Hiding in plain view: religiosity and patronage in the works of William Dugdale

This paper considers the religious sympathies and motivations of the antiquary William Dugdale, and of some of those who helped support the publication of his works through patronage of their engraved plates. It examines in particular a series of nineteen costume plates illustrating Catholic religious habits, which feature in Dugdale's co-authored Monasticon Anglicanum (1655–73) and (with an element of duplication) in his Antiquities of Warwickshire (1656). The patrons of these plates are for the most part not openly named, but can in certain cases be identified through their coats of arms: at least two (Thomas Yate and Miles Stapleton) were themselves Catholic, and another (Wingfield Bodenham) appears to have been sympathetic to Catholicism.