The Excommunication of Elizabeth I: Faith, Politics, and Resistance in Post-Reformation England, 1570-1603 (St Andrews Studies in Reformation History) 9004425993, 9789004425996

Table of contents :
Half Title
Series Information
Title Page
Copyright Page
Contents
Acknowledgements
Figures
Abbreviations
Note on the Text
Introduction
1 Queen Elizabeth’s Excommunication in Post-Reformation Politics
2 Elizabeth’s Excommunication in Surviving Records
Chapter 1 The Excommunication of Elizabeth i in International Politics
1 Making the Case for Elizabeth’s Illegitimacy, 1558–1569
2 Interpreting and Executing Regnans in Excelsis
1585846165478_15
Chapter 2 Transmitting the Excommunication of Elizabeth i
1 Distribution and Reception in the 1570s
2 Catholic Missions and the Circulation of Regnans in Excelsis, ca. 1580–1603
3 Debating the Excommunication’s Legitimacy
Chapter 3 Spreading the Word? Regnans in Excelsis in Protestant Discourse
1 Humour, History, and Anxiety in Printed Responses to Regnans in Excelsis
2 Protestant Translations of Regnans In Excelsis
Chapter 4 The Excommunication in Foreign and Domestic Policy
1 Threats from Spain and Scotland, ca. 1570–1579
2 Regnans in Excelsis and the Coming of War, ca. 1580–1588
3 Wars with Spain, France, and Ireland, ca. 1589–1603
Chapter 5 Political Engagement, Subversion, and Resistance in England and Ireland
1 Sedition as Resistance: Perceptions of Elizabeth after 1570
2 Alternatives to Violence: Prohibited Objects, Recusancy, and Public Disobedience
3 Regnans in Excelsis and Resistance in Ireland
Conclusion
Bibliography
Manuscript Sources
Printed Calendars of Sources
Printed Sources
Secondary Sources
Index

Citation preview

The Excommunication of Elizabeth i

St Andrews Studies in Reformation History Lead Editor Bridget Heal (University of St Andrews) Editorial Board Amy Burnett (University of Nebraska-​Lincoln) Euan Cameron (Columbia University) Bruce Gordon (Yale University) Kaspar von Greyerz (Universität Basel) Felicity Heal (Jesus College, Oxford) Karin Maag (Calvin College, Grand Rapids) Roger Mason (University of St Andrews) Andrew Pettegree (University of St Andrews) Alec Ryrie (Durham University) Jonathan Willis (University of Birmingham)

The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/​sasrh

The Excommunication of Elizabeth i Faith, Politics, and Resistance in Post-​Reformation England, 1570–​1603 By Aislinn Muller

LEIDEN | BOSTON

Cover illustration: Elizabetha Angliae et Hiberniae Reginae, by Thomas Cecill (ca 1625). © The Trustees of the British Museum. Explanation: Queen Elizabeth I on horseback, rescuing Truth from a cave and trampling a dragon (probably the dragon that appears in the story of the apocalypse). In the background is the Spanish Armada and the English army at Tilbury. The Library of Congress Cataloging-​in-​Publication Data is available online at http://​catalog.loc.gov LC record available at http://​lccn.loc.gov/​2020006151

Typeface for the Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic scripts: “Brill”. See and download: brill.com/​brill-​typeface. issn 2468-​4 317 isbn 978-​9 0-​0 4-​4 2599-​6 (hardback) isbn 978-​9 0-​0 4-​4 2600-​9 (e-​book) Copyright 2020 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Brill Hes & De Graaf, Brill Nijhoff, Brill Rodopi, Brill Sense, Hotei Publishing, mentis Verlag, Verlag Ferdinand Schöningh and Wilhelm Fink Verlag. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Koninklijke Brill NV provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910, Danvers, MA 01923, USA. Fees are subject to change. This book is printed on acid-​free paper and produced in a sustainable manner.

Contents

Acknowledgements vii List of Figures viii Abbreviations ix Note on the Text x



Introduction 1 1 Queen Elizabeth’s Excommunication in Post-​Reformation Politics 4 2 Elizabeth’s Excommunication in Surviving Records 12

1

The Excommunication of Elizabeth i in International Politics 16 1 Making the Case for Elizabeth's Illegitimacy, 1558–​1569 16 2 Interpreting and Executing Regnans in Excelsis 29

2 Transmitting the Excommunication of Elizabeth i 41 1 Distribution and Reception in the 1570s 44 2 Catholic Missions and the Circulation of Regnans in Excelsis, ca. 1580–​1603 56 3 Debating the Excommunication’s Legitimacy 73 3 Spreading the Word? Regnans in Excelsis in Protestant Discourse 86 1 Humour, History, and Anxiety in Printed Responses to Regnans in Excelsis 87 2 Protestant Translations of Regnans in Excelsis 102 4

The Excommunication in Foreign and Domestic Policy 114 1 Threats from Spain and Scotland, ca. 1570–​1579 116 2 Regnans in Excelsis and the Coming of War, ca. 1580–​1588 128 3 Wars with Spain, France, and Ireland, ca. 1589–​1603 141

5 Political Engagement, Subversion, and Resistance in England and Ireland 147 1 Sedition as Resistance: Perceptions of Elizabeth after 1570 148

vi Contents

2 Alternatives to Violence: Prohibited Objects, Recusancy, and Public Disobedience 162 3 Regnans in Excelsis and Resistance in Ireland 173



Conclusion 185



Bibliography 193 Index 235

Acknowledgements This book grew out of a PhD dissertation that I began in 2013 at the University of Cambridge. I have been especially fortunate to have Alexandra Walsham as a mentor through all stages of this project, first as my graduate supervisor and throughout the process of turning my research into a book. I am indebted to her for all of her guidance. Peter Marshall and Paul Cavill provided valuable advice on developing the thesis from which this book evolved; my thanks to Paul and to Adam Morton for their insightful comments on later chapter drafts. Seminar and conference audiences in Cambridge, Oxford, Warwick, Boston, London, and Vancouver offered helpful questions and feedback at various stages of research. I am grateful to Bridget Heal and the editorial board of the St Andrews Studies in Reformation History for their support, and to Francis Knikker and Arjan van Dijk at Brill for their assistance throughout the production process. During my PhD I received generous support from the Catholic Record Society and the Cambridge History Faculty, which helped fund my research at various archives and libraries. The staff of Cambridge University Library, the British Library, Lambeth Palace Library, the Westminster Diocesan Archives, and the British Jesuit Archives always offered helpful assistance during my visits. I am also thankful to Jan Graffius and Joe Reed for welcoming me to Stonyhurst College and answering my questions about its collections. I could not have finished this book without the support of my parents, Reid and Shelley, and brother, Reid, who has always been ready with a word of encouragement in difficult moments. My partner Gareth read the manuscript in full before I submitted it and has been a constant source of cheer and optimism through my moments of self-​doubt.

Figures 2.1 2.2 2.3 3.1

5.1

Houghton Library Br 1745.36.151. Printed copy of Regnans in Excelsis. 44 Lambeth Palace Library, Bacon MS 647 f. 35. Manuscript copy of Regnans in Excelsis. 53 Lambeth Palace Library Carew MS 607 f. 37b. English translation of Regnans in Excelsis. 54 Folger Library. Bernard Garter, A newyeares gifte, dedicated to the Popes Holinesse, and all Catholikes addicted to the Sea of Rome (London: Henry Bynneman, 1579). 91 The Lyford Grange Agnus Dei, ca. 1580. Courtesy of the Master and Community of Campion Hall, Oxford. 164

Abbreviations asv bav BL cms Salisbury

Archivio Segreto Vaticano, Rome Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Rome British Library, London Calendar of the Manuscripts of the Most Honourable Marquis of ­Salisbury, Preserved at Hatfield House (18  vols.). London:  HM ­Stationery Office, 1883–​1940. CP Calendar of the Cecil Papers in Hatfield House (24 vols.). London: HM Stationery Office, 1883–​1976. crs Publications of the Catholic Record Society csp Rome Calendar of State Papers Relating to English Affairs, Preserved ­Principally at Rome in the Vatican Archives and Library (2  vols.). ­London: HM Stationery Office, 1916–​26. csp Simancas Calendar of State Papers Relating to English Affairs, Preserved ­Principally in the Archives of Simancas [Spain] (4 vols.). London: HM Stationery Office, 1892–​1899. csp Venice Calendar of State Papers Relating to English Affairs, Existing in the ­Archives of Venice (38  vols.). London:  HM Stationery Office, 1864–​1947. cul Cambridge University Library lpl Lambeth Palace Library, London odnb Oxford Dictionary of National Biography PC Acts of the Privy Council SP State Papers tna The National Archives, Kew wda Westminster Diocesan Archives, London

newgenprepdf

Note on the Text Quotations from English-​language sources retain their original spelling, with contractions and abbreviations expanded silently. Insertions that appear in brackets are my own. Where quotations from sources in other languages have been translated and summarised in English with modernised spelling in the main text, the quotation in the original language is included in the footnotes. Where translations have been used that are available in other published works, this is indicated in the footnotes. Dates are given in old style with the year beginning on 1 January.

Introduction On 25 February 1570 Pope Pius v issued the bull Regnans in Excelsis, which declared Queen Elizabeth of England excommunicated from the Roman Catholic Church and deprived her of her sovereignty in England and Ireland.1 In addition to excommunicating Elizabeth, the bull released the queen’s subjects from any loyalty they owed to her, and ordered them not to obey her laws or commandments.2 If her subjects continued in their obedience, they too would face excommunication.3 To Elizabeth’s regime, this sentence made every English Catholic a potential traitor to the kingdom. The bull placed English Catholics in a dangerous and frustrating position, caught between the demands of their church and their government. Those who chose to resist the queen faced imprisonment, financial penalties, or prosecution for treason. Those who continued to obey the queen risked endangering their souls, for excommunication conferred eternal damnation upon its recipients. This book examines the ramifications of Queen Elizabeth’s excommunication and deposition, and how Catholics and Protestants responded to the dilemmas it raised. Why did the pope excommunicate Elizabeth, and what did he hope to accomplish? By 1570, England had ostensibly been a Protestant country for eleven years. The 1559 religious settlement agreed by the English parliament had re-​established an official, Protestant Church of England, following the brief restoration of Catholicism under Elizabeth’s elder sister Queen Mary i. What effect could excommunication from the Roman Catholic Church possibly have against a ruler who did not recognise the pope’s authority, and who did not even consider herself part of the Roman Catholic Church in the first place? 1 J.H. Pollen, English Catholics in the Reign of Queen Elizabeth (London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1920), 159. 2 Pius V, Regnans in Excelsis. A transcript of the bull, along with an English translation, is available in Ginevra Crosignani, Thomas McCoog, and Michael Questier, eds., Recusancy and Conformity in Early Modern England: Manuscript and Printed Sources in Translation (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, 2010), 86–​89: ‘Out of the plenitude of our Apostolic power we declare the aforesaid Elizabeth to be heretic and an abetter of heretics, and we declare her, together with her supporters in the above-​said matters, to have incurred the sentence of excommunication and to be cut off from the unity of the Body of Christ’. 3 Ibid., 89: ‘We command and forbid all and sundry among the lords, subjects, peoples, and others aforesaid that they have not to obey her or her admonitions, orders or laws. We shall bind those who do the contrary with a similar sentence of excommunication’.

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2020 | DOI:10.1163/9789004426009_002

2 Introduction Despite the Protestant religious settlement, England retained a resilient population of English Catholics throughout Elizabeth’s reign. Prior to Elizabeth’s accession England had undergone twenty-​five years of religious instability, the official religion of the country changing with the succession of each new monarch. This left many people uncertain about what they believed and to which confession they belonged.4 As the full effects of the Protestant settlement began to be felt in parishes across England, resentment over the religious changes mounted, especially in the north, culminating in a rebellion there in 1569. In Ireland, nominally under English control, most of the population remained staunchly Catholic, resisting English attempts to introduce Protestant reform. Rebellions against English rule in Ireland frequently invoked the religious differences between the two countries to justify resistance throughout Elizabeth’s reign.5 By declaring Elizabeth excommunicated and deposed, the pope lent legitimacy to Catholic resistance in England and Ireland. Deeming Elizabeth unfit to rule gave the rebellions against her credibility in the eyes of the rest of Catholic Europe and might convince more people on the ground in England and Ireland to join the resistance. In Europe, the pope and the leadership of the Catholic Church had begun aggressively to counter the influence and spread of the various Protestant faiths. The Council of Trent, concluded in 1563, formally condemned the heresies of Protestantism and clarified the Catholic Church’s teachings on the sacraments, justification, salvation, and the veneration of saints.6 Tensions between Protestants and Catholics in France and the Spanish Netherlands in the 1560s escalated into conflicts that would last for the rest of the sixteenth century. The papacy followed these wars of religion closely, actively supporting radical Catholic factions in France against a succession of kings who tried to keep the peace, and the Spanish King Philip ii’s efforts to subdue his Dutch Calvinist subjects. Other Protestant rulers who defied Rome, notably Prince Henri of Navarre, who stood to succeed as king of France, likewise found themselves excommunicated and declared unfit to rule by the papacy.7 The excommunication of Elizabeth i was part of a wider papal strategy of proactive interference 4 Peter Marshall, Reformation England, 1480–​1642 (London: Bloomsbury, 2012), 157–​86. 5 Hiram Morgan, ‘Faith and Fatherland in Sixteenth-​Century Ireland’, History Ireland 3, no. 2 (1995), 13–​20. 6 See John O’Malley, Trent:  What Happened at the Council (Cambridge:  Harvard University Press, 2000). 7 Mack Holt, The French Wars of Religion, 1562–​1629 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005); Geoffrey Parker, The Dutch Revolt (London: Penguin, 1985). See also Judith Pollmann, ‘Countering the Reformation in France and the Netherlands: Clerical Leadership and Catholic Violence, 1560–​1585’, Past & Present 190, no. 1 (2006), 83–​120.

Introduction

3

in European politics, in an attempt to regain ground lost to the Protestant Reformations in earlier decades. The papacy had a long history of excommunicating monarchs in Europe with whom it disagreed. In the late medieval period, popes frequently excommunicated rulers in Europe during disputes over who had the power to appoint bishops. Holy Roman Emperors Henry iv and Henry V, as well as King John of England, were all excommunicated for refusing to accept the pope’s episcopal candidates in their kingdoms.8 In some cases, the papacy excommunicated rulers for more overtly political reasons. When William of Normandy invaded England in 1066, Pope Alexander ii excommunicated the Anglo-​Saxon King Harold ii to help justify the campaign.9 Improper dissolution of marriage was another common cause. Pope Urban ii excommunicated King Philip i of France for remarrying without seeking an annulment from his first marriage. Clement vii excommunicated Elizabeth’s own father, Henry viii, when he put aside his first wife to marry Elizabeth’s mother, Anne Boleyn, and declared himself Supreme Head of the English Church.10 On the eve of the Reformation, the papal practice of excommunicating rulers who flouted the papacy had fallen out of use for nearly two centuries. In 1303, a dispute between Pope Boniface viii and King Philip iv of France over the king’s power to tax the clergy led the pope to prepare a bull of excommunication against the king. Before the sentence could be issued, Philip had the pope kidnapped and imprisoned. When Boniface died shortly afterwards, the newly-​elected and French-​born pope Clement V moved the papal curia from Rome to Avignon, where it was surrounded by French-​controlled territories. Although the papacy moved back to Rome in 1377, the legacy of this schism severely compromised its political credibility, and successive popes were more cautious in their dealings with European monarchs.11 During the Reformation, however, rulers in parts of Europe became increasingly receptive to Protestant teachings that challenged the supremacy of the papacy. To combat this, the popes of the sixteenth century took a more proactive role in European politics,

8

9 10 11

Elisabeth Vodola, Excommunication in the Middle Ages (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986), 20–​23, 25; David Carpenter, ‘The Plantagenet Kings’, in David Abulafia, ed., The New Cambridge Medieval History, c. 1198–​1300 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 319. John Foxe, The Unabridged Acts and Monuments Online (1563 edn) (Sheffield: hri Online Publications, 2011), 30. Available from http://​johnfoxe.org [accessed 15 Dec 2017]. Lucy Wooding, Henry VIII (London: Routledge, 2009), 248. Joëlle Rollo-​Koster, Avignon and its Papacy, 1309–​1417:  Popes, Institutions, and Society (London: Rowman and Littlefield, 2015), 1–​22.

4 Introduction using excommunication as a weapon against rulers who embraced the new heresies.12 1

Queen Elizabeth’s Excommunication in Post-​Reformation Politics

The papacy’s decision to excommunicate Elizabeth in 1570 did not come out of nowhere; it was the product of a debate that had begun at her accession in 1558. From the beginning this debate was entangled in wider concerns about the succession of the English crown. Initial suggestions that the papacy declare Elizabeth unfit to rule arose when the French monarchy tried to press the claim of the Catholic Mary Queen of Scots to the English throne in the 1550s, and were revived again during the final sessions of the Council of Trent in 1563. When Pius v finally issued the bull of excommunication and deposition, it lent further credibility to Mary’s claim as a legitimate, Catholic alternative to rule England from the perspective of the rest of Catholic Europe.13 In England, confessional politics likewise shaped the approaches of various interested parties to the problem of finding a suitable candidate to serve as Elizabeth’s heir. Susan Doran and Paulina Kewes have posited that from the 1570s, religion became a fundamental consideration in shaping attitudes towards the succession in England, and spurred the development of new constitutional ideas.14 As described by Patrick Collinson, the Protestant establishment within Elizabeth’s government was concerned with preventing at all costs the succession of a Catholic to the English crown, and was willing to take drastic measures to ensure this. The 1584 Bond of Association, for instance, represented such an extraordinary intervention, in which Elizabeth’s subjects were prepared to contradict the true and lawful succession of the English crown if that succession meant that the throne might pass to a Catholic.15 Collinson’s work 12 13

14 15

Anthony Wright, The Early Modern Papacy:  From the Council of Trent to the French Revolution, 1564–​1789 (Harlow: Longman, 2000), 191–​205. Thomas McCoog, ‘A View from Abroad: Continental Powers and the Succession’, in Susan Doran and Paulina Kewes, eds., Doubtful and Dangerous: The Question of the Succession in Late Elizabethan England (Manchester:  Manchester University Press, 2014), 257–​ 75; Wallace MacCaffrey, The Shaping of the Elizabethan Regime (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1968), 45–​49. Susan Doran and Paulina Kewes, ‘The Earlier Elizabethan Succession Question Revisited’, in Doran and Kewes, Doubtful and Dangerous, 38. Patrick Collinson, ‘The Monarchical Republic of Elizabeth I’, in idem, Elizabethan Essays (London:  Hambledon, 1994), 31–​57; idem, ‘The Elizabethan Exclusion Crisis and the Elizabethan Polity’, Proceedings of the British Academy 84 (1994), 51–​92.

Introduction

5

on this ‘exclusion crisis’ has inspired a wealth of scholarship on the monarchical republican system in early modern England, the extent to which it enabled such interventions, and the degrees to which it balanced power between the monarchy, parliament, and office holders in the localities.16 The execution of Mary Queen of Scots in 1587, around whom much of the anxiety about a foreign, Catholic successor to Elizabeth centred, did not resolve this problem. On the contrary, it opened the problem of choosing Elizabeth’s successor to equally creative challenges and solutions from interested Catholic factions. Stefania Tutino’s work on the English Jesuit Robert Persons shows the striking parallels between some of his views and those of Elizabeth’s Protestant subjects, especially on how the commonwealth might choose or even replace a ruler on religious grounds, above heredity.17 Peter Lake and Michael Questier attribute the conflict between appellant Catholic clergy and the English Jesuits at the end of the sixteenth century in part to disagreement about which potential successor English Catholics should have supported.18 Fears of a possible Catholic succession, or at the least a successor sympathetic to English Catholics, also overshadowed the prospects of James vi of Scotland in the late 1590s. Thomas McCoog and Michael Questier have pointed out that James courted both sides of the religious divide in his bid for the English throne, soliciting both Elizabeth’s ministers and the papacy for support of his candidacy.19 16 Recent examples include Catherine Chou, ‘ “One That Was no Furtherer of this Devise”:  (Manufactured?) Opposition to the Monarchical Republic of Elizabeth I’, Parliamentary History 36, no.  3 (2017), 273–​97; Peter Lake, ‘The “Political Thought” of the “Monarchical Republic of Elizabeth I”, Discovered and Anatomized’, Journal of British Studies 54 (2015), 257–​87; Rosamund Oates, ‘Puritans and the “Monarchical Republic”:  Conformity and Conflict in the Elizabethan Church’, English Historical Review 127, no.  527 (2012), 819–​ 43; Glyn Parry, ‘The Monarchical Republic and Magic: William Cecil and the Exclusion of Mary Queen of Scots’, Reformation 17 (2012), 29–​47; Neil Younger, ‘Securing the Monarchical Republic:  The Remaking of the Lord Lieutenancies in 1585’, Historical Research 84, no. 224 (2011), 249–​65; John McDiarmid, ed., The Monarchical Republic of Elizabeth I:  Essays in Response to Patrick Collinson (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007). 17 Stefania Tutino, ‘The Political Thought of Robert Persons’ Conference in Continental Context’, Historical Journal 52, no. 1 (2009), 43–​62. 18 Peter Lake and Michael Questier, ‘Taking it to the Street? The Archpriest Controversy and the Issue of the Succession’, in Doran and Kewes, Doubtful and Dangerous, 71–​91. See also their latest book, All Hail to the Archpriest: Confessional Conflict, Toleration, and the Politics of Publicity in Post-​Reformation England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019). 19 Michael Questier, Dynastic Politics and the British Reformations, 1558–​ 1630 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019), 228–​42; McCoog, ‘Continental Powers and the Succession’, 260–​65.

6 Introduction In much of this work Elizabeth’s excommunication is mentioned only in passing, if at all. While historians have understandably assessed the Elizabethan succession as a problem of national interest and security in its own right, this has sometimes led to the passing over of other concerns that made it particularly pressing. This book demonstrates that the papal excommunication made the succession problem much more acute and helped to drive its confessionalisation over the course of Elizabeth’s reign. It intensified the threat that Mary Queen of Scots and her supporters posed to Elizabeth after she fled to England in 1567, and hardened the opposition of English Protestants who might otherwise have been inclined to accept her as heir on constitutional grounds. Towards the end of the sixteenth century, the bull also exacerbated the divisions amongst English Catholics about who should succeed Elizabeth when she died. The excommunication also affected other aspects of foreign and domestic politics. Elements of Elizabethan diplomacy and foreign policy became increasingly confessionalised in the late sixteenth century, part of a broader trend in post-​Reformation Europe.20 Although Wallace MacCaffrey characterised the Elizabethan government’s initial response to the bull as relatively passive, recent biographies of William Cecil and Francis Walsingham, who played a central role in shaping the regime’s international relations, have demonstrated how strongly their Protestantism influenced the policies they implemented as the queen’s agents.21 On the other hand, Neil Younger has pointed out that most of Elizabeth’s court was a mix of committed Protestants, religious conservatives, and even occasionally crypto-​Catholics, whose influence may explain why some of the more extreme proposals regarding the suppression of Catholicism were stymied.22 As with the succession, I  argue that Elizabeth’s excommunication played a significant role in the confessionalisation of her regime’s international relations, influencing matters such as fiscal-​military assistance for rebels in the Spanish Netherlands, the progress of Elizabeth’s marriage negotiations, and 20 21

22

Benjamin Carvalho, ‘The Confessional State in International Politics:  Tudor England, Religion, and the Eclipse of Dynasticism’, Diplomacy and Statecraft 25, no.  3 (2014), 407–​31. Wallace MacCaffrey, Queen Elizabeth and the Making of Policy, 1572–​1588 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981), 125–​40; see also idem, Shaping of the Elizabethan Regime, 381–​85; Stephen Alford, Burghley:  William Cecil at the Court of Elizabeth  I (London:  Yale University Press, 2008); John Cooper, The Queen’s Agent:  Francis Walsingham at the Court of Elizabeth I (London: Bloomsbury, 2011). Neil Younger, ‘How Protestant Was the Elizabethan Regime?’ English Historical Review 133 no. 564 (2018), 1060–​92.

Introduction

7

support of James vi’s regency in Scotland. It appeared in government memoranda concerning diplomatic exchanges with Spain, France, Scotland, and the Holy Roman Empire, and prompted the passage of anti-​Catholic legislation in the 1570s and 1580s. The papal deposition also triggered perennial anxieties within the Elizabethan regime about foreign invasions. As England and Spain drew closer to open war in the 1580s, the bull helped to justify Spanish military intervention as a crusade against heresy. In Ireland, the bull was used to justify multiple rebellions against English rule. Hiram Morgan’s work on Elizabethan Ireland has demonstrated how important Catholic ideology became to resistance movements there in the late sixteenth century.23 Susan Brigden and Gerard Kilroy have suggested that the religious dimension of the Irish rebellions became particularly troubling to Elizabeth’s government, for fear that the violence would inspire similar uprisings amongst Catholics in England.24 Elizabeth’s excommunication attracted significant public interest outside the upper levels of her administration. Natalie Mears has argued that Elizabethan England fostered a lively news culture in which people of diverse social standings participated, bolstered by the oral circulation of information as well as by print and manuscript.25 Adam Fox’s work on oral communication in early modern England has similarly demonstrated that people at all levels of society participated in the circulation of political news, despite strict laws against sedition that sometimes made it dangerous to do so.26 Although Catholics were barred from access to the press in England for most of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Alison Shell’s work has demonstrated that English Catholics likewise harnessed a variety of written and oral forms of media to transmit dissident ideas.27 This book builds on this scholarship to examine the level of public interest and discourse about the excommunication, which has likewise been, by 23

Hiram Morgan, ‘Faith and Fatherland in Sixteenth Century Ireland’, History Ireland 3, no.  2 (1995), 13–​20; idem, ‘Policy and Propaganda in Hugh O’Neill’s Connection with Europe’, in Mary Ann Lyons and Thomas O’Connor, eds., The Ulster Earls and Baroque Europe: Refashioning Irish Identities 1600–​1800 (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2010), 18–​52. 24 Susan Brigden, New Worlds, Lost Worlds: The Rule of the Tudors (London: Penguin, 2000), chapter eight; Gerard Kilroy, Edmund Campion:  A Scholarly Life (Farnham:  Ashgate, 2015), 179–​85. 25 Natalie Mears, Queenship and Political Discourse in the Elizabethan Realms (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005). 26 Adam Fox, Oral and Literate Culture in England, 1500–​1700 (Oxford:  Clarendon Press, 2001); idem, ‘Rumour, News and Popular Political Opinion in Elizabethan England and Early Stuart England’, Historical Journal 40, no. 3 (1997), 597–​620. 27 Alison Shell, Oral Culture and Catholicism in Early Modern England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007).

8 Introduction and large, overlooked in assessments of its impact. Some historians assumed that most people outside of government knew little about it during Elizabeth’s reign, an assumption which has remained untested despite recent developments on public and political discourse in early modern England. The Excommunication of Elizabeth i shows that information about Regnans in Excelsis was widely available in England throughout Elizabeth’s reign. Public discussion and circulation of the bull points to enduring anxiety amongst her subjects about its repercussions for the realm. Copies of the sentence circulated in manuscript and print, in the original Latin and in English translations. References to the papal bull appeared in popular ballads, poems, chronicles, religious polemics, and sermons. Information about the papal deposition also circulated via word of mouth, through rumours, seditious speech, and the exchange of news. These discussions of the bull show that Elizabeth’s subjects were concerned about the excommunication and deposition’s implications for the security of the kingdom and England’s role in wider European affairs; they also show that people were equally worried about what it meant for their faith, and whether they could (or should) remain obedient to the queen. None of this is to say that Elizabeth’s excommunication has been entirely neglected in scholarship on her reign. Most scholarship that deals with Elizabeth’s reign and the Reformation does mention the bull of 1570; the problem that this book seeks to redress is that analysis of this event has not moved substantively beyond these passing mentions.28 I would suggest that this is partly because of the way the excommunication has been assessed in studies of Catholic political thought, a branch of English Catholic studies where it has received more attention. When considering the bull’s impact on political theories, historians in this field have tended to focus on a ruling issued by Pope Gregory xiii in 1580, which while it confirmed the validity of Regnans in Excelsis, seemed to mitigate its demands and excuse English Catholics from resisting the queen. Thomas Clancy, for instance, was quick to dismiss the bull’s impact in England, arguing that contemporary Catholic authors failed to defend it and that Gregory xiii’s ruling on the bull allowed Catholics to ignore it after 1580.29

28

29

See for instance AG Dickens, The English Reformation (London: Batsford, 1964), 311–​12; Philip Hughes, Rome and the Counter-​Reformation in England (London: Burns and Oates, 1942), 189, and The Reformation in England (London:  Burns and Oates, 1950), 276; Michael Mullett, Catholics in Britain and Ireland, 1558–​1829 (Basingstoke:  Macmillan, 1998), 13–​ 15; Brigden, New Worlds, Lost Worlds, 237, 264; Marshall, Reformation England, 193. Thomas Clancy, Papist Pamphleteers: The Allen-​Persons Party and the Political Thought of the Counter-​Reformation in England, 1572–​1615 (Chicago: Loyola University Press, 1964),

Introduction

9

Peter Holmes’s work on the evolution of Catholic political theory during Elizabeth’s reign posited that the 1580 ruling on Regnans in Excelsis helped to drive a shift from the encouragement of active resistance in the late 1560s to the promotion of what he deems ‘active non-​resistance’ by the mid-​1580s.30 The trajectory of resistance and non-​resistance in Catholic political thought which Holmes traces, however, is contingent upon the concept of resistance as a violent act. When one expands the definition of resistance to include nonviolent forms of subversion, this trajectory is less tenable. Thomas McCoog’s work on the Jesuit mission in England, on the other hand, has recognised that the papal confirmation of the bull in 1580 had the potential to provoke resistance in light of shifting balances of political power in Europe, which made it easier for Catholic monarchs such as Philip ii to contemplate more aggressive intervention on behalf of English Catholics. McCoog, however, stresses that the Jesuits (at least initially) would have been reluctant to cultivate this potential, citing an order issued by the Jesuit General to missionaries that prohibited them from meddling in affairs of state.31 Victor Houliston’s study of Robert Persons’s political views echoes this argument. He points to passages from Person’s Reasons of Refusal (1580) which suggest that in the early 1580s Persons did not believe that Elizabeth’s excommunication justified open rebellion against her.32 As in the work of Holmes and Clancy, however, these assessments depend upon an equation of resistance with violence and the overthrow of government. Recent studies of Catholic political theory have expanded upon Holmes’s connections between Elizabeth’s excommunication and Catholic resistance theory. Stefania Tutino, for instance, acknowledges that the the excommunication took on ‘the connotations of a national emergency’ and became central to public debate.33 Tutino argues that Nicholas Sander’s De Visibili Monarchia (1571) was one of the strongest attacks against the Elizabethan supremacy and a clear proponent of the papal rights invoked by the queen’s excommunication.34 While Tutino’s work demonstrates the impact of the bull for Catholic

30 31 32 33 34

47. See also his article ‘English Catholics and the Papal Deposing Power 1570–​1640’, Recusant History 6 (1961), 205–​27. Peter Holmes, Resistance and Compromise: The Political Thought of Elizabethan Catholics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), 29–​36. Thomas McCoog, The Society of Jesus in Ireland, Scotland, and England, 1541–​1588: ‘Our Way of Proceeding?’ (Leiden: Brill, 1996), 7, 80–​128. Victor Houliston, Catholic Resistance in Elizabethan England: Robert Persons’s Confessional Polemic, 1580–​1610 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007), 32. Stefania Tutino, Law and Conscience: Catholicism in Early Modern England, 1570–​1625 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007), 23. Ibid., 11–​52.

10 Introduction political theorists, she maintains that the bull inspired few practical changes in Catholics’ behaviour. Historians looking at the wider political trajectory of Elizabeth’s reign have echoed these assessments, presumably supposing that because of the 1580 ruling, most Catholics ignored the bull if they were aware of it, and that it therefore could have had little impact on Catholic attitudes towards the queen. Close analysis of the language of this ruling and its connections to the start of the Jesuit mission to England in 1580, however, indicate that there were several ways to interpret it, and that not all English Catholics understood it as an excusal from the obligations laid out in Regnans in Excelsis. This book argues that Gregory xiii’s confirmation of the excommunication in 1580 and his ruling on its interpretation in fact had greater consequences for Catholic resistance, foreign policy, and domestic politics in Elizabeth’s kingdoms than did the bull of 1570, and is critical to understanding the legacy of the bull in post-​Reformation England and Ireland. The Excommunication of Elizabeth i considers how this event provoked a wide range of nonviolent and violent forms of subversion, and seeks to expand the ways in which we conceive of religious and political resistance in early modern England. Much of the scholarship on Catholic political thought discussed here concluded that the papal excommunication and deposition of Elizabeth had little impact in England because it did not inspire armed resistance against the queen. Yet such a conclusion overlooks the many ways in which it was possible to express religious and political dissent without resorting to violence in post-​Reformation England. Studies of English Catholic culture have shown the variety of ways in which Catholics subverted the Elizabethan government.35 Alexandra Walsham has demonstrated the vibrancy of post-​Reformation English Catholicism, and the creativity with which Catholics continued to practise their faith in secret despite the risk of harsh punishment they faced if caught by the Elizabethan authorities.36 Her assessments of English Catholic engagement with print and the vernacular, as well as the continued interest within the community in sacred objects, relics, and spaces highlight the ingenuity with which English Catholics adapted to adverse religious circumstances. 35

36

See for instance Ronald Corthell, Frances Dolan, Christopher Highley, and Arthur Marotti, eds., Catholic Culture in Early Modern England (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2007); Lowell Gallagher, ed., Redrawing the Map of Early Modern English Catholicism (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2012). See Alexandra Walsham, Catholic Reformation in Protestant Britain (Farnham: Ashgate, 2014), for a collection of her essays on this subject.

Introduction

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These works also show Catholics’ willingness to engage in activities that resisted the Elizabethan government.37 Recent collections by Clarinda Calma, James Kelly, and Susan Royal have explored the interactions between Catholic devotion, identity, and politics in early modern England, and provide useful models for how this book explores the varieties of resistance in which Catholics engaged.38 In addition to motivating a variety of nonviolent forms of resistance, Regnans in Excelsis helped to justify at least two armed rebellions against English governance during Elizabeth’s reign, one of which escalated into a war that lasted for nine years. Hiram Morgan has described how the leaders of Irish rebellions in the 1580s and 1590s made their Catholic faith central to their theories of resistance, to unite the otherwise fractious ruling families in their attempts to overthrow English rule.39 When we consider the excommunication’s impact beyond the English borders, claims about its failure to instigate violence are less sustainable. Its role in justifying armed conflict in Ireland shows that the papal bull was perfectly capable of provoking more aggressive forms of resistance. Regnans in Excelsis raised acute questions amongst English Catholics about the limits of obedience and loyalty to the crown. Adrian Morey, Elliot Rose, and Arnold Pritchard have pointed to a lack of violent resistance amongst English Catholics as proof of their continued loyalty to the queen after 1570, echoing similar conclusions in early studies of English Catholic political thought.40 Recent scholarship on English Catholic politics has challenged earlier assumptions about the nature of English Catholic political participation and obedience. 37

38

39 40

Alexandra Walsham, ‘Domme Preachers? Post-​Reformation Catholicism and the Culture of Print’, Past and Present 168 (2000), 72–​123; ‘Skeletons in the Cupboard: Relics after the English Reformation’, in Relics and Remains, edited by Alexandra Walsham (Oxford: Oxford Journals, 2010), 121–​43; ‘Sacred Topography and Social Memory: Religious Change and the Landscape in Early Modern Britain and Ireland’, Journal of Religious History 36, no. 1 (2012), 31–​51. James Kelly and Susan Royal, eds., Early Modern English Catholicism: Identity, Memory, and Counter-​Reformation (Leiden: Brill, 2016); Teresa Bela, Clarinda Calma, and Jolanta Rzegocka, eds., Publishing Subversive Texts in Elizabethan England and the Polish-​ Lithuanian Commonwealth (Leiden: Brill, 2016). Hiram Morgan, ‘Never Any Realm Worse Governed:  Queen Elizabeth and Ireland’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 14 (2004), 295–​308; see also idem, ‘Faith and Fatherland’. Adrian Morey, The Catholic Subjects of Elizabeth I (London:  Allen and Unwin, 1978), Arnold Pritchard, Catholic Loyalism in Elizabethan England (London: Scolar Press, 1979); Elliott Rose, Cases of Conscience:  Alternatives Open to Recusants and Puritans under Elizabeth I  and James I (Cambridge:  Cambridge University Press, 1975). For a revised assessment see Patrick McGrath, ‘The Bloody Questions Reconsidered’, Recusant History 20 (1991), 305–​19.

