Guest post from Martyn R Beardsley.

To call one woman the saviour of a country’s religion might seem a bit of a stretch, but there is a certain logic behind it. Without its priests, organised Catholicism in England may well have perished in the early 1600s; without, the priests may well have perished. ‘Cut off the head of the snake and the body will die’, as the saying goes.

Anne Vaux was part of an underground Catholic ‘resistance’ network, and dedicated much of her life to sheltering and protecting Father Henry Garnet, the Jesuit Superior in England. At a time when the priesthood had all but been wiped out, Garnet in his early thirties, mentored newly arrived young priests who lived in constant fear of capture, torture and execution.

A devastatingly and ruthlessly effective network of spies and informants established by Elizabeth I and her spymaster Francis Walsingham was continued under James I and Robert Cecil. Priests slipped ashore in the dead of night, or more openly in ports, armed with false names and cover stories. Eventually, though, they were likely to be observed associating with known Catholics, and their details passed to local and national government.

Anne was assisted by her sister Eleanor, the elder of the two and nominally the head of the Vaux household – but Eleanor proved unequal to the trauma of the surprise raids on the homes of Catholics suspected of harbouring priests, and suffered something akin to a nervous breakdown. Anne took up the challenge willingly, and to protect her sister she passed herself off as Eleanor in confrontations with priest-hunters. Father Garnet came to rely heavily on her, and in turn she became such a devotee of the priest that Protestant propagandists spread the lie that they were lovers.

Garnet got his first taste of things to come not long after taking up residence with the Vaux sisters in Leicestershire, when there was an early morning swoop on the house. This was where Anne normally came into her own, but in fact on this occasion it was Eleanor’s 11-year-old god-daughter who bravely confronted the raiders in order to buy time for Garnet to be secured in a priest-hole. One intruder pressed his knife to her breast and threatened to stab her if she didn’t tell them where their priest was hiding, to which she cried, ‘If thou dost, it will be the hottest blood ever thou sheddest in thy life!’

Anne was fortunate in being the daughter of a wealthy nobleman – it took money and properties to hide and protect the hunted priests. But over time, the government’s attacks – both financially and politically – on Lord Vaux her father had had a devastating effect, and like his elder daughter, the once proud man was broken mentally and physically by the strain of it all. The family’s fortunes were decimated by fines and confiscations – but enough remained to allow Anne to continue her clandestine and dangerous work.

The Vaux sisters and Garnet were forced to move on each time they discovered that the authorities were on to them. They were at Baddesley Clinton in Warwickshire when a dawn raid took place, and as usual Anne Vaux stood her ground against the armed deputation while Garnet and other priests took refuge in secret hiding places built by the diminutive master priest-hole builder ‘Little John’ (Nicholas Owen). An extensive search failed to find the ingeniously hidden entrances.

By now, though, Garnet was one of the most wanted men in England, and things became infinitely worse when Anne accompanied him on a pilgrimage to St Winefride’s Well in North Wales. Along the way they were provided accommodation by several Catholics who were soon to become infamous as Gunpowder Plotters. Both Anne and Garnet suspected that something was big afoot, but had no idea what; they were, nevertheless, implicated by association after Guy Fawkes’s sensational arrest.

In the anti-Catholic witch-hunt that followed, Cecil was determined to catch Garnet and anyone associated with him, and from now on he and Anne struggled to find a ‘safe-house’.

Early in 1606, searchers finally caught up with Father Garnet and another priest at Hindlip Hall in Worcestershire. After spending eight days in a cramped priest-hole, unable to stand or stretch their limbs and surviving only on liquids secretly fed to them by straw through a tiny hole, they gave themselves up. Little John was also caught after emerging from a separate hiding place – until then, their priest-holes had remained undetected despite the most thorough ransacking of the house. They were transported to the Tower of London.

Showing incredible bravery, Anne Vaux visited Garnet in the Tower under an assumed name, exchanging messages written in invisible ink made from orange juice. But the authorities were not fooled. After one of her visits Anne was followed and arrested, and marched back to the Tower.

Little John was tortured to death; Garnet was horribly tortured but provided no information of use to his captors, and was put on trial. He spoke calmly and eloquently in his defence: the main charge against him being treason. He had neither plotted against King James and was appalled by the Gunpowder Plot – but this was only ever going to be a show trial. (The captured Gunpowder Plotters had already been executed with great haste, probably to prevent them from clearing him of any involvement). Garnet was taken to the gallows.

Before he was hanged, he made a speech in which he robustly defended the reputation of pious Anne Vaux against grotesque charges that she had been his lover. Garnet was then pushed from a ladder, and supporters pulled on his legs before the hangman could cut him down while still alive to commence the grisly mutilation of ‘quartering’.

Anne herself was fiercely interrogated but not tortured, and she was released after Garnet’s death.

She and Eleanor had done all that could be expected of anyone. They continued to harbour priests, but the white heat that followed the Gunpowder Plot had died down, and thanks to Anne’s work in keeping Garnet safe for so long the number of priests had greatly expanded and stabilised. Despite a few minor brushes with the authorities, Anne and Eleanor lived out the rest of their lives in relative peace and anonymity.

Funerals and burials according to Catholic rite were still illegal and carried out in secrecy, so the exact date of the sisters’ deaths is not known for certain. Eleanor is thought to have died in 1625 when she would have been around 65 years old. We know Anne then moved to Derbyshire, because she received fines there for not attending the Anglican church. She was well into her seventies when the name of the saviour of Catholic England last appears in written records.

The Women Who Saved Catholic England is available to order here.