Some of the early printed pedigrees on record of the Clutterbuck family claim religious persecution as the reason for relocating from the Netherlands to England. The late 15th and early 16th centuries in Europe were very frightening and dangerous times. The powerful Roman Catholic Church held a very hard line approach to religion so even the slightest hint of anything outside the practice of this faith was met with zero tolerance and dealt with severely.
In 1529, the Holy Roman Emperor, Charles V, who was ruler of the Netherlands, decreed that:
“…reading, purchasing or possessing any proscribed books, or any New Testaments prohibited by the Theologians of Louvain, are crimes, and the punishment: men to be beheaded, women buried alive and the relapsed burned at the stake.”
If you were caught with a book that was on the long list prohibited by the Roman Catholic Church, or if you were a Protestant or had listened to a Protestant religious service you could be accused of heresy and end up burned at the stake, sent to the gallows or buried alive. These extreme views were continued by Phillip II, the son of Charles V, when he took the throne.
Charles V Engraving: Burning of Maria van Beckum - 1544Phillip II
King Phillip II sent a powerful army under the command of the Duke of Alva, ‘to chastise and exact a full measure of vengeance’ on those citizens who had shown ‘equal contempt for the true religion and the royal authority’ . Even orthodox Catholics who failed to strenuously object to any form of Protestantism were deemed traitors, and in 1567, in a fit of near hysteria, King Philip II declared that all the inhabitants of the Low Countries were guilty of treason, incurring the penalty of death. With the ruthless Duke of Alva at the helm, and his newly appointed tribunal, the 'Council of Blood’, this resulted in a wholesale slaughter of men, women and children in the Netherlands. In this highly volatile climate of terror and uncertainty, tens of thousands of inhabitants were driven away - the answer for many families was to simply run for your life!
Even though so many Dutch families fled to England at this time, written records show that there were definitely Clutterbucks already settled in Gloucestershire well before the religious persecutions of Charles V and Philip II. It is possible, however, that a further branch of the family came across to England as a result of this or earlier religious upheaval. Although this may be the case, there have been no descendants traced to this line.