12 Introduction Sandeep Kaushik’s work on Sir Thomas Tresham, for instance, characterises his persistence in recusancy, patronage of less wealthy Catholic families, and advancement of Catholic interests in regions near his family estates as a kind of ‘defensive resistance’ which did not constitute a direct threat to the queen.41 The work of Michael Questier and James Kelly on the Browne and Petre families, respectively, likewise demonstrates their active political engagement through patronage, familial networks, and ideological connections during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.42 In a similar survey of the Vaux family, Jessie Childs highlights the emotional turmoil wrought by the legal difficulties that English Catholics faced during Elizabeth’s reign.43 Katy Gibbons and Brian Lockey, on the other hand, have illuminated the political activity of English Catholic exiles in Europe despite their displacement, and their industry in lobbying for the Catholic cause both in their countries of birth and in their adopted ones.44 These studies illustrate effectively how particular social circles and families negotiated the political and spiritual dilemmas wrought by the Elizabethan regime’s anti-​Catholic policies. Many of these works also implicitly engage with the question of what it meant to be ‘loyal’ to one’s monarch and country in this period. However, there remains a lack of consensus with respect to how exactly one might characterise a loyal or disloyal Catholic in early modern England. By assessing how Regnans in Excelsis altered Catholic attitudes and behaviours towards the Elizabethan regime, The Excommunication of Elizabeth i offers further insight into how English Catholics conceived of allegiance to the monarch, the government, and their country. 2

Elizabeth’s Excommunication in Surviving Records

The sources I have used to study the consequences of Elizabeth’s excommunication are mostly well-​known. While few copies of Regnans in Excelsis survive 41

Sandeep Kaushik, ‘Resistance, Loyalty, and Recusant Politics: Sir Thomas Tresham and the Elizabethan State’, Midland History 21 (1996), 37–​72. 42 Michael Questier, Catholicism and Community in Early Modern England:  Politics, Aristocratic Patronage and Religion, c.  1550–​1640 (Cambridge:  Cambridge University Press, 2006); James Kelly, ‘Kinship and Religious Politics Among Catholic Families in England, 1570–​1640’, History 94, no. 315 (2009), 328–​43. 43 Jessie Childs, God’s Traitors: Terror and Faith in Elizabethan England (London: The Bodley Head, 2014). 44 Katy Gibbons, English Catholic Exiles in Late Sixteenth-​Century Paris (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2011); Lockey, English Transnationalism and the Commonwealth; see also Albert Loomie, The Spanish Elizabethans: The English Exiles at the Court of Philip II (London: Burns and Oates, 1965).

Introduction

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in England, those that do point to efforts to circulate the bull in manuscript and print. Court records, state correspondence, print and manuscript literature point to the transmission of information about Elizabeth’s excommunication in oral and written discourse. Government sources offer invaluable insight into the regime’s perceptions of how Elizabeth’s subjects responded to her excommunication. They also provide some perspective on the international community, including the English Catholic exiles, and its role in promulgating Regnans in Excelsis. Letters exchanged between papal nuncios stationed across Europe and in Rome also provide valuable information about the papacy’s plans for the distribution and enforcement of the excommunication. For most English and Irish Catholics, discussing the bull in any sense would have been risky, if not outright dangerous, in the political climate after 1570. Evidence for English and Irish Catholic responses to the bull or activities related to it often comes from government records. When the opinions of English Catholics about the bull are expressed in such sources, it is often because they were arrested on suspicion of treason, and their answers to interrogations about the excommunication must be treated cautiously. Nevertheless, these documents point to pervasive concerns about the papal bull and the threat it posed to security. Indeed, some of the sources left by English Catholics in this period suggest that these anxieties were not without foundation. Letters exchanged between Jesuit and seminary priests in England and abroad shed light on how the excommunication affected their understanding of the queen’s legitimacy. Similarly, correspondence between English Catholics, the papacy, and foreign governments after 1570 shows how the excommunication altered their views of Elizabeth and her government, as do records of seditious speech that survive from this period. The papers of Sir George Carew, a captain who served in the English army in Ireland, are especially useful for considering how people in Ireland responded to Elizabeth’s excommunication throughout her reign. Contemporary print and manuscript texts are some of the most fruitful resources for attempting to understand how deeply Elizabeth’s excommunication scarred confessional politics in England. Elizabeth’s supporters produced reactionary sermons, pamphlets, speeches, polemics, and ballads after the publication of Regnans in Excelsis. Responses written by and on behalf of English Catholics also offer insight into how people used the bull to further different political agendas. Distinct narratives about Elizabeth’s excommunication and its ramifications emerged from this discourse, with authors resorting to particular versions of events if they were Catholic, and other versions if they were Protestant. Consequently, these texts are also useful for gauging how people wished to shape public perceptions of the excommunication, depending on their religious identities.

14 Introduction This book examines the responses of Catholics and Protestants to Queen Elizabeth’s excommunication from 1570 to 1603 and its long-​term repercussions in her kingdom. The first chapter surveys the circumstances and events that eventually led to Elizabeth’s excommunication in 1570. The possibility of excommunicating the queen had been under discussion in the Holy See since her accession, but the papacy deferred the decision at various points for political reasons. The chapter explains the logistics of excommunicating a ruler from the Catholic Church, and the different ways in which excommunication could occur, formally and informally. This chapter also analyses the language of the papal bull and its range of implications for Elizabeth’s subjects, which is critical for understanding the variety of responses to the sentence. Chapters 2 and 3 investigate the extent and forms of communication about the papal excommunication during Elizabeth’s reign. The second chapter explores the efforts of Catholics in England, Ireland, and on the continent to distribute and circulate copies of the papal bull after 1570. It considers the different forms of media in which information about the excommunication was made available and disproves the notion that few people would have seen or known about the excommunication in some form. Chapter 3 assesses the strategies used by Protestant writers to attack the excommunication. It also examines efforts to translate the sentence into English, and how the inclusion of translations and criticism of the bull in Protestant polemics contributed to awareness of Elizabeth’s excommunication in unanticipated ways. The influence of the papal bull over foreign relations and domestic policy is the focus of the fourth chapter. Chapter 4 analyses the importance that government officials attributed to the excommunication in dealings with countries such as Spain, France, Scotland, and the Low Countries, to illustrate the grave concerns about security that the bull provoked. The fifth chapter explores how Elizabeth’s excommunication affected Catholics’ perceptions of the queen and their relationship to her. Because the political, social, and cultural activities of prominent Catholic families such as the Brownes, Howards, Vauxes, Treshams, and Petres have been well documented in recent studies, these names appear less frequently here. Rather, using records of seditious speech and other forms of disobedience, I attempt to provide some perspective on how a wider cross-​ section of Elizabeth’s subjects responded to the excommunication and deposition of the queen. The chapter also assesses the role of the excommunication in justifying and inspiring armed resistance in Ireland during the Desmond Rebellions and the Nine Years’ War, as well as the different forms of nonviolent resistance that the bull provoked in England. By considering a fuller range of violent and nonviolent resistance in England and Ireland, this book

Introduction

15

demonstrates the significant role the excommunication played in encouraging Catholic subversion of the Elizabethan regime. The ramifications of Queen Elizabeth’s excommunication in confessional politics can tell us much about the nature of political participation and religious resistance in early modern England and Ireland, the roots of anti-​Catholicism, and the enduring legacies of confessional myths about the Reformation period. Furthermore, the events considered here also illustrate the sustained power of papal excommunication as a political weapon in post-​Reformation Europe. This book demonstrates the centrality of Queen Elizabeth’s excommunication to the developments of late sixteenth-​century England and the necessity of integrating it more fully into studies of the Reformation.

chapter 1

The Excommunication of Elizabeth i in International Politics Although the Northern Rebellion finally prompted Pius v to pronounce the excommunication and deposition of Elizabeth in 1570, the papacy and other Catholic rulers in Europe had been contemplating such a move against the queen from the time of her accession. Questions pertaining to Elizabeth’s legitimacy, coupled with the recent return of England to Roman Catholicism during the reign of Mary i and the likelihood that Elizabeth and her ministers would once again withdraw England from the Church, left Elizabeth’s crown open to challenges on grounds of both her birth and religion. Challenges to Elizabeth’s authority and succession in the 1550s and early 1560s have been well-​documented.1 Catholic debates about excommunicating Elizabeth during these years contributed significantly to these challenges, providing justification for questioning her right to rule. When the excommunication was finally pronounced and published in 1570, it contained some striking directives from the papacy, particularly regarding the deprivation of Elizabeth’s titles and the obligation of her subjects to resist her. While Pope Gregory xiii issued a further ruling on the bull in 1580 to clarify some of these dilemmas, the language of this ruling also raised questions about how and when the sentence against Elizabeth could be executed. 1

Making the Case for Elizabeth’s Illegitimacy, 1558–​1569

Shortly after Mary i of England died in November 1558, Pope Paul iv received a request from the French King Henri ii on behalf of Mary Queen of Scots, who at the time was married to his son, the Dauphin Francois.2 As a Catholic

1 See for instance Stephen Alford, The Early Elizabethan Polity: William Cecil and the British Succession Crisis, 1558–​1569 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998); Wallace MacCaffrey, The Shaping of the Elizabethan Regime (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1968); Susan Doran and Glenn Richardson eds., Tudor England and its Neighbours (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005); Patrick Collinson, ‘The Elizabethan Exclusion Crisis and the Elizabethan Polity’, Proceedings of the British Academy 84 (1994), 51–​92. 2 csp Rome vol. 1, 1.

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2020 | DOI:10.1163/9789004426009_003

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descendant of the Tudors, Mary was considered the best potential successor to Elizabeth amongst the Catholic rulers of Europe in the event of her untimely death.3 In 1558, however, Henri asked the pope to declare Elizabeth illegitimate and therefore incapable of succeeding to the English throne, so that the crown could pass directly to his daughter-​in-​law instead.4 From 1556 England had assisted Spain and the Holy Roman Empire in their wars against France for domination in the Italian peninsula, an alliance that came about after Philip ii’s marriage with the English Queen Mary.5 England was still at war with France when Mary died, and her death gave the French monarchy an opportunity to press its own claims for the English throne on the grounds of safeguarding the Catholic Church there. The marriage of Elizabeth’s parents had never been recognised by the Holy See, so she was technically illegitimate from the perspective of the Catholic Church.6 If the French king could persuade the pope to pronounce Elizabeth illegitimate and excommunicated and she could be forcibly removed from power, then his son could (in theory) acquire considerable power in northern Europe when he succeeded, ruling France as well as Scotland, England, and Ireland through his Scottish wife. The war would have given France the perfect excuse to stake its claim for the English crown on behalf of Mary Queen of Scots, especially now that Elizabeth, whose religious beliefs were decidedly not Catholic and whose parentage was suspect in the eyes of the Holy See, had succeeded. Economic crisis, religious tensions, and war weariness brought about by the loss of Calais to the French in 1557 meant that the English people were in neither the position nor the mood to continue a prolonged conflict with France. This left Elizabeth in a precarious position if peace could not be agreed upon, particularly since Philip ii had proved an inconsistent ally to England in a war that the new queen’s subjects largely blamed him for. Philip himself was more interested in securing peace on favourable terms for Spain with France.7 3 Thomas McCoog, ‘A View from Abroad: Continental Powers and the Succession’, in Susan Doran and Paulina Kewes, eds., Doubtful and Dangerous: The Question of Succession in Late Elizabethan England (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2014), 257–​58. 4 csp Rome vol. 1, 1. The request is corroborated by reports sent to the Privy Council by Lord Cobham, the English ambassador in France, and Sir Edward Carne, who continued acting as ambassador in Rome immediately after Mary’s death. TNA SP 70/​1 f. 82, 161. 5 David Potter, ‘England and Europe, 1558–​85’, in Susan Doran and Norman Jones, eds., The Elizabethan World (London:  Routledge, 2011), 613–​15; see also MacCaffrey, Elizabethan Regime, 45–​49. 6 Susan Doran and Christopher Durston, eds., Princes, Pastors, and People: The Church and Religion in England, 1500–​1700 (London: Routledge, 2003), 70–​71. 7 MacCaffrey, Elizabethan Regime, 47–​48; see also Geoffrey Parker, Imprudent King: A New Life of Philip II (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2014), 121–​25.

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Elizabeth’s new councillors worried about what Paul iv might do if parliament severed ties with Rome once more. A  memorandum in the papers of William Cecil entitled ‘A Device for the Alteration of Religion’, which outlined plans for Elizabeth’s first parliament, observed that one of the ‘dangers that may ensue upon the alteration’ was that the pope might excommunicate the queen and interdict the realm, making it ‘a prey to all the princes that will enter upon it’.8 Although Paul iv recorded the French king’s request in the papal diary, he never issued an official statement concerning Elizabeth’s legitimacy or in favour of Mary Queen of Scots’ succession in England. The French king’s request arrived within a month of the death of Mary i, and at the time it was not clear how or whether Elizabeth and her ministers would separate England from the Roman Church once more. The Italian Wars between France, Spain, and the Holy Roman Empire had been dragging on since 1551, and Henri ii could ill afford another drawn out conflict for the English crown. It is possible that Henri pressed the Scottish queen’s claim with the pope in order to gain an advantage in negotiations with England for peace. The French delegation certainly raised questions about the ability of Elizabeth’s envoys to negotiate with them in light of uncertainty as to whether Elizabeth was the rightful possessor of the English crown, an uncertainty which the French king had pointed out in the first place.9 When the treaty was signed at Cateau-​Cambrésis in April 1559, England agreed that Calais could remain under French control, relinquishing its last foothold in the kingdom and one that had been a strategic advantage in previous wars.10 The king of Spain and his advisors were also considering the potential consequences of an excommunication against Elizabeth in the late 1550s. A few months after the pope received the French petition, the Spanish ambassador in England, the Count de Feria, wrote to Philip ii concerning the religious settlement passed by parliament. In May de Feria described how many English bishops had refused to accept the settlement and felt confident that most of Elizabeth’s subjects remained Catholic in their beliefs. De Feria referred to Elizabeth as ‘a daughter of the devil and the greatest scoundrels and heretics in the land’.11 De Feria speculated that once the pope learned of the religious settlement he would take action against Elizabeth, but he warned against imposing any sentence that would also punish her subjects. He compared the 1559 settlement with Henry viii’s passage of the Act of Supremacy and 8 BL Cotton MS Julius F/​VI f. 161. 9 MacCaffrey, Elizabethan Regime, 47–​49. 10 Ibid. 11 csp Simancas vol. 1, 64–​78.

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Uniformity in 1534, cautioning that while Henry’s parliament had passed the act almost unanimously, the 1559 settlement had caused deep divisions in parliament. Consequently, it would be ‘very important that the Pope should except the [English] Catholics from excommunication’ if any sentence were passed against Elizabeth, as to include the faithful in such a sentence would be unjust.12 De Feria argued that ‘it will be a great consolation for the Catholics now to know that they are excepted’ from any censure against the queen, and offered to find a copy of the excommunication issued against Henry viii by Pope Paul iii in 1538 to send to Philip for comparison.13 De Feria was not the only member of the Spanish Embassy in London who felt that the pope should censure Elizabeth. In June 1559 the bishop of Aquila (Alvaro de la Quadra) reported that the English people ‘were grieved’ to hear that the pope had refrained from condemning Elizabeth, and blamed Philip for the lack of intervention from Rome.14 These reports suggest that the Spanish ambassadors in England supported more direct involvement from the papacy, and hoped that their counsel would move Philip to intercede with the pope to procure some form of censure against Elizabeth. Indeed, when Paul iv learned of the 1559 settlement and that England would once again break with Rome, he wrote to Philip giving his full approval for the king to invade and offered to grant the crown of England to Philip if he successfully deposed Elizabeth.15 When Philip replied to the ambassadors in England with further instructions in July, however, he said nothing about the ongoing debate about whether the pope should excommunicate Elizabeth, nor did he answer any charges concerning his role in the affair. Instead he informed de Feria and de Quadra that he would be dispatching a new envoy, Don Juan de Ayala, directly from his court to speak with the English queen, to press upon her that her religious policies were putting her throne and her diplomatic ties with Spain in jeopardy.16 While Philip’s warning to Elizabeth hinted at the possibility of her deprivation, it did not explicitly state that the pope might pass such a sentence. At the time Philip could do little else but send such warnings. Parts of Spain were on the verge of revolt in the late 1550s because of bad harvests and excessive taxation. The Castilian treasury was bankrupt, and Philip faced increasing pressure from his ministers to return home from the Netherlands, where he 12 Ibid. 13 Ibid. 14 Ibid., 78. 15 Parker, Imprudent King, 126. 16 csp Simancas vol. 1, 81–​91.

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had been living since Mary’s death, to put things right.17 Even if he wanted to take more aggressive action to prevent England’s re-​separation from Rome, he did not have the resources to carry out any such action. There was also the French claim to consider. Henri ii died unexpectedly in a jousting accident in July 1559, leaving his son Francis with the French crown as well as the Scottish one through Mary Queen of Scots. If Paul iv excommunicated Elizabeth now, the French could more easily claim the English throne on Mary Stuart’s behalf than could Philip as the consort of the deceased Mary Tudor. The consensus amongst biographers of Philip ii and Paul iv is that Philip persuaded the pope to hold off on excommunicating Elizabeth, to allow more time for a diplomatic solution to be reached concerning England’s new religious settlement, and to avoid the outbreak of war between France and England.18 The question of Elizabeth’s excommunication was revived again when Pope Pius iv proposed the sentence at the Council of Trent during its concluding sessions in the summer of 1563.19 Pius iv presented the matter to the council legates after receiving a petition from English Catholic exiles living in Louvain. The petition lamented the state into which religion in England had lapsed, and requested some form of judgement or assistance from the council and the pope.20 On 2 June 1563 Pius iv directed Cardinal Charles Borromeo, who was presiding over the council, to write to the legates, saying that ‘as the Decrees of the Council involve the condemnation of the Queen of England, the Protestants and the Huguenots’, they would ‘do well to begin considering what will be the proper procedure on your own and his Holiness’ part, and to send

17 Parker, Imprudent King, 127. 18 For a summary of this literature see Ted Booth, ‘Elizabeth I and Pope Paul IV: Reticence and Reformation’, Church History and Religious Culture 94, no. 3 (2014), 318–​21. 19 The debate about whether to excommunicate Elizabeth that took place in the early 1560s has received little attention in Reformation scholarship. Arnold Meyer’s book on England and the Catholic Church under Queen Elizabeth, translated from German into English in 1916, and J.H. Pollen’s 1920 monograph English Catholics in the Reign of Queen Elizabeth, remain the only works on this period to discuss the debate in any detail. John O’Malley’s more recent works on the decrees and developments of the council do not mention this episode at all. Krista Kesselring’s recent study of the Northern Rebellion of 1569 does provide a brief overview of these earlier events. See Meyer, England and the Catholic Church, 50–​58; Pollen, English Catholics in the Reign of Queen Elizabeth, 66–​83; John O’Malley, Trent: What Happened at the Council (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2000); Krista Kesselring, The Northern Rebellion of 1569:  Faith, Politics, and Protest in Elizabethan England (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), 34–​35. 20 A copy is printed in F.B. von Buchholz, Geschichte der Riegerung Ferdinands des Ersten, vol. 9 (Vienna: 1838), 701.

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his Holiness your opinion in writing, especially in regard to the Queen of England’.21 The pope also directed the legates from France, Spain, and the Holy Roman Empire to write to their respective sovereigns and seek their advice. The imperial legates received a negative response from the Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand I. The papal nuncio at the imperial court replied to the legates on 17 June saying ‘as to the proposed deprivation of the Queen of England upon occasion of her styling herself head of the … Church, his Majesty deems it a pernicious project, because, as all the Princes and States that have departed from the Catholic faith have in fact erred in the same way … it would seem to follow that all should be treated alike; otherwise the consequences would be in every way most embarrassing’.22 The nuncio remarked that he had never known ‘anything that has ever moved the Emperor so much as the proposal now made to deprive the Queen of England, and for my part I consider that his Majesty will never consent to it, as it might disconcert many of his designs, besides which the advantage that the Catholic Church is to get thereby is not apparent’.23 From 1559, the emperor had been trying to arrange a marriage between Elizabeth and his son, the archduke Charles of Austria. The negotiations had stalled but were revived after the Council of Trent concluded, and an excommunication would have added to the religious obstacles already facing the match.24 The emperor’s hostility to the proposed excommunication may also have been related to the historic difficulties his predecessors had experienced with the papacy about the church’s authority: six Holy Roman Emperors had been excommunicated by popes in the past.25 Philip ii was no more enthusiastic about the proposed excommunication of the queen than he had been four years previously. Cardinal Granvelle, the nuncio in Spain, in fact reminded the council that ‘his Catholic Majesty has more than once given the Pope to understand that neither at the instigation of 21

22 23 24 25

csp Rome, vol. 1, 130. See also asv Conc. Trid. Vol. 68 f. 88-​89v: ‘Sua Santissima dice che douendosi per li Decreti del Concilio condennare la Regina d’Inghilterra, li Protestanti et gli Vgonotti, sara bene che Vostri Illustrissime comincine a pensare quelche esse haueranno a fare circa cio, et quelche sua Santissma hauera a far lei, et ne scriuano qua quanto prima il parer loro, massime circa la Regina d’Inghilterra’. csp Rome, vol. 1, 131–​32. Ibid., 132–​33. Susan Doran, Monarchy and Matrimony: The Courtships of Elizabeth I (London: Routledge, 1996), 26–​29, 74. For more on the roots of this conflict see Uta-​Renate Blumenthal, The Investiture Controversy:  Church and Monarchy from the Ninth to the Twelfth Century (Philadelphia:  University of Pennsylvania Press, 1988); I.S. Robinson, Authority and Resistance in the Investiture Contest: The Polemical Literature of the Late Eleventh Century (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1978).

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the French nor of any others should he suffer himself to be induced to make any pronouncement against the said Queen without first communicating and consulting with him … he is ever anxiously pondering some method of bringing that kingdom back into a better way’.26 It is possible that, as in 1559, Philip was concerned about the implications of a successful excommunication and deposition of Elizabeth for the balance of power between France and Spain. Whatever Philip’s suspicions may have been, the French delegation ultimately assented to the opinions of the Spanish king and the emperor regarding the excommunication. Following a discussion with the legates from the empire, Poland, and Savoy, Charles de Guise, the Cardinal of Lorraine and leader of the French delegation in Trent, ‘concluded that it behooved us to take the opinion not only of the Pope but also of the Emperor thereon’.27 Faced with pressure from Ferdinand and Philip, the council legates wrote to Cardinal Borromeo in Rome, recommending that Pius iv let the matter rest ‘until it shall please God to indicate what, and how and when, action is to be taken’.28 Borromeo conveyed this message to Pius iv and on 10 July replied to the imperial nuncio that ‘the Pope, though counselled to cause rigorous proceedings to be taken by the Synod against the Queen of England, is nevertheless resolved to attach so much weight to his Majesty’s judgment, that he has instructed the Legates to be guided by his Majesty’s opinion’.29 For the time being, then, the excommunication of Elizabeth was put on hold, in hopes that other means might be found to persuade her to return to the Roman Church. Given Elizabeth’s uncertain status within the Roman Catholic Church, one might ask whether it was even necessary to formally excommunicate her. Elizabeth had never been baptised according to the Roman rites, though she had occasionally attended Mass during her sister’s reign.30 Furthermore, the Roman Catholic Church had never acknowledged the marriage of her parents. When Elizabeth ascended the throne she was still technically illegitimate in the Church’s view, leaving her right to rule open to challenge.31 During the temporary restoration of Catholicism in England from 26 27 28 29 30 31

csp Rome, vol. 1, 133–​34. Ibid., 133. Ibid., 137; see also Meyer, England and the Catholic Church, 53; Pollen, English Catholics in the Reign of Queen Elizabeth, 77. csp Rome, vol. 1, 137–​38. Christopher Haigh, Elizabeth I (London: Longman, 1988), c­ hapter 2. Although she was a legitimate successor in English law. See Paulina Kewes, ‘The Exclusion Crisis of 1553 and the Elizabethan Succession’, in Mary Tudor: Old and New Perspectives, edited by Susan Doran and Thomas Freeman (Basingstoke:  Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), 49–​61.

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1553–​58, many had faced similar concerns about the reinstatement of Roman rites. Roughly half of the population was under the age of twenty when Mary Tudor became queen, and some had probably never received the Roman Catholic sacraments before.32 The fact that many of these people, including Elizabeth, had been baptised in schism did not automatically exclude them from membership in the Roman Catholic Church, or mean that they had to undergo the rite again. The leaders of the Marian church, acknowledging the difficulties in re-​baptising a large portion of the kingdom, adopted a policy based on traditional doctrine, which asserted that those who had been baptised by schismatics or heretics need not be baptised again.33 Thus, Elizabeth’s baptism in schism did not exclude her from the Roman Church or its jurisdiction in the eyes of its leadership. From the Catholic Church’s perspective, Elizabeth remained vulnerable to papal censure and her legitimacy open to question in canon law. In light of the Council of Trent’s ruling and the decision of Pius iv not to excommunicate Elizabeth, it is worth considering why Pius v decided to flout conciliar authority and the recommendations of his predecessor years later. When Pius v formally declared Elizabeth excommunicated from the Catholic Church in 1570, England was in the middle of a political crisis. The pope pronounced the sentence against Elizabeth after receiving a letter on 16 February from the earls of Northumberland and Westmoreland. In this letter, the earls declared their intention to rebel against the queen and asked for help from the papacy.34 Having received their appeal, the pope promised divine and financial assistance to the rebels, and issued the formal excommunication against Elizabeth to lend further credibility to the rebellion, expecting the sentence to encourage greater support for the earls’ resistance both domestically and internationally.35 The letter that Westmoreland and Northumberland wrote to the pope, however, was dated 8 November 1569. The earls had marched into Durham on 14 November, beginning a rebellion in the north of England that would last about five weeks. After early successes with the seizures of Durham, Barnard Castle, and the port of Hartlepool, the rebels, lacking coherent plans 32 33 34 35

Susan Brigden estimates that about half the population of England was younger than twenty when Mary i succeeded; see Brigden, New Worlds, Lost Worlds:  The Rule of the Tudors, 1485–​1603 (London: Penguin, 2000), 207. William Wiseman, ‘The Theology and Spirituality of a Marian Bishop: The Pastoral and Polemical Sermons of Thomas Watson,’ in The Church of Mary Tudor, edited by Eamon Duffy and David Loades (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006), 270–​73. However, the pope had known about the rebellion by at least 4 February, since he wrote to Alba on this date telling him to help the rebels. See csp Rome, vol. 1, 324–​25. Krista Kesselring, The Northern Rebellion, 158.

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for further attacks, were overwhelmed by crown forces when they arrived in the north. On 20 December the earls fled into Scotland with around 100 horsemen, leaving the rest of their supporters to the queen’s mercy and effectively ending the Northern Rebellion in England.36 The papal excommunication of Elizabeth, issued nearly two months too late, therefore did little either to justify or to strengthen the rebellion. With the benefit of hindsight, Pius V’s excommunication of Elizabeth can appear poorly timed and politically ill-​informed.37 A closer assessment of what exactly Pius v knew about the rebellion and when he learned it, however, reveals a more complicated picture. The papacy had been receiving reports of the Northern Rebellion and unrest in England from as early as 11 December 1569, principally from second-​hand sources in the Low Countries and Spain.38 In fact the papacy may have been aware of the possibility of an insurrection from an even earlier date. The Spanish nuncio wrote on 12 December that the pope thought it possible that some disturbance might break out following the duke of Norfolk’s arrest in October 1569, and that King Philip ii should do all he could to help the English Catholics if it did.39 Admittedly, much of the news about the rebellion received in Rome between December 1569 and January 1570 was exaggerated. A newsletter sent to Rome from Augsburg on 25 December 1569 and apparently based on letters written from England on 12 December described how the rebels had taken control of several ports in the north including Hull and Newcastle; in fact, the only port they had secured was Hartlepool.40 These exaggerations arose from the confusion of the rebellion itself: few people in England were sure about whether the rebels or the crown held the advantage at any given point. In this period little distinction existed between rumour and news: contemporary accounts and discussions of the rising amongst people in England made it appear much larger in numbers than we now know it to have been.41 36 37

38 39 40 41

Ibid., 45–​90. For this interpretation see for instance Meyer, England and the Catholic Church, 77–​82. See also A.F. Pollard, History of England from the Accession of Edward VI to the Death of Elizabeth (London:  Longmans, Green and Co., 1910), 369–​70; A.G. Dickens, The English Reformation (London: Batsford, 1964), 311–​12; Julian Lock, ‘ “Strange Usurped Potentates”: Elizabeth I, the Papacy, and the Indian Summer of the Medieval Deposing Power’, Unpublished DPhil Thesis (University of Oxford). csp Rome, vol. 1, 315–​16. It is important to keep in mind that it often took two to three months for news from England to reach Rome. See Kesselring, Northern Rebellion, 58; see also Pollen, English Catholics in the Reign of Elizabeth, 146. asv Segr. di Stato, Spagna, vol. 4 f. 105d; csp Rome, vol. 1, 316–​17. bav Urb. Lat. 1041 f. 208; csp Rome 1, 318–​19. Kesselring, ‘Constructing and Containing the Northern Rising’, 420–​23.

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It may be somewhat unjust to dismiss Pius V’s excommunication of Elizabeth as based on bad intelligence when the English themselves were often uncertain as to whether their own information about the ­rebellion was ­accurate. Despite the inconsistent quality of intelligence about England in Rome, the pope was aware of some of the basic facts about the rebels’ situation by early 1570. News reports sent to Rome from Antwerp on 15 January 1570 noted the retreat of the earls into Scotland, and on 4 February Pius v wrote to the duke of Alba about his ‘daily anxiety and solicitude’ for those who had ‘taken arms no less holy than just for the restoration of the Catholic religion’ in England.42 The next day, the Pontifical Court, under the direction of Alexander Riario, opened proceedings for an indictment against Elizabeth for her alleged crimes against the Catholic Church. An account of the trial appears in the Annales Ecclesiastici, a chronological history of the Church begun by the pontifical librarian Cesare Baronio in 1588 and continued by Odorico Rinaldi and Giacomo Laderchi in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.43 Elizabeth was charged with seventeen crimes against the Catholic Church, including the usurpation of the headship of the English Church, the introduction of an oath and laws against papal authority, the deprivation of Catholic bishops and clergy, and their replacement with heretical priests. The indictment also accused Elizabeth of ‘living in the way of heretics’: she did not hear Mass or partake in other divine offices of the Catholic Church, and imposed heretical practices concerning the Eucharist.44 Twelve Englishmen living in exile in Rome were called to give evidence for these accusations: Richard Shelley, the prior of the Order of St John; Thomas Goldwell, the former bishop of St Asaph in Wales; Morris Clynnog, the former bishop of Bangor in Wales; the priests Nicholas Morton, Thomas Kirton, Henry Kirton, William Allot, Edward Bromburgh, William Gyblet, and Richard Hall; Henry Henshaw, former rector of Lincoln College, Oxford; and Edmund Daniel, former dean of Hereford Cathedral.45 Their testimony concluded on 10 February and Riario delivered his recommendation on the twelfth, which was 42 csp Rome, vol. 1, 321–​24. 43 The Annales are the principal surviving source of information for the pope’s proceedings against the queen. Arnold Meyer and John Pollen both cite the Annales in their accounts of the trial, as does Julian Lock in his more recent thesis. See Meyer, England and the Catholic Church, 76–​77; Pollen, English Catholics, 146–​49; Lock, ‘Strange Usurped Potentates’, 387. 44 Cesare Baronio, Odorico Rinaldi, and Giacamo Laderchi, Annales Ecclesiastici, vol. 37 (Barri-​Ducis: L. Guerrin, 1883),153–​54. 45 Ibid; see also Pollen, English Catholics, 148.

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read out in the court by Pius v: that for her crimes Elizabeth was accordingly declared excommunicated and anathema.46 On 16 February, the pope received Northumberland and Westmoreland’s plea for help. Nine days later, Pius issued the bull of excommunication and deposition against Elizabeth. The progression of these events indicates that Pius v had been considering more direct action against Elizabeth well before he received the earls’ petition, and may have proceeded with the bull whether or not the rebels asked formally for assistance. In the weeks leading up to his decision to excommunicate the queen, the pope had encouraged the king of Spain and the duke of Alba to do all they could to assist the Catholics in England.47 The pope’s overtures were related partly to the imprisonment of the duke of Norfolk and Mary Queen of Scots, following the Privy Council’s discovery of their plans to marry, and he in fact wrote to the duke and the Scottish queen offering them spiritual consolation, if little else.48 The international context in which Pius v decided to excommunicate Elizabeth could also explain why the pope proceeded against the queen. Although we now know that the flight of the earls into Scotland precipitated the end of the rising in England, it was not obvious to contemporaries at the time of their escape. Skirmishes between Elizabeth’s troops and supporters of the earls in Scotland persisted in the border regions between the two kingdoms until September 1570. It is possible that the earls escaped to Scotland to bide their time, in hopes that aid would arrive from the papacy and others sympathetic to their cause, so that they could then march back into England.49 The assassination of the earl of Moray, who had been acting as regent for the child king James vi, had also left a power vacuum in Scotland which Mary Queen of Scots’ supporters hoped to exploit to secure her restoration there.50 When one considers that Pius v was aware of the earls’ flight and Moray’s assassination in Scotland when he issued the excommunication of the queen, it is possible that the pope likewise shared this hope and believed that the rebels could secure enough assistance from the international community to make their return to England viable. In the months preceding the rebellion, the Holy

46 Baronio et al., Annales Ecclesiastici, 162–​63. 47 Kesselring, Northern Rebellion, 35; see also Pollen, English Catholics in the Reign of Elizabeth, 142–​47; csp Rome, vol. 1, 316–​17, 324–​25. 48 csp Rome, vol. 1, 320. 49 Krista Kesselring posits this in Northern Rebellion, 91–​117. 50 Jane Dawson, The Politics of Religion in the Age of Mary, Queen of Scots:  The Earl of Argyll and the Struggle for Britain and Ireland (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 182.

