Recusancy fines rose from pence to seizing landowners’ estates

Evidence

In 1559 non-attendance at church cost twelve pence a Sunday. By the 1580s the fine had risen to twenty pounds a month, and since only a handful of rich men could afford such a sum month after month an Act of Parliament authorized seizing the land and chattels of those behind in their payments. In all his plans for the restoration of the faith in England Allen had counted most on the Catholic landed aristocracy. But no landed class could preserve their leadership indefinitely against the grinding attrition of such fines. — Garrett Mattingly, The Defeat of the Spanish Armada, 141

Categorization

• XREF: Concrete economic pressure detail that grounds the reader’s narrative of Catholic resistance. — connects to: Recusancy fines rose from pennies to massive land seizures within decades — Garrett Mattingly, The Defeat of the Spanish Armada, 141; Vague statutory language enabled a park commission to seize land at will — Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the…, 804
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Garrett Mattingly, The Defeat of the Spanish Armada, 141