presided over the judges at the trial of the Duke of Norfolk for high treason in conspiring with Mary Stuart to dethrone the queen in January 1571, and the following month sentenced one of the duke's retainers, Robert Hickford, to death as an accomplice. His judgment on this occasion is reported at some length. It is a homily on the sacredness of majesty and the heinousness of treason, and, so regarded, not altogether a discreditable performance. The closing sentences evince an acquaintance with Chaucer's ‘House of Fame.’ But he does not appear to have been particularly subservient as a judge, as we find that this same year, 1571, he incurred the serious displeasure of the queen by refusing to ‘alter the ancient forms of the court’ in the interests of the Earl of Leicester. He was accused of denying justice and making the queen's bench ‘a court of conscience’ by one Thomas Welch in 1566. He married Ann, daughter of John Boles of Wallington, Hertfordshire, and relict of John Burgoyne, by whom he had one daughter, whose first husband was Sir John Spencer. He died at his seat at Newenham, Bedfordshire, in 1574.
[Fuller's Worthies (Leicestershire); Dugdale's Orig. 217, Chron. Ser. 89, 90, 91; Cal. State Papers, Dom. 1547–80, pp. 107, 416; Cobbett's State Trials, i. 957, 1042, ii. 1046; Foss's Lives of the Judges.]
CATNACH, JAMES (of the Seven Dials), (1792–1841), publisher, born at Alnwick in Northumberland, 18 Aug. 1792, was the son of John Catnach, a printer of that town. The elder Catnach printed and published books which, for the time, were well illustrated; such as ‘The Beauties of Natural History, selected from Buffon's History of Quadrupeds, &c., with sixty-seven cuts by Bewick,’ ‘Poems by Percival Stockdale, with cuts by Thos. Bewick,’ ‘The Hermit of Warkworth,’ and the ‘Poetical Works of Robert Burns,’ the illustrations being engraved by Bewick. About 1808 he left Alnwick for Newcastle, and five years afterwards removed to London. He had a shop in Wardour Street, Soho, and died 4 Dec. 1813, from the effects of an accident.
His son James, who was then working as a printer at Newcastle-on-Tyne, immediately came to London, and soon afterwards, 1813–1814, commenced business at 2 Monmouth Court, Seven Dials, where he set up his father's old wooden press, and got together some scraps of type and old woodcuts. With these he printed little duodecimo volumes known as ‘chap-books’ and broadsides.
He was young and energetic, and struck out a new line for himself, in the shape of children's books, which he published at a farthing each. He bought ballads on every passing event, at the price of half-a-crown per ballad. In cases of popular excitement he did well, and he is reported to have made over 500l. by the trial of Thurtell for the murder of Mr. Weare.
His publications were printed on the flimsiest possible paper, with bad ink and worse type, and, as a rule, headed by a woodcut totally irrelevant to the text. Among these woodcuts, especially in the Christmas carol broadsheets, are many of the sixteenth century, which he had bought at various sales of printing material. The British Museum has a large collection of his ballads and those of his competitors, notably two thick volumes, which contain over four thousand purchased in 1868 for 7l. 7s.
He made a competence, possibly some 5,000l., and retired from business in 1838, living at Dancer's Hill, South Mimms, near Barnet, but he died at his old shop on 1 Feb. 1841, aged 49, and was buried in Highgate cemetery.
[Hindley's Life and Times of James Catnach, 1878; A Collection of the Books and Woodcuts of James Catnach, 1869.]
CATON, WILLIAM (1636–1665), quaker, was probably a near relation of Margaret Askew, afterwards wife of Thomas Fell, vice-chancellor of the duchy of Lancaster. At the age of fourteen he was taken by his father to the judge's house at Swarthmore, near Ulverston, to be educated by a kinsman who was then tutor to the Fell family. The boy was made a companion to the judge's eldest son, and was sent with him to a school at Hawkshead. In 1652 George Fox paid his first visit to Swarthmore Hall, and Caton embraced quakerism. He now refused to study on the ground of its being a worldly occupation, and Margaret Fell employed him at Swarthmore to teach her younger children and act as her secretary. When he was about eighteen, Caton was chosen one of the quaker preachers for the district of which Swarthmore was the centre, and in his ‘Journal’ he relates that he was often ‘beaten, buffetted, stocked, and stoned’ by the people of the places in which he attempted to preach. In 1654 he left Swarthmore in order to become an itinerant preacher. Towards the end of the year he was joined by John Stubbs, with whom he proceeded to Maidstone. Here they were both sent to the house of correction and harshly treated, when, the only charge against them being that of preaching, the magistrates were compelled to release them (a