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See had received numerous reports of a trade dispute between England and Spain, which had been set off when Elizabeth’s government prevented several ships carrying Spanish gold from leaving the English ports where they had taken safe harbour during bad weather.51 Negotiations for the return of the ships turned sour at several points. News advertisements sent to Rome from Antwerp between February and April 1569 deemed it likely that war would break out between England and Spain.52 Possibly Pius v hoped he could persuade Philip ii to take a more active role in assisting the English Catholic resistance in light of his difficulties with the queen, and that the excommunication of Elizabeth would provide further justification for such a conflict. Of course, none of this happened in the end. Ultimately, frequent raids by English soldiers wore down the earls’ support in Scotland, and no financial or military assistance came from any of the Catholic European powers. The rebellion collapsed, and in England over 600 of its participants were publicly executed, including the earl of Northumberland after the Scottish lords relinquished him to Elizabeth’s agents in the north.53 Moray’s assassination triggered a civil war in Scotland between factions loyal to Mary and her son that would last until 1573.54 The remainder of the earl of Northumberland’s associates, including his wife, Anne Percy, and the earl of Westmoreland, fled to the continent and lived out the rest of their lives in exile. Many of those participants in the rising who escaped execution lost their property to the crown and faced lives of destitution, as did the surviving family members of the executed.55 In light of the alternative possibilities, however, it would be misleading to conclude that Pius V’s excommunication of Elizabeth signalled a complete misunderstanding of the domestic and foreign affairs of England from 1569–​70. Taking into account the ongoing instability in England and Scotland that followed the Northern Rebellion, alongside the tensions between England and Spain, Pius V’s excommunication of Elizabeth appears to have been a more calculated attempt to take advantage of this disorder and the confessional tensions underpinning it. The responses of the Spanish King Philip ii and the French King Charles ix to the excommunication of Elizabeth in 1570 were on the surface somewhat muted, as was that of the Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian ii.56 Contrary

51 Parker, Imprudent King, 205–​07. 52 csp Rome, vol. 1, 299–​302. 53 Kesselring, Northern Rebellion, 118–​20. 54 Amy Blakeway, ‘The Response to the Regent Moray’s Assassination’, Scottish Historical Review 88, no. 225 (2009), 10–​12. 55 Kesselring, Northern Rebellion, 112–​13, 119. 56 Maximilian’s father, Ferdinand, died in 1564.

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to the conventions encouraged by the Roman Catholic Church with respect to excommunicated rulers, no diplomatic or economic relations were completely cut between England and its Catholic neighbours, although at the time tensions with Spain were fast approaching a crisis.57 The Holy Roman Empire and France had a complex history with the papacy when it came to the excommunication and attempted deposition of rulers. Medieval popes had excommunicated and tried to depose six of Maximilian ii’s predecessors, while three French kings had similar sentences pronounced against them by bishops and popes.58 Elizabeth’s fellow monarchs, whatever their religious differences, may have been reluctant to formally acknowledge the pronouncement of excommunication and deposition of another sovereign, lest the pope attempt the same against them whenever their interests clashed in future. Furthermore, Spain and the Holy Roman Empire were both occupied with wars against the Ottoman Empire in the early 1570s; Philip ii had additional military engagements in the Low Countries, where a revolt led by William of Orange had begun in 1568.59 In France the wars of religion begun in 1562 between Catholic and Calvinist Huguenot factions had resumed; for most of early 1570 royal forces were occupied with trying to subjugate Admiral Coligny and his Huguenot troops, who were raiding towns and villages in the south. An uneasy peace agreement was reached at Saint-​Germain-​ en-​Laye in the summer, but the war had left the French crown with serious debts.60 The military and financial obligations of the major Catholic powers in Europe also made it unlikely that any of them would be willing to take a proactive role in the pope’s designs to depose the English queen, at least in the short term. The excommunication and deposition of Elizabeth in 1570 was not the work of a moment. On the contrary, it was the product of a debate that had been going on between the papacy and the larger Catholic kingdoms for over ten years. This debate became entangled in several events of international importance, from the Italian Wars to the Council of Trent. It also influenced the foreign policy of several Catholic kingdoms with respect to England, particularly Spain, France, and the Holy Roman Empire. While the Northern Rebellion provided

57 Meyer, England and the Catholic Church, 86–​87. 58 Jean Gosselin provides a convenient list in The Power of the Papacy in the Middle Ages, vol. 2 (London: Dolman, 1853), 1–​2. 59 Geoffrey Parker, The Dutch Revolt (London: Penguin, 1985); see also Parker, Imprudent King, 195–​213. 60 See Mack Holt, The French Wars of Religion, 1562–​1629 (Cambridge:  Cambridge University Press, 2005), 50–​75.

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the final impetus for the bull’s publication, the request for help from the earls of Northumberland and Westmoreland was not as instrumental in moving the pope to take action as has previously been supposed. Pius V’s correspondence from early 1570 and the opening of trial proceedings against Elizabeth in Rome indicate that he was contemplating a formal rebuke of the queen whether or not he received any request for assistance from Catholics in England. Regardless of what the pope knew and when he knew it, when the sentence was finally produced for publication at the end of February it did generate significant problems for Elizabeth’s Catholic subjects. The form of excommunication employed against Elizabeth in the bull, combined with the papal directives for her subjects concerning resistance and allegiance, generated difficult questions in the Catholic community as to how the sentence should be interpreted. The language of the bull of excommunication itself also facilitated multiple interpretations and understandings of how Catholics should respond to the sentence. 2

Interpreting and Executing Regnans in Excelsis

The proclamation of the sentence begins with a declaration of the apostolic succession of the papacy, and of the pope’s supremacy ‘over all nations and kingdoms, to root up, pull down, waste, destroy, plant, and build’ in order to preserve the faithful of the Catholic Church.61 Referring to the spread and growth of Protestant faiths, it laments how ‘the number of the ungodly has grown so strong in power’, and that ‘no place is left in the world which they have not tried to corrupt with their abominable doctrines’. The bull then names Elizabeth, ‘the servant of vice’ and the ‘pretended queen of England’ as an accomplice in this work, ‘having acquired the kingdom [of England] and outrageously usurped for herself the place of Supreme Head of the Church’.62 The language used to describe Elizabeth here illuminates several important points about the pope’s view of her. The bull referred to Elizabeth as a ‘pretended queen’ who ‘usurped’ and ‘acquired’ her titles in an invalid manner, before the official sentence of deposition and excommunication was even pronounced against her. In so doing it cast aspersions upon Elizabeth’s legitimacy in two respects. By calling Elizabeth a pretender, the pope called attention 61 62

Pius V, Regnans in Excelsis, printed in Ginevra Crosignani, Thomas McCoog, and Michael Questier, eds., Recusancy and Conformity in Early Modern England:  Manuscript and Printed Sources in Translation (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Medieval studies, 2010), 88. Ibid.

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to her parentage and the fact that her parents’ marriage had never been recognised by the Catholic Church. The description also hinted at Elizabeth’s implicitly excommunicated status through latae sententiae, for the heresy she had committed by taking on the headship of the English Church. The concept of latae sententiae in Roman canon law implied that an individual became excommunicated immediately upon committing a crime, making the legal process of excommunication more of a formality than a necessity.63 The restoration of a heretical, Protestant church in England would have qualified Elizabeth for excommunication latae sententiae from the perspective of the Roman Catholic Church. Significantly, this passage indicates that from the Holy See’s point of view, Elizabeth had never been the legitimate ruler of England. The sentence of excommunication and deposition in Regnans in Excelsis formally acknowledged and proclaimed this view, but her illegitimate, heretical status was not contingent specifically upon the bull’s publication. The bull then lists the crimes Elizabeth had committed against the Roman Catholic Church. It describes how she ‘prohibited the practice of the true religion’ which had been restored by her sister Mary, ‘the legitimate queen of famous memory’. Pius V’s allusion to Mary as a legitimate ruler served to further emphasise that Elizabeth, in the eyes of the Church, had never been a lawful queen. Elizabeth had ‘abolished the Sacrifice of the Mass, prayers, fastings, choice of meats, celibacy and Catholic ceremonies’ and commanded ‘that impious rites and institutions (accepted and observed by herself according to Calvin’s precepts) should be observed by her subjects also’.64 She had ejected Catholic bishops and clergy, bestowed their offices ‘and other ecclesiastical things upon heretics’, forced her subjects ‘to abjure the authority and obedience of the Roman Pontiff’, and compelled them to recognise her ‘as sole mistress in temporal and spiritual affairs’.65 The language used here echoed the accusations made against Elizabeth in the trial at the pontifical court, which had centred on her usurpation of supremacy, the ejection and imprisonment 63 Bruce Brasington, ‘Differentia Est:  A Twelfth-​Century Summula on Anathema and Excommunication’, in Uta-Renate Blumenthal, Anders Winroth, and Peter Landau, eds., Canon Law, Religion and Politics (Washington D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 2012), 108–​10. Julian Lock also discusses the concept of latae sententiae at length in the first chapter of ‘ “Strange Usurped Potentates” ’, 14–​76. 64 Crosignani et al., Recusancy and Conformity, 88. Peter Marshall has pointed out that the bull’s singling out of Calvin was part of a broader literary trope in Catholic polemics, and that English Catholic polemicists often portrayed Calvin as the personification of the cruelty and heresy of the Church of England. See Marshall, ‘John Calvin and the English Catholics, ca. 1565–​1640’, Historical Journal 53, no. 4 (2010), 851. 65 Crosignani et al., Recusancy and Conformity, 88–​89.

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of Catholic clergy, abjuration of the sacraments and the imposition of heretical rites. Elizabeth’s crimes were ‘clear and notorious to all nations and proved by the most weighty testimony of so many that there is no room whatever for excuse, defence or evasion’.66 The reference to testimony also made clear that the pope had heard from witnesses to Elizabeth’s behaviour, as in the trial at the pontifical court, and lent further credibility to the accusations. Furthermore, Elizabeth’s spirit had grown ‘hardened and obstinate’, she had ‘set at naught the pious prayers and warnings of Catholic princes concerning her soundness of mind and conversion’ and ‘not even allowed the Nuncios of this See to cross into England for this purpose’. Consequently, the pope was ‘necessarily compelled to take up against her the weapons of justice’, and declared ‘the aforesaid Elizabeth to be heretic and an abetter of heretics, and … together with her supporters in the above-​said matters, to have incurred the sentence of excommunication and to be cut off from the unity of the body of Christ’. The pope also declared Elizabeth ‘to be deprived of her pretended claim to the afore-​said kingdom and of all lordship, dignity, and privilege ­whatsoever’.67 The way in which Pius v pronounced the sentence against Elizabeth has been criticised for violating previous conciliar decrees on excommunication. The Fourth Lateran Council had ruled in 1215 that an excommunication could only be pronounced after a warning had been issued and that the sentence must be pronounced before witnesses for reasonable cause.68 Contrary to convention, Elizabeth received no formal warning from Pius v that she was about to be excommunicated and was therefore given no chance to repent and avoid the sentence, though the trial in Rome and subsequent recommendation of excommunication had been conducted before witnesses.69 That being said, since her baptism and illegitimacy made Elizabeth vulnerable to excommunication and deposition in the Roman Catholic Church, a formal pronouncement of the sentence may not have been technically necessary. Additionally, the yearly reading of the bull In Coena Domini at Rome during Easter week included a pronouncement of excommunication, in general terms, against all those who committed apostasy, schism, or heresy, which also technically would have

66 67 68 69

Ibid., 89. Ibid., 89. The Fourth Lateran Council’s canon on excommunication is available in Patrick Geary, ed., Readings in Medieval History (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2010), 445–​46. Richard Helmholz, Canon Law and the Law of England (London:  Hambledon, 1987), 104–​05.

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included Elizabeth.70 European rulers had, however, objected to other provisions in this bull for centuries, especially those that prohibited taxation of ecclesiastical lands and personnel. Consequently, several monarchs, including the kings of France and Spain, had prohibited the bull from being published in their kingdoms.71 By issuing a separate bull against Elizabeth, Pius v avoided this prohibition. The inclusion of automatic deposition in the sentence was also unusual. Typically when a monarch was excommunicated they were given time to seek absolution before the church declared them deposed.72 When Paul iii excommunicated King Henry viii in 1538, for instance, the sentence was preceded by a warning; he was given three months to seek absolution before the papacy deposed him.73 Pius v gave no such warning to Elizabeth, choosing instead to excommunicate and depose her outright. The arrival of the earls’ appeal to the pope so soon after the trial in Rome may have prompted this unusual step. The implication of excommunication provided by latae sententiae and the bull In Coena Domini does not seem to have been sufficient for the Northern rebels as justification for their enterprise. The leaders of the rebellion had agreed that they could not properly justify their resistance unless the pope issued a formal sentence of excommunication against the queen. If they were to rebel, there could be no question about the religious justification for the earls’ resistance.74 Pius V’s excommunication of Elizabeth clarified her position with respect to the Roman Catholic Church, in a papal bull that could be published without some of the wider concerns that a bull against heresy such as In Coena Domini presented. Having received a direct request for help from Catholics living in England, the pope may also have felt that a more severe condemnation of the queen was warranted and would help to galvanise resistance more quickly. Pius v followed this deprivation with an order to all of Elizabeth’s subjects: 70

Agostino Borromeo, ‘The Crown and the Church in Spanish Italy in the Reigns of Philip II and Philip III’, in Thomas Dandelet and John Marino, eds., Spain in Italy: Politics, Society, and Religion, 1500–​1700 (Leiden: Brill, 2007), 546–​47. 71 Ibid. 72 Elisabeth Vodola, Excommunication in the Middle Ages (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986), 21–​23. 73 A copy of the sentence was printed in a pamphlet entitled Two bulls roaring out excommunications, anathema’s and total deprivation (London: Francis Smith, 1674): ‘we denounce against him the said Henry the Eight, the sentence of a redoubled Excommunication, and the Toleration of Rebellion by any of his Subjects, and the Deprivation of his Kingdoms and all the Territories thereto appertaining, unless he the said Henry do within ninety days after the date hereof appear before us … to compurge himself of those Crimes which shall be laid to his charge’, 5. 74 Kesselring, Northern Rebellion, 57.

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We declare that the lords and peoples of the said kingdom, and all others who have sworn allegiance to her in any way, are perpetually absolved from any oath of this kind and from any type of duty in relation to the lordship, fidelity and obedience; consequently we absolve them by the authority of our present statements, and we deprive the same Elizabeth of her pretended claim to the kingdom and of all other claims mentioned previously. And we command and forbid all and sundry among the lords, subjects, peoples and others aforesaid that they have not to obey her or her admonitions, orders or laws. We shall bind those who do the contrary with a similar sentence of excommunication.75 This section of the bull became critical to English Catholic relationships with Elizabeth, her regime, and the Roman Catholic Church for the rest of her reign. In the original Latin, Pius v declared that Elizabeth had incurred the sentence of anathema (anathematis), and that anyone who continued to obey her would likewise incur anathema.76 This use of anathema to confer an excommunication dated back to the medieval Church, in which canon lawyers often distinguished between ‘major’ and ‘minor’ types of excommunication. Minor excommunication meant that a person was temporarily suspended from receiving the sacraments, but not entirely cut off from the Catholic Church and their community. Major excommunication entailed complete ostracisation from the Church and meant that the individual was cursed (or anathematised).77 The major form of the sentence therefore condemned the person’s soul to eternal damnation.78 Since Regnans in Excelsis applied anathema to both Elizabeth and anyone who continued to obey her, the pope had condemned their souls to such suffering. The use of such a measure made the bull particularly alarming for Elizabeth’s Catholic subjects. If they continued to show Elizabeth obedience and allegiance, they would suffer eternal damnation with her. But what would be the consequences if they did disobey her? The government had treated the northern rebels brutally. Returning to or entering open rebellion might save one’s soul from damnation but would offer small comfort for the punishment the crown would exact if such a rebellion again proved unsuccessful. While the pope had threatened extreme measures 75 Crosignani et al, Recusancy and Conformity, 89. 76 Ibid., 87. 77 F. Donald Logan, Excommunication and the Secular Arm in Medieval England (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, 1968), 14. 78 Ibid., fn.

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against those who continued to follow Elizabeth, the particular wording of this passage could be interpreted in different ways. The pope made no distinction between the kinds of laws people were now compelled to disobey –​he did not distinguish, for instance, between laws pertaining to religion and those pertaining to civic matters. The directive on disobedience is in fact rather vague when closely scrutinised. Although it makes no distinction between civil and religious laws, neither does it compel Elizabeth’s subjects to disobey all of her laws, mandates, and commandments. If a Catholic subject chose to selectively disobey some of Elizabeth’s laws, would this be sufficient to spare them from anathema? In this case, could a distinction be made between laws pertaining to religious and civil matters? In many ways, the bull of Pius v raised more questions than it tried to answer. For several years after its pronouncement, Elizabeth’s Catholic subjects were left to wrestle with these dilemmas on their own. Pius v provided no further guidance, and when he died in 1572, concerns arose about whether the sentence would even remain in force. An example of the kinds of theoretical questions the bull provoked with respect to obedience and allegiance survives in the Vatican Archives, in a memorandum that bears the title ‘For the Consolation and Instruction of English Catholics’. The author of these questions has never been definitively identified, but it is most likely that the questions were compiled by the Jesuits Edmund Campion and Robert Persons in advance of their mission to England in 1580.79 Fourteen of the nineteen submitted questions were related to the excommunication of Elizabeth i, and they show how the excommunication overshadowed nearly every aspect of the priests’ ministry in England. The questions in the document concerned the various ways in which Regnans in Excelsis could be interpreted, particularly with respect to the validity of the sentence and resistance to Elizabeth and her government.80 Three concerned the language of Regnans in Excelsis and whether it could be considered a legitimate sentence. The first question, for instance, asked ‘Whether the bull of Pius v issued against Elizabeth, pretended queen of England, had and has force and power’. Question two likewise dealt with the 79 80

A transcript of these questions, along with an English translation, is available in Crosignani et al., Recusancy and Conformity, 90–​99. See p. 90 for a discussion of the document’s authorship. Peter Holmes has argued that these questions ‘confirm that the English Catholic leaders wished to be rid of the obligation imposed by Regnans in Excelsis’. See Peter Holmes, Resistance and Compromise:  The Political Thought of the Elizabethan Catholics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), 42–​43. I would argue that these questions actually indicate a desire to understand more fully all of the bull’s implications for life as a Catholic under the Elizabethan regime.

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circumstances of the bull’s publication, asking ‘Whether Catholics in England can with safe conscience speak against this bull either because it was not sent to England and executed by Pius v … or because throughout England there is some uncertainty about the pope’s intention’.81 These questions pertained to some of the ways in which Pius v had departed from legal conventions when he issued Regnans in Excelsis. Although the pope had conducted a trial in the papal court before proceeding with the sentence, the form of excommunication and deposition, as described above, did not follow the guidelines laid out by previous Church councils.82 This enabled some English Catholics to question whether the sentence against Elizabeth and any subjects who continued to follow her had ever actually held any power in the first place. The second question encapsulates the confusion caused by the publication and wording of the bull, particularly for Catholics in England who did not have access to information about the proceedings against Elizabeth in Rome and for who the timing of the sentence might have seemed rather odd. Did the pope really want Elizabeth’s subjects to stop obeying all of her laws? If the pope had in fact intended for the bull to garner support for the northern rebels, did the bull cease to be valid now that the rebellion had been crushed? Given that the bull was issued nearly two months after royal forces subdued the worst of the rebellion, had it ever even been valid in the first place? Another question considered whether the bull not only freed subjects ‘from their oath and obedience to the queen’, but whether it also required them ‘to consider her illegitimate, deprived of all right to rule, and a tyrant so that one, who in conscience does not hold her such cannot be absolved if sufficiently instructed about the bull’.83 This question pertained to the unusual significance that absolution acquired in English Catholicism during Elizabeth’s reign. In the English Catholic context, the question could apply to the absolution of Catholics from schism with the Roman Church, in the event that they had fallen out of regular observance of the faith. It could also refer more conventionally to the sacrament of penance and reconciliation.84 That the ‘Consolation’ asks whether the receipt of absolution should be contingent upon acknowledging that Elizabeth was rightly excommunicated

81 Crosignani et al., Recusancy and Conformity, 94. 82 Geary, Medieval Readings, 445–​46. 83 Crosignani et al, Recusancy and Conformity, 94. 84 On the significance of reconciliation in English Catholicism see Lucy Underwood, ‘Persuading the Queen’s Majesty’s Subjects from Their Allegiance: Treason, Reconciliation, and Confessional Identity in Elizabethan England’, Historical Research 89, no. 244 (2016), 246–​67.

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and deposed by the pope is striking. It illustrates how the sentence affected the everyday lives and devotions of English Catholics as well as larger questions of resistance to rulers. Could (or should) a Catholic be denied access to the sacraments if they did not consider Elizabeth excommunicated and deprived? Whoever wrote the question certainly believed that this might be a possibility. Another eleven questions in the ‘Consolation’ centred on the practical consequences of the bull for English Catholics. They included queries about problems of political participation, such as ‘Whether, while the bull stands in force, Catholics can obey Elizabeth in civil matters and cooperate in the administration of the realm’ in just matters, ‘whether to give this obedience they can take the oath to Elizabeth’, and ‘whether they can call Elizabeth Queen of England and in their documents may give the same titles of royal power’ to her as before the bull’s issue.85 These concerns related to the part of the papal excommunication which also declared Elizabeth deprived of her right to rule her kingdom, and that consequently her subjects should no longer obey her laws.86 The questions about the oath and the queen’s title likewise stemmed from her declared deposition and the pope’s release of her subjects from their allegiance to her. The oath to which the document referred was the oath of allegiance given to everyone in government or ecclesiastical office in England, in which the swearer had to uphold Elizabeth as supreme governor of the English Church, thereby denying the papal supremacy.87 In light of the papal deprivation, the use of Elizabeth’s title also presented a practical problem in matters requiring legal documentation, such as lawsuits and estate documents. These questions emphasise how the bull impacted every aspect of the civic and religious spheres. It affected a Catholic’s ability to simply sign their name to a legal document, to participate in public life and the governance of their communities, and to take part in the rituals of their faith. Questions listed later in the document took a more interventionist turn. They asked ‘whether Catholics, while the bull remains in force, may take up

85 86 87

Crosignani et al., Recusancy and Conformity, 95. The bull simply says ‘we command and forbid all and sundry … that they have not to obey her or her admonitions, orders, or laws. Ibid., 89. Peter Marshall, Reformation England, 1480–​1642 (London: Bloomsbury, 2012), 192. For the origins of the oath in the Henrician Reformation see Jonathan Gray, Oaths and the English Reformation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012). Gray argues that the ambiguous language of the oath enabled some people to swear to it without seeing it as a matter of faith.

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arms in the defense of Elizabeth’ against a Catholic foe, even if that adversary claimed to oppose Elizabeth for the restoration of the faith in England. Another posed the opposite question, asking if in this case ‘Catholics are not held in conscience by virtue of the bull to take up arms against her, to disturb her from ruling or, given the opportunity and likelihood of achieving victory to kill her’.88 These questions pertained to the nature of the resistance that the papacy expected from Elizabeth’s subjects, assuming that some kind of force should be used against the queen to facilitate the country’s return to Catholicism. The tenth question went even further, asking ‘whether a private person, while the bull remains in force, cannot kill her because she is a tyrant and has no just title to the realm and whether the Pope is not able to give a dispensation so that this may be done’.89 Here the line of interrogation took a different approach, sidestepping entirely the question of the bull’s validity. This question implied that the papal denunciation might not actually have been necessary to warrant the assassination of Elizabeth if she was considered a tyrant. In this case it might have been lawful to kill her regardless of the bull. The scope of these questions indicates how many avenues existed for determining how Regnans in Excelsis applied and could be executed in England. While a strict interpretation of the bull might mean the suspension of sacraments for those who did not uphold it, it was also perfectly possible to question whether the sentence of excommunication and deposition was legally sound in the first place. Assuming one did recognise the sentence as lawful, the papal mandate for resistance could itself be read in a variety of ways. Some might feel that it was only necessary to resist the queen’s laws pertaining to religion, while others might feel that the bull compelled them to take up arms against her. The phrasing of the sentence allowed for any and all of these understandings. This confusion hung over the Catholic community for a decade. Pius V’s successor, Gregory xiii, did not attempt any further clarification or reassessment of the excommunication until 1580, when he and the Jesuit General approved the establishment of a mission to England. When Gregory met with the Jesuits selected for the mission, he issued them with faculties that included a statement on Regnans in Excelsis.90 The faculties granted the missionaries permission to assume a number of pastoral functions in England. 88 89 90

Crosignani et al., Recusancy and Conformity, 95. Ibid. For an overview of the first mission and its beginnings see Thomas McCoog, The Society of Jesus in Ireland, Scotland, and England, 1541–​1588 (Leiden: Brill, 1996), 129–​77.

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Amongst other privileges, the pope granted the missionaries the power to celebrate the Mass, administer the sacraments, print and publish Catholic books, and to absolve any Englishman who retained church property sold off by the Elizabethan government, as well as a number of other privileges that would be necessary to carry out the mission.91 Most of these faculties were written in the third person. The faculty on altars, for instance, says ‘They [the priests] may use whatever kind of portable altars they find in England’, while the faculty on books states that ‘They may also’ keep and read ‘any holy books written in the vernacular’.92 However, the section on Elizabeth’s excommunication subtly switches points of view: ‘Let our supreme lord be solicited for an interpretation of the declaratory judgement of Pius v against Elizabeth and her subjects, which Catholics desire to understand in this way: that it is forever binding on her and the heretics, but indeed no way binding on Catholics, under present circumstances, but then and only then, when the same bull can be put into execution’.93 The phrasing of this particular instruction is confusing: rather than being a pronouncement on Regnans in Excelsis it reads more as a reminder, possibly that Campion and Persons should ask the pope to modify the sentence of his predecessor during their audience.94 Surviving copies of the papal faculties, which were used by other missionary priests, add to this confusion: one surviving copy, which was kept at the English College in Douai, does not even include the passage, suggesting disagreement about whether the pope actually approved it.95 Yet many historians of English Catholicism have read this section of the faculties as an official modification of the excommunication and deposition. It has been used to explain what historians have characterised as a mostly passive response to the bull in the English Catholic community, and in particular to argue that most Catholics retained some sense of loyalty to Elizabeth in spite of her excommunication.96 It is one of only two passages 91

92 93 94 95 96

‘Faculties Granted to Robert Persons and Edmund Campion by Pope Gregory XIII’, printed and translated in Ginevra Crosignani, Victor Houliston, and Thomas McCoog, eds., Unpublished Correspondence and Papers of Robert Persons (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, 2017), 87–​90. Ibid., 88. Ibid. Victor Houliston has noted the unusual syntax of this part of the faculties. See Crosignani et al., Unpublished Papers of Robert Persons, 89fn. Ibid., 84, 87. This copy is now in the Westminster Diocesan Archives in London (A2/​32 f. 157–​60). For this reading in studies of political thought see Clancy, Papist Pamphleteers, 48; Holmes, Resistance and Compromise, 32–​33; Tutino, Law and Conscience, 20. For this argument in studies of English Catholic loyalty see for instance Arnold Pritchard, Catholic Loyalism

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in the document that uses a different point of view to make a request rather than grant privileges. The other passage asks ‘Your Holiness to approve and bless the pious zeal’ of priests and laymen who volunteered to procure alms for the English Catholic community, by granting them a plenary indulgence four times a year.97 A note at the end of the list of faculties did say that ‘the said benefits His Holiness granted’, which presumably included the interpretation of the bull that Campion and Persons put forward.98 But the syntax of the sentence could imply two meanings. It could be a point that Persons and Campion inserted into the faculties and planned to ask the pope to clarify, but the phrase ‘Let our supreme lord be solicited for an interpretation’ could also indicate that the priests should refer English Catholics to the pope on this matter if they were asked about it, regardless of how they felt the bull should be understood.99 This particular interpretation would have presented some impracticalities, unless it meant that the English Catholic community as a whole should petition the pope separately for a ruling about the queen’s excommunication. It could also mean that the pope would offer guidance on the bull’s interpretation periodically, as political circumstances fluctuated to favour or hinder the Catholic cause in England. Although the shift in perspective at this point in the document does suggest that Campion and Persons intervened to seek some clarification of Regnans in Excelsis, the answer they received did little to resolve the questions it raised. The papacy made no further official amendments to Elizabeth’s excommunication after 1580, leaving English and Irish Catholics to decide the best course of action for themselves. When Pius v issued Regnans in Excelsis in February 1570, it was the product of a years-​long debate about the best strategies for the papacy to employ against Elizabeth and her Protestant regime in order to safeguard Roman Catholicism in England. Yet the sentence of excommunication and deposition, when it was finally passed, did not settle this debate. Rather, because the wording and language of the papal bull could be interpreted in multiple ways, it generated pressing questions about how and whether Catholics in Elizabeth’s kingdoms should obey the sentence. These dilemmas stemmed particularly

97 98 99

in Elizabethan England (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1979), 37–​39; Adrian Morey, The Catholic Subjects of Elizabeth i (London: Allen and Unwin, 1978), 91. For a more recent iteration of this interpretation see McCoog, Society of Jesus, 1541–​1588; Marshall, Reformation England, 193. Crosignani et al., Unpublished Documents of Robert Persons, 89. Ibid. Ibid., see Houliston’s explanation 88fn.ss

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from the bull’s threat of anathema for anyone who continued to obey the queen. Did the pope expect total disobedience in the form of violence and rebellion, or would some kind of partial disobedience suffice? These were the questions that Elizabeth’s Catholic subjects were left to struggle with if they considered the bull valid. On the other hand, the pope’s decision to anathematise Elizabeth and her obedient subjects outright, without first giving warning and an opportunity to seek absolution, was taken by some as a violation of the conciliar guidelines for pronouncing excommunication, a violation which opened the sentence to legal challenges. If the bull was legally suspect, could it be ignored or did it still carry some power? Catholics wrestled with these questions until the end of Elizabeth’s reign. The explanation issued by Gregory xiii in 1580 created new questions about when, how, and for whom the sentence remained in force. Far from settling the scope of the original bull, the ruling on Regnans in Excelsis in the papal faculties for missionaries was itself unclear in its origins and validity, reinvigorating rather than concluding discussions of how Catholics should respond. The ruling was also seized upon by Elizabeth’s Protestant supporters, who were quick to point out that it did not nullify the bull of Pius v. Before these questions could be debated, however, the bull needed to be transmitted from Rome to England, Ireland, and the rest of Europe.

chapter 2

Transmitting the Excommunication of Elizabeth i In order for the excommunication and deposition of Elizabeth to take effect, the sentence had to be communicated throughout Europe and in England. Official copies of papal bulls usually had to come from Rome and carry a papal seal, typically made of lead. While the original papal bull was usually inscribed on vellum, official copies in this period could either be printed or written out by scribes. Although the papacy did not have its own press until 1588, if bulls needed to be published in larger quantities, the pope granted interim privileges to printers in Rome to produce them.1 Conventionally, copies of papal bulls of international significance were given to ambassadors in the Vatican and sent to the papal nuncios serving as ambassadors in different parts of Europe. Once received, the nuncios would present the bull to the rulers of their host countries, and if necessary secure permission for wider distribution. These conventions posed a challenge for the publication of Regnans in Excelsis, given that Elizabeth had barred papal nuncios from entering her kingdom after her succession. Acknowledging these difficulties, Pius v decreed that copies of the sentence made by public notaries would carry the same force as those printed in Rome and affixed with the papal seal.2 Ensuring that a sufficient number of bulls reached England was challenging enough at a time when correspondents had to send out multiple copies of a single letter to better the chances that it would ultimately reach its intended recipient. Royal proclamations and an act of parliament, which decreed that the possession or bringing in of papal bulls would henceforth be treason, made the distribution of the bull much more difficult, with port officers and agents on the watch for signs of suspicious activity. Additionally, parliament declared

1 See Anthony Wright, The Early Modern Papacy from the Council of Trent to the French Revolution, 1564–​1789 (Harlow: Longman, 2000), 275–​76. 2 Pius V, Regnans in Excelsis, in Ginevera Crosignani, Thomas McCoog, and Michael Questier, eds., Recusancy and Conformity in Early Modern England: Manuscript and Printed Sources in Translation (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, 2010), 89: ‘Because it would be too difficult for the present words to be conveyed to those who need them, we desire that copies of them bearing the signature of a public notary and the sign of a prelate of the Church or his office, should have the same authentic strength … and produce everywhere the same effect as this present document would produce, if submitted or shown’.

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2020 | DOI:10.1163/9789004426009_004

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conversion or reconciliation to the Roman Catholic faith a treasonable offence and outlawed the importation of ‘popish’ materials like the agnus dei and blessed beads from Rome.3 This is perhaps why only four copies of the bull are known to have survived in England.4 The British Library holds one printed copy from 1570, two manuscript copies from the 1580s were saved in the Carew and Bacon Manuscripts at Lambeth Palace, and one printed copy survives in the papers of William Cecil, Lord Burghley, at Hatfield House.5 Another two copies, one print and one manuscript, are held at the Houghton Library at Harvard University; the Folger Library in Washington, DC also holds one manuscript copy.6 Two copies of the Declaration of the Sentence and Deposition Against Elizabeth, which was printed in 1588 and supposedly proclaimed another sentence of excommunication, this time issued by Pope Sixtus V, have survived in the British and Bodleian Libraries, although government correspondence noted that up to 12,000 copies had been printed in Antwerp.7 The dearth of surviving copies may explain the enduring assumption that few people outside of government could have known about the papal excommunication, given the proscription placed on papal bulls and relatively low levels of literacy in both Latin and English.8

3 13 Eliz. I c. 2, in Statutes of the Realm, vol. 4 (London: HM Stationery Office, 1819), 530–​31. The agnus dei was a cake of wax stamped with an image of the lamb of God and blessed by the pope. Catholic responses to some of the clauses of this statute are considered in the fifth chapter of this book. 4 Julian Lock’s thesis on Queen Elizabeth and the papal deposing power explored the consequences of the excommunication for Protestant political writing but did not discuss the distribution of the bull in England. See Lock, ‘ “Strange Usurped Potentates”: Elizabeth I, the Papacy, and the Indian Summer of the Medieval Deposing Power’, DPhil Thesis, University of Oxford, 1992. See also Aislinn Muller, ‘Transmitting and Translating the Excommunication of Elizabeth I’, Studies in Church History 53, no. 1 (2017), 210–​22. This essay surveys the circulation of the bull in the 1570s and early 1580s. 5 BL C.18.e.2.(114*.), LPL Carew MS 607 f. 37b-​38 and Bacon MS 647 f. 35–​36, cms Salisbury, vol. 1, 400. 6 Houghton Library, Harvard University MS Lat 233 and Br 1745.36.151; Folger Library MS G.b.5 f. 1–​2. In addition to these the Vatican Archives hold three copies: one manuscript (ASV Misc. Arm. II no. 100 f. 179) and two printed broadsides (asv Misc. Arm. II no. 67 f. 246 and Misc. Arm. II no. 84 f. 35). 7 TNA SP 12/​211 f. 93. See also BL C.23.e.14 and Bodl. Lib. Douce Prints a.48. 8 See Thomas Clancy, Papist Pamphleteers: The Allen-​Persons Party and the Political Thought of the Counter-​Reformation in England, 1572–​1615 (Chicago: Loyola University Press, 1964), 47; J.J. Scarisbrick, The Reformation and the English People (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1984), 147; Christopher Haigh, ‘The Continuity of Catholicism in the English Reformation’, in Haigh, ed., The English Reformation Revised (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 190.

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Nevertheless, while few copies of Regnans in Excelsis have survived, it is possible to trace the circulation of the bull and how people learned about it. Despite the challenges, copies of the excommunication did get through to England and Ireland and circulated throughout Elizabeth’s reign. Most were brought in clandestinely by priests and lay Catholics, and some were even displayed publicly. Reports in the domestic and foreign State Papers describe the bull’s initial pronouncement, its arrival in England, and its appearance in different parts of the realm, as well as its advertisement in other countries. In addition to print and manuscript copies, information about the bull also became more widely available through Catholic polemics that mentioned the papal excommunication in some way. The routes by which clandestine manuscript and print literature circulated amongst English Catholics likewise point to ways the bull could have been secretly transmitted.9 Yet the circulation of papal bulls contributed only in part to the transmission of the news that Elizabeth had been excommunicated and deprived by the pope. Most people in England would have heard about the sentence via word of mouth, from friends, colleagues, and neighbours in conversations about the latest news. Oral culture, rumour, and other forms of secondary transmission provide useful models for tracking awareness of the excommunication in the absence of physical copies of the document.10 Recurring cases of seditious, slanderous, and traitorous speech throughout the 1570s and 1580s suggest that information about the sentence circulated widely. Because the transmission of information about the papal sentence in Catholic circles was inherently subversive, the different forms of circulation also shed light upon the extent and variety of subversive activities in which Catholics were engaged.

