Introduction

Abstract

In 1589, Richard Topcliffe, the man the Elizabethan state employed to do its dirtiest work, reported that ‘the Jhezewts & Semenaries’ — Jesuits and other Catholic priests — who were on the verge of taking over the country were aided not only by ‘discrett & trusty patroans’ but by ‘crafty Catholic childrene abroade in every quarter and coaste’, lending them better assistance ‘than ever frend to England had Imbassador’.¹ In the year after the Spanish Armada, Catholicism was not only a proscribed religion in Protestant England, it was perceived as a political threat to the existence of the nation. Catholics practised their religion clandestinely, sometimes at risk of their lives; around them, Protestant propaganda about Catholicism in general and the alleged nefarious activities of English Catholics in particular ensured that they were the most controversial minority in early modern England.