‘A Welsh Lancashire’? Monmouthshire Catholics in the Eighteenth Century

1979 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 176-188 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philip Jenkins

In the seventeenth century, one of the Catholic strongholds of Britain had lain on the southern Welsh borders, in those areas of north Monmouthshire and southern Herefordshire dependant on the Marquis of Worcester at Raglan, and looking to the Jesuit mission at Cwm. Abergavenny and Monmouth had been largely Catholic towns, while the north Monmouthshire countryside still merited the attention of fifteen priests in the 1670s—after the Civil Wars, and the damaging conversion to Protestantism of the heir of Raglan in 1667. Conspicuous Catholic strength caused fear, and the ‘Popish Plot’ was the excuse for a uniquely violent reaction, in which the Jesuit mission was all but destroyed. What happened after that is less clear. In 1780, Berington wrote that ‘In many [counties], particularly in the west, in south Wales, and some of the Midland counties, there is scarcely a Catholic to be found’. Modern histories tend to reflect this, perhaps because of available evidence. The archives of the Western Vicariate were destroyed in a riot in Bath in 1780, and a recent work like J. H. Aveling's The Handle and the Axe relies heavily on sources and examples from the north of England. This attitude is epitomised by Bossy's remark on the distribution of priests in 1773: ‘In Wales, the mission had collapsed’. However, the question of Catholic survival in eighteenth-century Wales is important. In earlier assessments of Catholic strength (by landholding, or number of recusants gaoled as a proportion of population) Monmouthshire had achieved the rare feat of exceeding the zeal of Lancashire, and Herefordshire was not far behind. If this simply ceased to exist, there was an almost incredible success for the ‘short, sharp’ persecution under Charles II. If, however, the area remained a Catholic fortress, then recent historians of recusancy have unjustifiably neglected it.

1980 ◽  
Vol 23 (2) ◽  
pp. 275-293 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philip Jenkins

South Wales and the border counties played a crucial part in the events known as the ‘Popish plot’. The alleged catholic conspiracy laid particular emphasis on the roles allotted to Welsh magnates like Worcester and Powis, with their neighbours and dependants, and invasion plans were said to hinge on strategic centres like Chepstow castle and Milford Haven. Men from this area were active in the’plot’, whether as informers - notably Bedloe - or as parliamentary opponents of the duke of York; Welsh Jesuits were supposedly involved in the main conspiracies and murders, and Border protestants like Bishop Croft were among their main targets. John Arnold of Monmouthshire even aspired to the position in the whig leadership held by Shaftesbury, and the tory Ailesbury regarded the worst villains of the whole ‘plot’ as Arnold himself and his Herefordshire kinsman John Dutton Colt. It was also in this area that the ‘plot’ was at its most violent, and Professor Kenyon's study of the Popish plot rightly refers to ‘this battle area on the frontier of Wale’. ‘The main damage suffered outside London’ by the Jesuits was the loss of the south Wales district headquarters at the Cwm, when this was raided in 1678 by Croft, Arnold, and another ultra-protestant named Charles Price: ‘ the south Wales mission was the only one completely eliminated’. In 1679 a Jesuit wrote from north Wales that’ the college of South Wales was totally rooted up. We of the north have fared a little better, thus far; but God knows how long it is to last, for we live in constant fears and perils, only three of us now remaining’.


1963 ◽  
Vol 29 ◽  
pp. 99-132 ◽  
Author(s):  
G. J. Wainwright

The distribution of Mesolithic sites in Wales is controlled to a great extent by the terrain, for physiographically, Wales is a highland block defined on three sides by the sea and for the greater part of the fourth side by a sharp break of slope. Geologically the Principality is composed almost entirely of Palaeozoic rocks, of which the 600-foot contour encloses more than three quarters of the total area. There are extensive regions above 1,500 feet and 2,000 feet and in the north the peaks of Snowdonia and Cader Idris rise to 3,560 feet and 2,929 feet respectively. Indeed North Wales consists of an inhospitable highland massif, skirted by a lowland plateau and cut deeply by river valleys, providing only limited areas for settlement. The hills and mountains of Snowdonia with their extension at lower altitudes into the Lleyn Peninsula, and the ranges of Moelwyn, Manod Mawr, Arenig Fach and Cader Idris, are discouraging obstacles to penetration, save for a short distance along the river valleys. To the east of these peaks are extensive tracts of upland plateau dissected by rivers, bounded on the west by the vale of the river Conway and cleft by the Vale of Clwyd. To the east of this valley lies the Clwydian Range and further again to the east these uplands descend with milder contours to the Cheshire and Shropshire plains.To the south the district merges into the uplands of Central Wales, which are continuous until they are replaced by the lowland belt of South Wales.


