Archives and Special Collections: Subject guides - Religious Archives

Constable-Maxwell family papers

This vast collection for the Constable-Maxwell (incorporating Sherburne of Lancashire) family of Everingham, East Yorkshire, and Caerlaverock and Terregles in Scotland, is a rich source of Catholic material and the following list is far from exhaustive. Pre-Reformation items have already been listed under Monastic Records. Post-Reformation items include recusant records for Philip Constable and his son, Marmaduke Constable, and correspondence about the sequestration of estates during the civil wars [e.g. DDEV/52/12, 14; DDEV/60/1-10, 41; DDEV/68/248; see Peter Roebuck, 'The Constables of Everingham: the fortunes of a Catholic Royalist family during the Civil War and Interregnum', Recusant history, 9 (1967-8) and Yorkshire baronets, 1640-1760: families, estates and fortunes (1980)]. The correspondence and papers of Robert Maxwell of Caerlaverock, 1st earl of Nithsdale (1613-1646), includes letters from John Spottiswood, Archbishop of St Andrews, as well as Marshal Tillieres and Cardinal Richelieu of France written from the late 1620s to 1641. Letters of the 18th and 19th centuries of the Constable and Maxwell (earls of Nithsdale) families are invaluable for information on Catholic affairs in England and Scotland [DDEV/60/11-89]. For example, there is early 18th-century correspondence from the Prior of St Edmund's, Paris [DDEV/60/84], early 19th-century correspondence to Pope Gregory XVI [DDEV/60/31] and an early 20th-century letter from the Superior of Chaplains of Our Lady of Lourdes [DDEV/60/80]. Some letters and diaries contain information on the building of the Catholic chapels and schools at Everingham and Dumfries [DDEV/60/29-30; DDEV/61/41]. The papers of Marmaduke Francis Constable Maxwell (1837-1908), contain letters about national and international Catholic affairs [DDEV/60/36] and include a book of letters and papers of Bishop Bonaventure [DDEV/60/83]. There are letters to and from Stonyhurst College, which had originally been the Sherburne family mansion [DDEV/60/69]. DDEV/67 solely contains Catholic papers including the 5 volumes of the Reverend J Knaresborough's Sufferings of the Catholics (compiled around 1720) with lists of martyrs, banished priests, prisoners in York Castle and various 17th-century items including lists of recusants in twelve English counties 1624-1654. Other items include a 1740 transcript of the 1580 Life and death of Mistress Margaret Clitheroe and printed material on the Pilgrimage of Grace, Mary Queen of Scots and the Popish Plot. There are family registrations of Catholic baptisms and burials as well as the illuminated certificate of the visit of Gwendolen Howard, Duchess of Norfolk to 'holy places' in 1933. The collection also contains a volume of papers related to the Popish Plot and the Exclusion Crisis including The tryals of Titus Oates (1685), printed speeches of William, Lord Russell, and two letters of James II to the Pope [DDEV/68/79]. DDEV(2) has a number of Catholic printed pamphlets and books.