9

10

Teresa Bela, Clarinda Calma, and Jolenta Rzegocka, eds., Publishing Subversive Texts in Elizabethan England and the Polish-​Lithuanian Commonwealth (Leiden:  Brill, 2016); Earle Havens and Elizabeth Patton, ‘Underground Networks, Prisons and the Circulation of Counter-​Reformation Books in Elizabethan England’, in James Kelly and Susan Royal, eds., Early Modern English Catholicism: Identity, Memory, and Counter-​Reformation (Leiden: Brill, 2016), 165–​88; Arthur Marotti, Religious Ideology and Cultural Fantasy: Catholic and Anti-​ Catholic Discourses in Early Modern England (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2005); Nancy Pollard Brown, ‘Paper Chase: The Dissemination of Catholic Texts in Early Modern England’, English Manuscript Studies, vol. 1 (1989), 120–​43; Earle Havens, ‘Notes from a Literary Underground: Recusant Catholics, Jesuit Priests, and Scribal Publication in England’, Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America 99, no. 4 (2005), 505–​38. Alison Shell, Oral Culture and Catholicism in Early Modern England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009); Adam Fox, Oral and Literate Culture in England, 1500–​1700 (Oxford: Clarendon, 2000); Krista Kesselring, ‘ “A Cold Pye for the Papists”: Constructing and Containing the Northern Rising’, Journal of British Studies 43, no. 4 (2004), 417–​43.

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­f igure 2.1  Houghton Library, Br 1745.36.151. Printed copy of Regnans in Excelsis.

1

Distribution and Reception in the 1570s

Discussions about Elizabeth’s excommunication amongst her subjects took place even before the formal declaration of Regnans in Excelsis. These conversations were intimately tied to the planning and justification of the

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Northern Rebellion in 1569. Looking back on his role in the insurrection, Francis Norton, the eldest son of Richard Norton, sheriff of Yorkshire, recalled how a priest named Dr Nicholas Morton came from Rome and spoke with the conspirators before the rebellion. The priest made them ‘vnderstande of the excommunycatyon wyche threttened to vs’ and the ‘losse of ower countre’, warning the rebel leaders that ‘aull crystyen prynces thorrowe the popes perswasyon wolde seayke to subuerte vs yf we dyd not reforme’.11 In the same letter from 1572 Norton added that Morton had travelled around the country gauging public opinion on the possibility of excommunicating Elizabeth, and found the people inclined to rebel if the pope declared her deposed.12 The earl of Northumberland, one of the rebellion’s leaders, testified separately that he had been told by a priest that Elizabeth had brought excommunication upon herself when she refused to let the pope send an ambassador into England.13 While no record of a bull of excommunication exists before that issued at Rome in February 1570, the idea that Elizabeth had already informally incurred excommunication through her actions appears to have taken hold in England during the plotting of the Northern Rebellion. This notion was grounded in the doctrinal principle that when a person committed certain crimes, especially those involving heresy, they automatically incurred excommunication.14 Elizabeth’s rejection of Catholicism and reestablishment of an official Protestant Church in England certainly would have fallen under the category of heresy. Francis Norton’s conversation with Nicholas Morton points to the anxiety English Catholics felt about their role in these events, and the questions with which they struggled even before the publication of Regnans in Excelsis. If Elizabeth had by default incurred excommunication through her actions, what did that mean for Catholics who lived under her rule? Were they complicit in heresy if they did not resist the government’s attempts to reimpose a Protestant faith in the kingdom? These concerns in fact preceded the rebellion: Anthony Browne, Lord Montague warned parliament that these quandaries would be a natural result of a renewed schism with Rome, in a speech against the 1559

11 12 13 14

TNA SP 70/​125 f. 173. Ibid., see also Krista Kesselring, The Northern Rebellion of 1569: Faith, Politics and Protest in Elizabethan England (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), 45–​90, for more on the planning of the insurrection. TNA SP 15/​21 f. 114. Elisabeth Vodola, Excommunication in the Middle Ages (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986), 28–​43. See also the first chapter of this book.

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religious settlement.15 The testimony of Francis Norton and the earl of Northumberland suggests that the queen’s Catholic subjects continued to wrestle with these dilemmas in the late 1560s. By appealing to the pope for an official ruling, the rebels hoped to clarify the dilemma with which many English Catholics had struggled for the first decade of Elizabeth’s reign and win more people over to their cause. Pius v tried to ensure that news of Elizabeth’s excommunication reached England. The Holy See sent printed copies of Regnans in Excelsis to its nuncios residing in courts throughout Europe, who then facilitated further publication. Coastal countries with commercial ties to England received some of the first copies of the excommunication, possibly because the papacy hoped this strategy would enable the news to reach England more quickly. Bulls were sent to the duke of Alba for distribution in the Netherlands at the end of March 1570, with instructions to circulate them in the ports ‘most frequented by English traders, that the news may the more readily reach England’.16 The pope also sent copies to the nuncio in Poland, commanding him to send the bulls to Danzig and ‘all the towns on that coast that have commerce with that island [England], that by all means from some quarter they may be apprised of it’.17 Bulls were dispatched to the bishop of Włocławek and to Cardinal Stanislaus Hosius for distribution, with orders to seek permission from King Sigismund ii to print additional copies.18 News advertisements announcing the excommunication’s publication also circulated on the continent in May and summarised the main points in Regnans in Excelsis: that Elizabeth had been declared an illegitimate heretic, the pope released her subjects from obedience to her and granted all Christian princes freedom to invade her kingdom.19 Despite these efforts, it took time for Regnans in Excelsis to become widely known in England. Mary Queen of Scots admitted to receiving a copy of Elizabeth’s excommunication while imprisoned at Coventry in March 1570, though she claimed that she burned the bull after reading it.20 On 13 May 1570, the Spanish ambassador in England, Guerau de Spes, wrote to Philip ii regarding some rumours he had heard, that an Irish bishop had passed through Calais

15 Michael Questier, Catholicism and Community in Early Modern England:  Politics, Aristocratic Patronage, and Religion, c.  1550–​1640 (Cambridge:  Cambridge University Press, 2006), 121–​23. 16 csp Rome, vol. 1, 332. 17 Ibid., 335. 18 asv Segri. Di Stato, Polonia, Vol. 1 f. 64; see also csp Rome, vol. 1, 335. 19 bav Urb.lat.1041 Part I, f. 274v. See also csp Rome, vol. 1, 336. 20 TNA SP 53/​8 f. 112.

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with copies of ‘the Bull from his Holiness against the Queen’.21 The excommunication caught the attention of the whole kingdom on 25 May, when John Felton affixed a copy to the door of the bishop of London’s palace.22 In an account of Felton’s life and execution written by his daughter, Frances Salisbury, she describes Felton as being chosen to publish the bull in London: ‘When Pius v his Bull concerning the Excommunication of Queen Elizabeth was to be sent into England, Mr Felton, being known to be a gentleman of approued resolution and vertue, was dealt withal to vndertake the businesse of publishing it one way or other about the cittie of London. The danger of such an employment, which he tooke for an act of virtue, daunted him not a whitt’.23 If Felton was indeed selected to publish the bull in London, it suggests that the papacy and its agents did try to promulgate the bull in England in an official manner, or at least as close to an official manner as possible. Papal bulls were typically affixed to the doors of churches and cathedrals to ensure the greatest visibility.24 By posting the bull at the London episcopal palace, Felton emulated the process by which many papal bulls were published. The London episcopal residence was next door to St Paul’s Cathedral and Paul’s Churchyard, which became a great centre for the exchange and printing of news during Elizabeth’s reign.25 Strategically, posting the bull there also made the most sense: Felton harnessed the symbolic power of the Church by publishing it at the bishop’s residence, and ensured it would be seen by large numbers of people flocking to the church complex to hear the latest news. Conflicting reports survive about how Felton acquired copies of the sentence. Frances Salisbury claimed that Felton collected copies of the bull in Calais before returning to London to publish it.26 Interrogations conducted by the Privy Council suggest that Felton obtained the bull from the Spanish ambassador de Spes, who had apparently received the bull from the Italian banker and papal agent Roberto Ridolfi. According to a statement later given by John Leslie, bishop of Ross and Mary Queen of Scots’ envoy in England, Ridolfi 21 22 23 24 25 26

csp Simancas, vol. 2, 244–​45. PC 2/​10 f.  11, see also Julian Lock, ‘Felton, John  (d.  1570)’,  ODNB (Oxford:  Oxford University Press, 2004), available from http://​www.oxforddnb.com/​view/​article/​9272 [accessed 7 Nov 2014]. A/​2/​2/​3 f. 238. Silvia Manzi, ‘Nella Lingua di Ciascuno:  Church Communication Between Latin and Vernacular During the Counter-​ Reformation’, Studies in Church History 53, no.  1 (2017), 200. See Natalie Mears, Queenship and Political Discourse in the Elizabethan Realms (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 168. wda A/​2/​2/​3 f. 238.

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brought six copies of the bull into England. Three of these were delivered to de Spes, Leslie, and the French ambassador Bertrand de Salignac Fénélon, but the fates of the other three are unknown.27 Leslie may have received more than one copy. Henry Wriothesley, the earl of Southampton, spoke with Leslie about the excommunication in Lambeth shortly after Felton published it in London. During their conversation Leslie admitted to having the bull in his possession and sent a copy to Southampton the next day.28 The pronouncement of Elizabeth’s excommunication stirred difficulties at a time when England’s relations with Spain and France, and even closer to home with Scotland, were increasingly uncertain. In January 1570, James Stewart, the earl of Moray who had been acting as regent of Scotland for the young King James vi, was assassinated by the Hamiltons, a family loyal to Mary Queen of Scots, who had fled to England in 1567 and remained there under house arrest. Moray had become a close ally of Elizabeth’s councillors since assuming the regency in 1567. His death strengthened the position of Mary’s supporters in the ongoing civil wars in Scotland, who now appealed to Charles ix in France for assistance in the conflict. In the short term, this left England without a reliable, Protestant partner in the north. To avoid a proxy war with France, Elizabeth agreed to begin negotiations with the Hamiltons in May 1570 for the return of Mary to Scotland, on the promise that Charles would send no military aid to her supporters.29 Yet Mary, as a Catholic queen and cousin to Elizabeth, was also the natural, alternative candidate for the English crown for those who accepted the papal excommunication and deposition of Elizabeth. Although the negotiations eventually came to nothing, the Privy Council worried that the excommunication would facilitate Mary’s designs on the English throne and encourage the French to provide her allies in Scotland with military aid.30 In the middle of this instability, the earls of Northumberland and Westmoreland had fled into Scotland following the collapse of the Northern Rebellion in December 1569, with little chance that they would be returned to face ­punishment.31 The apparent involvement of the Spanish and French ambassadors in the publication of the excommunication in London provoked diplomatic

27 28 29

cms Salisbury, vol. 2, 555. cms Salisbury, vol. 1, 562. Wallace MacCaffrey, The Shaping of the Elizabethan Regime: Elizabethan Politics, 1558–​ 1572 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1968), 372–​73. 30 Susan Brigden, New Worlds, Lost Worlds:  The Rule of the Tudors, 1485–​1603 (London: Penguin, 2000), 237–​38. 31 Kesselring, Northern Rebellion, 91–​117.

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tensions between England and its Catholic neighbours. King Philip ii claimed ignorance of the whole affair between Felton, Ridolfi, and his ambassador. In a letter to the papal secretary, the nuncio in Spain noted Philip’s displeasure at receiving news of the excommunication from England in July rather than directly from Rome.32 Henry Brooke, Lord Cobham, Elizabeth’s ambassador in the Holy Roman Empire, complained to Emperor Maximilian ii about the Spanish ambassador’s complicity with Felton in September 1570; during their meeting the emperor also admitted that the bull had been published in Prague.33 At the time of the bull’s publication, England had just narrowly avoided open war with Spain. In 1569 the Privy Council ordered the seizure of a fleet of Spanish ships which had sought shelter from storms in the ports of southwest England. The ships had been carrying gold to pay Spanish troops fighting in the Low Countries, where several of the northern provinces had rebelled against Spanish rule there. To retaliate the duke of Alba, the Spanish governor of the Low Countries, arrested English subjects living there and England responded in kind.34 Philip ii expelled the English ambassador in Madrid, John Man, and Elizabeth placed the Spanish ambassador in London under house arrest. In January 1570, Philip remarked to Alba that he seemed to be in a ‘virtual state of war’ with England.35 No official declaration of war was ever made, but the publication of the excommunication in London and the Spanish ambassador’s role in the incident stoked the Privy Council’s fears of more aggressive retaliation.36 Felton’s publication of the bull in London inflamed tensions for months, even after his execution in August 1570. Early in 1571 Francis Walsingham reported that a copy was set up in Paris, near the church of St Étienne-​de-​Grès, ‘of the same daie that Feltons was of, Conteyneing the selfesame matter’ with ‘divers flocking about it’.37 Walsingham and his fellow ambassador, Thomas

32

asv Segr. Di Stato, Spagna, vol. 4 f. 140v; see also csp Rome, vol. 1, 339–​40. As copies of the bull were sent to Alba, Philip’s general in the Low Countries, in March, however, it is unlikely that the Spanish king was completely ignorant of the excommunication. See Geoffrey Parker, Imprudent King: A New Life of Philip II (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2014), 196–​98. 33 TNA SP 70/​114 f. 21. 34 Brigden, New Worlds, Lost Worlds, 234–​35. 35 Henry Kamen, Philip of Spain (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998), 132–​34. 36 MacCaffrey, Shaping of the Elizabethan Regime, 383. 37 TNA SP 70/​117 f.  4. This was near to a neighbourhood in Paris frequented by English Catholic exiles. See Katy Gibbons, ‘ “A Reserved Place”? English Catholic Exiles and Contested Space in Late-​Sixteenth-​Century Paris’, French Historical Studies 32, no.  1 (2009), 33–​62.

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Sackville, Lord Buckhurst, raised the incident during an audience with Charles ix. The meeting became quite tense. The king promised that the culprit responsible for posting the bull ‘sholde receve souche punishment, as souche a presumption requyred’. In reply, Walsingham warned the king ‘that if he did not take ordre in this, the lyke measure mighte be measured to him selfe’, making a thinly-​veiled reference to the king’s precarious political position in the religious wars that were consuming France.38 After the meeting, one of Charles’s advisors, Louis St-​Gelais de Lansac, took Walsingham aside and told him ‘in myne eare, that he had greate cawse to suspect’ that the bull’s publication in Paris had been ‘som Spanishe prac[tice]’.39 Elizabeth’s excommunication continued to circulate in England and elsewhere in the British Isles throughout the 1570s. In Ireland a copy of the bull surfaced in connection with the first Desmond Rebellion, which English governors had been trying to quell since 1569. The earl of Ormond blamed one of the rebellion’s leaders, James Fitzgerald, for posting a copy at the gates of Limerick in June 1571.40 During a diplomatic mission to Scotland in 1573, Henry Killigrew wrote to Elizabeth’s secretary of state, Sir Thomas Smith, to report that the excommunication had been published in northern Scotland.41 Killigrew blamed ‘one Andros [Andrews] of Aberdeen a lerned papyst’ for this incident.42 A copy of Regnans in Excelsis turned up in Tunbridge in April 1577, when Thomas Worsley was discovered with ‘a coppie of a bull maide against hir Maiestie and the state of this Realme’.43 Another bull was sent to Sir Amias Paulet in February 1578 during his tenure as governor of Jersey, by a man he named only as ‘Monsieur Berny’. Berny apparently obtained the bull from a bishop (whom he did not name) and an associate named Bernaldin, who had been travelling through Spain and ‘many other countries’ promulgating its message.44 Some English Catholic authors on the continent also included information about the papal excommunication in their polemical works, many of which were smuggled back into England. The exile Nicholas Sander’s De Visibili Monarchia, which was published in 1571, included a full reprint of Elizabeth’s

38 39 40 41 42 43 44

TNA SP 70/​117 f. 4. See Mack Holt, The French Wars of Religion, 1562–​1629 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 76–​80. TNA SP 70/​117 f. 5. TNA SP 63/​32 f. 169. TNA SP 52/​25 f. 149. Ibid., see also BL Lansdowne MS 15/​49 f. 97. Brighton, The Keep, RYE 7/​47/​15/​15. TNA SP 78/​2 f. 12.

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excommunication.45 While details of this book’s circulation in England during Elizabeth’s reign are scant, Sander’s reiteration of the bull to support his arguments for the spiritual and temporal supremacy of the pope also facilitated further access to the sentence against Elizabeth, especially on the continent. Four editions were published in 1571, 1578, 1580, and 1592 at Louvain, Antwerp, and Würzburg.46 Sander also attempted to distribute copies of the book in England and Scotland, with mixed success. A copy he sent to William Maitland, a supporter and former councillor of Mary Queen of Scots, was intercepted by authorities.47 Matthew Parker, the archbishop of Canterbury, found ‘half a store of theis traiterous bookes of Saunders’ during a raid of the booksellers in London, and he ‘distributed almoste all of them excepte one or two to sum suche men whome I thought mete to pervse them’.48 Apart from Sander’s work, however, no other extant English Catholic publication from the 1570s contains such a reproduction of the bull, though several authors alluded to it in different ways. This may be a question of survival and prudence: royal proclamations against Catholic books and writings which were issued after the bull’s publication made it dangerous to keep any kind of Catholic text, let alone one that sanctioned the queen’s deposition. On the other hand, the circulation of papal bulls, royal proclamations, and various references to the excommunication in the press, not to mention the rumours and public discourse that all of this inspired, meant that there was already a wealth of information available about Elizabeth’s excommunication to both Catholics and Protestants. The circulation of Elizabeth’s excommunication across Europe and in the British Isles therefore involved agents both on the continent and within England. While the Holy See used papal bulls to transmit the sentence, its appearance in news advertisements also helped this information to reach a wider audience. Catholics continued to transport copies of Regnans in Excelsis around and into England throughout the 1570s. The dispatch of printed copies of the bull certainly suggests that Pius v intended a distribution of a fairly large scale in England and Europe. The majority of English Catholic 45

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See Stefania Tutino, Law and Conscience:  Catholicism in Early Modern England, 1570–​ 1625 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007), 11–​51. See also Gerard Kilroy, ‘ “Paths Coincident”: The Parallel Lives of Dr Nicholas Sander and Edmund Campion, SJ’. Journal of Jesuit Studies 1, no. 4 (2014), 520–​41. These can all be viewed in the Universal Short Title Catalogue, available from https://​ustc. ac.uk. Thomas Mayer, ‘Sander [Sanders], Nicholas (c. 1530–​ 1581),’  ODNB (Oxford:  Oxford University Press, 2014), available from https://​doi-​org/​10.1093/​ref:odnb/​24621 [Accessed 15 Feb 2019]. BL Lansdowne MS 15/​49 f. 97.

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writings and literature circulated in active underground networks of scribal publication, and it is likely that copies of the bull also circulated in these networks.49 Nancy Pollard Brown outlined the origins of some of these networks on the outskirts of London and their extensions into the midlands of England, suggesting routes by which copies of the bull could travel.50 Two copies of the bull that have survived in England are manuscript transcriptions. One includes outlines of the seals that appeared at the top of copies printed in Rome, as can be seen in Figure  2.2. The inclusion of the seals in this manuscript could have been an attempt to recreate the authenticity of a papal bull, and served as a sign that the manuscript had been copied from a printed bull.51 The second surviving manuscript copy, which can be seen in Figure 2.3, is an English translation of the bull, and includes only text without images. Pius V’s instructions for the production of additional copies of the excommunication outside of Rome required only that these copies be notarised and sealed by a prelate; his instructions included nothing else about their appearance.52 Even with this latitude, it would have been difficult to authenticate copies of the excommunication in England. Most public notaries would never have authorised such a document, as to do so would have been treason. Consequently, most manuscript transcriptions of Regnans in Excelsis circulating in England during Elizabeth’s reign were informal copies. This did not diminish their value: on the contrary, the survival of manuscript copies of the sentence in both Latin and English shows how they could be used to reach a much wider literate audience.53 The displaying of the excommunication in public places also highlights the importance of oral communication about the bull. Ultimately, it was through rumour and word of mouth that most people would have learned about the excommunication, and postings of the bull at well-​trafficked city and church gates increased the chances that the news would travel this way.54 Proclamations and other important announcements were commonly displayed and read aloud in the public squares of cities, towns, and villages. Libellers often 49

Havens, ‘Notes from an Elizabethan Underground’, 505–​38. See also Havens and Patton, ‘Underground Networks’, 165–​88. 50 Pollard Brown, ‘Paper Chase’, 131–​34. 51 Julia Crick and Alexandra Walsham, eds., The Uses of Script and Print, 1300–​1700 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 11–​16. 52 Crosignani et al., Recusancy and Conformity, 89. 53 Alison Shell has suggested that the survival of the Latin Mass, in addition to strengthening Catholic identity, also facilitated wider understanding of Latin amongst English Catholics of varying degrees of literacy. See Shell, Oral Culture and Catholicism, 7. 54 Mears, Queenship and Political Discourse, 145–​82.

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­f igure 2.2  Lambeth Palace Library, Bacon MS 647 f. 35. Manuscript copy of Regnans in Excelsis.

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­f igure 2.3  Lambeth Palace Library, Carew MS 607 f. 37b. English translation of Regnans in Excelsis.

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co-​opted this practice, posting their subversive writings in public, populous places to ensure they attracted attention, and even engaging performers to read them out.55 By placing the bull at prominent locations such as the bishop of London’s palace or the city gates, people similarly inverted a convention used for announcements of high authority and helped to ensure wider dissemination of the sentence. When Felton and Fitzgerald set up the bull outside the London episcopal palace and the gates of Limerick, their actions signified both a rejection of Elizabeth’s rule and a reclamation of the public square as a space for Catholic voices. The posting of Regnans in Excelsis, with its declaration of Elizabeth’s deposition and call to resistance, exemplified just how dangerous the practice of libelling could be to the regime.56 It was not simply the practical decision to display the bull in public which caused a stir; the symbolic undertones of this gesture played an equally important part in ensuring that news of the bull would spread throughout the kingdom. The reception of Elizabeth’s excommunication amongst the English people also points to the significant role of oral communication in spreading news of the sentence. Royal proclamations issued against the smuggling and circulation of papal bulls after Felton’s arrest spoke of the ‘murmuryng against the quiet gouernement of the Realme’ which the excommunication had stirred up, while another proclamation accused seditious persons of ‘scattering false rumors and newes, both by speache, and by bookes and wrytinges, onely of intent to breake the common peace … and to procure more partners with them in their treasons and rebellions’.57 In June Antonio de Guaras, a Spanish merchant residing in England, reported to King Philip ii that the government had arrested ‘many persons’ in connection with promulgating the excommunication. After John Felton was executed in August, de Guaras recounted how Felton publicly repeated the sentence against Elizabeth at his trial, and of a great unrest that persisted ‘in all parts of this country’.58 A letter written by Richard Barnes, the bishop of Carlisle, to the earl of Sussex in October 1570 illuminates how news of the bull was received in the north of England. Barnes 55 56 57 58

Adam Fox, Oral and Literate Culture in England, 1500–​1700 (Oxford: Clarendon, 2000), 317–​21; Alastair Bellany, ‘Railing Rhymes Revisited:  Libels, Scandals, and Early Stuart Politics’, History Compass 5, no. 4 (2007), 1136–​79. See also Pauline Croft, ‘Libels, Popular Literacy, and Public Opinion in Early Modern England’, Historical Research 68, no. 167 (1995), 266–​85, which assesses similar concerns in the 1590s. A proclamation made agaynst seditious and tratyerous bookes, billes, and  vvritinges (London:  Jugge and Cawood, 1570); and A proclamation made agaynst maynteyners of seditious persons, and of trayterous bookes (London: Jugge and Cawood, 1570). csp Simancas, vol. 2, 266.

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described how in Lancashire ‘sythince Felton sett vppe the Bull e[t]‌c the gretest there … haue openly entrteyned sondrie rennegate lovainiste massers with theire Bulles’, referring to the locals’ reversion to Catholic priests for spiritual sustenance.59 These incidents indicate that the publication of Regnans in Excelsis in 1570 generated substantial public concern and interest in England. The organised effort to publish the bull in London in May 1570, combined with later circulation of the bull in print, manuscript, and speech, shows that people were willing to take considerable risks to transmit information about the papal deposition of the queen. As the bishop of Carlisle’s correspondence demonstrates, this transmission had practical and troubling repercussions for the Elizabethan regime. While communication about the bull could inspire acts of resistance like those described above, spreading knowledge of the bull could also be an act of resistance in and of itself. The murmuring and unrest to which these documents referred indicate that people in England found the excommunication deeply unsettling, but it also points to their willingness to defy the government by communicating about the bull in the first place. 2

Catholic Missions and the Circulation of Regnans in Excelsis, ca. 1580–​1603

In 1580 Pope Gregory xiii confirmed the excommunication against Elizabeth and efforts to distribute it began anew, in hopes that this time circumstances might be more favourable to the execution of the sentence.60 The pope confirmed the validity of the sentence in the same year that the Society of Jesus began its first mission to England. When these events are considered together in the context of political developments on the continent and within the English kingdoms, the confirmation of Regnans in Excelsis appears as part of a broader, aggressive papal strategy to counter the gains of Protestantism in Europe. The central role that missionary priests played in communicating the sentence against Elizabeth to her subjects also suggests that the republication of Elizabeth’s excommunication in the 1580s had more of an impact in England than the first proclamation of the bull in 1570.

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TNA SP 15/​19 f. 39. Although Gregory xiii confirmed the validity of Regnans in Excelsis, he did not issue a new sentence of excommunication and deposition against the queen. Copies of Regnans in Excelsis that were published in 1580 were reprints of the original bull from 1570.

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Although Elizabeth and her government had managed to defuse many of the diplomatic crises they had faced in 1570, by 1580 tensions were beginning to mount again. Philip ii had secured a ceasefire in Spain’s wars with Morocco and the Ottoman Empires, enabling him to reapportion money and troops to the revolt in the Low Countries and revisit the possibility of intervention in England.61 In 1578, Elizabeth had reluctantly sent troops to the Low Countries to assist the Protestant rebels, but the intervention exacerbated the conflict in the provinces and drew the ire of the Spanish king.62 Later in the year, the Privy Council watched with growing alarm when Philip successfully annexed the kingdom of Portugal, consolidating his power in the Iberian Peninsula.63 In France, King Henri iii faced growing opposition from the Catholic League and increasing difficulty in keeping the fragile peace between his Huguenot and Catholic subjects, aggravated by the papacy’s support for the League and its powerful noble leaders. At this time Elizabeth was in the midst of marriage negotiations with the king’s younger brother, the duke of Anjou, but the negotiations were failing.64 When Elizabeth proposed an alliance to check the growing power of Spain in 1581, the French king declined for fear that the English would not honour the pact.65 In Scotland, the arrival of Esmé Stewart at the Scottish court in 1579 and his growing influence over the young James vi also raised concern. Stewart’s close connections with the Guise family and the militant Catholic League in France revived anxieties about a potential threat on the northern border.66 These circumstances, along with another outbreak of rebellion in Ireland against Elizabeth’s rule, created a climate that seemed more favourable to the Catholic cause in England. In February 1580 Lord Cobham, now Elizabeth’s ambassador in France, reported that Cardinal Alexander Farnese had distributed new copies of the bull amongst the ambassadors in Rome; Cobham sent

61 Parker, Imprudent King, 264–​73. 62 Brigden, New Worlds, Lost Worlds, 269–​70. 63 Although Spain was encumbered with the succession crisis in Portugal, it did not become involved in the war for the succession until July 1580. Despite military obligations in Portugal, Philip committed himself to the renewed Holy League at the end of the year. See Parker, Imprudent King, 271–​73. 64 See Penny Roberts, Peace and Authority During the French Religious Wars, 1560–​1600 (Basingstoke:  Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), c­hapter  2; Susan Doran, Monarchy and Matrimony: The Courtships of Elizabeth I (London: Routledge, 1996), ­chapter 7. 65 Brigden, New Worlds, Lost Worlds, 272; Wallace MacCaffrey, Queen Elizabeth and the Making of Policy, 1572–​1588 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981), 268. 66 Brigden, New Worlds, 272.

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one that he had obtained at the French court to the Privy Council.67 Rudolph Gwalther, a prominent preacher and leader of the reformed church in Switzerland, wrote to Lord Burghley from Zurich to inform him of the publication of another of these bulls in Nuremberg on 8 March.68 Another edition of Nicholas Sander’s De Visibili Monarchia, which included a reprint of the bull, was also published in 1580 at Antwerp. Closer to home, the Privy Council ordered the interrogation of a Portuguese agent named Antonio Fogaça in April 1580. Fogaça had been living in London and passing intelligence to a number of figures troubling to the Elizabethan government, including the duke of Alba and several advisors to Philip ii. He was brought in for questioning after he was caught with a copy of Regnans in Excelsis amongst his letters and papers. Fogaça explained that the bull ‘was given vnto him xi years paste by an Englyshe docter in the howse of Sambitons which doctor since died a[t]‌Louain aight yeares past, and the same he hathe ever since reserved and caused it lately to be copied oute’ again.69 Later in the year, a treaty concluded between Spain, Tuscany, and Pope Gregory in December for the revival of a Holy League reiterated ‘That Queen Elizabeth be declared an usurper and incapable to reign, because she was born of an illegitimate marriage, and because she is a heretic’. The treaty also stipulated ‘that the Bull of excommunication which Pius v of happy memory issued against the said Queen be published in the courts of all Christian princes’.70 This was the context in which the Society of Jesus approved the English mission and in which Gregory xiii affirmed the sentence against Elizabeth. Under the supervision of William Allen, priests trained at the Catholic English colleges in Douai, Rheims, and Rome had begun travelling back to England to minister to Catholics in secret from 1574. Allen petitioned the Society of Jesus to send additional missionaries into England, arguing that Catholics there would welcome them and that the seminary priests from the colleges needed their assistance. Although initially reluctant to send a mission to England because of the dangers the priests faced if caught by the Elizabethan authorities, the general of the Society eventually agreed. Once the pope also granted his approval preparations for the mission began in early 1580.71 67 68 69 70 71

TNA SP 78/​4A. Farnese was the grandson of Pope Paul iii. His nephew, of the same name, was the duke of Parma and appointed governor of the Spanish Netherlands by King Philip ii. BL Lansdowne MS 31/​36 f. 97. TNA SP 12/​137 f.10. CSP Venice, vol. 7, 651. Thomas McCoog, The Society of Jesus in Ireland, Scotland, and England, 1541–​1588: ‘Our Way of Proceeding’? (Leiden: Brill, 1996), 129–​34.

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The pope’s confirmation of Regnans in Excelsis was in fact connected to the beginning of the Jesuit mission. Edmund Campion and Robert Persons, who were selected to lead the mission, travelled to Rome in April 1580 before setting off for England. There they had an audience with Pope Gregory xiii to discuss the aims of the mission. In advance of their meeting with the pope, a list of nineteen questions was presented to the Roman Curia, asking for clarification of the previous pope’s excommunication of the queen and how it altered Catholics’ relationship with her government.72 As the previous chapter discussed, these questions ranged from concern about the bull’s validity to whether the bull justified attempts to forcibly remove Elizabeth from power, or even to kill her. A response to these questions survives in the Vatican Archives. The authorship of this response is unknown, and it was likely written by more than one person.73 Some of the replies show inconsistencies in thinking about the bull’s legitimacy and its effects. The preamble to the document, for instance, declared that ‘The Catholics of England are not bound under pain of sin or of excommunication by virtue of the bull published by Pius V’ and that ‘concerning the bull’s comments about the so-​called queen … Catholics are excused from the obligations laid down’.74 It has been argued that this preamble constituted an ‘unequivocal’ amendment which released English Catholics from obeying the demands of the bull, and that therefore missionary priests must have had little to do with using the bull to encourage resistance.75 Yet the answers that follow in the rest of the response contradicted much of this opening statement. An answer to the question of ‘whether Catholics … can take up arms against Elizabeth, given the opportunity, in virtue of the bull’ concluded that ‘it is licit in virtue of the bull (which remains … untouched and in force) to take up arms against the queen’. To the question of whether it would be lawful to kill Elizabeth, the response was ‘that if someone were able by the queen’s death certainly to free the realm from oppression, doubtless it would be lawful for him to kill her’.76 The answers to these questions were never made public and were never part of the official faculties issued to the English mission.77 The faculties given to 72 73 74 75 76 77

These questions and their implications are discussed in detail in the first chapter of this book. Crosignani et al., Recusancy and Conformity, 90. Ibid., 97. Gerard Kilroy, Edmund Campion: A Scholarly Life (Farnham: Ashgate, 2015), 143. Crosignani et al., Recusancy and Conformity, 98–​99. Ibid., 90. See also Victor Houliston, Ginevra Crosignani, and Thomas McCoog, eds., The Unpublished Correspondence and Papers of Robert Persons, SJ (1546–​1610), vol. 1 (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, 2017), 51–​68.

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the Jesuits by Pope Gregory xiii offered a similarly ambiguous comment on Elizabeth’s excommunication: that it still bound the queen and her heretical supporters, but did not bind English Catholics ‘under present circumstances’.78 The wording of this particular paragraph in the faculties makes it unclear as to whether the pope ever actually agreed that English Catholics could be excused from obeying Regnans in Excelsis ‘under present circumstances’: it merely notes that ‘Catholics desire to understand it this way’.79 The Gregorian addendum still meant that English Catholics had to be ready at a moment’s notice to rise up against their queen.80 When considered in its broader international context, this confirmation of the excommunication could be understood as part of a more proactive strategy to strengthen Roman Catholicism in the English domains, especially in light of the outbreak of the second Desmond Rebellion in Ireland in 1579. The Elizabethan government’s hostile reaction to the Jesuit mission was in part informed by concerns about Catholic resistance in Ireland spilling over into England.81 To Elizabeth’s ministers, the timing of the mission with the outbreak of rebellion and the confirmation of Regnans in Excelsis was too close to be coincidence. The leader of the rebellion, James Fitzgerald, had successfully lobbied for papal support of the rebellion in Rome, and returned to Ireland with a small expeditionary force of forty Italian soldiers and copies of the excommunication to distribute. Nicholas Sander, who had spent the last ten years in Europe advocating for the forcible removal of Elizabeth from the throne, also accompanied him.82 In any case, the detailed questions the Jesuits presented to the pope are suggestive. They show that the priests anticipated that Elizabeth’s excommunication would be central to discussions with the people they encountered in their mission, and that they were eager to clarify the repercussions for her subjects. Cases of conscience, a series of theoretical dilemmas which priests studied during their training at the Catholic English colleges in Europe, also indicate how Jesuit and seminary priests could resolve the dilemmas the excommunication provoked amongst the laity. A book of these cases compiled by William Allen and Robert Persons in the early 1580s raised the question of whether it was lawful for English Catholics to obey Elizabeth in political matters, as had been done before the bull of Pius v. Allen and Persons argued that although 78

Quoted in Houliston et  al., Unpublished Correspondence, 67. The phrase ‘our supreme Lord’ refers to Pope Gregory xiii. 79 Ibid., 67. See also the first chapter of this book. 80 McCoog, The Society of Jesus in Ireland, Scotland, and England, 1541–​1588, 140–​41. 81 Kilroy, Edmund Campion, 179–​85. 82 Kilroy, ‘Parallel Lives of Dr Nicholas Sander and Edmund Campion’, 525–​26.

