Catholics, Dead Sheep and Fire Balls in Early Modern England August 15, 2014
Author: Beach Combing | in : Modern , trackback
In 1531 Henry VIII began divorce proceedings with Roman Catholic Church and Latin Europe, the so-called English Reformation: all of modern English history pivots on that date, much as medieval English history pivots on 1066. The betrayal of English Catholicism was a brutal process in which some of the best Britons suffered intoleraby. But if Catholic loyalists suffered so too did the new English Protestants, be they pretend, confused, bi or black leather puritan. The English polity, its aristocracy, its clergy and ultimately its people could not shrug off a thousand years of painted saints and wide-hipped madonnas with indifference, nor could they forget the trickle of Thomas Moore’s blood running down the block. And the English Civil War, the Monmouth Rebellion, the long 45, the Gordon riots, Gladstone speaking sense to Parliament over Ireland, not to mention the insane Anglican ‘Catholic’ debates of the late nineteenth century were the delirium tremens of a long fever of (perhaps necessary) betrayal. Part of this fever was the belief that English Catholics were constantly plotting to overwhelm the (new) natural order. Of course, sometimes it was true. The suicidally wreckless Guido Fawkes would have passed a recruitment interview with Al Quaeda: Papal agents did, without any question, run spy rings in the realm of England, plotting to kill God’s annointed. However, most of the time it was demonstrably absurd nonsense and this brings us to the dead sheep and the fire-balls.
C. 1678 an English printer brought out an extraordinary four side pamphlet on Strange and Wonderful News from Bristol. Now ‘Strange and Wonderful’ was, in seventeenth-century pamphleting a cue for an outrageous marvel story: armies seen fighting in the sky, woman gives birth to calf, incontinent fairies in Munster etc etc. Sometimes these stories were based on local gossip, sometimes on local facts, sometimes they were simply made up, though they always had an impassioned Protestant take: think the National Enquirer meets Billy Graham. The news in Bristol was that in the countryside thereabouts five sheep had been killed and that other sheep had been killed in other places around the Kingdom. Of course, killing sheep and stealing wool and meat is hardly that remarkable, but these sheep were left dead where they were killed and no meat or wool was taken. In fact, the only material removed from the sheep was fat from around the kidneys. Today, a journalist would shrug, scratch his proboscis with a blunt pencil and wonder whether he couldn’t invent a phantom escaped zoo cat to explain the event. Back then the writer’s eyes blazed and he dipped his quill in ink and he saw a Catholic story. In fact, the pamphlet writer had been reliably informed that wherever there were sheep killings in the country there was, shortly afterwards fires in the nearby cities. Starting to make sense?
Now for the modern reader the connection between murdered sheep, fat and fires might not be immediately apparent. But think about it. Isn’t it obvious? The Catholics were making fire balls from sheep fat, after Mass. Fire balls that they would throw into any building where there was ‘combustible material fit for their purpose.’ These ovian cocktails had an almost occult quality: when thrown they could not be put out, they stuck to things as they burnt… (Imagine what a modern Hollywood film would do with that.) So much for the fire ball scare of the 1670s, now a seriously unimportant question that shows the essential triviality of this blog. What about the dead sheep? Always assuming that the information about sheep is based upon some sort of reliable information what was killing them in such a curious way and why? drbeachcombing AT yahoo DOT com Ageing levellers, red squirrels, other sheep? The mind boggles.
17 Aug 2014: Sword&Beast suggests that we are dealing with an English chucacapra while TW wants it to be UFO mutilations. I’d completely failed to think of these parallels!
24 Aug 2014: Michael Robinson has sorted a lot of the questions out here.
‘My own opinion is there were no such dead sheep, near Bristol or elsewhere. On the rich limestone soils above the Avon seventeenth century sheep of the Protestant persuasion safely grazed without fear of Jesuit mutilation, Spanish Inquisition or papal pyromania. ( http://youtu.be/yc_btdk-_d4?t=14m3 )
The full title of the pamphlet is as follows:
Strange and wonderful news from Bristol being a true relation, how several sheep were found killed near that city; their bellies being ript open, and their fat only taken out of them; all the rest of the carcass being left entire, in order (as it is to be feared) to the kindling more dreadful fires, for carrying on the horrid and damnable Popish Plot and conspiracy for the destruction of His Majesty, and the Protestant religion and government now establisht by law. Together, with the examinations taken thereupon, before Sir John Lloyd Mayor, Sir Robert Cann, Mr. Alderman Yates, Capt. William Bedloe, and Sheriff Jackson, and many other of the most eminent citizens of Bristol. [London? : s.n., 1678?]
Link to the formal description, with known locations: http://estc.bl.uk/R21334
The clues are ” … horrid and damnable Popish Plot and conspiracy for the destruction of His Majesty, …” ie the entirely fictional conspiracy created by Titus Oates out of whole cloth that gripped the entire Kingdom in a fit of paranoia and hysteria between October 1678 and 1681; second, the mention of Capt. (sic) William Bedloe the notorious serial fraudster who was enlisted to support Oats’ account and received a reward of £500 for his evidence before the Commons in November 1678.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Bedloe
http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Bedloe,_William_(DNB00) (DNB 1885)
Bedloe in Bristol, and elsewhere, was a nobody before the plot. He wrote offering to make startling declarations in August 1678, and would have been of no consequence till November after his testimony in London before the Commons. He remained in London immediately thereafter. It is completely implausible that Bedloe would have had sufficient local stature to have been involved in any official inquiry, with Sheriff et al., when Lloyd was Mayor. By 1679, when Bedloe returned and would be of sufficient stature to participate in such an inquiry, Lloyd was no longer Mayor of Bristol.* I can find no mention of this or a similar incident in any of the Bristol histories, though all authors are aware of the text’s existence – it is mentioned in bibliographies of Bristol and the West Country from the last third of the nineteenth century.
In short I think it is a London** printer/bookseller’s confection, prepared secretly to cash in on Bedloe’s notoriety and probably ‘published’ at the same time, or immediately following the appearance of Bedloe’s own book on Popish pyromania which has absolutely no mention of sheep. (full text at link below) Would the man not mention such a detail if ever he had heard of such a crime?
An impartial account of the several fires in London, Westminster, Southwark, and the places adjacent. Begun and carried on by Papists, … ; with the several ways and methods practised by them in manageing their horrid designs of fire and desolation. Discovered by Cap. William Bedlow who was formerly engaged with them in those wicked practices
London: for Robert Godfrey, 1679
Citation link with full title: http://estc.bl.uk/R188992
Link to full scan: http://books.google.com/books?id=uyw-AQAAMAAJ
* I assume it is on the basis of the ending of Lloyd’s mayoralty that the cataloguer offers the date of 1678. The underground and less salubrious of the London printers, like their modern successors in the tabloid and scandal trade, cared only about commercial plausibility. Without personal examination I would tentatively opt for a date of 1679 for the pamphlet.
** We are still in the time of the Licensing Acts, which remained in force till 1694, and there were no presses outside the jurisdiction of the London Stationer’s Company. It was far from unusual for one of the brethren who worked at the lower end of the trade to maintain an additional press out of view and unmonitored and to cut the company out of what would be their share of revenue.
A final thought — what is it about serial slaughter and removing of kidneys that is so dreadful and fascinating to some, don’t the ripperologists obsess over a similar detail?
