(1) The poetry of this Staffordshire circle embraces the non-court, recusant and social milieu of the first Lord Aston, his children, their spouses and friends.(2) Elizabeth Petre, nearly fifteen years of age, was engaged to marry twenty-two year-old William Sheldon, scion of the wealthy recusant family that introduced tapestry-making to England.(3) After the excommunication of Elizabeth I in 1570, the purpose of legislation changed from securing royal supremacy to defeating the new recusant missionary campaign.(4) More specifically, a recusant was someone who refused to attend Protestant church services.(5) We still have no clear idea of the extent of underground compositions written for use in the recusant community, but Byrd's masses would have been part of this campaign.(6) A group of recusant players under Cholmeley's patronage toured in Yorkshire from 1606 to at least 1616 using only printed play-texts for their repertory.(7) He was a fixture in the liturgical life of the recusant safe-houses, the great country homes of Catholic aristocrats, which served as 16 th-century catacombs riddled with secret chambers to hide fugitive priests.(8) A recusant Catholic would not be the possessor of that right.(9) Indeed, the law has already been abused by some university administrators who now have the power to punish recusant colleagues.(10) His early acting career probably began with performances before a network of recusant gentry in the Warwickshire area where he served as a resident player under the pseudonym Shakeshaft.(11) Monmouthshire was indeed the strongest recusant area in the kingdom, apart from Lancashire.(12) His ravishing portrait of the young English recusant nun Elizabeth Throckmorton (c. 1729; Washington, NG) is a case in point.(13) The hand of co-editor Richard Wilson is clearly felt in the speculation on Shakespeare's possible residency in the recusant Catholic communities of the province during his so-called u2018lost yearsu2019.(14) Having had some narrow escapes the priest was eventually arrested as a recusant priest and was tried by revolutionary Court.(15) Later still, I learnt that it was quite likely he'd been born Catholic, from a recusant family.(16) The Lancashire desolation and remoteness was a refuge for recusants - awkward people who were stubborn and resilient, and whose best expression was not in word but in action and a capacity to come back for more persecution.
