I think we could say that from the reign of Elizabeth I all Catholic Reformation era martyrs were Recusants--they refused to deny their Faith and swear oaths of allegiance to the Anglican Church and its Governor, the monarch and so were found guilty of Treason under escalating penal laws--but not all Catholic Recusants were martyrs. Nevertheless, all Catholic Recusants suffered in some way for their loyalty to the Catholic Faith: they were either fined, imprisoned, exiled, lost some of their lands, restricted in their ability to travel, etc.
Sigrid Undset was fascinated by the story of the Blundell family of Crosby Hall in Lancashire, now Merseyside. Lancashire was a hotbed of Recusancy in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Undset read a book of the letters of one Blundell heir, William Blundell, published in 1933. Cavalier: Letters of William Blundell to His Friends, 1620-1698, was edited by Margaret Blundell. Margaret Blundell refers to William as a "staunchly faithful husband, a responsible father, [and] a disinterested friend'. She says he's "no prig, he is possessed of a sense of humour, a peppery temper, [and] an inexhaustible curiosity about men and things." Finally, she concludes that he maintains his cheerful disposition "even when he is crippled by wounds, again and again imprisoned, and finally and irrevocably impoverished" (Foreword, p. vi).
Sounds like a remarkable person.
Undset published her own Cavalier in 1935. As Father Nichols comments in Sigrid Undset: Reader of Hearts, she does cull some details about agriculture and horticulture from Blundell's letters, but she "concentrates on the vicissitudes that the squire of Crosby suffered for the Catholic faith in terms of the loss of lands, and the sundering of his family" (p. 96)
William Blundell came from a line of faithful Catholics:
In 1590, Richard Blundell was imprisoned in Chester Castle for hiding a Catholic priest; he died in Lancaster Gaol in 1595. Richard's son William (1567-1638) and wife Emily (1566-1631) were also imprisoned, in the Gatehouse Prison, Westminster from 1590 to 1595 and then went into hiding for a time. William's son Nicholas (1589-1631) was the father of the Cavalier's William Blundell. He would have a son, also named Nicholas (1669-1737), who was a diarist.
A nineteenth century William Blundell (1786–1854), enjoyed some freedom to serve as High Sheriff of Lancashire (for 1838/39) after Catholic Emancipation in 1845.
So many William's and Nicholas's!! Like the Anne's and Mary's and James's and Charles's, etc, etc.!
The point is: Margaret Blundell's book about an ancestor inspired Undset because of the steadfast loyalty and faithfulness of this Catholic Recusant Family. As Undset notes in her retelling of William Blundell's story, his descendant Conservative MP Francis Blundell introduced the bill that became the Roman Catholic Relief Act of 1926. Like Margaret Blundell, Undset praises William's equanimity, based on his view that this world is a "vale of tears" at the same time as it "is God's work" and the "Evil One" cannot destroy "its beauty and goodness altogether. . . . (p. 125 in the Alfred Knopf edition). She highlights William's spinster sister Mistress Frances, who helps his wife Anne with the household management and teaches the little girls. One of his daughters, Jane, leaves England to become a Poor Clare in Rouen. A Jesuit priest, Father John Walton, lives with the family, never discovered by pursuivants. Undset follows the story of the Blundell family through the vicissitudes of the Popish Plot and even mentions a connection to one of its victims, Blessed Richard Langhorne. In translation, it's a delicately, beautifully told story of a faithful household struggling to survive.
If you're interested in reading Undset's Cavalier, you could find it in Men, Women, Places: Studies and Portraits, published by Cluny.
In the next episode of this series we'll look at the Catholic Recusant martyrs whom Undset admired and wrote about in Stages on the Road.
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