The declarations and ordinances made upon the rule of our holy mother S.Clare is an English translation of papal pronouncements upon the rules governing the convents of the Franciscan Order of St Clare. Elizabeth Evelinge's 176-page English version was published by one of the most prolific presses of the 17th-century English Roman Catholic exiles, the English College Press at St Omer. The edition, which was presumably very limited, was meant for English nuns living in monasteries in Flanders and Northern France. At her death, Elizabeth Evelinge was described as having 'a more polish'd way...

This volume includes two early seventeenth-century translations of Roman Catholic books by English recusant nuns - Catherine Greenbury (a Franciscan) and Mary Percy (a Benedictine). To practise their faith on the continent both these women fled Elizabethan England where Roman Catholic practice had been outlawed under pain of severe penalty (even death). Catherine Greenbury was born at York into a wealthy upper middle-class family but left England after the death of her husband, shortly after the birth of her daughter in or around 1616. After establishing herself in Brussels in a convent...