Towneley from A to Z
Towneley from A to Z
The family is seen at prayer. In 1601 John was 73 and Mary was 59 and they had been married for 44 years. The children who had died before 1601 are shown, as in youth, behind the living children.
Above the family, the painting shows the Towneley coat of arms, crest and motto together with ancestral coats of arms related by marriage.
From 1559 Queen Elizabeth required all her subjects to go to Church of England services. The courts fined and imprisoned those who refused to attend. John would not give up his Catholic faith and as a result went to prison many times in the years 1565 to 1594. The words below the picture name the places he was imprisoned.
This John about the 6 or 7 year (1565) of Her Majesty that now is (Queen Elizabeth), for professing the Apostolical Catholic Roman faith, was imprisoned first at Chester Castle, then sent to Marshalsea, then to York Castle, then to the Blockhouse in Hull, then to the Gatehouse in Westminster, then to Manchester, then to Broughton in Oxfordshire, then twice to Ely in Cambridgeshire, and so now 73 years old and blind, is bound to appear and to keep within fives miles of Towneley, his house, who has since the statute of the 23rd year (1581) paid into the exchequer £20 per month and does still, yet there is paid already above £5,000 - 1601