Catholic Resistance in Elizabethan England

229 Pages·2007·1.34 MB·English

by  Victor Houliston

Catholic Resistance in Elizabethan England
Early Roman Portrait of Father Robert Persons. Sketch by Charles Weld
(c. 1857), at Stonyhurst College, from an original in Rome. Reproduced by
permission of the Governors of Stonyhurst College, Lancashire.
Catholic Resistance in
Elizabethan England
Robert Persons’s Jesuit Polemic, 1580–1610
VICTOR HOULISTON
Institutum Historicum Societatis Iesu
© Victor Houliston 2007
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval
system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying,
recording or otherwise without the prior permission of the publisher.
Victor Houliston has asserted his moral right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act,
1988, to be identifi ed as the author of this work.
Published by
Ashgate Publishing Limited Ashgate Publishing Company Institutum Historicum
Gower House Suite 420 Societatis Iesu
Croft Road 101 Cherry Street Via dei Penitenzieri, 20
Aldershot Burlington, VT 05401-4405 00193 Roma
Hampshire GU11 3HR USA Italy
England
Ashgate website: http://www.ashgate.com
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Houliston, Victor, 1954–
Catholic resistance in Elizabethan England : Robert Persons’s Jesuit polemic, 1580–1610.
– (Catholic Christendom, 1300–1700)
1. Parsons, Robert, 1546–1610 – Criticism and interpretation 2. Parsons, Robert, 1546–
1610 3. Jesuits – England – Biography 4. Religious literature, English – History and
criticism 5. English literature – Catholic authors – History and criticism
I. Title
271.5’3’092

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Houliston, Victor, 1954–
Catholic resistance in Elizabethan England : Robert Persons’s Jesuit polemic, 1580–1610
/ Victor Houliston.
p. cm. – (Catholic Christendom, 1300–1700)
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN-13: 978-0-7546-5840-5 (hardback : alk. paper)
ISBN-10: 0-7546-5840-6 (hardback : alk. paper)
1. Parsons, Robert, 1546–1610. I. Title.
BX4705.P37683H68 2007
271’.5302–dc22
2006100203

Ashgate Publishing Ltd Institutum Historicum Societatis Iesu
ISBN 978-0-7546-5840-5 ISBN 978 88 7041 363 2
Printed and bound in Great Britain by Antony Rowe Ltd, Chippenham, Wiltshire.
Contents
Publishers’ Note vii
Series Editor’s Preface ix
Preface xi
Acknowledgements xiii
List of Abbreviations xv
1 The Legend of Father Parsons 1
2 The English Mission: Writing The Christian Directory 23
3 The Spanish Connection: Satirizing Burghley 47
4 The Myth of England’s Catholic Destiny: Persons’s Political Vision 71
5 Reclaiming the Past: Combating Foxe and Coke 93
6 A Jesuit Apologia: Appellant Abuse 117
7 Making England Safe for Catholicism: Liberty of Conscience
under James 135
8 Mastering the Polemical Scene 161
Appendix: A Chronology of Persons’s Printed Works, 1580–1622 183
Bibliography 185
Index 209
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Publishers’ Note
This volume is a co-publication between Ashgate Publishing and the Jesuit
Historical Institute.
As well as being part of Ashgate’s Catholic Christendom, 1300–1750
monograph series, it is the 63 volume in the Jesuit Historical Institute’s series
Bibliotheca Instituti Historici Societatis Iesu.

Ashgate Publishing Institutum Historicum Societatis Iesu
This page intentionally left blank
Series Editor’s Preface
The still-usual emphasis on medieval (or Catholic) and reformation (or
Protestant) religious history has meant neglect of the middle ground, both
chronological and ideological. As a result, continuities between the middle
ages and early modern Europe have been overlooked in favor of emphasis
on radical discontinuities. Further, especially in the later period, the
identifi cation of ‘reformation’ with various kinds of Protestantism means that
the vitality and creativity of the established church, whether in its Roman
or local manifestations, has been left out of account. In the last few years,
an upsurge of interest in the history of traditional (or catholic) religion
makes these inadequacies in received scholarship even more glaring and in
need of systematic correction. The series will attempt this by covering all
varieties of religious behavior, broadly interpreted, not just (or even especially)
traditional institutional and doctrinal church history. It will to the maximum
degree possible be interdisciplinary, comparative and global, as well as non-
confessional. The goal is to understand religion, primarily of the ‘Catholic’
variety, as a broadly human phenomenon, rather than as a privileged mode of
access to superhuman realms, even implicitly.
The period covered, 1300–1700, embraces the moment which saw an
almost complete transformation of the place of religion in the life of Europeans,
whether considered as a system of beliefs, as an institution, or as a set of social
and cultural practices. In 1300, vast numbers of Europeans, from the pope
down, fully expected Jesus’s return and the beginning of His reign on earth.
By 1700, very few Europeans, of whatever level of education, would have
subscribed to such chiliastic beliefs. Pierre Bayle’s notorious sarcasms about
signs and portents are not idiosyncratic. Likewise, in 1300 the vast majority of
Europeans probably regarded the pope as their spiritual head; the institution
he headed was probably the most tightly integrated and effective bureaucracy
in Europe. Most Europeans were at least nominally Christian, and the pope
had at least nominal knowledge of that fact. The papacy, as an institution,
played a central role in high politics, and the clergy in general formed an
integral part of most governments, whether central or local. By 1700, Europe
was divided into a myriad of different religious allegiances, and even those
areas offi cially subordinate to the pope were both more nominally Catholic in
belief (despite colossal efforts at imposing uniformity) and also in allegiance
than they had been four hundred years earlier. The pope had become only
one political factor, and not one of the fi rst rank. The clergy, for its part, had
virtually disappeared from secular governments as well as losing much of its
local authority. The stage was set for the Enlightenment.
Thomas F. Mayer,
Augustana College