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it was lawful to obey the queen in ‘purely political’ matters, English Catholics were not bound to do so, and additionally that ‘there [was] a further comment on this case which must be given in secret’.83 The answer to a dilemma raised in the manual about the validity of interrogations also suggests how the excommunication influenced the actions of the priests. The manual stated that an interrogation conducted by ministers of the queen was ‘never done by lawful authority … because a heretic queen is not a legitimate queen’, and that those subjected to such interrogations could be silent or equivocate in their answers.84 Jesuit and seminary priests played an active role in transmitting and explaining the excommunication to people in England. In January 1580 Lord Cobham, the ambassador in France, reported that the excommunication had been ‘newly confirmed and secretly printed’, and that a Jesuit named Thomas Derbyshire was on his way to England with a copy of it.85 Christopher Byers, a seminary priest who arrived in England in 1580, later recalled how a colleague of his at that time had been ‘an earnest perswader’ of the queen’s murder, and had brought a copy of the bull into England ‘to that ende’.86 There is certainly evidence to suggest that the priests believed the excommunication to be legitimate and that resisting the queen was therefore lawful. In 1581 a seminary priest named John Paine claimed that it was lawful to kill the queen without offending God, because ‘there were divers matters from the Pope published agaynst her’.87 In the same year another seminary priest named William 83 84

85 86 87

Peter Holmes, Elizabethan Casuistry (London: Catholic Record Society, 1981), 121. Ibid. Holmes recently discovered and translated another version of the Allen-​Persons cases, which included the answers to three additional cases. One of these concerned how priests might answer, when captured, ‘whether they think Queen Elizabeth is truly and properly speaking Queen after the excommunication published against her’. The conclusion was that priests could reply that she was queen, ‘because it is commonly said that the excommunication of Pius v was not legitimately published, following the correct legal procedure’. Holmes interprets this statement as proof that the author considered the bull invalid. See Peter Holmes, ‘The Missing “Allen-​Persons” Cases of Conscience’, Recusant History 32, no. 1 (2014), 6–​7 and 17–​18. I am not convinced that the author’s wording implies this. The phrase ‘it is commonly said’ could apply to any number of people holding varying religious views and may be an equivocation. Furthermore, the ‘correct legal procedure’ would have involved a papal nuncio publishing the bull of excommunication in England, which would have been impossible considering that government officials would never have permitted the nuncio to enter the country. Pius v acknowledged and made provisions to circumvent this problem in Regnans in Excelsis. See Crosignani et al., Recusancy and Conformity, 89. TNA SP 78/​4A f. 17. TNA SP 53/​19 f. 109. BL Lansdowne MS 33 f. 147-​47a.

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Hudson visited the Petre family in Essex, and told them ‘of an army that was … in prepar[ation], by the k[ing] of spayne, and the Pope…. and that there were certain prayers sett out beyond the seas … to be vsed and saide … for the good successe of the said armye’.88 Henry Orton and the Jesuit James Bosgrave publicly denounced accusations that they had ‘treated the bull lightly, or sought to nullify it’ in 1582, when they were captured and interrogated by the Elizabethan authorities.89 When Robert Persons wrote to Gregory xiii and Philip ii in May 1582 about the feasibility of invading England, he emphasised that it would be essential for the army to bring a press with them on the campaign, so that they could print and distribute copies of the excommunication against the queen. Persons further advised that it would be necessary for Gregory xiii to send out a bull of excommunication in his own name, and to declare that Elizabeth was no longer fit to govern.90 The interrogation reports and martyrdom accounts of numerous priests also indicate how the excommunication influenced their interactions with Elizabethan officials. When faced with questions about the papal bull they often refused to answer, as was the case with Edward Shelley and Ralph Emerson when they were captured in 1585.91 Some, however, were bolder and acknowledged that the queen’s excommunication remained in force, as did the Jesuits John Hart and John Gerrard.92 Seditious speech recorded after the bull’s republication indicates how news of the excommunication was received in England. In Writtle a clerk was found guilty of sedition in July 1580 for saying that England had no queen.93 A man from Norfolk was accused in October 1580 of having ‘openly seid, in the 88

Ibid., f. 143a-​44. The Petre family became strong supporters of the Jesuit mission, funding the College of the Holy Apostles for Essex, Norfolk, Suffolk, and Cambridgeshire. See James Kelly, ‘Counties Without Borders? Religious Politics, Kinship Networks and the Formation of Catholic Communities’, Historical Research 91, no. 251 (2018), 22–​38; idem, ‘Kinship and Religious Politics Among Catholic Families in England, 1570–​1640’, History 94, no. 315 (2009), 328–​43. 89 Henry Foley, ed., Records of the English Province of the Society of Jesus, vol. 7 part 2 (London: Burns and Oates, 1783), 1343. 90 Leo Hicks, ed. Letters and Memorials of Father Robert Persons (crs vol. 39) (London: Whitehead, 1942), 164–​65. 91 J.H. Pollen, Unpublished Documents Relating to the English Martyrs (crs vol. 5) (London: Whitehead, 1908), 26–​106. At least ten priests captured in the 1580s used this strategy. 92 John Gerrard, Autobiography of an Elizabethan, translated by Philip Caraman (London: Longmans and Green, 1951), 98; TNA SP 12/​144 f. 130. 93 J.S. Cockburn, ed., Calendar of Assize Records, Elizabeth I: Essex Indictments (London: HM Stationery Office, 1977), 203.

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herynge of sundrie persones, that the Queenes most excellent Maiestie and hir most honorable priuie counsell are herytikes.… That this realme stand[s]‌ accurssed and excomunicated of the popes owne mouth’.94 These kinds of responses persisted beyond 1580. In Sussex a man admitted that he would be willing to ‘resist the queen and crown’ in 1582. Another yeoman from Canterbury was accused of expressing hope in 1584 that he ‘should see the day [when] the pope of Rome would have as great sway and authority in England as ever he did in Rome’.95 Some of the responses from the 1580s also suggest how seminary priests and Jesuits discussed the queen’s excommunication with the people to whom they ministered. During a public disputation between Robert Bennet and a priest about to be executed near Winchester in 1583, the priest declared that ‘if the pope had also entrdicted hir [the queen’s] authoritie in ciuill causes he had done no other thing’ than was within his power. Bennet observed ‘a favour and liking’ of the priest’s speeches amongst the people present at this debate.96 A Lancashire farmer named John Finch told his interrogators in 1584 that ‘if Pius v had excommunicated [the queen], she was indeed excommunicated and justly so’, and publicly affirmed that he would ‘follow and obey whatsoever the Pope would command or appoint to be done’. Finch admitted to having conversed with several seminary priests, and the answers he gave his examiners suggest how they may have explained the queen’s excommunication to the laity.97 At the Jesuit Thomas Alfield’s indictment in 1585, he told the court a story about a ‘worshipful laymen’ named Jacob Leybourne, ‘who protested both at his arraynement and at his death that her Maiestie was not his lawfull Queene, for two respects: the one for her byrthe, the other for the excommunicaion, her Highenes having sought neyther dispensacion for the first nor absolucion for the seconde’.98 The role of the Jesuit and seminary priests in fostering awareness of the queen’s excommunication offers insight into an aspect of the mission that merits further consideration. The extent to which members of Catholic missions to England encouraged different kinds of religious and political resistance to the 94 95

TNA SP 12/​151 f. 64. J.S. Cockburn, ed., Calendar of Assize Records, Elizabeth I: Sussex Indictments (London: HM Stationery Office, 1975), 181; see also Cockburn’s Calendar of Assize Records, Elizabeth I:  Kent Indictments (London:  HM Stationery Office, 1978), 214. Similar responses are given greater consideration in the fifth chapter. 96 BL Lansdowne MS 39 f. 183. 97 Pollen, Unpublished Documents, 85–​87:  ‘I have bene conversant with some seminary priests; but not with any Jesuits, for which I ame sorry’. 98 Ibid., 115–​16.

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Elizabethan regime has been the subject of extensive debate.99 Conventionally, historians assumed that Jesuit and seminary priests used the pope’s clarification of the excommunication to assure English Catholics that they could continue to obey the queen indefinitely, without fear of divine punishment.100 Recent studies of the missions have complicated this view. Thomas McCoog has argued that Gregory xiii’s modification of the bull was never meant to be a permanent solution –​as soon as the queen’s deposition could be managed, Catholics would be expected to support it.101 Other historians still observe a distinction between certain forms of ‘religious’ disobedience to the crown such as recusancy, which the first Jesuit mission encouraged, and an outright commitment to overthrow the Elizabethan regime, which they did not publicly endorse.102 Peter Lake and Michael Questier see more politically subversive intentions in the activities of the early English Jesuits, suggesting that they encouraged recusancy from the Protestant English Church in order to demonstrate the strength and numbers of English Catholics, in hopes that this would force religious concessions from the Elizabethan regime.103 On the other hand, through careful analysis of the language used by Edmund Campion and other priests to answer state interrogations, Stefania Tutino has argued that the missionaries held more intransigent views about all forms of obedience to Elizabeth and her legitimacy as a ruler, which were clearly informed by the papal deposition.104 The evidence of missionaries’ communication about the bull to the English people indicates that they did not keep these views to themselves. Elizabeth’s excommunication figured centrally in preliminary discussions about the first Jesuit mission to England, and both Jesuit and seminary priests seem to have considered transmitting the bull to the laity as an important part of their ministry. The significance of the bull’s distribution within the Catholic missions suggests that it also affected the rationale for the missions in the first place, and the kinds of activities the missionaries encouraged in order to preserve the faith. 99

For a summary of these debates see Peter Lake and Michael Questier, The Trials of Margaret Clitherow: Persecution, Martyrdom, and the Politics of Sanctity in Early Modern England (London: Bloomsbury, 2011), 49–​82. 100 See for instance Clancy, Papist Pamphleteers; Adrian Morey, The Catholic Subjects of Elizabeth I (London: Allen and Unwin, 1978), 91. For a more recent iteration of this argument see Kilroy, Edmund Campion, 143–​44. 101 McCoog, The Society of Jesus in Ireland, Scotland, and England, 1541–​1588, 141. 102 See for instance Victor Houliston, Catholic Resistance in Elizabethan England:  Robert Persons’s Jesuit Polemic, 1580–​1610 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007), 31–​32. 103 Lake and Questier, Trials of Margaret Clitherow, 49–​51. 104 Tutino, Law and Conscience, 33–​52.

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The responses of people in England to renewed communication about the bull also indicate that the missionaries were right to be concerned about explaining its consequences. They show that, far from settling questions about the bull’s validity and resistance to the government, Gregory xiii’s modification of Regnans in Excelsis actually revived interest in the debate about Elizabeth’s right to rule in light of the papal deposition. As in the 1570s, these discussions could be subversive in and of themselves. The cases of seditious speech described above, many of which included challenges to the queen’s legitimacy on account of the excommunication, involved statements that people often made in public. Those who uttered these speeches increased the bull’s publicity twofold, through the content of their words and the act of publicly delivering them in defiance of the laws against sedition. James Fitzgerald’s rebellion in Ireland (the second Desmond Rebellion) also played a role in raising awareness of the renewed excommunication.105 An informant in the earl of Desmond’s camp in 1579 noted that John Fitzgerald, brother to the earl of Desmond, ‘hathe a Bull from the Pope to maintaine his relligion and excommunicacion for all that depend vpon the Queen’.106 Elizabeth summoned the Spanish and French ambassadors in March to complain that copies of the excommunication had been sent into Ireland, suggesting that their sovereigns had been less than helpful in preventing this.107 In his proclamation to the people of Ireland Fitzgerald also used the excommunication to justify his insurrection. He announced that Gregory xiii had renewed the sentence against Elizabeth, and that the pope had begun the process of deposing her by sanctioning holy war in Ireland and providing the Fitzgeralds with military and financial assistance.108 105 James Fitzgerald was a cousin of the earl of Desmond, Gerald Fitzgerald. He had helped to lead the first Desmond Rebellion in Ireland from 1569–​73. After the first rebellion’s defeat he fled to the continent and travelled through the courts of France, Spain and Rome before securing support from Gregory xiii. See Hiram Morgan, ‘Faith and Fatherland in Sixteenth Century Ireland’, History Ireland 3, no. 2 (1995), 13–​20. 106 TNA SP 63/​68 f. 8. 107 csp Simancas, vol. 3, 20. 108 lpl Carew MS 607 f. 35: ‘Oure holly father pope Gregorie the thirtenthe Christes vicare in earthe perceaving what dishonor to god and his sanctes, what destruction to Christian soules in Ireland and England, what sedition tumult sporte and murder hathe fallen to Scotland France and Flanders by the procurement of Elizabeth the praetensed Queene of England perceaving also that neither the warning of other Catholick princes and good Christians nor the sentence of pope Pius the fifth his praedecessor, nor the longe suffrance of god coulde cause her to forsake her Chisme heresie and wicked attemptes: as he nowe purposeth (not withoute the consent of other Catholick potentates) to deprive her actually of the vniuste possession of these kindomes whiche shee vsethe for the cheefe instrumentes of her impietie: so he first of all attempteth her said actuall deprivation by

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With this proclamation Fitzgerald brought back copies of the renewed excommunication. A copy of one of these bulls, which was translated into English, survives in the manuscripts of the Carew family at Lambeth Palace Library.109 This suggests much about its target audience: possibly Fitzgerald hoped to recruit more of the bilingual Ango-​Irish in Ireland to his cause with a translation of the bull. New English Catholics became an increasing presence in Ireland in this period because the penal laws were less stringently enforced there than in England; a copy of the bull written in English would certainly have appealed to this group.110 It was also possible that copies would make their way to England through Wales. Complaints about lax security in the western English and Welsh coastal towns occur frequently in government correspondence of this period. Smugglers ferried timber and corn between England and Ireland with impunity despite the best efforts of the Privy Council to control the ports, and it is possible that copies of the excommunication came in via these routes.111 A bull in English speaks to the sense of urgency and imminent change which Catholics felt at the time of republication and a desire to inform as many people as possible about the renewed sentence. It also suggests a demand for papal bulls amongst those who could not understand Latin, bulls which could be more easily circulated and explained in the absence of priests. Word of mouth was essential to spreading news of the excommunication in England after its first publication in 1570, and the production of a vernacular translation after Pope Gregory’s renewal of the sentence would have encouraged wider accessibility and more effective communication. Regnans in Excelsis also appeared in vernacular translations on the continent via the publication of Nicholas Sander’s Origine ac Progressu de Schismatis Anglicani, which was printed in 1585. Although Sander died in Ireland in 1579, his history of the arrival and implementation of Protestant reform in England

the meanes of our deere contre, wherin he dothe vs more honor and favor, then easalie can be expressed in woordes’. 109 See Figure 2.3. George Carew, earl of Totnes, served as a captain in the army in Ireland from 1579–​80. His later promotions included sheriff of county Carlow (1583), a seat on the Irish Privy Council (1590), and Lord President of Munster (1600). See Ute Lotz-​ Heumann, ‘Carew, George, earl of Totnes (1555–​1629)’, ODNB (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), available from http://​www.oxforddnb.com/​view/​article/​4628 [accessed  7 Nov 2014]. 110 David Edwards, ‘A Haven of Popery: English Catholic Migration to Ireland in the Age of Plantations’, in Alan Ford and John McCafferty, eds., The Origins of Sectarianism in Early Modern Ireland (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 95–​126. 111 See for instance BL Lansdowne MS 40/​20 f. 47.

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was completed and published by his colleague, Edward Rishton.112 Rishton included a full reprint of Regnans in Excelsis in the text of the Schismatis Anglicani. The history was intended primarily for a European audience and aimed to win transnational political support for English Catholics. It was published in six Latin editions and translated into six vernacular languages, including French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, German, and Polish. An English edition was apparently in preparation in 1596, but no such edition has survived.113 As with Sander’s earlier defence of the pope and the bull in De Visibili Monarchia, the number of editions the book went through indicates a high level of interest on the continent in Elizabeth’s conflict with the papacy. However, the Schismatis Anglicani also reached a wider audience through translation into several European languages. The popularity of this book points to the intensification of endeavours to communicate Regnans in Excelsis through various media in the 1580s in continental Europe as well as in England and Ireland. Efforts to distribute Regnans in Excelsis continued up to the launching of the Spanish Armada. Francis Walsingham received intelligence from Shields, near Newcastle, in September 1585 that a man had arrived in the town from Dieppe, a port in northern France, with ‘a bul of sartene thinges and is thowght to be a very bad member to his prynse and his contrie’.114 In December Thomas Rogers, one of Walsingham’s agents, wrote to him that ‘the laste letters from Rome [cert]efye that the newe Excommunicacion A[gainst] England is graunted, and that yt shall shortly be sent into England, to be Fixed vppon the courte gate, and vppon Powles, but whoe shalbe the Doer of yt I cannot learne as yet’.115 These rumours of a third excommunication against Elizabeth merit further consideration. In the preceding year, Francois, the duke of Anjou and King Henri iii’s younger brother, had died, leaving France without a Catholic heir to the throne. This left the Huguenot prince of Navarre, Henri de Bourbon, with the closest claim to the French crown. Pope Sixtus V, hoping to prevent the succession of a Protestant to the French kingdom, excommunicated Henri of Navarre in 1585 to prevent him from succeeding in the event of Henri

112 Christopher Highley, ‘ “A Pestilent and Seditious Book”:  Nicholas Sander’s “Schismatis Anglicani” and Catholic Histories of the Reformation’, Huntingdon Library Quarterly 68, no. 1 (2005), 153. 113 Ibid., 154–​55. 114 TNA SP 12/​182 f. 126. 115 TNA SP 15/​29 f. 98. ‘Powles’ is meant to signify St Paul’s Cross in London, where royal proclamations and sermons were often read out. See Mary Morrissey, Politics and the Paul’s Cross Sermons, 1558–​1642 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011).

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iii’s death.116 From his accession in 1585 Sixtus V had encouraged Philip ii of Spain to take more aggressive measures to bring England back into the Roman Church.117 Initially Philip was unwilling to proceed without full financial backing from Rome, which the pope was reluctant to provide. When the pope agreed to partially reimburse the king for the cost of outfitting the Armada, Philip began preparations for an invasion of England in 1586.118 In these circumstances, a third excommunication of Elizabeth would have fitted within a broader strategy to combat heresy in France and England. A new excommunication would have helped justify the endeavour and reminded Elizabeth’s Catholic subjects of their obligation to resist her when the time was right. A memorandum drawn up for Philip ii in March 1588 cited the ‘bull of Pius v’ as one of the ways in which he could press his claim to the English throne, following a successful invasion of England.119 Because Regnans in Excelsis had not named a successor to the English crown around whom Catholics should rally, Philip was also advised to appeal to the pope to issue a new bull against the queen, which would affirm his claim and that of his heirs to the English throne.120 Indeed, publicising Elizabeth’s excommunication appears to have been part of the Spanish strategy for winning the English people over to their cause after the invasion. In June 1588 Burghley acknowledged his receipt from Walsingham of ‘a copy of a roryng hellish Bull which yow wryte to be prynted in Antwerp to the nombre of xiiand [12,000] the contentes wherof I do note to be the summary of D. Allyns exhortation as to the deprivation of hir Maiesty’.121 Cecil was referring to the Declaration of the Sentence and Deposition of Elizabeth, published prior to the Spanish invasion. The Declaration is a single printed broadsheet, which has conventionally been attributed to William Allen, as ‘a resumé of the chief points contained in Allen’s Admonition to the nobility and people of England and Ireland’.122 Because of this, bibliographers of English Catholic literature have assumed that ‘the bull of Pope Sixtus V of which it purports to be the Declaration was never, in fact, issued’.123

1 16 117 118 119 120 121 122

For more on this episode see Holt, French Wars of Religion, 121–​52. csp Simancas, vol. 4, 557–​69. Ibid., 557–​69; see also Parker, Imprudent King, 305–​06. csp Simancas, vol. 4, 43. Ibid., 28–​36. TNA SP 12/​211 f. 93. A.F. Allison and D.M. Rogers, eds., The Contemporary Printed Literature of the English Counter-​Reformation Between 1558 and 1640, vol. 2 (Aldershot: Scolar Press, 1989–​94), 10. 123 Ibid.

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When the two documents are compared, however, the language and style of writing in each of these texts appears different. The title of the declaration is remarkably similar to that used for Regnans in Excelsis: the heading of Pius V’s bull reads ‘Sententia declaratoria contra Elizabeth Praetensam Angliae Reginam’, while the 1588 broadside begins with ‘A Declaration of the Sentence and Deposition of Elizabeth, vsurper and pretensed Quene of Englande’.124 Both Regnans in Excelsis and the Declaration also opened with an affirmation of the apostolic succession of the papacy. The Declaration begins with ‘SIXTVS the fifte, by Gods prouidence the vniuersal pastor of Christes flocke, to vvhome by perpetual and lavvful succession, apperteyneth the care and gouernement of the Catholike Church’. Regnans in Excelsis, when translated into English, opened with ‘He that rules in the Heavens above, and to whom all power is given both in Heaven and Earth, gave unto … Peter, the chiefest amongst the Apostles, and to the Pope of Rome, Peters Successor, a holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church’.125 The printed 1588 Declaration went on to say that His Holinesse, in the almighty power of God, and by Apostolical auctority to him committed, doth renewe the sentence of his predecessors Pius 5. And Gregorie the 13. tooching the Excommunication and deposition of the sad Elizabeth: and further a nevve doth Excommunicate, and depriue her of all auctority and Princely dignety, and of all title and pretense on to the said Croune and Kingdomes of England and Ireland; declaringe her to be illegittimate, and an vniust vsurper of the same; And absoluinge the people of those states, and other persons whatsoeuer, from all Obedience … vnto her, or to any other in her name.126 Allen’s Admonition to the Nobility, on the other hand, is worded in more conciliatory terms: the Popes holiness … wholly inclined to mercy, followinge Gods rule and example … doth most mercifully forget and forgiue all the premisses, aswell in the whole body of the commonwealthe as in euery particuler person, that ys penitent and wearie of these horrible disorders and treasons committed against God, the See Apostolike, holie Churche, and our cuntrie … and only meaneth in Christes woorde and power giuen vnto 124 BL C.18.e.2(114*); A declaration of the sentence and deposition of Elizabeth (Antwerp: A. Conincx, 1588). 125 Ibid., See Crosignani et al., Recusancy and Conformity, 88–​89. 126 A declaration of the sentence and deposition of Elizabeth.

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him, and in zeale of Gods house, to pursue the actuall depriuation, of Elizabethe the pretensed Queene … declared and iuditially sentensed, by his Holines predecessors, PIVS QVINTVS and GREGORIE the xiii.127 The Admonition does not possess the same authoritative voice of the Declaration. None of the hesitancy and reluctance in Allen’s appeal to the English people is present in the Declaration, and the language in the latter is similar to the forms used in papal bulls. It is likely that the Declaration was meant to imply that the excommunication of Elizabeth had been renewed by Sixtus V, and that it was translated and published by Allen. Whoever the true author of the Declaration may be, its language is similar to other papal bulls issued in this period. If the Declaration never received official sanction from Rome and was never a legitimate papal bull, its author certainly tried to pass it off as genuine. No images of the papal seal, which was commonly included on printed bulls, appear on the document, only a simple Greek cross is stamped at the top.128 This might be explained by a lack of space on the broadsheet: the length of the text itself took up one full side. Nevertheless, the nature of this document raises some important points for consideration. The author wanted their readers to think that the Declaration amounted to the force of a papal bull, and it is easy to envisage a situation where those less familiar with the physical appearance of a bull might accept the Declaration as genuine. Attempts had been made before to translate copies of Regnans in Excelsis into English, and surviving manuscript copies of the bull in England bear little physical resemblance to the originals preserved in the Vatican.129 It was not unusual for papal bulls to take on different appearances after scribes copied them, especially when they were considered illegal or traitorous items by the English government and had to be copied in adverse circumstances.130 Elizabeth’s ministers had no qualms about referring to the Declaration as a bull of excommunication. In a letter to the archbishop of Canterbury written at the end of June 1588, Walsingham warned the archbishop of the ‘12 thousand 127 William Allen, Admonition to the nobility and people of England and Ireland (Antwerp: A. Conincx, 1588), 6–​7. 128 lpl Bacon MS 647 f. 35–​36. See Figure 2.2 in this chapter. 129 asv Misc. Arm. II no.  67 f.  246 and Misc. Arm II no.  84 f.  35 are prints of Regnans in Excelsis identical to Houghton Library Br.1745.36.151. See Figures  2.2 and 2.3 in this chapter for examples of surviving manuscript copies in England. 130 On the authenticity of print see Adrian Johns, The Nature of the Book: Print and Knowledge in the Making (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998), see also Elizabeth Eisenstein, The Printing Revolution in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge:  Cambridge University Press, 2012).

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Bulles which are meant to be dispersed … by the which the Pope exhorteth her Maiestes subiectes to withdrawe their obedience from her’.131 The Privy Council issued another royal proclamation against the bringing in of bulls shortly after they learned of the Declaration’s publication.132 The proclamation in fact announced that ‘Sixtus the fift now Pope of Rome, hath of late published and set foorthe a most malicious and detestable Bull or Libell against her Maiestie’.133 As Walsingham warned his fellow ministers, 12,000 copies of this ‘bull’ were published in Antwerp in preparation for the Armada’s invasion. While only two have survived in England to the present day, this is not necessarily indicative of its unsuccessful distribution, as few broadside proclamations from this period survive in more than ten copies. Rather, this enterprise shows that eighteen years after Pius v first announced the excommunication of Elizabeth, efforts to disseminate this message amongst the English people were as strong as ever. News, information, and rumours about Elizabeth’s excommunication continued to circulate around England and Ireland to the end of her reign. Sir John Popham wrote to Cecil in 1589 acknowledging receipt ‘of the most wycked Bull set forth by thys last pope Sixtus Quintis agaynst her Maieste’.134 In 1591 Francis Bacon, then serving in parliament, received reports that a member of the Catholic Bellamy family, some of whom had been implicated in the Babington Plot to assassinate the queen in 1586, had obtained a copy of Elizabeth’s excommunication and were possibly involved in a new scheme against the government.135 After the king of Spain died in 1598, one of Cecil’s informants in the Low Countries wrote to him about a plot between the king and the papacy to send out a new bull of excommunication against the queen, which had been under discussion before Philip ii’s death.136 Regnans in Excelsis was also proclaimed in Ireland during the Nine Years’ War. In the province of Munster Sir Thomas Norris reported that ‘certeine Preestes’ had been travelling through the countryside in 1598, proclaiming ‘the Bull of Pope Pius Quintus’ wherever they went.137 Printed copies of

1 31 lpl Fairhurst MS 2009 f. 17. 132 A proclamation against the bringing in, dispersing, vttering and keeping of bulles from the sea of Rome, and other traiterous and sedicious libels, bookes and pamphlets (London: Christopher Barker, 1588). 133 Ibid. 134 TNA SP 12/​223 f. 116. 135 TNA SP 12/​239 f. 163. 136 TNA SP 12/​268 f. 97. 137 TNA SP 63/​202/​4 f. 20.

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Regnans in Excelsis were also found at Listowel Castle in Kerry during a raid in 1601.138 The circulation of the bull and related materials continued to inform public discourse about the queen and her legitimacy as a ruler. A yeoman living in Hatfield in 1590 was arrested for saying that ‘the Church of England was not [a]‌true nor lawfull Churche’ and that ‘he cannot tell whither the Queenes Majestie be a true, lawfull, and christian majestrate’.139 In 1592, a tailor living in Finchingham in Essex was indicted for saying that ‘the poope is supreme hedd over all Christendome’, and that if he ‘sholde be comanded to doe any service in the Queenes behalfe, the same wold goe ageynste his conscience’.140 Continued circulation and proclamation of the sentence also spurred resistance in Ireland during the Nine Years’ War. The Jesuit Henry FitzSimon was imprisoned in Dublin in 1600 for proclaiming his belief in ‘the bull of Pius Quintus agaynst hir maiesty’.141 In the same year Sir George Carew observed ‘how obstinattlye the traytors in this realme are ledd … agaynst her Maiestie and her government’ around the city of Limerick. Carew attributed this resistance to ‘a bull of excommunication latelye brought into this land from Rome, which threatens damnation to all those thatt do euen submitt themselues vnto her Maiestie’.142 These persistent efforts to raise awareness of Elizabeth’s excommunication point to a sustained preoccupation with the implications of the sentence amongst her subjects. To the very end of her reign, the papal deposition of the queen remained an issue of vital domestic and international significance amongst English and Irish Catholics. Transmission of the sentence did not fade away after its initial publication. On the contrary, the circulation of the bulls and discussions they provoked intensified as Elizabeth’s reign progressed and tensions with European Catholic kingdoms spilled over into conflict in the 1580s and 1590s. This circulation shows that the theoretical dilemma forced upon English Catholics by Elizabeth’s excommunication had practical consequences too.

1 38 TNA SP 63/​209/​1 f. 78. 139 J. S.  Cockburn, ed., Calendar of Assize Records, Elizabeth I:  Hertfordshire Indictments (London: HM Stationery Office, 1976), 77. 140 Cockburn, Essex Indictments, 390. 141 TNA SP 12/​275 f. 220. See also Thomas McCoog, The Society of Jesus in Ireland, Scotland, and England, 1598–​1606: ‘Lest Our Lamp Be Entirely Extinguished’ (Leiden: Brill, 2017), 265. 142 TNA SP 63/​207/​3 f. 290.

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Debating the Excommunication’s Legitimacy

While relatively few Catholic publications from Elizabeth’s reign included full reprints of Regnans in Excelsis in the way that Nicholas Sander’s books did, Catholic polemicists did refer to the papal sentence in their works. These allusions became yet another way in which information about the bull circulated in Catholic communities. Martyrological accounts of priests and laymen executed by the Elizabethan regime portrayed the queen and her councillors using the bull as a convenient excuse to persecute English Catholics. Thomas Alfield’s True Reporte of the Death and Martyrdome of M.  Campion Jesuit (1582), for instance, described in detail the reactions of Edmund Campion, Ralph Sherwin, and Alexander Briant to their executioners’ questions about the bull on the scaffold before they ‘meekely and sweetly yelded’ their souls to Christ.143 An expanded account of Campion’s execution and those of eleven other priests, compiled by William Allen, accused the regime of ‘renewing again the old sore of the excommunication … and by vndewe waies gone about to make vs guiltie and odible by that’.144 These narratives circulated widely in England and Europe, both in print and in manuscript, to garner public support from the wider Catholic community. The gruesome accounts of English Catholics’ suffering served as edifying models of faith and spiritual grace in the face of adversity.145 These stories additionally underscored the cruelty of the heretical English government, and when they mentioned the papal excommunication and deposition, worked to undermine its legitimacy. Using examples from the biblical and medieval past also became a prominent feature of Catholic defences of Elizabeth’s excommunication, turning a common tactic in Protestant polemics against the papacy’s critics.146 Such defences were part of a wider polemical programme that defended the papal supremacy and deposing power more broadly. Other Catholic publications moved beyond defence and invoked the excommunication to justify different kinds of resistance to the Elizabethan regime. Written responses to the bull were not produced solely in opposition to Protestant rhetoric. Towards the end of Elizabeth’s reign, Regnans in Excelsis and its implications for English

143 Thomas Alfield, A true reporte of the death and martyrdome of M. Campion Iesuite and preiste (London: Rowlands, 1582), 19–​29. 144 William Allen, A briefe historie of the glorious martyrdom of XII reuerend priests (Rheims: Jean Foigny, 1582), 38. 145 Dillon, Construction of Martyrdom; Brad Gregory, Salvation at Stake: Christian Martyrdom in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1999), 254–​314. 146 The Protestant side of this debate is considered in the next chapter.

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Catholics became a fierce point of contention between those who maintained the papal supremacy and deposing power, and Catholics who wanted to set aside the bull in hopes that the government would grant them a degree of toleration. Martyrdom accounts have received considerable attention from historians and literary scholars, but less attention has been paid to other strategies Catholic writers used to discuss the queen’s excommunication.147 Assessing these strategies shows that English Catholics actively engaged Protestant polemicists in debate about the legitimacy of the papal deposition, and even used it as leverage with the Elizabethan government towards the end of the sixteenth century. Catholic writers began composing responses to the papal excommunication soon after its publication. Sander’s De Visibili Monarchia openly defended Elizabeth’s excommunication and deposition by referring to medieval precedents for the papacy censuring and excommunicating errant rulers. Sander’s defence of the Roman Catholic hierarchy, which included a reprint of Regnans in Excelsis and an account of John Felton’s execution for posting it in London, made reference to the struggles of Holy Roman Emperor Henry iv with Pope Gregory vii as well as the conflict between the French King Philip iv and Pope Boniface viii.148 Sander portrayed Henry as a ruler in need of admonishment, describing how he drove his mother out of his realm, looked down on his fellow German princes, oppressed the nobility, and raised up ‘inferior persons’.149 Sander’s accusations against Henry iv bore similarities to those levelled against Elizabeth by Pius v in Regnans in Excelsis. In the bull, the pope accused Elizabeth of having ‘despised the pious prayers and admonitions with which Catholic princes have tried to cure and convert her’ and of

147 Recent work on Catholic martyrdom and its representation in England includes: Alexandra Walsham, ‘Relics, Writing, and Memory in the English Counter-​Reformation:  Thomas Maxfield and His Afterlives’, British Catholic History 34, no. 1 (2018), 77–​105; Anastasia Stylianou, ‘Martyrs’ Blood in the English Reformations’, British Catholic History 33, no. 4 (2017), 534–​60; Robert Harkins, ‘ “Persecutors Under the Cloak of Policy”: Anti-​Catholic Vengeance and the Marian Hierarchy in Elizabethan England’, Sixteenth Century Journal 48, no.  2 (2017), 357–​85; Alison Shell, ‘The Writing on the Wall? John Ingram’s Verse and the Dissemination of Catholic Prison Writing’, British Catholic History 33, no.1 (2016), 58–​70. 148 cul Nicholas Sander, De Visibili Monarchia (Louvain: John Fowler, 1571), 460–​75, 514. Stefania Tutino has written a thorough analysis of the resistance theories Sander laid out in this treatise. See Law and Conscience, 21–​29. 149 Sander, De Visibili Monarchia, 462: ‘Henricus Rex … Principes despicere, nobiles opprimere, inferiors sustollere…. Talia igitur initia ipsius erant, qui tot Pontifices Romanos persecutus postea est’.

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‘removing the royal Council, composed of the nobility of England, and filling it with obscure men’.150 Sander’s account of Philip iv similarly argued that the king had shown contempt for the papacy by allowing letters from the pope to be burned in his court. Through Philip’s actions ‘the righteous judgment of God was lost’ and ‘the road was cut off between France and the papacy’. Because of this, Boniface had no choice but to excommunicate the king.151 In comparison, Elizabeth’s sentence accused her of ‘not even permitting the nuncios sent to her … by this See to cross into England’, and of forcing her subjects ‘to abjure the authority and obedience of the pope of Rome’.152 Sander portrayed the papacy as a reluctant monitor of rulers’ behaviour, intervening only when their crimes became so serious that the pope had no choice but to publicly censure them. The parallels that he drew between Elizabeth’s actions and those of the medieval rulers implied that she too was in need and deserving of similar punishment. The Treatise of Treasons, published in 1572 and attributed to John Leslie, bishop of Ross, alluded to more recent and local precedents in its discussion of Elizabeth’s excommunication. In his warning to Elizabeth’s subjects about what might befall them as a consequence of the sentence, Leslie said Let the Stories tell you … namely those of the late king of Nauarre, and of your owne King Iohn her owne Progenitour…. for the reast do referre thee to the Presidents and examples of all Christian Princes and Nations excommunicated before her … vpon thine owne pervsing of the sequeles ensued (in few yeares to speake of) to euery excommunicated Emperour, King, or Countrey, that persisted obstinate: be thy selfe Iudge, whether it shalbe wisedome or policie for your Queene, to trust to these Machiauellians light regarde and estimation made therof.153 In this passage Leslie referred to the excommunications of Antoine de Bourbon, the late father of King Henri of Navarre, and of the English King John, who was excommunicated by Pope Innocent iii in 1209 in an investiture dispute over the vacant seat of the archbishopric of Canterbury. The pope also ordered

1 50 Crosignani et al., Recusancy and Conformity, 86–​89. 151 Sander, De Visibili Monarchia, 514:  ‘literas Papae in ignem proiecit in contemptum Ponteficis, propter quod iusto Dei iudicio male periit…. Rex ergo vias interclusit inter Franciam et Pontificem. Papa vero Regem excommunicauit’. 152 Crosignani et al., Recusancy and Conformity, 86–​89. 153 John Leslie (attributed), A treatise of treasons against Queen Elizabeth and the croune of England (Louvain: John Fowler, 1572), 103-​103b.