2005 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 23-44
Author(s):  
Michel Duquet

Abstract The seventeenth century saw the early stages of significant trading on the west coast of Africa as well as the establishment of permanent settlements in North America by Dutch, French and English explorers, merchants, colonists and missionaries in a period marked by the imperial contest that had been set in motion on the heels of the discovery of America in 1492. The travelers who wrote about their voyages overseas described at length the natives they encountered on the two continents. The images of the North American Indian and of the African that emerged from these travel accounts were essentially the same whether they be of Dutch, French or English origin. The main characteristic in the descriptions of African native populations was its permanent condemnation while representations of the Indian were imbued with sentiments ranging from compassion, censure and admiration. The root causes for this dichotomy were the inhospitable and deadly (to Europeans) tropical environment of Africa’s West Coast and the growing knowledge of local societies that Europeans acquired in North America. The analysis of the contrasting images of natives on both sides of the Atlantic and the context within which they were produced are the focus of the paper.


Author(s):  
A. Wess Mitchell

This chapter examines the competition with the Ottoman Empire and Russia, from the reconquest of Hungary to Joseph II’s final Turkish war. On its southern and eastern frontiers, the Habsburg Monarchy contended with two large land empires: a decaying Ottoman Empire, and a rising Russia determined to extend its influence on the Black Sea littorals and Balkan Peninsula. In balancing these forces, Austria faced two interrelated dangers: the possibility of Russia filling Ottoman power vacuums that Austria itself could not fill, and the potential for crises here, if improperly managed, to fetter Austria’s options for handling graver threats in the west. In dealing with these challenges, Austria deployed a range of tools over the course of the eighteenth century. In the first phase (1690s–1730s), it deployed mobile field armies to alleviate Turkish pressure on the Habsburg heartland before the arrival of significant Russian influence. In the second phase (1740s–70s), Austria used appeasement and militarized borders to ensure quiet in the south while focusing on the life-or-death struggles with Frederick the Great. In the third phase (1770s–90s), it used alliances of restraint to check and keep pace with Russian expansion, and recruit its help in comanaging problems to the north. Together, these techniques provided for a slow but largely effective recessional, in which the House of Austria used cost-effective methods to manage Turkish decline and avoid collisions that would have complicated its more important western struggles.


Author(s):  
Mary Elizabeth Fitts

Chapter 3 documents the emergence, composition, and political interactions of the Catawba Nation through the mid-eighteenth century. Between the Spanish incursions of the 1560s and the establishment of Charles Town in 1670, a group of Catawba Valley Mississippians known as Yssa rose to become the powerful Nation of Esaws that formed the core of the eighteenth-century Catawba Nation. In the late seventeenth century this polity was a destination for European traders as well as American Indian refugees fleeing hostilities associated with the Indian Slave trade and settler territorial expansion. While many of these refugees were from the Catawba River Valley, others—most notably the Charraw—were Piedmont Siouans who fled southward from the North Carolina-Virginia border. The incorporation of refugees had significant implications for Catawba politics and daily life, which are explored in subsequent chapters.


Author(s):  
Douglas Hamilton

Although they were small, the islands of the Caribbean were central rather than peripheral to the idea of empire. By the seventeenth century, the islands of the Antillean archipelago were already integral to European imperial rivalry and—as a result—came to shape European notions of what empires were and what they were for. This chapter explores the shifting nature of these islands as they emerged to become imperial powerhouses in the eighteenth century. This transformation was set against the backdrop of the great upheavals of war and revolution. The shifting demography of the West Indies and their economic and strategic importance exposed them particularly to the threats created by the geopolitical maelstrom around them. This chapter argues that their island nature intensified how they were affected by, and responded to, the profound and unprecedented uncertainties of the Age of Revolutions.


