“A Time of Great Turmoil”

Since Isaac’s mother was probably a French Catholic, it is likely that he and all his siblings were brought up in that faith; also, given the links that he and his predecessor at court, Jerome Gohory, shared with the many French musicians there, he did not escape the attentions of the Recusancy officials in London. Officers of the Middlesex Sessions courts and Recusancy Commissions were ordered to seek out suspected papists under the terms of successive Test Acts, often working from information supplied by local informers and parish constables. Suspected papists were required to forswear essential elements of the Catholic faith and adhere to Anglican practices, on pain of fines or even imprisonment. Despite exemptions from prosecution granted occasionally to Catholic court musicians, many of Isaac’s colleagues and relatives were treated as suspected papists. They included, among others, Jerome Gohory and his wife, Florent Foucade and his wife (Isaac’s sister Mary), the painter Louis Goupy, the dancing-masters Michael le Duke and Charles Delagarde, and the musicians James Paisible, Francis Dieupart and Stephen Lefevre, all summoned at different times and often more than once. Some fled, some refused to swear the required oaths, a few conformed.