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the suspension of sacraments in England while the excommunication stood, and John eventually relented and accepted the pope’s candidate in exchange for absolution.154 Although Leslie did not spell out the circumstances of John’s sentence, the allusion and the warning that followed implied that those rulers and countries who had historically resisted excommunication had consequently suffered. If Elizabeth persisted in heresy, she too risked endangering herself and her kingdom. Other English Catholic authors in exile who printed controversial works in the 1570s, including Gregory Martin and Richard Bristow, relied principally on biblical precedent and writings of the early church to make their arguments. Quoting Paul’s second epistle to the Corinthians, in which Paul threatened ‘to come againe vnto them, and then to Excommunicate the offenders, without sparing of anie’ as punishment for their worship of false apostles, Bristow argued that this incident ‘proueth this authority of his [the pope] to excommunicate with the power of Christ’.155 Bristow believed that Paul’s letter made ‘manifest, that they doe miserably forget themselues, vvho feare not the excommunications of Pius Quintus, of holy memorie: in whome Christ himselfe [is] to haue spoken and excommunicated, as in Saint Paule’.156 Although Gregory Martin’s Treatise of Schism (1578) did not mention Elizabeth’s excommunication directly, Martin also declared that ‘Al open professors of heresie or knowen heretikes are ipso facto excommunicati, in so doing they are excommunicate forthwith, without further sentence, as appereth in Councels, decrées, et in bulla coene domini’. Martin supported his reference to the conciliar decrees with quotations from Jerome, Luke, and the first book of Corinthians.157 These arguments were pertinent to the debates amongst English Catholics about the validity of Elizabeth’s excommunication. Bristow used the epistles of St Paul to stress the divinely-​ordained power of the popes to excommunicate; Martin invoked the concept of excommunication latae sententiae established in canon law for crimes of heresy. It is worth pointing out that both strategies emphasised the queen’s status as excommunicated and a heretic. Although Regnans in Excelsis could be questioned on legal grounds, Elizabeth’s actions against the Catholic Church in England clearly demonstrated her heresy, and constituted a crime worthy of excommunication ipso facto. 154 David Carpenter, ‘The Plantagenet Kings’, in David Abulafia, ed., The New Cambridge Medieval History, vol. 5 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 319–​20. 155 Richard Bristow, A briefe treatise of diuerse plaine and sure wayes to finde out the truthe (Antwerp: John Fowler, 1574), 31-​32b. 156 Ibid. 157 Gregory Martin, A treatise of schisme (London: W. Carter, 1578), 51–​54.

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Catholic writers continued to employ a mix of the biblical and medieval past to discuss Elizabeth’s excommunication in the 1580s. Shortly after Edmund Campion and Robert Persons arrived in England in the summer of 1580 to begin their mission, both produced short polemics in defence of the Catholic Church.158 The absence of any overt discussion of Regnans in Excelsis in both Campion’s Rationes Decem (1581) and Persons’s Brief Discours Contayning Certayne Reasons Why Catholiques Refuse to Goe to Church (1580) is particularly striking when juxtaposed with English Protestant polemic, which frequently referred to the bull to conflate Roman Catholicism with treason. Yet assessment of biblical and medieval references in their publications shows that Campion and Persons did engage with the excommunication’s implications in public discourse, albeit more indirectly than their polemical adversaries. In the Rationes Decem Campion appealed to the examples of several rulers who embraced the Roman Catholic Church and the papacy to argue in support of the Church’s hierarchy of spiritual power: The pietie of which Princes and People, and the Discipline both of Peace and Warre did originally take their rooting, in this our Catholike doctrine. What Theodosij out of the East, what Charles’es out of the West, may I here recite? What Edwards of England, Lodouicks of France, Hermingildi of Spayne, Henryes of Saxony, Wenceslaes of Bohemia, Leopolds of Austria, Steuens of Hungarie … may I appeale vnto? All which (being organized with secular power) by example, by Armes, by Lawes, by solicitous industrie, by magnificent charges, haue maintained and supported our Church?159 A closer examination of the rulers to whom Campion referred reveals a list of leaders who, like Elizabeth, had faced papal censure.160 The emperor Theodosius was supposedly excommunicated and prohibited from entering a church 158 For recent assessments of their publications during the mission see Houliston, Catholic Resistance in Elizabethan England, 27–​44; Ronald Corthell, ‘Writing Back: Robert Parsons and the Early Modern English Catholic Subject’, Philological Quarterly 87, no. 3–​4 (2008), 277–​97; Clancy, Papist Pamphleteers; Holmes, Resistance and Compromise; Tutino, Law and Conscience; Lake and Questier, ‘Puritans, Papists and the “Public Sphere” ’. 159 Edmund Campion, Rationes Decem, translated by Laurence Anderton (Rouen:  1632), 182–​83. 160 Gerard Kilroy has suggested that Campion ‘ignored’ the debate over the papal deposing power in the Rationes Decem, drawing on evidence from Campion’s trial in which he expressed concern about the consequences of Regnans in Excelsis for the English people. See Kilroy, Edmund Campion, 204.

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by Ambrose, the bishop of Milan, who refused to absolve Theodosius until he completed public penance.161 Pope Innocent ii excommunicated the French King Louis vii when he contested the nomination of the archbishop of Bourges. Duke Leopold of Austria found himself thrown out of the Church in retaliation for taking King Richard i of England prisoner when he travelled through Austria on his way home from fighting in the crusades.162 The ‘Henryes of Saxony’ to whom Campion referred were the Holy Roman Emperors Henry iv and v, both of whom were commonly alluded to in Protestant polemics against papal supremacy and excommunicative power.163 Henry iv sought absolution from his initial excommunication in 1076 to prevent worsening of the ongoing civil war in Saxony, although Pope Gregory vii later renewed the sentence in 1078.164 After a long struggle with three different popes over investiture rights, Henry V conceded to the papacy in exchange for peace at the Concordat of Worms.165 All of these rulers relented to the wishes of the pope or bishop in question in exchange for absolution. In Campion’s appeal to history excommunication remained a legitimate form of censure for rulers, one of which Elizabeth and her supporters needed to be mindful. The Rationes Decem circulated in Latin in the 1580s and its target audience included Elizabeth’s ministers, the queen herself, and educated subjects who would have been familiar with these ­stories.166 By engaging with precedents that affirmed the validity of monarchical excommunication, Campion indirectly asserted the power of Elizabeth’s own punishment to his readers. Persons adopted a more conventional approach to addressing Elizabeth’s excommunication through history, appealing to scripture and the examples 161 This precedent is used in many narratives on papal supremacy. Patrick Collinson actually considered this episode responsible for Ambrose’s absence from Foxe’s Acts and Monuments. See Collinson, ‘If Constantine, then also Theodosius:  St Ambrose and the Integrity of the Elizabethan Ecclesia Anglicana’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History 30 (1979), 205–​29. 162 See I.S. Robinson, ‘The Papacy’, in David Luscombe and Jonathan Riley-Smith, eds., The New Cambridge Medieval History, vol. 4 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 317–​83. 163 See idem, Henry IV of Germany, 1056–​1106 (Cambridge:  Cambridge University Press, 1999), 143–​70. 164 Ibid., 156–​63. 165 Uta-​Renate Blumenthal, The Investiture Controversy: Church Monarchy from the Ninth to the Twelfth Century (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1988), 167–​72. 166 See Lake and Questier, ‘Puritans, Papists, and the “Public Sphere” ’, 601–​06, and Daniel Woolf, Reading History in Early Modern England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 93–​97.

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of the early Christian emperors. In a discussion of heresy in the Brief Discours Persons wrote what a sin it [heresy] was counted in the primatiue Church, it may apere by the seuer lawes, made … in the decrées of the good christian Emperors Martian and Iustinian, and espetialy of the noble and zelous first christian Emperor, Constantine, which made it deathe, after the condemnation of Arius by the general councel of Nyce, for any man more to read his books and therby to aduenture to be poisoned with his heresies.167 Here Persons offered examples of model Christian sovereigns as a rebuke to Elizabeth for persisting in heresy and allowing it to spread amongst her people. In Regnans in Excelsis Pope Pius v pronounced Elizabeth ‘to be an heretic, and a favourer of heretics’ and declared this his reason for excommunicating and deposing her.168 Persons invoked the intolerance of heresy by renowned emperors such as Constantine and Justinian to remind readers of Elizabeth’s heretical status, as well as her apparent contempt for the examples of her holy forebears.169 Persons used these stories to emphasise that Elizabeth had not followed the examples set by these rulers, though they may also have served as a warning to her regime of the futility of trying to enforce church attendance.170 Persons also referred to the writings of Saint John and the Prophet David to discuss schismatics and heretics, which described the appropriate treatment of excommunicates. S. Iohn expresseth  farther, what it is to consent vnto them, or to communicate with them in their workes, saying. He that sayeth as much as God speede them doth communicate (or participate) with them in their noughtye workes. Which thinge the Prophet Dauid knew wel, and therefore sayde, that he would not soe much as sitt downe  with such men, and obiecteth the contrarye fault to a wicked man…. And Saint Paul 167 Robert Persons, A brief discours contayning certayne reasons why Catholiques refuse to goe to church (East Ham: Greenstreet House Press, 1580), 7–​9. 168 Crosignani et al., Recusancy and Conformity, 86–​89. 169 See Claire Sotinel, ‘Emperors and the Popes in the Sixth Century’, in Michael Maas, ed., The Cambridge Companion to the Age of Justinian (Cambridge:  Cambridge University Press, 2005), 267–​90; Timothy Barnes, The New Empire of Diocletian and Constantine (London:  Harvard University Press, 1982); H.A. Drake, ‘The Impact of Constantine on Christianity’, in Noel Lenski, ed., The Cambridge Companion to the Age of Constantine (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 111–​36. 170 Houliston, Catholic Resistance in Elizabethan England, 27–​32.

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commaunded Tymothye, not to consent to Alexander the Heretycke, but to auoyd him. Lykewyse, he commaunded the Romayns, not to consent to other suche fellowes, but to declyne or turne awaye from them.171 Several similarities exist between Persons’s plea to avoid heretics and the guidelines in the decretals for dealing with excommunicates from the Church. Just as devout Christians were obligated to shun heretics in Persons’s scriptural admonitions, so would they have been expected to ostracise anyone excommunicated by a bishop or the pope.172 Excommunicates were in theory barred from any association with members of their community, to the point where sharing meals and utensils was prohibited, and the heretics in Persons’s references received much the same treatment.173 The passage reminded readers that Elizabeth was not the only person excommunicated and anathematised by Regnans in Excelsis –​so was anyone who continued to follow her. This excerpt was less about the consequences of excommunication for Elizabeth herself than it was about its implications for the souls of her subjects. In 1584 William Allen published A True, Sincere, and Modest Defence of English Catholics, a reply to William Cecil’s Execution of Justice in England.174 The book was originally printed in English and later translated into Latin; a copy was sent to Pope Gregory xiii by the nuncio in Paris.175 The Defence openly 171 Persons, Brief discours, 31–​32. The canons of the English Church concerning excommunication were nearly identical to those used in the Catholic Church, and adopted from the decretals of Clement iii, Innocent iii, Innocent iv, Alexander iii, Alexander iv, Gregory ix, and most interestingly, Gregory vii and Boniface viii. See Gerald Bray, Tudor Church Reform: The Henrician Canons of 1535 and the Reformatio Legum Ecclesiasticarum (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2000), 52–​60. 172 In theory this was true in both the Roman Catholic and English Churches. On excommunication in the English Church see Ralph Houlbrooke, ‘The Decline of Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction’, in Rosemary O’Day and Felicity Heal, eds., Continuity and Change: Personnel and Administration of the Church in England 1500–​1642 (Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1976), 239–​57; and Martin Ingram, ‘Puritans and the Church Courts, 1560–​1640’ in Christopher Durston and Jacqueline Eales, eds., The Culture of English Puritanism, 1560–​1700 (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1996), 58–​91. 173 Vodola, Excommunication in the Middle Ages, 29–​30, 37–​38, 49, 53–​54, 68–​69. 174 I have used the version of Allen’s Defence of English Catholics edited by Robert Kingdon, in the same volume in which he edited Burghley’s Execution of Justice. For a treatment of Burghley’s argument see chapter three of this book. 175 See the introduction to William Allen, A True, Sincere, and Modest Defence of English Catholics, edited by Robert M.  Kingdon (Ithaca:  Cornell University Press, 1964). Peter Lake has discussed Allen’s use of ecclesiastical history to defend papal authority in the Defence, arguing that Allen’s statements helped to fuel the Elizabethan regime’s fears about English Catholic allegiances to the pope. Lake, Bad Queen Bess? Libels, Secret

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considered Elizabeth’s excommunication and what it meant to English Catholics. Allen devoted an entire chapter to the papal excommunication and deposition of monarchs.176 Allen recalled the story of Babylas, the bishop of Antioch, who excommunicated an emperor for executing a royal hostage, and Pope Fabian, who ‘pursued the said Emperor by like excommunication and other means till at length he brought him to order and repentance’. The story of Ambrose, the bishop of Milan, and the Roman Emperor Theodosius also appeared. Allen recounted how Ambrose ‘excommunicated the elder Theodosius the Emperor’, and at his command Theodosius ‘put off his kingly robes’, left his throne, and took his place amongst the laity for eight months after massacring hundreds of Visigoths at Thessalonica.177 For Allen it was perfectly natural that the pope and the church hierarchy should be the judge of sovereigns: there was nothing ‘more common in the histories of all ages’. He listed the excommunications of the emperors Anastasius, Lotharius, and Michael as proof of this statement, as well as Pope Innocent’s excommunication of Arcadius. Allen acknowledged, however, that in certain cases ‘excommunication, being only but a spiritual penalty … would not serve’ and in these cases bishops as other godly persons, their own subjects, did crave aid and arms for their [rulers’] chastisement; as most holy and ancient Popes … did incite Catholic kings to do the same; that those whom the spiritual rod could not fruitfully chastise they might by extern[al] or temporal force bring them to order and repentance, or at least defend their innocent Catholic subjects from unjust vexation.178 Allen invoked these historical precedents to make a powerful assertion about the rights not only of the papacy, but also of Roman Catholic monarchs to intervene in places outside their dominions where other Catholics were threatened.179 The stories of monarchs who acknowledged the papacy’s censures ­established a basis for the legitimacy of Elizabeth’s excommunication. They also helped make a case for the invasion of England on the pretext of liberating

Histories, and the Politics of Publicity in the Reign of Queen Elizabeth I (Oxford:  Oxford University Press, 2016), 146–​49. 176 Allen, Defence of English Catholics, 146. 177 Ibid., 157–​158. See Collinson, ‘If Constantine, then also Theodosius’, 209–​13, for an account of the massacre. 178 Allen, Defence of English Catholics, 158–​60. 179 See the chapter on ‘The Succession Problem’ in Clancy, Papist Pamphleteers, 49–​53.

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the country from heresy.180 There cannot be any question in this passage of the author’s opinion of Regnans in Excelsis.181 The fact that Allen wrote and published this treatise in English first suggests much about its target audience and a continued sense amongst English Catholic leadership that the excommunication could be used to persuade Elizabeth’s subjects to assist in deposing her. When one considers the Defence’s more militant approach in light of events unfolding in the rest of Europe in the 1580s, one can also better appreciate Elizabeth’s excommunication as but one part of the papacy’s initiatives against Protestantism.182 Sometimes Catholic writers invoked Elizabeth’s excommunication to justify other forms of resistance besides violence. A manuscript on the virtues of recusancy attributed to the secular priest John Mush, entitled ‘An answere to a comfortable advertisement’, used the bull to remind English Catholics that our protestantes of England are not onlye manifest heretykes and professed enemyes to the churche of Rome in religion, but moreover they are as much promulgate and denounced excommunicates, as any heretykes in France and Germanye, and this not onlye by the popes bull in coena domini but also by a particular excommunication published in England by Mr Felton from Pius v as all men knowe against the Queene and all such as favour and participate with her in her religion.183 This treatise was written in May 1588, a few months before the Spanish Armada sailed for England. By this point most of the kingdom was aware that confrontation with Spain was looming, and the distribution of Elizabeth’s excommunication was an important component of Philip ii’s invasion plan.184 Mush’s allusion to the bull of 1570 reminded his audience of the sentence at a crucial 180 Thomas Clancy and Stefania Tutino have discussed this concept in their research, albeit in different Catholic polemical works. Clancy does not acknowledge this particular passage of the Defence; he explores the theory of intervention in Allen’s later writings. See Clancy, Papist Pamphleteers, 52–​55, and Tutino, ‘The Political Thought of Robert Persons’s Conference in Continental Context’, Historical Journal 52, no. 1 (2009), 43–​62. 181 Patrick McGrath probes this question in ‘The Bloody Questions Reconsidered’, Recusant History 20, no. 3 (1991), 305–​19. 182 See the fourth chapter of this book for these political developments. 183 St Mary’s College, Oscott MS E5 16, ‘An answere to a comfortable advertisement with it addition written of late to afflicted catholykes concerninge goinge to churche’, printed in Ginevra Crosignani, Thomas McCoog, and Michael Questier, eds., Recusancy and Conformity in Early Modern England:  Manuscript and Printed Sources in Translation (Toronto: Pontifical Institute for Medieval Studies, 2010), 187. 184 Brigden, New Worlds, Lost Worlds, 290–​94. See also the fourth chapter of this book.

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moment. He invoked the bull to remind readers that English Protestants had officially been denounced as heretics and that it was therefore unacceptable for Catholics to attend their services; it also reminded Catholics of Elizabeth’s status as a heretic ruler who could be resisted. Elizabeth’s excommunication became an intense source of division amongst Catholics during the archpriest and appellant controversies of the late 1590s. In this debate, stances on the excommunication became more sharply defined. The controversy stemmed from Pope Clement viii’s appointment of George Blackwell, a priest with close ties to the Jesuits, to oversee the missions of the secular priests working in England.185 The controversy resulted in a series of polemical debates between the Jesuit Robert Persons and secular priests such as William Watson and Christopher Bagshaw. Prior to the 1590s, most works printed by Catholic writers maintained a fairly united front on Elizabeth’s excommunication, whether they mentioned it explicitly or only alluded to it. By the beginning of the seventeenth century appellant Catholic authors began openly questioning the sentence and its call for resistance in their publications, as did Anthony Copley. Copley’s father lived in exile in Rouen; at fifteen he absconded from England and subsisted on pensions from Gregory xiii and the duke of Parma, before returning to England in 1590 to seek the queen’s pardon and employment.186 In a letter to a ‘Iesuited gentelman’, Copley observed that although the bull ‘doe[s]‌de facto assoyle the subjects of this Realm from their homage vnto her [Elizabeth]; it therefore followes not that they must, and ought to be parties against her Maiestie’ in the event of an attack, ‘howsoeuer pretending euen Religion, or other ciuill good thereunto’.187 Another public letter of Copley’s to a ‘dis-​Iesuited kinseman’ lamented that the pope had proceeded against the queen ‘by Buls and censures of excommunication and depriuation against her Maiestie, through the instigation (no doubt) of Spaine and Iesuits’.188 The secular priest Christopher Bagshaw 185 For an overview of this controversy see Arnold Pritchard, Catholic Loyalism in Elizabethan England (London: Scolar Press, 1979); see also Peter Holmes, Resistance and Compromise: The Political Thought of the Elizabethan Catholics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), 196–​215. On its implications for the succession see Peter Lake and Michael Questier, All Hail to the Archpriest: Confessional Conflict, Toleration, and the Politics of Publicity in Post-​Reformation England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019). 186 Michael Graves, ‘Copley, Anthony (b. 1567, d. in or after 1609)’, ODNB (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), available from https://​doi-​org/​10.1093/​ref:odnb/​6268 [accessed 5 Nov 2018]. 187 Anthony Copley, An Answere to a Letter of a Iesuited Gentelman (London: Felix Kingston, 1601), 39–​40. 188 Anthony Copley, Another Letter of Mr. A.C. to his dis-​Iesuited Kinseman (London: R. Field, 1602), 11–​12.

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echoed this accusation in his Sparing Discouerie of Our English Iesuits, declaring that ‘the Bull of Pius Quintus came out by the Iesuiticall humourists procurement’.189 The secular priest John Mush, who in 1588 had used Elizabeth’s excommunication to justify recusancy, boldly declared that ‘the Pope himselfe may bee lawfully resisted and disobeyed in causes temporall: especially, when the matter concernes the vtter subuersion of a whole Common-​wealth’ in the Dialogue Betwixt a Secular Priest and a Lay Gentleman that he produced in 1601.190 This was a radical departure from what Catholic writers had previously advocated. Although relatively few authors openly called for the execution of Elizabeth’s deposition after 1570, the strategies they used to discuss it before the archpriest controversy usually signalled that they considered the sentence a valid use of papal power, and one that was justified given the heretical views and policies of the Elizabethan regime. Now appellant writers openly questioned the powers belonging to the papacy. The appellant view that Catholicism should work within, rather than outside and occasionally against, the state had precedent in continental Europe, where territorial churches were taking stronger shape at the end of the sixteenth century.191 Their views on Regnans in Excelsis and the papal deposing power could fit within this broader pattern, although the blame the appellants placed on the Jesuits for the publication of the bull was a tactic primarily intended to taint them, to support the case for expelling the order and securing toleration for secular priests. While this strategy proved unsuccessful, it had precedent in numerous Protestant polemics printed in the 1570s and 1580s, which tied the Jesuits to the excommunication in the same way.192 Catholic writers’ use of the bull during the appellant controversy, combined with their use of biblical and medieval history to engage with the bull’s implications, shows that they actively engaged in debate about the excommunication of Elizabeth and its validity. This aligns with efforts within the wider English Catholic community to transmit copies of the bull and information about the sentence more generally. Catholic authors’ allusions to the sentence through uses of the past served as yet another means of communicating the implications of Regnans in Excelsis to people, one that included warnings from 189 Christopher Bagshaw, A Sparing Discouerie of Our English Iesuits, and of Father Parsons Proceedings (London: Felix Kingston, 1601), 11. 190 John Mush, A dialogue betwixt a secular priest, and a lay gentleman (London: Adam Islip, 1601), ix. 191 Tutino, Law and Conscience, 73. 192 On which see the third chapter of this book.

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history about what might happen to Elizabeth if she continued to defy the papacy. As years passed and it appeared less probable that English Catholics’ situation might improve, the ways in which Catholic authors engaged with the bull began to change, especially as the ideological differences between Jesuit and secular priests became more public and heated in the early seventeenth century. As Elizabeth aged and concerns about the succession became more pressing, some Catholics became more willing to publicly question whether the pronouncement of Regnans in Excelsis had been a good idea. The distribution of copies of Regnans in Excelsis after its initial pronouncement and confirmation, when combined with oral communication about the bull and the availability of reprints and summaries which appeared in printed works, ensured that Elizabeth’s excommunication was common knowledge in England. This evidence challenges earlier arguments that few people in England could have known about Regnans in Excelsis, and that it could not therefore have contributed significantly to religious resistance. On the contrary, the increased efforts to circulate the bull in the 1580s, and the role that Jesuit and seminary priests played in this enterprise, point to its importance amongst the English people and suggests a significant amount of concern with its spiritual and political implications. The intensified efforts of the 1580s to communicate the excommunication both in England and Europe also suggest that the bull’s renewal was meant to encourage stronger resolve amongst English and Irish Catholics and their allies on the continent to pursue more aggressive resistance against Elizabeth and her Protestant regime. With this in mind, I would argue that the excommunication confirmed against Elizabeth in the 1580s exerted more profound influence in her kingdom than did the initial pronouncement of the sentence in 1570. The circulation of Regnans in Excelsis in various written and oral forms also sheds light on the nature of Catholic resistance to the Elizabethan regime after 1570. Royal proclamations and an act of parliament passed in 1571 had outlawed papal bulls and any speech that questioned the queen’s legitimacy or called her a heretic. Anyone caught with a copy of a papal bull could be tried for treason. Communication about the bull as discussed in this chapter was therefore, itself, a striking and dangerous act of subversion against the Elizabethan regime. The extent to which English and Irish Catholics participated in the transmission of the papal sentence points to a culture of resistance that was bolder and much more widespread than has generally been acknowledged in studies of post-​Reformation Catholicism in the Tudor realms. In this context, it is little surprise that the excommunication also became central to the rationale for a range of violent and nonviolent forms of subversion amongst English and Irish Catholics.

­c hapter 3

Spreading the Word? Regnans in Excelsis in Protestant Discourse Although papal agents, missionaries, and English Catholics played a significant role in transmitting Regnans in Excelsis to the queen’s subjects, their efforts were not the only way that people would have learned about the sentence. On the contrary, it could be argued that Protestant responses to the bull contributed just as much, if not more, to how Elizabeth’s subjects became aware of the sentence. From the time of the bull’s first publication in 1570 until the end of Elizabeth’s reign, writers produced a stream of prose and verse that criticised the papacy and Regnans in Excelsis. While these works varied in the extent to which they discussed the bull, they all ensured that a diverse audience of varying degrees of literacy was aware of the queen’s excommunication, even if they did not always know the precise details of the sentence.1 Most of these publications were meant to reassure audiences that the realm had nothing to fear from the papal excommunication. Yet the fact that the excommunication generated this kind of discussion indicates that the bull unsettled the queen’s Protestant subjects much more than a superficial reading of their responses would suggest.2 Antipathy to Roman Catholicism became a unifying force amongst Protestants in post-​Reformation England, used to garner support for different political and religious policies. Peter Lake has suggested that this strategy exacerbated public anxiety about the realm’s vulnerability to foreign and domestic threats.3 The persistent appearance of Elizabeth’s

1 See John Pendergast, Religion, Allegory, and Literacy in Early Modern England, 1560–​1640: The Control of the Word (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006); David Cressy, ‘Literacy in Context: Meaning and Measurement in Early Modern England’, in Cressy, ed., Society and Culture in Early Modern England (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003), 305–​19. 2 Peter Lake and Michael Questier address manifestations of these broader fears in The Antichrist’s Lewd Hat: Protestants, Papists and Players in Post-​Reformation England (London: Yale University Press, 2002); see also Arthur Marotti, Religious Ideology and Cultural Fantasy: Catholic and Anti-​Catholic Discourses in Early Modern England (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2005). 3 Peter Lake, Bad Queen Bess? Libels, Secret Histories, and the Politics of Publicity in the Reign of Elizabeth I (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), 1–​2. See also Lake, ‘The Significance of the Elizabethan Identification of the Pope as Antichrist’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History 31, no. 2 (1980), 161–​78.

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2020 | DOI:10.1163/9789004426009_005

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excommunication in anti-​Catholic and antipapal publications shows how the sentence contributed to this sense of fragility. Such responses to the excommunication, however, indicate that doubts about the government’s ability to weather religious conflict were more than side-​effects of political strategy. They arose from genuine concerns about how Elizabeth’s disputes with the papacy would affect her kingdom’s safety and security. The range of works in which discussions of the papal bull appeared also indicates that this was an event discussed at many levels of society. Public discourse became a regular feature of political life from early in Elizabeth’s reign.4 Sustained public discussion of the excommunication for the rest of the queen’s life, and indeed well into the seventeenth century, suggest that the public sphere was becoming a more permanent fixture of English society from the early 1570s. Furthermore, when Elizabeth’s supporters wrote responses to the papal bull in defence of the queen, many of them included reprints and translations of the passages from Regnans in Excelsis that they wanted to criticise. This strategy provided her subjects with more access to information about the excommunication and increased awareness of it in unforeseen ways. Ironically, Protestant and government efforts to dispute the excommunication and publicly denounce it probably contributed more to the spread of information about Regnans in Excelsis than did Catholic transmissions of the sentence. 1

Humour, History, and Anxiety in Printed Responses to Regnans in Excelsis

Over 100 texts printed between 1570 and 1603 referred to Elizabeth’s excommunication or directly addressed it.5 Rather than assessing every instance in which writers responded to the papal excommunication in print, this section highlights some of the major themes which emerge across the range of works that discussed Regnans in Excelsis. Public responses to Elizabeth’s excommunication appeared in a variety of literary forms. Ballads, confessional polemics, 4 See Natalie Mears, Queenship and Political Discourse in the Elizabethan Realms (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005). 5 By my count, between 1570 and 1603, at least 117 printed works were published that either mentioned Regnans in Excelsis or explicitly attacked it. In the aftermath of the Gunpowder Plot from 1605–​06, at least eighteen responses to the plot made reference to Elizabeth’s excommunication. These numbers were compiled using Early English Books Online and the English Short Title Catalogue. See A.W. Pollard and G.R. Redgrave, A Short-​Title Catalogue of Books Printed in England, Scotland, and Ireland, and of English Works Books Printed Abroad 1475–​1640, 3 vols. (London: Bibliographical Society, 1976–​91).

88 chapter 3 sermons, poems, chronicles, and other works criticised the papal bull as a blustering but ultimately ineffective usurpation of power by the pope. Despite their differences in form, many of these works used similar strategies to attack the excommunication. Some writers made light of the bull and mocked the sentence against Elizabeth. Others employed historical precedents for the papacy’s excommunication and deposition of other monarchs to reassure readers that the bull was nothing to worry about. Occasionally polemicists employed both strategies in the same text. While authors used these tactics to convince their audiences that the bull posed no serious threat to the queen or her kingdom, the fact that they felt it necessary to respond at all shows the extent to which Elizabeth’s subjects worried about its consequences. All of these publications also helped to ensure widespread availability of information about the queen’s deposition. Perhaps unsurprisingly, many Protestant authors turned to metaphor to ridicule the papal bull. Comparisons of Regnans in Excelsis to mythical bulls, ordinary bulls, cows, and swine proliferated in anti-​Catholic publications.6 A poem entitled The Braineles Blessing of the Bull, printed in 1570 by Alexander Lacie, offered an extensive response to Elizabeth’s excommunication using animal metaphors. The initial picture of the bull in the poem was formidable:  ‘He beates  the ground with  foote, with hip and haunch:  As though hell gates should open at his call, And at his becke, the heauens high should fall’.7 The author referred to English Catholics as calves, comparing them to offspring of the metaphorical papal bull: ‘A Calfe or twayne hath here ben gotten since, Whose heads were solde of late in butcher row’ and taunted Catholics to ‘Come cheape Calues heads, and bring in Peter pence, Though some are bought, our butchers looke for mo. … We haue good hope, calues heads wyll not be deare’.8 The ‘calfe or twayne’ whose head the butchers sold referred to John Felton, executed in August 1570 for posting the bull in London. The poem’s gruesome images of calves’ heads proliferating for sale in the streets of London 6 See Brodie Waddell on the prevalence of methaphors for predatory animals in early modern sermons: Brodie Waddell, ‘Economic Immorality and Social Reformation in English Popular Preaching, 1585–​1625’, Social and Cultural History 5, no. 2 (2008), 165–​82. These kinds of attacks appear to have drawn inspiration from similar responses to the Northern Rebellion. Ballads attacking the rising often used the sigils of the earls of Northumberland and Westmoreland (a moon and a bull, respectively) to refer to the organisers of the rebellion. See Krista Kesselring, ‘ “A Cold Pye for the Papistes”: Constructing and Containing the Northern Rising’, Journal of British Studies 43, no. 4 (2004), 417–​43 for more on these ballads. 7 The braineles blessing of the bull the hornes, the heads and all, light on their squint eyed skonses full that boweth their knees to ball (London: Alexander Lacie, 1570). 8 Ibid.

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exposes the fears that inspired the author in the first place. Their underlying assumption was that English Catholics would readily accept the directives of Pius v. While its superficial tone was one of defiance, this passage made clear that the author of this poem expected the papacy and its excommunication of Elizabeth to have a receptive audience in England, and that the bull would even attract new followers to the Roman Church and the pope. Thomas Norton produced a series of attacks against the bull and the papacy in this vein shortly after Felton set up the excommunication.9 His Disclosing of the Great Bull described the papal censure as ‘a beastly cruell bodie, roaring out with the voyce or sound of a Bull, and wordes of a man, the sense of a deuill. The selfe same monster Bull is he that lately roared out at the Bishops palace gate in the greatest citie of England, horrible blasphemies agaynst God, and villanous dishonors agaynst the noblest Quéene in the world Elizabeth’.10 Norton’s picture of Regnans in Excelsis as a roaring hell-​beast and its contents as dishonourable, blasphemous, and even heretical was intended to create deep misgivings in any of Elizabeth’s subjects who were still uncertain about the English Church, and to affirm the convictions of those already convinced of the antichristian nature of anything related to the papacy. Yet the horror, cruelty, and devilishness ingrained in Norton’s portrayal of the bull also suggest its ability to strike fear in the hearts of Elizabeth’s subjects. There was a sense of shock that such a bull could be suffered to utter its ‘blasphemies’ in the ‘greatest citie of England’. The insults Norton hurled against the excommunication, along with the rest of his invective against popery, may also have helped to advance an aggressive political agenda against Catholics.11 As a member of parliament Thomas Norton introduced and helped push through many of the treason laws which targeted English Catholics in the 1571 parliament. Michael Graves has outlined Norton’s close ties to Lord Burghley and their collaboration on several legislative initiatives in parliament. In light of this relationship, Norton’s antipopery may have been encouraged by Burghley as a means of intimidating members of parliament into passing punitive legislation against Catholics.12 9 10 11 12

See Michael Graves, Thomas Norton: The Parliament Man (Oxford: Blackwell, 1994), for more on Norton’s relationship with the Elizabethan government. Thomas Norton, A disclosing of the great bull and certain calues that he hath gotten, and specially the monster bull that roared at my Lord Byshops gate (London: John Daye, 1570), 14–​17. Additionally, Peter Lake has recently argued that Thomas Norton used the anti-​Catholic pamphlets he published in 1570 to advocate a version of mixed monarchical government. See Lake, Bad Queen Bess, 23–​40. Ibid., 18–​ 28; see also Michael Graves, ‘Thomas Norton the Parliament Man:  An Elizabethan MP’, Historical Journal 23, no. 1 (1980), 17–​35.

90 chapter 3 His pamphlets against Elizabeth’s excommunication were intended to stir up public anti-​papal sentiments which enabled their passing. Depictions of the excommunication using terms like ‘trash’ and ‘trumpery’, comparing it to objects with little social or economic value, can likewise be found in numerous ballads, pamphlets, and longer polemics from Elizabeth’s reign. This phenomenon belonged to a wider trend in Protestant literature that disparaged the material culture of Roman Catholicism in monetary terms, one that originated in the early days of the Reformation.13 This discourse also shaped contemporary understandings about Elizabeth’s excommunication. The use of insults that commented on the worth of the excommunication occurred throughout Elizabeth’s reign, part of a broader convention that persisted well into the eighteenth century. Authors commonly likened rosaries, hallowed grains, crucifixes, agni dei, and various other materials to trash, waste, and other cast-​off items of little interest.14 As with animal metaphors, writers likened papal bulls to worthless merchandise in order to persuade the public that the sentence against Elizabeth presented no real threat to her subjects. Employing terms of worth to describe the excommunication created an image of the papal bull that divorced it from its original purpose and reduced it to something little better than rubbish. In a mocking letter written to Pius v after John Felton’s execution, part of a pair of ballads composed for the occasion, Steven Peele quipped that ‘euery Lad doth scoff and scorne your bulles to bad, And thinke they shall the better fare For hatyng of your cursed ware’.15 Bernard Garter’s Newyeares Gifte, Dedicated to the Popes Holinesse (1579) drew together verses against the papacy, letters written by English bishops against the papal supremacy, and images of Catholic materials to reach a wide audience. Garter, a clerk for the Blacksmiths’ company and a poet based in London, relied heavily on descriptions of value to deride the papacy, declaring that ‘their Buls, pardons, and such other néedlesse, or rather damnable baggage, trash, and 13 14

15

James Kearney, ‘Trinket, Idol, Fetish:  Some Notes on Iconoclasm and the Language of Materiality in Reformation England’, Shakespeare Studies 28 (2000), 257–​61. Alexandra Walsham, ‘The Pope’s Merchandise and the Jesuits’ Trumpery: Catholic Relics and Protestant Polemic in Post-​Reformation England’, in Jennifer Spinks and Dagmar Eichberger, eds., Religion, the Supernatural and Visual Culture in Early Modern Europe (Leiden: Brill, 2015), 370–​409. Steven Peele, A letter to Rome, to declare to ye Pope, Iohn Felton his freend is hangd in a rope: and farther, a right his grace to enforme, he dyed a papist, and seemd not to turne (London:  Alexander Lacie, 1571). Not much is known about Peele beyond the ballads he left behind, but it is worth noting that these ballads were sold in the shop of Henry Kirkham, the same bookseller who sold The Braineles Blessing of the Bull. Lacie was likewise the printer for the Braineles Blessing.

