EDWARD COURTNEY, JESUIT

[Edward Courtney], 'Twenty arguments against the Oath of Allegiance. Propounded to Mr. Preston and other Defenders of the said Oath in satisfaction of a late bitter Provocation published on that subject in the name of Mr. Howard. By a Lay Catholicke'. Added in another hand is a note: 'Composed by Edw. Courtenay who died a Confessor in the Common Gaole at Exon'. Begins with an address to the Catholic reader: 'I must confesse I have adventured on this subiect...'. Edward Leedes (1599-1677), alias Edward Courtney, was a Jesuit who was arrested in London in 1634, charged with a denial of the oath of allegiance and supremacy, and committed to the Gatehouse prison. Earlier that year 'A Patterne of Christian Loyaltie' (1634), published under the name of Sir William Howard but actually written by Thomas Preston OSB, argued that Catholics could, in good conscience, take the oath of allegiance. Courtney's strongly papalist Latin refutation, although it remained only in manuscript, circulated widely enough to become a cause célèbre. Courtney was afterwards procurator of the English province in Brussels and rector of the English College, Rome. He died at St. Omer.

Another manuscript is MS Barb. 2384 in the Vatican Library.

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