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In the Folger Library in Washington is a large folio manuscript which Dr. James McManaway has recently established as compiled “by some one deeply interested in the affairs of Essex, perhaps by one of his clerks.” The identification of the clerk has yet to be made; a note in the top left corner of the manuscript's front cover “Die Veneris Julii 1, 1601 per me Ricardum Greeneum” is a promising lead, but a Richard Green has not as yet been discovered among the extant records concerning the Earl of Essex. Dr. Mc Manaway writes of this manuscript's contents as follows :

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‘In this embassy’, Antonio Foscarini reported to the Doge in Venice in 1611 from London, ‘there has always been an Englishman as interpreter, a Catholic, who has regularly attended the church without anyone hindering him. The same goes on in the French and Spanish embassies, to his Majesty's entire satisfaction.’ Little is known about this type of employment, aside from James's atypical toleration of an Englishman's public non-conformity. It can be of interest to see what sort of Englishman could be selected by a foreign power to serve in its embassy in seventeenth-century London. There can be more curiosity to learn what type of work he could in fact be called upon to do. Fortunately, sufficient evidence has survived in the case of at least one Englishman of clear recusant connections, Francis Fowler II, to make an attempt. Curiously, in preparing this study an unexpected problem emerged in the discovery of another Englishman of an identical name who lived in Madrid with some of the same duties to perform. This surprising career of a Francis Fowler I is also described here. From this pair of biographies it is hoped that fresh clues have been found about the family of the distinguished printer of early recusant books, John Fowler.

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