Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 09.djvu/288

 old creed. He was a recusant, and for the crime of not attending at his parish church and taking part in a form of worship which he regarded as worse than a mockery, he suffered severely in person and substance during the latter half of Queen Elizabeth's reign. He had become compromised as early as 1580 by his befriending of the Roman emissaries (Cal. State Papers. Dom. 1580, p. 322), and he certainly was a liberal contributor to their support (Troubles of our Catholic Forefathers, 2nd ser. p. 156). There is some reason to believe that Robert, his son, was for a time a scholar at the college of Douay (Diary of the English College, Douay, ed. Dr. Knox, 1878, p. 206), but in 1586 he entered at Gloucester Hall, now Worcester College, Oxford, which was then a favourite place of resort for the sons of the recusant gentry, as Peterhouse was at Cambridge. The young men of this party rarely stayed at the university more than a year or two, the oath of supremacy being a stumbling-block to them; and Catesby never proceeded to the B.A. degree. In 1592 he married Catherine, daughter of Sir Thomas Leigh of Stoneleigh, Warwickshire, and with her had a considerable estate settled to the uses of the marriage. Next year, by the death of his grandmother, he came into possession of the estate of Chastleton, where he continued to reside for the next few years. His wife died while he was living at Chastleton, leaving him with an only son, Robert; an elder son, William, having apparently died in infancy. In 1598 his father died, and though his mother, Lady Catesby, had a life interest in a large portion of her husband's property, Catesby was by this time a man of large means and much larger expectations; but it seems that the pressure of the persecuting laws, which had been applied with relentless cruelty upon the landed gentry in the midland counties, had produced an amount of irritation and bitterness which to proud and sensitive men was becoming daily more unsupportable, and the terrible fines and exactions which were levied upon their estates, and the humiliating espionage to which they were subjected, tended to make them desperate and ready for any risks that promised even a remote chance of deliverance. As early as 1585 Sir William Catesby had compounded with the government, to the extent of a fifth of his income, for the amount of impositions to be levied upon him for his recusancy (Hist. MSS. Comm. 7th Rep. 640). Nevertheless we find him three years after a prisoner at Ely along with Sir Thomas Tresham and others of the recusant gentry, and indignantly protesting against the cruel treatment to which he was exposed. In 1593 he was still in durance, and with some difficulty obtained a license for fifteen days' absence to go to Bath for the recovery of his health, which presumably had suffered from his long confinement (ib. 5th Rep. 311). Matters did not mend for the recusants during the next few years, and the penal laws were not relaxed, though the victims were perforce kept quiet. When the mad outbreak of Robert, earl of Essex, in 1601 brought that foolish nobleman to the scaffold, Catesby was one of his most prominent adherents, and in the scuffle that took place in the streets he received a wound. He was thrown into gaol, but for once in her career the queen did not think fit to shed much blood in her anger. More money was to be made out of the conspirators by letting them live than by hanging them, and Catesby was pardoned, but a fine of 4,000 marks was imposed upon him, 1,200l. of which was handed over to Sir Francis Bacon for his share of the spoils (, Bacon Letters, iii. 11). It was an enormous impost, and equivalent to a charge of at least 30,000l. in our own times. Catesby was compelled to sell the Chastleton estate, and seems then to have made his home with his mother at Ashby St. Legers, Northamptonshire. Growing more and more desperate and embittered, he seems after this to have brooded fiercely on his wrongs and to have surrendered himself to thoughts of the wildest vengeance. Casting aside all caution he consorted habitually with the most reckless malcontents and brought himself so much under the notice of the government that a few days before the queen's death he was committed to prison by the lords of the council, and was probably under arrest on the accession of James I (, Ep. p. 347; Cal. State Papers, Dom. James I, 1603–10, p. 1). During the first six months of his reign the new king seemed inclined to show favour to the catholic gentry, or at any rate inclined to relax the cruel harshness of the laws. The fines and forfeitures upon recusants almost disappeared from the accounts of the revenue, and a feeling of uneasiness began to spread among the protestant zealots that toleration was going too far. This forbearance lasted but a little while. Continually urged by the outcries of the puritan party to show no mercy to their popish fellow-subjects, and worried by his hungry Scotchmen to bestow upon them the rewards which their poverty needed so sorely if their services did not merit such return, James, who soon discovered that even English money and lands could not be given away without limit, began to show that he had almost as little sympathy with the romanising party as his predecessor, and the old enactments