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­f igure 3.1  Folger Library. Bernard Garter, A newyeares gifte, dedicated to the Popes Holinesse, and all Catholikes addicted to the Sea of Rome (London: Henry Bynneman, 1579).

trumperies, are ouer dearly bought, althoughe indéede they be nothing worth, nay worse than naught’.16 Garter’s tirade against the ‘trash and trumperies’ of Roman Catholicism was one of the more extensive criticisms of Elizabeth’s excommunication in these terms. At the end of his pamphlet Garter included a woodcut entitled ‘The Popes Merchandize’ which included images of all of the materials Garter disparaged in his treatise, so that Elizabeth’s subjects might better identify and eradicate these outlawed materials.17 Criticism of Elizabeth’s excommunication in terms of value became prominent in literature published against the Jesuit mission. William Charke’s Answere to a Seditious Pamphlet Lately Cast Abroade by a Iesuite (1580) assured his readers that the ‘Bulles, pardons, holie graines, copper pieces of Agnus dei, with such other childish inuentions’ were nothing more than ‘most foolish and

16 17

Sidney Lee and Matthew Steggle, ‘Garter, Bernard (fl. 1565–​1579)’, ODNB (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), available from http://​www.oxforddnb.com/​view/​article/​10412 [accessed 2 Aug 2015]. Ibid., see Figure 3.1.

92 chapter 3 beggerly trashe’.18 Charke was a preacher in London well known to the authorities for his puritan leanings; he participated in the London Presbyterian conference and Bishop Aylmer tried to have him removed from the capital for his nonconformity in 1577.19 After he wrote his Answere to a Seditious Pamphlet, however, the Privy Council appointed Charke to dispute with Edmund Campion while he was imprisoned in the Tower.20 Similarly, George Elliot’s Very True Report of the Apprehension and Taking of that Arche Papist Edmund Campion described how the pope ‘Dispersed his sayd officers in diuers places of this Realme … with such store of Romish relikes, popish pelfe, trifles and trash … as namely by deliuering vnto them [English Catholics] Bulles from Rome, Pardons, Indulgences, Medalls, Agnus Dei, hallowed graines and beades, Crucifixes, painted pictures, and such other paltrie’.21 Elliot was an informant for the earl of Leicester: he reported to the earl on the activities of various Catholics in the southeast in 1581, and his account of Campion’s capture was meant to dispute a publication by Anthony Munday on the same subject.22 Munday enjoyed the patronage of several members of the queen’s household and council, and it is possible that Elliot hoped to discredit him and procure his own advancement.23 The fixation on papal bulls and Catholic devotional items in these works presents a paradox inherent in much of the polemic that dealt with the excommunication. The very efforts to belittle the papal bull and the Catholic materials with which it was classed signified a dark importance for these objects amongst English Protestants.24 Much as they might insult such items, 18

19 20 21 22 23

24

William Charke, An answere to a seditious pamphlet lately cast abroade by a Iesuite, with a discouerie of that blasphemous sect (London:  Christopher Barker, 1580), 33. See also Richard L. Greaves, ‘Charke, William (d. 1617)’, ODNB (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), available from http://​www.oxforddnb.com/​view/​article/​5142 [accessed  23 July 2015]. Greaves, ‘Charke, William’. Ibid. George Elliot, A very true report of the apprehension and taking of that arche Papist Edmond Campion the Pope his right hand, with three other lewd Iesuite priests, and diuers other laie people, most seditious persons of like sort (London: Thomas Dawson, 1581), a2b-​a3. See BL Lansdowne MS 33 ff. 143–​49. No account of Elliot appears in the ODNB, but Stephen Alford offers an account of his participation in Campion’s arrest in The Watchers: A Secret History of the Reign of Elizabeth I (London: Allen Lane, 2012), c­ hapter 6. David M.  Bergeron, ‘Munday, Anthony  (bap.  1560,  d.  1633)’,  ODNB (Oxford University Press, 2004), available from http://​www.oxforddnb.com/​view/​article/​19531 [accessed 2 Aug  2015]. See also Donna Hamilton, Anthony Munday and the Catholics, 1560–​1633 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005). Ann Kibbey, The Interpretation of Material Shapes in Puritanism:  A Study of Rhetoric, Prejudice, and Violence (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986). See also Patrick

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reformers feared their power to persuade unwitting subjects back into idolatry, and from thence, into the open resistance and rebellion which the pope demanded from Elizabeth’s subjects. As with satire, the persistence of these attacks proves how much the papacy’s attempt to excommunicate and depose Elizabeth unsettled those who had hoped the kingdom was set on a course of religious reform. Another strategy that appeared frequently in Protestant responses to Regnans in Excelsis was to use the history of papal excommunication to place the sentence against Elizabeth in context for readers. Catholic and Protestant uses of the past to debate the legitimacy of Elizabeth’s excommunication were part of a wider conflict over the history of Christianity. The critique voiced by Catholics, ‘where was your church before Luther’, motivated evangelical and later Protestant scholars to look to examples from scripture and the history of the early Church to justify their doctrines and practices as grounded in tradition rather than invention. The medieval past became a ‘critical battleground’ in the Reformation debates in England, with both Catholics and Protestants employing the history of the Church to defend their positions and dispute their opponents.25 As with other attacks on Regnans in Excelsis, this technique points to underlying fears about the possible ramifications of the bull for England. By engaging with historical examples of conflict between the papacy and other monarchs, the queen’s supporters tried to demonstrate that Elizabeth’s struggles with Rome were far from unusual, and that her government’s anti-​Catholic policies were justified in the present circumstances. This strategy, however, also implicitly invoked the question of whether Elizabeth would need to capitulate to pressure from the papacy and the Catholic powers of Europe. Heinrich Bullinger’s Confutation of the Popes Bull (1572) included a lengthy summary of disputes between the Holy See and various medieval monarchs, amongst whom King Philip iv of France and Holy Roman Emperor Henry iv

25

Collinson, ‘From Iconoclasm to Iconophobia: The Cultural Impact of the Second English Reformation’, in Peter Marshall, ed., The Impact of the English Reformation 1500–​1640 (London:  Arnold, 1997), 278–​307; and Claire Farago and Carol Komadina Parenteau, ‘The Grotesque Idol:  Imaginary, Symbolic, and Real’, in Michael Cole and Rebecca Zorach, eds., The Idol in the Age of Art: Objects, Devotions, and the Early Modern World (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2009), 105–​32. Helen Parish, Monks, Miracles, and Magic: Reformation Representations of the Medieval Church (London: Routledge, 2005), 19–​20. For case studies of evangelical uses of the past in the early days of the English Reformation see the essays by Julian Lock, Peter Marshall, and Alec Ryrie in Bruce Gordon, ed., Protestant History and Identity in Sixteenth-​Century Europe (Aldershot: Scolar Press, 1996).

94 chapter 3 figured prominently.26 Bullinger described how Gregory vii ‘bent himselfe wholly to oppresse Henry the fourth the sonne of Henry the third, of purpose to reuenge the carying away of his maister Gregorie the sixth and of himselfe into Germanie’. This Gregory attempted by putting ‘forth a Bull against the Emperour, wherein he … burtheneth him with greuous crimes, by spreading those letters of his ouer all Italie, Germanie, and Fraunce. … he aduentureth to excommunicate the Emperour, and to giue sentence agaynst him that he should be deposed from his Empyre or kingdome, and to discharge all his subiectes of their faith and obedience that they ought vnto him’.27 Similarly, Bullinger recounted how Boniface viii proceeded ‘to rayse vp troubles in Fraunce, to commaund the king to depose him selfe from his kingdome and to resigne it to the Church of Rome, and to assoyle the Lordes and gentlemen of their othe of fealtie, wherby they were bound to the king. But the king being no whit abashed at those fond cursinges, gaue streight charge to all his subiectes that none of them should come at Rome or send any money thether’.28 These monarchs were excommunicated in circumstances similar enough to those of Elizabeth to strike a chord with readers. Philip, for instance, was thrown out of the Catholic Church for trying to limit the papacy’s administrative role in church governance in France and attempting to establish an independent Gallican Church.29 Henry iv, on the other hand, was excommunicated twice, first in an investiture dispute and then again in the midst of a civil war in which the pope supported Rudolf of Swabia, who hoped to displace Henry and claim the empire for himself.30 Henry’s second excommunication by Pope Gregory vii was considered by many Protestant scholars as the first precedent for joining the deposition of a monarch with excommunication, and consequently it became prominent in debates over Elizabeth’s excommunication and its validity.31 In the wake of the Northern Rebellion and the discovery of the Ridolfi Plot to replace Elizabeth with Mary Queen 26

A more detailed discussion about the origins of Bullinger’s response to the excommunication appears in the next section. 27 Heinrich Bullinger, A confutation of the popes bull, translated by Arthur Golding (London: John Day, 1572), 74–​75. 28 Ibid., 83. 29 See Joseph Strayer, Medieval Statecraft and the Perspectives of History (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1971), and Alister McGrath, Christian History:  An Introduction (Oxford: Wiley Blackwell, 2013), 119, for more on this controversy. 30 See I.S. Robinson, Henry IV of Germany (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 143–​210. 31 Elisabeth Vodola, Excommunication in the Middle Ages (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986), 21–​23.

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of Scots in 1571, the parallels between Henry’s situation and that of Elizabeth might have been particularly appreciated by English readers.32 Their mutual struggles with the papacy, rebellious subjects, and rival candidates for their thrones made Henry iv a useful and comforting point of comparison. Although Henry struggled through a papal deposition and civil war, ultimately he prevailed, conquering Rome in 1084 and forcing Gregory vii to relinquish the papacy.33 References to the emperor in Protestant polemics against the bull served as reassurance that Elizabeth too would overcome papal interference in her kingdom. Similar uses of precedent appeared in polemical responses to the bull’s confirmation and the arrival of the Jesuit mission in 1580. John Foxe was one of the first to respond with The Pope Confuted, which he published anonymously in Latin in 1580 and James Bell translated into English in the same year.34 Scholarship on Foxe has largely prioritised his efforts to construct a new history of the Church in his iconic Acts and Monuments.35 The Pope Confuted engaged more with religious controversy than the building of historical tradition, but it did allude to medieval history to support its claims against papal powers. The book was separated into two parts: the first was an attack on the pope as the antichrist and the second a disputation of errors in Roman Catholic Church doctrine.36 In the first section Foxe appealed to incidents of royal conflict with the papacy that frequently appeared in antipapal works. He asked ‘how often hath attemptes beene giuen, euen of the most puissant Monarchies, Kinges, and Potentates of the worlde, to snaffle this intollerable ambition of popane arrogancie, yet voyd of al successe notwithstanding, eyther through feare of further 32

Krista Kesselring, ‘Mary Queen of Scots and the Northern Rebellion of 1569’, in Peter Kaufman, ed., Leadership and Elizabethan Culture (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), 51–​72. 33 Robinson, Henry IV of Germany, 211–​35. 34 John Foxe, The pope confuted, translated by James Bell (London: Thomas Dawson, 1580). The original work was printed as Papa Confutatus (London: Thomas Dawson, 1580). 35 See for instance Thomas Freeman, ‘ “Great Searching Out of Bookes and Autors”:  John Foxe as Ecclesiastical Historian’, PhD Thesis (Rutgers University, 1995); John King, Foxe’s Book of Martyrs and Early Modern Print Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), and ‘Guides to Reading Foxe’s Book of Martyrs’ in Paulina Kewes, ed., The Uses of History in Early Modern England (San Marino:  Huntington Library, 2006), 129–​146; Patrick Collinson, ‘John Foxe as Historian’, in David Loades and Mark Greengrass, eds., The Unabridged Acts and Monuments Online (hri Online Publications, Sheffield, 2011), available from: http://​www.johnfoxe.org [accessed 4 April 2014]. 36 See Thomas Freeman, ‘Foxe, John (1516/​17–​1587)’, ODNB (Oxford:  Oxford University Press, 2008), http://​www.oxforddnb.com/​view/​article/​10050 [accessed 21 March 2014]. See also Lake, ‘The Pope as Antichrist’, 161–​78.

96 chapter 3 peril … or circumuented by trayterous reucustyng [recusing] of theyr Subiectes at home’.37 The examples, said Foxe, ‘may easily and readily bee vouched, if out of Fraunce, Germanie, Cicilie, Austriche, we woulde reckon vp all, and euery particular King and Emperour bearing the names of Phillip, Lewes, Otto, Henry, Fredericke as wee might’.38 The monarchs to whom Foxe referred included Philip iv of France and the Holy Roman Emperors Louis iv, Henry iv, Otto iv, Frederick ii, and Frederick Barbarossa, all of whom the papacy excommunicated in circumstances similar enough to Elizabeth’s that readers would appreciate the parallels.39 Foxe’s list of allusions served two purposes in the text. It demonstrated that conflict between the papacy and temporal sovereigns like Elizabeth was a common occurrence, as was the pope’s use of excommunication against monarchs to achieve the papacy’s political ends. Indeed, in Foxe’s narrative it seemed to be the normal state of affairs in Europe. The second objective was to highlight the futility of monarchical excommunication, and as in the Acts and Monuments, provide examples for Elizabeth to emulate.40 Foxe’s account of Elizabeth in the Acts and Monuments was implicitly critical, especially of her decision to attend mass during her sister’s reign.41 In The Pope Confuted, however, Foxe mustered a number of precedents from the past to support Elizabeth in her struggle against the papacy. Like Henry iv, Louis iv tried to depose the pope who excommunicated him. Philip iv sent forces into Rome to capture Boniface viii and replaced him with the more compliant antipopes Benedict xi and Clement V, who moved the papacy to Avignon in 1309. Frederick Barbarossa

37 Foxe, Pope Confuted, 12–​13. 38 Ibid., 13–​14. 39 Henry iv also received attention in Foxe’s Acts and Monuments. Foxe included copies of the bull of excommunication Gregory vii issued against Henry, as well as the deposition proclaimed against Gregory by the German bishops on Henry’s behalf. See John Foxe, The Unabridged Acts and Monuments Online (1583 edition), Book 4, 202–​03, available from http://​www.johnfoxe.org [accessed 22 Jan 2015]. 40 The parallels Foxe tried to draw between Elizabeth and the Emperor Constantine, for instance, have been discussed and analysed extensively. See Freeman, ‘ “Great Searching Out of Bookes and Autors” ’, Collinson ‘John Foxe as Historian’, King, ‘Guides to Reading Foxe’s Book of Martyrs’, 140, Gretchen Minton, ‘ “The Same Cause and Like Quarell”: Eusebius, John Foxe, and the Evolution of Ecclesiastical History’, Church History 71, no. 4 (2002), 715–​42. 41 Thomas Freeman, ‘ “As True a Subject Being Prysoner”:  John Foxe’s Notes on the Imprisonment of Princess Elizabeth, 1554–​55’, English Historical Review 117, no.  470 (2002), 104–​16; see also his ‘Providence and Prescription:  The Account of Elizabeth in Foxe’s “Book of Martyrs” ’, in Susan Doran and Thomas Freeman, eds., The Myth of Elizabeth (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2003), 27–​55.

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managed to hold onto power in the German principalities despite the alliance formed against him between the papacy, England, Spain, France, Hungary, the Lombards, and the Byzantine Empire after his excommunication, and like Philip set up an imperial antipope.42 In the early 1580s, when worries about the Jesuit mission to England, the treaty for the Holy League between Spain and Rome, and the resurgence of the Catholic League in France much preoccupied Elizabeth’s regime, these stories of medieval monarchs’ triumph over papal machinations would have served as both a source of comfort and a vital political message to the literate public. The Holy Roman Emperors’ resistance to excommunication without apparent fear of any spiritual repercussions would have had special significance, as they were traditionally crowned by the popes and in a sense derived their authority from the papacy. By referring to these stories, Foxe implied that Elizabeth, as a monarch whose authority did not derive from the papacy in this way, certainly had no reason to fear the papal censure against her, and was perfectly justified in enforcing her spiritual and temporal supremacy in England. The conflict between Henry iv and Gregory vii became a vital part of the argument for resistance to the papacy in William Cecil’s The Execution of Justice, which was published in 1583 in response to the fallout from Edmund Campion’s execution in 1581. In describing the origins of precedents for monarchical excommunication, Burghley explained that ‘This kind of tyrannous authority in Popes to make wars upon emperors and kings and to command them to be deprived took hold at the first by Pope Hildebrand [Gregory vii], though the same never had any lawful example or warrant from the laws of God of the Old or New Testament’.43 Burghley highlighted the parallels he recognised between Elizabeth’s situation and Henry’s, saying ‘where Gregory the Seventh … presumed to depose Henry the Fourth, a noble emperor then being, Gregory the Thirteenth now at this time would attempt the like against King Henry the Eighth’s daughter and heir, Queen Elizabeth … holding her crown immediately

42 Robinson, Henry IV, 143–​45. Robinson clarifies that Henry demanded that Gregory abdicate and urged the Roman clergy to force him from office; he did not try to depose Gregory directly. See also Peter Herde, ‘From Alfred of Nassau to Lewis of Bavaria, 1292–​1347’, in Michael Jones, ed., The New Cambridge Medieval History, vol. 6 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 538–​50; William Chester Jordan, ‘The Capetians from the Death of Philip II to Philip IV’, in Abulafia, New Cambridge Medieval History, vol. 5, 302–​11; William Courtenay, ‘Between Pope and King:  The Parisian Letters of Adhesion 1303’, Speculum 71, no. 3 (1996), 577–​605. 43 William Cecil, The Execution of Justice in England, edited by Robert Kingdon (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1965), 25.

98 chapter 3 of God’.44 Cecil also alluded to the Holy Roman Emperors Henry V, Frederick Barbarossa, Frederick ii, and Louis iv as ‘all emperors cruelly and tyrannously persecuted by the Popes and by their bulls, curses, and by open wars … yet the successes of their tyrannies were, by God’s goodness, for the most part made frustrate, as … there is no doubt but the like will follow to their confusions at all times to come’.45 It appears that Burghley had assistance in compiling the research for The Execution of Justice.46 Before writing The Execution of Justice, Burghley asked the civil lawyer John Hammond to compile a history of the papacy’s relationship with temporal monarchs. Hammond served as a member of the High Commission from 1573 and worked on a variety of civil cases in England.47 Surviving correspondence indicates the Privy Council’s reliance on him to examine witnesses and suspected criminals, as well as to clarify their legal questions.48 While Hammond never became a member of the Privy Council, he was nevertheless an invaluable advisor to Elizabeth’s statesmen, one of several ‘men of business’ within government who could ‘utter and act on issues more liberally and forcefully than his patrons’.49 Hammond’s unpublished manuscripts, entitled ‘The Popes Excommunication of Christian Princes Unlawful’ and ‘What Resistaunce Hath Beene Made or Defence Vsed by Christen Princes Againste the Popes Excommunications’, contain a lengthy discussion of Henry iv and Gregory vii that Burghley drew inspiration from in The Execution of Justice.50 But they also offered a more measured assessment of the papacy’s history of conflict with European monarchs, one that betrays the substantial concerns in government circles about the long-​term consequences of Elizabeth’s deposition. Hammond’s second 44

Ibid., 23. It is worth reiterating that allusions to Henry iv appeared in both Foxe’s Acts and Monuments (Book 4, 202–​03) and The pope confuted (12–​14) as well. 45 Cecil, The Execution of Justice, 24–​25. For the same stories in Foxe, see Pope Confuted, 12–​14. 46 Robert Kingdon and Stephen Alford have both discussed Burghley’s motivations for writing The Execution of Justice, and Alford suggests that he probably had help, but neither considers this possibility at length. See Kingdon, ‘Introduction’, and Stephen Alford, Burghley: William Cecil at the Court of Elizabeth I (London: Yale University Press, 2008), 247. 47 pog White, ‘Hammond, John’, ODNB, available from https://​doi-​org/​10.1093/​ref:odnb/​ 12159 [accessed 1 Oct 2018]. See also BL Add MS 48023 f. 375 and TNA SP 80/​1 f. 3. 48 See TNA PC 2/​13 f. 75, SP 12/​154 f. 95, BL Add MS 48027 f. 447, 380. 49 Patrick Collinson, ‘Puritans, Men of Business, and Elizabethan Parliaments’, in idem, Elizabethan Essays (London: Hambledon, 1994), 70–​71. 50 For comparison, see BL Add MS 48063 John Hammond, ‘What Resistaunce Hath Been Made or Defence Vsed by Christen Princes Againste the Popes Excommunications’, f. 72-​ 72b, and Cecil, Execution of Justice, 23–​25.

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manuscript on the resistance of princes, for instance, noted how ‘In Polonie Gregorie the viith havinge excommunicated the king Bolessans [Bolesław ii, r. 1076–​79] for Adultery … the king grew so odious to his subiectes, that he was driven for his succor to flie into Hungrie’.51 He also observed that ‘Ladislaus king of Hungrie [Ladislaus iv, r. 1272–​90] muche offended the noblemen and people of his realme, for leavinge the companie of the Queene … for which cause procuring him to be excommunicated by the Pope, and so sapposinge that they were sufficiently discharged of there allegence, the[y]‌lefte him naked to the opertunitie of mens mallice, whoe procured him to be murdered’.52 The implications here would have been rather unsavoury to Elizabeth’s ministers. Hammond acknowledged that what ultimately mattered for kings who submitted to the papal supremacy were not the powers the pope actually possessed, but the ones that subjects believed the pope could exercise, and in these stories, those perceived rights included the ability to excommunicate and depose sovereigns.53 Hammond’s inclusion of incidents where monarchs had to bow to public opinion and submit to the pope may have constituted a warning that Elizabeth needed to be prepared to do the same if necessary.54 No such stories of capitulation to the papacy appeared in Cecil’s published work. In each example Cecil mentions, the papacy’s interference with the Holy Roman Emperors and princes of Europe was ‘by God’s goodness, for the most part made frustrate, as … there is no doubt but the like will follow to their confusions at all times to come’.55 The marked contrast in tone between these two works makes manifest the anxiety that underpinned many contemporary polemics that criticised the papal deposition. Hammond’s private manuscript openly considered the potential dangers of prolonged opposition to the papacy, while Burghley’s published tract glossed over these unpalatable 51

BL Add MS 48063 f. 71-​71b. The exact circumstances of the rebellion against Bolesław are unclear, and Hammond does not disclose his source for this incident. Until his deposition Bolesław was actually a strong supporter of Gregory vii in his conflict with Henry iv and his reforms of the Church. See Jerzy Wyrozumski, ‘Poland in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries’, in Luscombe, New Cambridge Medieval History, vol. 4, 280–​82; S.C. Rowell, ‘The Central European Kingdoms’, in Abulafia, New Cambridge Medieval History, vol. 5, 760–​61. 52 Ibid. 53 Patrick Collinson’s model of the ‘monarchical republic’ and the idea that consent of the governed was necessary for effective Elizabethan government seems prominent here too. See ‘The Monarchical Republic of Queen Elizabeth I’, in Collinson, Elizabethan Essays, 31–​58. 54 See Jacqueline Rose, ‘Kingship and Counsel in Early Modern England’, Historical Journal 54, no. 1 (2011), 49–​53. 55 Cecil, Execution of Justice, 24–​25.

100 chapter 3 possibilities in favour of stories of rulers who triumphed over Rome. The connections between these texts, and what was left out of the published work, underscore how deeply the papal sentence troubled Elizabeth’s ministers, and illuminate the processes by which they worked to reassure both the public and themselves that the queen would prevail. Protestant writers continued to use history and humour to attack the excommunication as confessional tensions mounted at home and abroad during the 1580s and 1590s. Following the excommunication of King Henri of Navarre in 1585, a number of French polemics were translated and printed in English which drew parallels between the king’s conflict with the papacy and that of Elizabeth.56 Francois Hotman’s Brutem Fulmen, written in defence of Henri and translated by Christopher Fetherstone in 1586, described how the pope’s ‘thunderbolts of excommunications and bannings haue beene esteemed as paper-​shot’ by the Huguenots in France.57 Like his English colleagues, Hotman used the examples of Holy Roman Emperor Henry iv and King Philip iv of France to criticise the papacy’s use of excommunication.58 In the same year, George Whetstone quipped that Pius V’s ‘roring Bull shewed his mallice, but his short hornes had small power to hurt’ the queen in his English Myrror.59 James Aske’s commemorative poem Elizabetha Triumphans, published to celebrate the defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588, described how the pope ‘butcher-​ like … sends abroad his Bulles’, to affirm that ‘the Queene of English soyle hath lost the right of this her lawfull seate’.60 In the same vein, Laurence Humphrey published a series of seven sermons under the title A View of the Romish Hydra and Monster. The first sermon highlighted the dangers of capitulating to the pope’s demands, noting that ‘King Iohn by the Pope was excommunicated, and released vpon this condition, that hee and his successours the Kings of England should acknowledge themselues tributaries to the Bishop of Rome, but 56

57 58 59 60

Lisa Parmelee has examined how Huguenot and Catholic Leaguer political theories shaped discussions of the succession and the Archpriest controversy in England later in the 1590s. See Parmelee, Good Newes from Fraunce: French Anti-​League Propaganda in Late Elizabethan England (Rochester: University of Rochester Press, 1996), 75–​96. Francois Hotman, The brutish thunderbolt: or rather feeble fier-​flash of Pope Sixtus the fift, against Henrie the most excellent King of Nauarre, and the most noble Henrie Borbon, Prince of Condie, translated by Christopher Fetherstone (London: Arnold Hatfield, 1586), 8–​9. Ibid., 140–​41, 316. George Whetstone, The English mirror…. Publishing the peaceable victories obtained by the Queenes most excellent Maiesty, against this mortall enimie of publike peace and prosperitie (London: J. Windet, 1586), 141. James Aske, Elizabetha triumphans.  Conteyning the damned practizes, that the diuelish popes of Rome haue vsed euer sithence her Highnesse first comming to the Crowne (London: Thomas Orwin, 1588), 8.

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afterward he was poisoned’.61 Humphrey’s sixth sermon, on the other hand, listed the terrible fates of popes who interfered with anointed monarchs, observing how many of these pontiffs ‘like flax set on fier haue passed away, most of them sodenly and shamefully, specially such as haue been cruel in excommunicating and persecuting Emperours. … And haue not of late Pius Quintus and Gregory the thirteenth prooued to be quenched too, notwithstanding all their glory, and their Buls against our Soueraign Prince Elizabeth?’.62 These kinds of discussions about the bull persisted in the last decade of Elizabeth’s reign, as England’s military conflicts with other Catholic countries and rebellion in Ireland dragged on, combined with increasing economic hardship in England in the 1590s.63 In this context, jabs at the papacy and Regnans in Excelsis were meant to assure the public that England would prevail through its troubles. A satire printed in 1590 on the pontificate of Sixtus V, written from the pope’s perspective, lamented the failure of Pius v and Gregory xiii’s censures to produce any effect:  ‘England, whom with her Quéene, our predecessors haue so long and déepely cursed, that there hath bin no malediction against her and hirs left vnpronounced, flourisheth nowe more then euer’.64 John Carpenter’s Preparatiue to Contentation (1597) drew parallels between Elizabeth’s excommunication and that of King John in a discourse on papal supremacy. A marginal note in the discussion stated that ‘In the twelfth yeare of King Iohn, the two legates of the Pope did assoile all English men of their homages to their king. So Pius quintus the Pope entending the same sent his Romish Bull’.65 At a sermon preached at Paul’s Cross on Elizabeth’s accession day in 1599, Thomas Holland referred to the ‘bellowing of Pius Quintus bloody bull’ and the numerous plots it had inspired, ‘in the which doubtlesse, we had al perished, and had bin swallowed vp quicke, if the Lord had not beene on our side’.66 Similarly, in The Unmasking of the Politique Atheist (1602) John Hull spoke of ‘the thundring

61

Laurence Humphrey, View of the Romish hydra and monster, traison, against the Lords anointed (Oxford: Joseph Barnes, 1588), 21. 62 Ibid., 146–​47. 63 Alexandra Gajda, ‘Debating War and Peace in Late Elizabethan England’, Historical Journal 52, no. 4 (2009), 851–​78. 64 I.L., A true and perfecte description of a straunge monstar borne in the citty of Rome in Italy, in the yeare of our saluation 1585 (London: John Wolfe, 1590), 4. 65 John Carpenter, A preparatiue to contentation: conteining a display of the wonderfull distractions of men in opinions and straunge conceits (London: Thomas Creede, 1597), 22. 66 Thomas Holland, Paneguris D.  Elizabethæ, Dei gratia Angliæ, Franciæ, et Hiberniæ Reginæ.  A sermon preached at Pauls in London the 17. of November ann. Dom. 1599 (Oxford: Joseph Barnes, 1601), 12.

102 chapter 3 Bull of Pius Quintus, roaring and breathing out his beastly threats against our gracious Soueraigne Queene Elizabeth’.67 These uses of humour and history to criticise the papal excommunication of Elizabeth speak to the centrality of this event in late-​sixteenth century politics. Humour and history were two of the most important tools one could employ in the public discourses of this period, applicable to both the defence and disputation of constructions of authority.68 In the publications discussed here these tools were employed in both respects: to challenge the papal supremacy over monarchs and justify the Elizabethan regime’s political stance towards Rome and English Catholics. However, the functions of mockery, satire, and appeals to the past in responses to the bull also reflect deep-​seated anxieties about what the ultimate outcome of this contest between papal and royal authority would be. Furthermore, the quality of the references to Regnans in Excelsis in these publications speaks to widespread familiarity with the sentence amongst Elizabeth’s subjects, especially in the later decades of her reign. The dozens of works that alluded to the bull or discussed it in detail all increased the availability of information about Elizabeth’s excommunication in England. Casual references to the ‘bull of Pius Quintus’ and his ‘beastly threats’ by the end of Elizabeth’s reign suggest that most people knew at least the rough details of the sentence, even if they themselves had never seen a copy. 2

Protestant Translations of Regnans In Excelsis

While information about the papal excommunication often appeared in the form of brief allusions and references, substantial portions of the sentence could also be found in translation in Protestant polemics printed after 1570. In some cases, writers reiterated entire passages of Regnans in Excelsis in their works, believing it would be obvious to readers that the pope’s assertions were false and even absurd. This practice, as Alexandra Walsham has argued, could be harmful in theological disputes because it enabled the reader to evaluate both positions in a debate and potentially find the author’s opponent more convincing.69 This risk became acute in public responses to Regnans in 67 68 69

John Hull, The vnmasking of the pollitique atheist (London: Ralph Howell, 1602), 66. See Adam Morton and Mark Knights, eds., The Power of Laughter and Satire in Early Modern Britain (Martlesham: Boydell, 2017); Daniel Woolf, The Social Circulation of the Past: English Historical Culture, 1500–​1730 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003). Alexandra Walsham, ‘The Spider and the Bee: The Perils of Printing for Refutation in Tudor England’, in John King, ed., Tudor Books and Readers: Materiality and the Construction of Meaning (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 163–​90.

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Excelsis, which circulated in a kingdom that was by no means united in religious belief, and where many remained uncertain as to which confession they ultimately belonged. When authors summarised or reprinted passages of Elizabeth’s excommunication for the purposes of scholarly debate, there was every chance that readers might find the papal sentence more compelling than the arguments against it. The practice of reprinting for refutation stemmed from a genuine belief on the part of reformers that they possessed the only claim to absolute truth, in an age where truth was considered singular rather than relative. Protestant divines in this period engaged in religious disputation precisely because ‘they knew beyond doubt that their truth would be confirmed by formal and rational argument’.70 Authors who contested Elizabeth’s excommunication believed that readers would see the superiority of their arguments, grounded in scripture, when compared alongside the claims of Regnans in Excelsis, and therefore saw little danger in reprinting it in their works. The following section will address this conundrum and consider how reiterations of Regnans in Excelsis in polemics contributed to awareness of Elizabeth’s excommunication. Shortly after Pius v first issued the bull in 1570 Edmund Grindal, the archbishop of York, Richard Cox, bishop of Ely, and John Jewel, bishop of Salisbury, wrote to the Swiss theologian Heinrich Bullinger to ask if he would write a formal disputation of Regnans in Excelsis. Bullinger, chief pastor of Zurich and the successor to Ulrich Zwingli, had befriended many English reformers including Grindal, Cox, and Jewel when they took refuge in Switzerland during the reign of Mary i. He maintained a lively correspondence with many English bishops for the rest of his life and his ideas exerted significant influence on their efforts to reform the English Church after Elizabeth succeeded in 1558.71 Despite Bullinger’s clear connections to the English Church, it is surprising that the bishops approached him with this project. John Jewel had established himself as the principal champion of the English Church in his debates with Catholic controversialists like Thomas Harding and Thomas Stapleton in the 1560s.72 As 70 71 72

Joshua Rodda, Public Religious Disputation in England,1558–​1626 (Farnham:  Ashgate, 2014), 5. See Torrance Kirby, The Zurich Connection and Tudor Political Theology (Leiden:  Brill, 2007). See also Bruce Gordon and Emidio Campi, eds, Architect of Reformation:  An Introduction to Heinrich Bullinger, 1504–​1575 (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2004). Peter Milward, ‘The Jewel-​Harding Controversy’, Albion 6, no.  4 (1974), 320–​41; Gary Jenkins, John Jewel and the English National Church: The Dilemmas of an Erastian Reformer (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006); John Craig, ‘Jewel, John (1522–​1571)’, ODNB (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), available from http://​www.oxforddnb.com/​view/​article/​14810 [accessed 7 Sept 2015].

104 chapter 3 such, he would have seemed the ideal candidate to write a formal refutation of Regnans in Excelsis. In spite of his reputation within England, however, Jewel never gained the kind of international recognition and influence that Bullinger possessed amongst reformed scholars, and it is possible that the bishops, Elizabeth’s ministers, and even Jewel believed that a response from Bullinger would appeal more broadly both within England and without.73 Bullinger enjoyed respect amongst a broad spectrum of Protestants. The English bishops frequently appealed to him to resolve internal disputes, and even engaged him as an apologist for the English Church on the international stage. Translations of his works were published throughout the 1540s and 1550s as well as Elizabeth’s reign, some in multiple editions.74 The application to a reformer as eminent as Bullinger for help underscores how worried the Elizabethan reformers became about how people would react to the bull if it was left unanswered. At his friends’ behest, Bullinger wrote the Bullae Papisticae Refutatio, in which he challenged the legitimacy of Elizabeth’s excommunication and the papal powers of excommunication and deposition. The book was published in Latin in 1571 and translated into English as The Confutation of the Popes Bull by Arthur Golding in 1572. As the time for publication drew nearer, not everyone was convinced that the book would be a success. When the Privy Council began arranging the publication of Heinrich Bullinger’s confutation in 1571, the archbishops of Canterbury and York expressed concern that the book would increase awareness of the bull and do more harm to the queen than good. Despite these concerns, the council approved the publication because ‘there would be copies enough of the Bull dispersed to make it known; and therefore it was needful to have an Answer dispersed also in the Queen’s Vindication’.75 Whether through the direct efforts of English Catholics to circulate copies of the bull and related materials, or the enthusiastic responses of Protestant balladeers and pamphleteers, information about Elizabeth’s excommunication was already widespread. Allowing the publication of Bullinger’s treatise could not hurt government efforts to manage the crisis any more than it could help. What is particularly striking about this exchange is the government’s admission that the English people could access information about the excommunication relatively easily. The council acknowledged that Elizabeth’s subjects

73

Hastings Robinson, The Zurich Letters, vol. 1 (Cambridge:  Cambridge University Press, 1842), 229–​39. 74 Kirby, The Zurich Connection, 25–​26. 75 John Strype, Annals of the Reformation and Establishment of Religion, vol. 1, part  2 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1824), 355.

