Catholics and Treason: Martyrology, Memory, and Politics in the Post-Reformation

✍ Scribed by Michael Questier

• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Year: 2022
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 681
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

Catholics and Treason takes the narratives generated by the contemporary law of treason as it applied to Roman Catholics, during and after the Reformation of the Church in the sixteenth century, and uses them to explore the Catholic community's writing of its own history. Prosecutions of Catholics under the existing law and via new legislation produced a great deal of documentation which tells us much about contemporary politics that we could not garner from any other source. The intention here is to locate the narratives of persecution inside the context of the 'mainstream' history of the period from which, for the most part, they have been routinely excluded but out of which they partly emerged. In that respect, this is the history of the post-Reformation Church and State with the politics (of violence) put back. This volume takes as its starting point the magnum opus of Bishop Richard Challoner, his Memoirs of Missionary Priests, and it works backwards from that book into the period that Challoner describes. Historian Michael Questier seeks to reassemble as far as possible the historical jigsaw puzzle on which Challoner laboured but which he could not complete, thinking about the implications for our view of the post-Reformation and of the way in which Challoner and others described the Catholic experience of in/tolerance.

✦ Table of Contents

Cover
Catholics and Treason: Martyrology, Memory, and Politics in the Post-Reformation
Copyright
Acknowledgements
Preface
Contents
List of Illustrations
List of Abbreviations
Note on the Text
PART I
1: Introduction: Martyrs for the Faith?
The Origins of a Tradition: Richard Challoner’s Memoirs of Missionary Priests and Catholic Martyrology
Collecting Evidence about Catholic Martyrs in Reformation England
2: Catholic Martyrdom and the Writing of English Reformation History
The Appropriation of Tradition
Persecution and the Catholic Community in (Post-)Reformation England and Britain
3: Martyrdom and the Construction of Martyr Narratives
Killing a Priest in Reformation England
The Ideological Significance of Inflicting Punishment: Theory and Practice
God’s Revenge on the Persecutors
Treason and Conscience, Religion and (Popular) Politics
PART II
4: ‘Sentenced to Die as in Cases of High Treason’: The Elizabethan Settlement and the Coming of Intolerance, c.1558–1582
The Elizabethan Settlement and the Culture of Conformity in Post-ReformationPolitics
Catholics, Puritans, and Persecution in the Mid- and Later 1570s
True Lies: Edmund Campion and his Alleged Treasons
5: After Campion
Discipline and Punish
The Execution of Justice
6: Catholic Martyrs and the Political Crises of the mid-1580s
Catholic Denunciations of Tyranny
Mass Deportations, the Bond of Association, the Approach of War, and the 1585 Statute against Catholic Clergy
Royal Martyrdom
The Rise of Catholic Resistance Theory
7: The Incestuous Bastard Queen Persecutes the Faithful Servants of Christ
The Spanish Armada
Anti-Poperyand Anti-Puritanism
The Catholic Rejection of Compromise: Henry Garnet, Robert Southwell, Richard Holtby, and the 1591 Proclamation
8: Catholic Radicalism and the (Re-)Emergence of Catholic Loyalism
The Meeting of the 1593 Parliament
The Perceived Dangers of Catholic Legitimism: John Boste, John Ingram, and Henry Walpole
Southwell’s Revenge—the Discrediting of Richard Topcliffe
9: The Coming of Toleration in Late Elizabethan England?
The Approach of a European Peace, the Conversion of Henry IV, and the Impending Accession of James VI
The Discontents of Anti-Poperyin the Mid- and Later 1590s and the Limits of Intolerance
The Case of William Freeman
The Troubles of Northern Catholics and the Difficulties of Matthew Hutton
The Arraignment of Robert Barnes and his Friends
The Case of John Rigby
10: The Appeal to Rome and the Struggle for the Memory of the Martyrs
The Fin de Siècle Disputes among Catholic Clergy and the Question of Persecution
Accession Politics and the Contestation of Catholic Martyrdom
The Archpriest Controversy and the Late Elizabethan State
Endgame: Proclamations and Protestations
PART III
11: Tolerance and Intolerance in England after the Accession of James VI
Temporary Royal Forbearance and its Swift Withdrawal
Whitsun Riot
Gunpowder Plot, Henry Garnet, and the Oath of Allegiance
Robert Drury, George Gervase, Matthew Flathers, and Thomas Garnet
The Experience of Persecution and the Catholic Demand for Episcopal Regulation of their Community
12: Mid-JacobeanConfessional Politics and Anti-Popery
The 1610 Parliament and the Assassination of Henry IV
The Treason Trials of 1610
Roger Cadwallader
George Napper
John Roberts and Thomas Somers
Mid-JacobeanDynastic Policy and the English Catholic Community: the Consequences of the King’s Protestant Turn
The Execution of John Almond and the Uncertainties of Mid-Jacobean Politics
13: The Protestant Turn Turns Sour
Royal Authority, Catholicism, and (Anti-)Calvinism
The Martyrdom of Thomas Maxfield
14: Towards Toleration?: The Change of the Times in Late Jacobean and Caroline Britain
The Release of William Baldwin, European War, and Dynastic Marriage Negotiations
Early Caroline Catholicism and the Cult of Martyrdom:: Catholics Look Back on their Recent Past
The 1628 Parliament and the Case of Edmund Arrowsmith
The Advent of the Personal Rule
15: Back to the Future: Catholicism, Persecution, and the Outbreak of the Civil War
The Fear of Popery
The Failure of Royal Authority and the Case of John Goodman
New Treason Trials and Executions of Catholic Clergy
The Rise of the Blackloists, Erastianism, Independency, and the Turn away from ‘Persecution’
16: The Restoration and the Popish Plot
The Historiography of Restoration Catholicism
The Popish Plot 1678–1681
17: Conclusion: The Afterlife of the Early Modern English Martyr Tradition
Select Bibliography: Manuscripts
Archives of the Archdiocese of Birmingham
Archives of the Archdiocese of Westminster, London
Archives Générales du Royaume, Brussels
Archivio Segreto Vaticano, Vatican City
Archivum Britannicum Societatis Jesu, London
Archivum Romanum Societatis Jesu, Rome
Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University Library
Biblioteca Vallicelliana, Rome
Bodleian Library, Oxford
Borthwick Institute, York
British Library, London
Canterbury Cathedral Archives
Douai Abbey, Woolhampton, Berkshire
English College, Rome
Essex Record Office, Chelmsford
Exeter University Library
Hatfield House, Hertfordshire
Hendred House, Berkshire
Hull History Centre
Inner Temple Library, London
Kingston History Centre, Kingston-upon-Thames
Lambeth Palace Library, London
Lancashire Record Office, Bow Lane, Preston
National Library of Ireland, Dublin
National Library of Wales, Aberystwyth
St Mary’s College, Oscott
Stonyhurst College, Lancashire
The National Archives (Public Record Office), Kew
Ushaw College Library, Special Collections
Warwickshire County Record Office, Warwick
West Sussex Record Office, Chichester
Index