good and the good of the college if you are so much a politician, to find out any further reach, or meaning in it, you will be as much out as you were when you gave care to Mr. Jennings and I shall remain with the satisfaction.
Watkinson expressed his concerns at Russell’s influence at the college with the Lisbonian dean and his predecessor as president, John Perrot. Russell felt that having done so, Watkinson had damaged their working relationship. It is clear the two men did not see their relationship in the same light. Russell wrote:
I have done the part of charity and friendship, though it have not the effect I desire. This much ex supra abundante Footnote 152 from one who might expect satisfaction from you for the idle charge of a supplanter which I value at the rate you see. Only sensible of it as it must diminish your credit with Mr. Perrott and the friends he communicates with on whom you may have more dependence than I and it may be of concern to you to keep up your repute with them as I hope you will do and I shall conclude to it as far as I am able and shall discern wherein I may be serviceable to you, passing by this error tanquam non fuisset Footnote 153 still ready vincere bono Malum Footnote 154 by serving you with as large a heart as though you had never entertained such a suspicion with this assurance and hopes you will take this in good part. I rest.Footnote 155
The years 1681–83 marked the decline in relations between Russell and Watkinson, culminating in the legal case of 1685. Russell’s interference in college affairs was becoming a difficulty to Watkinson and, in return, Russell began to see Watkinson as an impediment to the further advancement of his own alma mater. It was an example of where the patron-client model went wrong, particularly where alumni were involved. It was also entirely a ‘Lisbonian’ dispute, where the college could keep such matters ‘in house’. The last letter exchanged between the two former friends was in August 1685; it concerned Russell’s case against the college and the rights of nomination.Footnote 156 The final letter in the collection regarded Russell’s solemn entrada into the city of Viseu as the diocese’s new bishop: it was addressed not to Watkinson but to Hesketh, two days before Hesketh left for the English Mission. The letter told Hesketh to instruct Watkinson to dispose of Russell’s house in the college and his possessions as he pleased.Footnote 157
Conclusion
The Russell Letters and Papers reveal a man who had a remarkable impact on a variety of fronts. As a bishop he was a great reformer: he was a champion of the rights of the church in Portugal against hostility from Spain, the military orders and the religious. He would punish his own clergy to prove a small point in exercising his powers as ordinary rather than letting clerical misdemeanours go unchecked. Errant clergy were arrested and publicly chastised, and he presented such events to his peers as a ‘Caesar-esque’ execution of justice. Russell would buy and free a slave in certain situations, whilst keeping slaves within in his own household. His life deserves a full scholarly account, and it is hoped this article will encourage further research. The Russell Letters reveal his importance as a conduit, and his agency stretched from London to Lisbon. His ability to network, his skills as a negotiator, his understanding of temperament and his ability to work situations were remarkable. In this, he might be described as a mini-Mazarin. Russell knew what doors to push and what doors to leave closed. He was well versed in the art of casuistry and was as skilled a diplomat as he was a bishop. This agency made him indispensable to many people; even his detractors acknowledged that Russell ‘gained everyone’s confidence.’Footnote 158 Reformer, bishop, patron, agent, slave trader, Russell’s place within the history of the English Catholic church, on the English Mission and the wider Continental diaspora, is beginning to have a wider acknowledgement.
Bishop Russell was that rarest of creatures in Restoration British Catholicism; he was the bishop that England never had. His skills in regulating canonical anomalies in Portalegre, after decades of episcopal absence, might have worked well in Restoration Lincoln, York, Bath or Shrewsbury. The circumstances of Russell’s career, and his utility to the Portuguese Crown, made Russell thoroughly Portuguese. He was however, also representative of his college; Lisbon had one of the highest rates of ‘retention’ amongst the exile colleges throughout the continental diaspora. Many Lisbonians would serve as chaplains to Portuguese families, or serve in the Portuguese empire, rather than return to the English Mission. Further research is needed in examining Russell’s later episcopal career as bishop of Viseu (1685–93), his role in the slave trade and his working relationships with his Portuguese and Spanish bishops on the mainland. Ultimately a biography is needed and, in so doing, it is hoped this new research will help scholars of Restoration British Catholicism rethink the diaspora through a Lusitanian perspective. Lisbon was over 1000 miles from Rome, and over 1000 miles from London. Recent scholarship has argued that the English College, resident in the Bairro Alto district of the city, quietly surviving, and faithful to its founding principles of educating men for the English Mission, had disproportionate ‘soft power’ in Rome, Lisbon and London, throughout its 350-year institutional history.Footnote 159
‘Bispo Inglez’, as Russell was affectionately known to the Portuguese, died at Fotel Farm, Viseu, on 15 November 1693. He was interred in his cathedral under the choir floor. He left his estate to be administered by his nephew, Nicholas Waldegrave, much of it to the English College at Lisbon. Russell’s final account of his administration, presented to Pope Innocent XI, quoted St Peter, Prince of the Apostles, and one of the two patrons of his college at Lisbon (Acts 3:6):Footnote 160
In these and similar works I have spent and exhausted the whole income of my church, so that after twenty-two years of the episcopal charge, I am able truly to say (not in pride but in the humility of a grateful heart be it spoken) gold and silver I have not.Footnote 161