Inner Asia ◽  
2002 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 361-373
Author(s):  
Elke Studer

AbstractThe article outlines the Mongolian influences on the biggest horse race festival in Nagchu prefecture in the Tibetan Autonomous Region (TAR).Since old times these horse races have been closely linked to the worship of the local mountain deity by the patrilineal nomadic clans of the South-Eastern Changthang, the North Tibetan plain. In the seventeenth century the West Mongol chieftain Güüshi Khan shaped the history of Tibet. To support his political claims, he enlarged the horse race festival's size and scale, and had his troops compete in the different horse race and archery competitions in Nagchu. Since then, the winners of the big race are celebrated side by side with the political achievements and claims of the central government in power.


1969 ◽  
Vol 12 (01) ◽  
pp. 81-89
Author(s):  
H. M. Feinberg

This article is a supplement to a previous article on the same subject published in the African Studies Bulletin. Before I list further citations omitted from Materials for West African History in the Archives of Belgium and Holland, I will discuss, in some detail, the nature of the archival material deposited in the Algemeen Rijksarchief, The Hague. I will attempt to enhance the brief discussions of Miss Carson while avoiding repetition of statements which seem clear and/or are adequately discussed in her book. The General State Archives, The Hague, includes two major collections of interest to the West African historian: the Archives of the West India Companies and the Archives of the Netherlands Settlements on the Guinea Coast. Initially, one must realize that most of the seventeenth-century papers of both collections have been lost or destroyed, and that as a consequence there are many gaps among the existing manuscripts. For example, volume 81 (1658-1709) of the Archives of the Netherlands Settlements on the Guinea Coast includes only manuscripts for the following times: December 25, 1658-June 12, 1660; August, 1693; and October 12-December 31, 1709. Also, most of the seventeenth-century material is written in script, whereas the eighteenth-century manuscripts, with some exceptions, are in more conventional hand-writings.


1948 ◽  
Vol 30 ◽  
pp. 95-110 ◽  
Author(s):  
G. S. Graham

UNTIL the eighteenth century, British naval operations rarely strayed outside the strictly European theatre. Engagements in North American waters were isolated enterprises, having little connection with the decisive area of battle which lay off the west coast of Europe in the vicinity of the British Isles. This concentration of forces in home waters was deter-mined as much by structural, technical and hygienic deficiencies as by strategic doctrine. Disease and gales were always the worst enemies, and in the manner bf continental armies, the ships of the Royal Navy sought winter quarters in or after November. By the end of the seventeenth century, however, improvements in naval architecture and the technique of navigation, as well as methods of preserving food and protecting health (slight as they may appear to this age), enabled ships to keep at sea for longer periods, and at greater distances from their home ports.


1983 ◽  
Vol 24 (3) ◽  
pp. 321-348 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robin Law

The rise of Lagos, which became the principal port of the ‘Slave Coast’ at the end of the eighteenth century, can only be understood by reference to the interaction between the European Atlantic trade and the indigenous canoe-borne trade along the coastal lagoons. European traders in the sixteenth century used the Lagos channel and the lagoon to approach the Ijebu kingdom, where slaves and cloth were purchased, but this trade lapsed in the seventeenth century. The Lagos settlement originated as a fishing hamlet, but was occupied as a military base by Benin around the end of the sixteenth century. Benin expansion to the west may have been designed to prevent European trade with Ijebu, in the interests of a Benin monopoly. Lagos remained formally subject to Benin until the nineteenth century, but the decline of Benin power in the eighteenth century left it effectively independent. European sources of the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries attest trade in cloth and slaves passing along the lagoons through Lagos to Allada and Whydah in the west. Although this pattern of trade has been assumed to date back to pre-European times, it was more probably a consequence of the European presence, and more specifically of the westward drift of European interest along the coast from Benin after the sixteenth century. European traders began to show an active interest in the lagoon trade to the east of Allada in the early eighteenth century, and again began to explore the possibility of using the Lagos channel to bapproach the inland lagoons. Lagos developed as an Atlantic port from the 1760s, exporting slaves and Ijebu cloth, but its importance was limited by its remoteness from any major source of slaves. Its emergence as a major port in the late eighteenth century was due to the disruption of slave shipments from ports further west by military pressure from Dahomey, which led to the diversion of slave supplies eastward along the lagoons for shipment from Lagos.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document