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would come to their own conclusions about the bull’s legitimacy, regardless of the best attempts to control information about the sentence. Bullinger began his Confutation with a summary of the principal points in Regnans in Excelsis before proceeding to critique it. Although the bull does not appear word-​for-​word in the text, Bullinger borrowed heavily from the original phrasing in the decree. When translated into English, Pius V’s initial pronouncement read Out of the plenitude of our Apostolic power we declare the aforesaid Elizabeth to be heretic and an abetter of heretics, and we declare her, together with her supporters in the above-​said matters, to have incurred the sentence of excommunication and to be cut off from the unity of the Body of Christ. Furthermore we declare her to be deprived of her pretended claim to the aforesaid kingdom and of all lordship, dignity and privilege whatsoever. Also we declare that the lords and peoples of the said kingdom, and all others who have sworn allegiance to her in any way, are perpetually absolved from any oath of this kind…. And we command and forbid all and sundry among the lords, subjects, peoples and others aforesaid that they have not to obey her or her admonitions, orders, or laws. We shall bind those who do the contrary with a similar sentence of excommunication.76 In comparison, Bullinger’s description of the excommunication, translated by Golding, noted how Pius v Out of this fulnesse of power, mounting vp into his high throne … he thunderingly readeth forth from thence the articles of his accusation which he hath to alledge against the most vertuous Quéene of England … he denounceth and declareth her an hereticke, and a fauourer of heretickes, and therfore most proudly determineth her to be stricken through with his curse, and cut of from the vnitie of Christes body, and moreouer to be depriued of her kingdome, and of all right of her crowne, and of all maner of other preheminence, dignitie, and priuiledge. And not content with this, he procéedeth yet further, and geueth charge to all and singular the Quéenes Nobilitie, and other her subiectes, that vnder paine of the sayd curse they obey not hereafter the lawes and commaundementes of their pretensed or supposed Quéene, as he termeth her.77 76 Crosignani et al., Recusancy and Conformity, 89. 77 Bullinger, A confutation of the popes bull, 1–​2.

106 chapter 3 Bullinger preceded this summary with a declaration that ‘the Bull it selfe is not worthy to be recited at large’, but the passage above is essentially an embellished recitation of Pius V’s own words. While Bullinger framed his summary with comments that made clear his distaste for the bull, his description of the sentence is remarkably similar to the original. Bullinger’s Confutation appears to have attracted a wide readership in England, particularly after its translation into English. John Parkhurst, bishop of Norwich, wrote to Bullinger after the publication of the English version to inform him that ‘Your most learned refutation of the pope’s bull is in the hands of every one; for it is translated into English, and is printed at London’.78 Elizabeth herself seems to have been pleased with Bullinger’s defence. Richard Cox reported that ‘She was exceedingly delighted with your book against that bulled nonsense, and read it with the greatest eagerness’.79 As happy as the regime and the English bishops were with the success of Bullinger’s refutation, the English translation facilitated much wider awareness of the queen’s excommunication, and could even be appropriated by those who considered the excommunication valid. Since the Confutation was printed with official approval, it provided a means of accessing information about Elizabeth’s excommunication without falling under suspicion of treason.80 While concrete evidence for the acquisition of Protestant texts by English Catholics in this manner is difficult to find, the initial concerns of the Privy Council and the English bishops about the dangers of printing the Confutation indicate that this was at least a possibility. The fact that the council allowed its publication speaks to the esteem with which Bullinger was regarded in England, but it also suggests how threatened the Elizabethan regime felt by the spread of information about the excommunication. For Elizabeth’s supporters, the bull was too significant a challenge to be

78 Robinson, Zurich Letters, vol. 1, 266. 79 Ibid., 268–​69. 80 While little work has been done on the appropriation of polemical works in this manner, literature on the appropriation of devotional works provides a useful model, particularly with respect to the Jesuit Robert Southwell. See for instance Arthur Marotti, ‘Southwell’s Remains:  Catholicism and Anti-​Catholicism in Early Modern England’, in Cedric Brown and Arthur Marotti, eds., Texts and Cultural Change in Early Modern England (Basingstoke:  Macmillan, 1997), 37–​65; and Susannah Monta ‘Uncommon Prayer? Robert Southwell’s Short Rule for a Good Life and Catholic Domestic Devotion in Post-​Reformation England’, in Lowell Gallagher, ed., Redrawing the Map of Early Modern English Catholicism (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2012), 245–​71. See also John Yamamoto-​ Wilson, ‘The Protestant Reception of Catholic Devotional Literature in England to 1700’, British Catholic History 32, no. 1 (2014), 67–​90.

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ignored, and it was paramount that it be thoroughly refuted by one of the leading reformed theologians in Europe. As the previous chapter discussed, Gregory xiii’s renewal of the excommunication in 1580 inspired increased efforts to communicate about the bull in the English kingdoms, aided in part by the seminary priests and the Jesuit mission. These activities provoked an indignant response from the queen’s Protestant supporters, one which matched in intensity the increased threat from Roman Catholicism that Protestants perceived in the combination of the incoming mission and the confirmation of Regnans in Excelsis. The increase in the appearance of fragments or entire passages of the bull in works intended for a wide readership meant that access to information about Elizabeth’s excommunication proliferated in the 1580s, at a time when confessional tensions at home and abroad made it the most dangerous to the Elizabethan regime. Many works that recounted parts of Regnans in Excelsis appeared after the arrival of the Jesuit mission in the summer of 1580. Most of the anti-​Catholic literature produced in England in the 1580s centred its attacks on the Jesuits and seminary priests, using the renewal of Elizabeth’s excommunication to bolster accusations of treason against them.81 The excommunication therefore became part of a strategy in Protestant polemic to discredit the mission and the clandestine publications of its leaders, Edmund Campion and Robert Persons.82 In his Answere to a Seditious Pamphlet Lately Cast Abroade by a Iesuite, a response to the nine articles Edmund Campion had published and directed to the Privy Council, William Charke replied that ‘Hee can not agayne bring in the Pope, but he must take awaye from her royall Maiestie, her iust supreme soueraintie, and depriue her at one clappe of the authoritie shee hath ouer all persons and ordinances…. shee must seeke a reconciliation from the Popes curse: her chiefe lawes must bee no lawes’.83 Similarly, John Field’s Caueat for Parsons Howlet, a response to Persons’s Brief Discours Contayning Certayne Reasons Why Catholiques Refuse to Goe to Church, claimed that Persons reherseth the Bull of Pius Quintus against her hignesse, and plainly asseureth, that it was for iuste causes declared and published. He calleth

81 See Joad Raymond, Pamphlets and Pamphleteering in Early Modern Britain (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 36–​38. 82 This episode is covered in more detail by Peter Lake and Michael Questier, ‘Puritans, Papists, and the “Public Sphere” in Early Modern England: The Edmund Campion Affair in Context’, Journal of Modern History 72, no. 3 (2000), 587–​627. 83 William Charke, An answere to a seditious pamphlet lately cast abroade by a Iesuite, with a discouerie of that blasphemous sect (London: Christopher Barker, 1580), 35–​36.

108 chapter 3 her maiesty the pretended Queene, and sheweth howe … Elizabeth that then gouerned was an heretike, and that for that cause she was by very right fallen from all gouernment and power, which she vsurped ouer the catholiques, and that she might be accounted of them without any danger, as an heathen and publicane, neither that they were from thenceforth, bound to obey her laws and commandments.84 Despite Field’s claims, Persons never explicitly recounted or even mentioned Elizabeth’s excommunication in the Brief Discours. The passage Field quoted came from Sander’s De Visibili Monarchia, published after the first pronouncement of the excommunication; Field had translated the excerpt into English.85 It is possible that Field used the excerpt from Sander’s book to taint Persons by association and better convince readers of his treachery. Ironically, however, in this passage Field did more rehearsing of Regnans in Excelsis than his opponent, and by summarising it succinctly in English he made the sentence more accessible to his audience. The capture and execution of Edmund Campion and twelve other seminary priests and Jesuits in 1581 prompted two extraordinary reprints of Regnans in Excelsis in officially sanctioned publications. In 1582 the Privy Council ordered the publication of A Particular Declaration or Testimony, of the Vndutifull and Traiterous Affection Borne Against Her Maiestie by Edmond Campion Iesuite, and Other Condemned Priestes, which in addition to including the transcripts of the captured priests’ interrogations, also reprinted passages of Regnans in Excelsis and Nicholas Sander’s De Visibili Monarchia, with English translations of the Latin texts. Elizabeth’s ministers hoped that printing these extracts alongside the testimony of the imprisoned priests would convince the public of their treason against the queen and the kingdom. While the tract omitted the list of reasons Pius v offered in the bull for excommunicating Elizabeth, it did include a translation of the sentence itself: Of the fulnesse of Apostolike power [Pius v] hath declared the said Elizabeth an heretike, and a fauourer of heretikes, and that such as

84

85

John Field, A caueat for Parsons Howlet, concerning his vntimelye flighte, and schriching in the cleare daylighte of the Gospell (London:  Robert Waldegrave, 1581), 87–​88. Field was known for his Presbyterian beliefs, and it is possible that he wrote much of his anti-​ Catholic polemic to deflect official attention from his own more radical views. See Patrick Collinson, ‘John Field and Elizabethan Puritanism’, in Collinson, ed., Godly People: Essays on English Protestantism and Puritanism (London: Hambledon Press, 1983), 335–​70. cul Nicholas Sander, De Visibili Monarchia (Louvain: John Fowler, 1571), 730.

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adhere vnto her in the promisses, haue incurred the sentence of Anathema accursed. Moreouer, that she is depriued of her pretensed right of the said kingdom, and also of al and whatsoeuer dominion, dignitie and priuiledge…. And he hath commaunded and forbidden all and euery the nobles, subiectes, peoples and other aforesayde, that they be not so bolde to obey her, or her aduertisements, commaundements or lawes: and whosoeuer otherwise do, he hath bounde with like sentence of curse.86 The Privy Council intended this publication and its extracts from Catholic texts to be seen or heard by ‘all her Maiesties good and faithfull subiects’. Its assembly of key passages from works by leading English Catholic polemicists and reiteration of the papal bull not only increased the availability of the sentence against Elizabeth in English. The Particular Declaration also put the sentence in its wider domestic and international contexts by placing it alongside interrogations of priests, which included questions about the invasion of the realm and attempts to physically harm the queen. The fallout from the execution of the seminary and Jesuit priests also prompted John Garbrand to publish A Viewe of a Seditious Bul sent into England, from Pius Quintus in 1582, a transcript of the sermon John Jewel preached against Elizabeth’s excommunication at Salisbury Cathedral in 1570. When Jewel died in 1571 he bequeathed all of his papers to Garbrand, for whom Jewel acted as a mentor during his early career in the English Church. Garbrand is better known for his editions of the sermons Jewel preached at Paul’s Cross in London, as well as Jewel’s Treatise on the Holy Scriptures, also published in the early 1580s.87 His decision to publish Jewel’s sermon on the bull as an independent work speaks to a perceived necessity to respond formally to the excommunication’s confirmation, but its presentation also suggests much about how Jewel delivered the sermon in his diocese. Those who gathered to hear Jewel’s sermon in 1570 and those who read its transcript after 1582 were treated to a full reading of Regnans in Excelsis, a translation of the Latin words into English, and even a description of what the bull looked like:

86 87

Taken from A particular declaration or testimony, of the vndutifull and traiterous affection borne against her maiestie by Edmond Campion Iesuite, and other condemned priestes (London: Christopher Barker, 1582), bii. Stephen Wright, ‘Garbrand, John  (1541/​2–​1589)’,  ODNB (Oxford:  Oxford University Press, 2004), available from http://​www.oxforddnb.com/​view/​article/​10342 [accessed 7 Sept 2015].

110 chapter 3 After this his angry Title, his Holinesse hath thought good to shew vs some little of his pretie imagery, and maketh Peter stand on the one side with Keyes, and a poesie: Tibi dabo claues regni coelorum, I wil giue the Keyes of the kingdome of Heauen to thee. And leaste you shoulde not yet finde whiche is he, he is marked, Petrus clauiger, Peter the Keybearer. Paule is placed on the lefte side, with his Sworde: his marke is … Paule the Sword bearer, and hys circumscription, Paulus doctor gentium & vas electionis, Paule the Doctor of Gentiles, and elect vessel: and betwéen them both the Popes Armes, the triple Myter, the Crosse Keyes, and sixe Gunne stones: so he maketh the two Apostles supporters of his Armes, and setteth forth himselfe vnder their name, and credite.88 Jewel did not deliver a continuous reading of the bull in his sermon; instead he read a sentence out, translated it, and disputed it before moving onto the next. One can imagine Jewel in his pulpit with the bull in hand, holding it up before his audience, reading out each sentence, translating it for his listeners, and roundly abusing each of the pope’s accusations against the queen. He laced his commentary on the sentence of excommunication with sarcasm and disdain, proclaiming Nowe vpon warrant of these wordes so fondly applyed, he addresseth himselfe solemnly to pronounce sentence. Declaramus praedictam Elizabeth eique adherente in praedictis anathematis sententiam incurrisse. We make it knowen, that Elizabeth aforesaid, and as manie as stande on hir side in the matters aboue named, haue runne into the daunger of our curse. This is a terrible thunderbolt shot in among vs from Rome, in Paper. These cloudes are without raine: These Gunnes will doe no harme.89 Although Jewel framed each sentence of Regnans in Excelsis with lengthy and vicious invective against the papacy, it is still striking that he read it aloud to his audience. However much Jewel attempted rhetorically to eviscerate the excommunication and the institution that produced it, his sermon made the papal bull intelligible to everyone who came to listen to him, with every chance that some who attended his sermon would be more convinced by the fragments of Regnans in Excelsis he read aloud than by his diatribe.90 It also 88

John Jewel, Viewe of a seditious bul sent into Englande, from Pius Quintus bishop of Rome, anno. 1569, edited by John Garbrand (London: Newberie and Bynneman, 1582), 5–​6. See also Figure 2.1 for a photograph of a printed copy of the bull that matches this description. 89 Jewel, Viewe of a seditious bul, 81. 90 Walsham, ‘The Spider and the Bee’.

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increased the potential that information about Elizabeth’s excommunication would spread by word of mouth. Those who could not attend the sermon personally and read it as a published work ten years later could easily synthesise the parts of Regnans in Excelsis that appeared in the text, and all of these people could potentially transmit what they heard or read of the excommunication to others who wished to know about it. Fragments and summaries of the papal excommunication appeared in Protestant publications until the end of Elizabeth’s reign. In 1597 Richard Bancroft, the bishop of London, wrote to Sir Robert Cecil to tell him he had obtained a new history of England that had been published abroad, and which included a reprint of the Declaration of the Sentence Against Elizabeth. Although the author ‘favours the gospel’, Bancroft felt that this part of the book should be omitted if it were to be published in England.91 Summaries of the sentence also became a feature of polemic during the archpriest and appellant controversies. Protestant polemicists added their voices to the fray, using the excommunication to demonstrate the treasonous motives of the Jesuits, and particularly Robert Persons, against whom many of the polemics were directed. In his Watch-​Word to All Religious and True-​Hearted English Men (1598), Francis Hastings recounted ‘the thundring Bull of excommunication against her Maiestie, and her whole land, from that impious Pope Pius Quintus, wherein her Maiestie is not allowed the title of lawfull and rightfull Queene, but is termed The pretended Queene of England; and all her subiects are absolued from the oth of obedience’.92 Hastings included a similar abstract of the sentence in his subsequent Defense of the Watch-​Word, which he published in response to Robert Persons’s reply to the Watch-​Word.93 Another critique of Persons by James Balmford in 1600 noted ‘that Pope Pius Quintus (by his bull declaratory) pronounced our gracious and Christian Queene an hereticke, and excommunicated all such as yeeld obedience to her’.94 Matthew Sutcliffe likewise included a summary of the bull in his own denunciation of Persons. His Briefe Replie to a Certaine Odious and Slanderous Libel (1600) reminded readers that ‘Pope 91 92 93

94

cms Salisbury, vol. 7, 406. Francis Hastings, A watch-​word to all religious, and true hearted English-​men (London: Felix Kingston, 1598), 27. Francis Hastings, An apologie or defence of the watch-​vvord, against the virulent and seditious ward-​vvord published by an English-​Spaniard (London: Felix Kingston, 1600), 94–​ 95: ‘For in the title to that Bul, you know the Queene is called a pretended Queene, by the Bull she is deposed, her Subiects are absolued from their oath of fealtie & allegeance, and those that obay her are accursed’. James Balmford, A position maintained by I.B.  before the late Earle of Huntingdon:  viz. Priests are executed not for religion, but for treason (London: 1600), 7.

112 chapter 3 Pius, as the world knoweth … pronounced her [Elizabeth] excommunicate, depriued her of her kingdome, exhorted not onely forreine princes to make warres, but all her subiects to rebell against her: finally all such, as should obey her lawes, or helpe her, hée doth no lesse anathematize, then the Quéene herselfe’.95 A pamphlet published by John Hull in 1602 described the thundring Bull of Pius Quintus, roaring and breathing out his beastly threats against our gracious Soueraigne Queene Elizabeth, thus popishly inscribed. Sententiam declaratoriam contra serenissimam Reginam Anglia es ei adhaerentes haereticos. Qua etiam declar antur absoluti omnes sabditi à iuramento fidelitatis, et quocun{que} alio debito, et deinceps obedientes anathemate illaqueantur. A sentence declaratory against the most renowned Queene of England, and all her hereticall adherents, absoluing all her subiects from their oath of trustinesse loyaltie, and whatsoeuer other duty, accursing with a fearefull execration all those, that shall yeeld vnto her any seruice or obedience. Beholde the fruites of Romish religion, periury, treason, disobedience, and vilde reuiling of the Lords annointed, calling her serua vitiorum: the woman seruant of vice and wickednesse.96 Hull’s approach bears similarities with that used by John Jewel in the sermon he delivered against the bull in 1570. The Latin title that Hull used was not an exact transcription of the title of Regnans in Excelsis; possibly Hull relied on a copy of the bull that used different language. Nevertheless, the essential elements of the sentence still appear in this passage and point to the profound long-​term impact that the excommunication exerted over confessional debates. Regnans in Excelsis remained a central feature of Protestant polemic, and the tendency of authors to include summaries and extracts of the sentence in their arguments ensured that information about the sentence continued to be accessible to the end of Elizabeth’s reign. Public criticism and derision of Elizabeth’s excommunication appeared in many forms. Authors used humorous insults to discredit the papacy and its declaration against the queen and to convince her subjects that they had nothing to fear from Regnans in Excelsis. Yet the vehemence with which they responded to the bull in this manner suggests that the excommunication provoked significant anxieties about possible Catholic resistance and retaliation. The use of history by Elizabeth’s supporters to justify her defiance of the papacy likewise 95

Matthew Sutcliffe, A briefe replie to a certaine odious and slanderous libel, lately published by a seditious Iesuite (London: Arnold Hatfield, 1600), 68. 96 Hull, Vnmasking of the pollitique atheist, 66.

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points to the consternation her excommunication generated within her government and the English Church. The recurrent appearance of these kinds of attacks on the papal excommunication in public discourse throughout the rest of Elizabeth’s reign indicates the centrality of this event in everyday discussions of religion and politics. Elizabeth’s excommunication deeply affected the worldviews of her subjects, infiltrating multiple forms of oral and literary culture. While this range of works helped to ensure widespread awareness of the sentence amongst the queen’s subjects, it also points to a high level of public interest in Elizabeth’s ongoing struggles with the papacy. Another important theme in this chapter has been the availability of English translations and summaries of Regnans in Excelsis. While English copies of the excommunication did circulate in the 1580s, some of the first translations of the bull into English appeared in religious disputations written by Protestant scholars. Ironically, Protestant efforts to translate Regnans in Excelsis into English probably did more to increase access to the papal bull in England than Catholic efforts to smuggle in copies of the sentence from Rome. They provided a legal means of learning about the excommunication without the risk of incurring charges of treason. These translations also made it easier to transmit information about the excommunication by word of mouth, still the dominant mode of communication amongst the majority of people in the Tudor realms. While not all responses to the bull included full explanations or recitations of the sentence, a significant number of anti-​Catholic polemics included jibes and references to it, thereby enabling at least a nominal awareness of the excommunication throughout England. The circulation of the bull in Protestant print culture, combined with the efforts of Catholics to transmit it through print, manuscript, and speech as explored in the previous chapter, helped to ensure that information about Elizabeth’s excommunication and deposition was ubiquitous in England. At his trial in 1581, Edmund Campion asked the jury, ‘who knowes not that the Queene of England was excommunicated?’ in response to accusations that he had tried to promulgate the sentence.97 His question, though posed sarcastically, cut to the core of the Elizabethan regime’s worst fears. Despite their efforts to control the circulation of papal bulls and information relating to them, the majority of the queen’s subjects were all too aware of the papal denunciation and challenge to her legitimacy. 97

BL Harley MS 6265 f. 17.

­c hapter 4

The Excommunication in Foreign and Domestic Policy Confessionalisation increasingly influenced foreign policy amongst European kingdoms in the wake of the religious reformations of the sixteenth century.1 The role that Elizabeth’s excommunication played in foreign and domestic policy after 1570 underscores this trend. The papal deposition of Elizabeth opened the realm to invasion by any Catholic ruler who aspired to reclaim England from heresy. The excommunication therefore gave the Catholic rulers of Europe an elegant way to justify war with England, should they ever have needed one. Various memoranda and letters from those in service to the crown expressed concern about the implications of the excommunication for the realm’s security from domestic and international threats. When discussions of the papal bull in state correspondence are considered alongside Catholic efforts to transmit the sentence, Protestant attacks on the bull in the press, and the domestic responses of English and Irish Catholics, we can better appreciate why the government was so concerned about the excommunication’s repercussions for diplomacy. Anxiety about the succession and fears of invasion informed many of the regime’s concerns about the bull. Although the succession had been the subject of lively debate in England from 1558, the excommunication’s challenge to Elizabeth’s legitimacy made it an ever more pressing problem.2 While discussion of the succession in the 1560s centred mostly on who was eligible to succeed based on different English laws, confessional differences became

1 Benjamin Carvalho, ‘The Confessional State in International Politics: Tudor England, Religion, and the Eclipse of Dynasticism’, Diplomacy and Statecraft 25, no. 3 (2014), 407–​31; see also Benjamin Carvalho and Andrea Paras, ‘Sovereignty and Solidarity:  Moral Obligation, Confessional England, and the Huguenots’, International History Review 37, no. 1 (2015), 1–​21. 2 Patrick Collinson, ‘The Elizabethan Exclusion Crisis and the Elizabethan Polity’, Proceedings of the British Academy 84 (1994), 51–​92; idem, ‘The Monarchical Republic of Elizabeth I’ in Collinson, ed., Elizabethan Essays (London: Hambledon, 1994), 31–​57; Susan Doran and Paulina Kewes, eds., Doubtful and Dangerous: The Question of Succession in Late Elizabethan England (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2014); Peter Lake, Bad Queen Bess? Libels, Secret Histories, and the Politics of Publicity in the Reign of Queen Elizabeth I (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), 19–​96.

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2020 | DOI:10.1163/9789004426009_006

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central to the succession question in the 1570s.3 Elizabeth’s excommunication and deposition played a critical role in this shift, particularly in cultivating heightened animosity towards Mary Queen of Scots. As a descendant of Henry vii and a devout Catholic, some Catholic rulers in Europe considered Mary not simply the rightful successor to Elizabeth, but the rightful queen of England once the papacy declared Elizabeth deprived of her right to rule.4 Consequently after 1570 the bull also exacerbated the problem of Mary’s captivity in England. Mary was not necessarily the unanimous choice to succeed or replace Elizabeth amongst English Catholics:  other Catholic contenders during Elizabeth’s reign included Margaret Clifford (1540–​96), the granddaughter of Mary Tudor (Henry viii’s younger sister), and Margaret Douglas (1515–​78), the countess of Lennox and daughter of Margaret Tudor. From 1570 until her eventual execution, however, Mary was the candidate that proved the greatest threat to Protestants in government.5 Yet Elizabeth’s excommunication continued to influence the succession debate even after Mary’s execution in 1587. As the queen aged and conflict with Spain persisted in the 1590s, Philip ii and his supporters put forward an alternative solution to the papacy and the English public involving Philip and his daughter, the Infanta Isabella. While some of Elizabeth’s councillors considered James vi of Scotland a suitable candidate for the throne in the event of the queen’s death, his links to the Catholic Church, both through his mother’s family in France and through his own diplomatic overtures to Rome, remained ­troubling.6 The spectres of foreign invasion and interference with the succession also influenced the Elizabethan government’s domestic response to the papal excommunication. Many of the anti-​Catholic policies pursued by the regime after 1570 were, at their core, motivated by fear of the extent to which the 3 Susan Doran and Paulina Kewes, ‘The Earlier Elizabethan Succession Question Revisited’, in Doran and Kewes, Doubtful and Dangerous, 38. 4 Thomas McCoog, ‘A View From Abroad: Continental Powers and the Succession’, in Doran and Kewes, Doubtful and Dangerous, 257–​58. 5 Doran and Kewes, ‘The Earlier Elizabethan Succession’, 22; see also Anne McLaren, ‘Gender, Religion, and Early Modern Nationalism: Elizabeth I, Mary Queen of Scots, and the Genesis of English Anti-​Catholicism’, American Historical Review 107, no. 3 (2002), 739–​67; and Stephen Alford, ‘The Political Creed of William Cecil’, in John McDiarmid, ed., The Monarchical Republic of Early Modern England: Essays in Response to Patrick Collinson (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007), 75–​90. 6 McCoog, ‘A View From Abroad’, 263–​68; see also Susan Doran, ‘Loving and Affectionate Cousins? The Relationship Between Elizabeth I  and James VI of Scotland, 1586–​1603’, in Susan Doran and Glenn Richardson, eds., Tudor England and its Neighbours (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), 203–​34.

116 chapter 4 excommunication had altered English Catholic views of Elizabeth. Religious grievances had been a significant motivation to the participants in the Northern Rebellion in 1569, and the papal excommunication could legitimise further resistance to the Elizabethan regime amongst English Catholics. If the pope had declared Elizabeth a heretical, illegitimate ruler, did that mean that English Catholics would now consider Mary Queen of Scots as their rightful ruler? Would they rise up and try to replace Elizabeth with a monarch more favourable to the Roman Church? In light of the deposition, how would English Catholics respond to an invading force from a Catholic country that promised to restore their faith? These ‘bloody questions’ drove much of the legislation passed against Catholic practices after 1570. They also formed the basis of nearly every interrogation of Catholic priests and laity arrested after 1570, whose loyalties were now treated as suspicious.7 Examining these consequences in the context of broader concerns about the succession and invasion demonstrates that the excommunication and deposition played a critical role in the government’s relations with Catholic powers abroad as well as with Catholics in England. 1

Threats from Spain and Scotland, ca. 1570–​1579

Elizabeth herself voiced concerns about Regnans in Excelsis and its effects on her subjects when it was published in England. The bishop of Ross (John Leslie), recording an audience with the queen on 28 June 1570, recalled her saying that ‘these that hold of the pope does not think her [a]‌naturall princes nor lauchfull, be ressoning of the bull of excommunicatioun laitlie sett up’.8 Leslie conferred with Elizabeth for ‘a good space tending to that end’. Intriguingly, he added that the queen ‘said that the pape was reputt tobe a good man … therefor she was sory that he suld tak suc[h] consaitt of her, for she did no thing but that her consciens did persuade her do’.9 One purpose of Elizabeth’s meeting with Leslie, who acted as Mary Queen of Scots’ envoy at the English court, was to determine the extent of the Scottish queen’s support in France and persuade

7 Patrick McGrath has surveyed the answers of English Catholics interrogated by the Elizabethan regime, arguing that their answers highlight a fair amount of support for an invasion of the country on religious grounds. See his ‘The Bloody Questions Reconsidered’, Recusant History 20 (1991), 305–​19. See also Stefania Tutino, Law and Conscience: Catholicism in Early Modern England, 1570–​1625 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007), 45–​49. 8 BL Cotton MS Caligula C/​II f. 126. 9 Ibid.

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her to stop styling herself as queen of England.10 Elizabeth’s expression of regret about her excommunication and apparent respect for Pius v was probably less of a genuine effusion of repentance than a play to convince Mary that she might reconcile with Rome and render any designs against her pointless. Elizabeth used the possibility of her seeking absolution from the pope as a warning that Leslie could carry back to Mary and her supporters, in case they were considering making any attempts against the English queen on account of the papal sentence. It is worth considering, however, why Elizabeth raised the issue of her censure in the first place. It suggests real concern about how her subjects were responding to the bull, and the fact that she made a show of disappointment at the pope’s admonishment indicates how powerful a political tool the sentence could be. None of the bluster and indignation about the bull that figured prominently in Protestant print appears in this exchange; on the contrary here Elizabeth demonstrated that she took it quite seriously, and even manipulated it to gain the advantage over potential Catholic adversaries. In the summer of 1570 the Privy Council became increasingly worried that Spain would try to invade England. The two countries had narrowly avoided war over the seizure of Spanish ships and gold in the winter of 1569–​70, and relations were still fraught over increasing English involvement in the revolt of the Low Countries.11 From 1569 England had acted as a haven for the Dutch rebels’ vigilante navy, and many Englishmen sailed with them in sporadic attacks on Spanish ships that passed through the Channel.12 In June Guerau de Spes, the Spanish ambassador in England, wrote to Philip ii that ‘the passage of our Queen and the Pope’s Bull’ had made Elizabeth and her privy councillors very nervous about further hostilities with Spain.13 De Spes was referring to the upcoming voyage of Anna of Austria, who travelled through the Channel in the autumn of 1570 to join Philip ii in Spain as his new wife. Elizabeth and the Privy Council worried that the Spanish fleet, which was being outfitted in Flanders during the summer to accompany the Austrian princess, would 10

11 12 13

As discussed in the second chapter, around this time Elizabeth was also trying to prevent Charles IX from sending troops to aid Mary’s supporters in Scotland. See Susan Doran, Monarchy and Matrimony:  The Courtships of Elizabeth I (London:  Routledge, 1996), 103–​04. Pauline Croft, ‘ “The State of the World is Marvellously Changed”:  England, Spain, and Europe, 1558–​1604’, in Doran and Richardson, Tudor England and its Neighbours, 180–​97. Hugh Dunthorne, Britain and the Dutch Revolt, 1560–​1700 (Cambridge:  Cambridge University Press, 2013), 63–​66. For a general overview of the revolt see also Graham Darby, ed., The Origins and Development of the Dutch Revolt (London: Routledge, 2001). csp Simancas, vol. 2, 247.

118 chapter 4 instead be used to attack England. Antonio de Guaras reported rumours from the court and around London in June that Anna of Austria’s voyage was a ruse and that Philip would deploy the fleet against England.14 In July and August Elizabeth ordered the fortification of the southern coastal towns, the outfitting of new ships, and the mustering of shipmen to counter a possible attack.15 When Anna of Austria finally embarked on her voyage in September, Elizabeth sent the admirals Charles Howard and William Wynter ‘with certayne of our ships to attende vpon hir … for hir commoditie’.16 Elizabeth instructed Howard to tell the princess that ‘if a gretter force of shippes’ would suit her ‘we have a whole navie in suche good redynes’ to ensure her safe passage to Spain.17 The threat barely concealed in these overtures illustrates how the publication of Regnans in Excelsis altered the Elizabethan government’s outlook in the summer of 1570, triggering a sense of crisis and a prospect of invasion that would persist in the political background for the next thirty years. The queen’s instructions to her admirals to warn the Austrian princess of the English navy’s strength were meant to deter Philip ii from pursuing any aggression against England in the name of the Catholic Church. Surviving correspondence of Spanish officials in Madrid and the Netherlands indicates that Philip had no intention of using his new wife’s wedding entourage to attack England. However, in the context of the recent blockade and the publication of the excommunication in London, the movement of a Spanish fleet across the Channel put the government on high alert.18 Dispatches and exchanges between foreign ambassadors in England and elsewhere in Europe indicate that English fears about the excommunication’s international consequences were not simply paranoia. Although Anna of Austria’s voyage proved inoffensive, some of Philip’s advisors did try to persuade him to respond to Regnans in Excelsis with military force. Guerau de Spes wrote to Philip ii in June 1570 on the possibility of an ‘enterprise’ against 14 15 16

17 18

Ibid., 252, 256. TNA SP 12/​71 f. 125, SP 12/​73 f. 1; SP 12/​73 f. 88. Elizabeth I to Charles Howard, 1 September 1570. This letter is from the papers of the duke of Northumberland, sold at auction by Sotheby’s 15 July 2014. Sale no. L14404, lot 403. A digital reproduction of the letter is available from http://​www.sothebys.com/​ en/​auctions/​ecatalogue/​2014/​english-​literature-​history- ​childrens-​books-​illustrations-​ l14404/​lot.403.html [accessed 30 April 2018]. Ibid. Although Anna of Austria’s bridal fleet was never conceived of as a cover to attack England, Philip did contemplate invading England as part of the Ridolfi plot in 1571. See Geoffrey Parker, Imprudent King: A New Life of Philip II (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2014), 206–​07.

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England, and recommended that Philip might successfully invade both England and Ireland at once in light of the fracas the publication of the bull had caused.19 The papal nuncio in Spain, Juan Baptista Castagna, tried to urge Philip to suspend all commerce with England, on the grounds that Catholic princes could have no dealings with excommunicates, in an effort to foment unrest in England and force Elizabeth to submit to the Holy See.20 Though Philip rejected this idea on the grounds that it would also be economically detrimental to Spain, he was not above encouraging Elizabeth’s demise in less overt and expensive ways.21 Castagna reported to Cardinal Alessandrino in Rome that Philip had instructed the duke of Alba to take any opportunity to aid the English Catholics, but that he wished his intentions for a design against England to be kept quiet.22 While Philip ultimately proved unwilling to enforce the papal deposition of Elizabeth in the early 1570s through the extremities of invasion and commercial embargoes, the evidence above suggests he was not opposed to the project in principle. Geoffrey Parker has argued that in the late 1560s and early 1570s Philip considered his duty to ‘restore and preserve’ the Catholic faith in England second only to preserving the faith and prosperity of his own lands.23 Scholars such as Pauline Croft have argued that the ideological conflict between Spain and England during this period has been overstated, pointing to the persistence of covert trade between English and Spanish merchants despite the embargo imposed by the Privy Council from 1569–​73.24 Spain’s obligations in its own territories were considerable and made a religious crusade against England unrealistic at the time. The revolt in the Low Countries, coupled with a Morisco rebellion in Granada and increasing Ottoman incursions into the Mediterranean occupied most of Spain’s financial and military resources in the early 1570s.25 Yet Philip’s attitude towards England suggests that lack of resources, rather than interest, prevented him from taking a more active role in papal schemes to depose Elizabeth.

19

csp Simancas vol. 2, 245–​6. See also Geoffrey Parker, ‘The Place of Tudor England in the Messianic Vision of Philip II of Spain’. Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 12 (2002), 189–​93. 20 asv Segr. di Stato, Spagna, vol. 4 f. 145v. For a translation see csp Rome vol. 1, 350. 21 Ibid. 22 asv Segr di Stato, Spagna, vol. 4 f. 142–​43. For a translation see csp Rome vol. 1, 340–​41. 23 Parker, ‘Messianic Vision of Philip II’, 188. 24 Pauline Croft, ‘Trading with the Enemy, 1585–​1604’, Historical Journal 32, no. 2 (1989), 281–​302; eadem, ‘England, Spain, and Europe’, 180–​86. 25 Parker, Imprudent King, 195–​228.

120 chapter 4 Elizabeth’s government was so worried about these schemes that they tried to get the pope to rescind the excommunication in the months following its publication. In August 1570 Elizabeth sent Henry Brooke, Lord Cobham to the Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian ii, to ask him to intercede on her behalf with the pope. On 20 September Cobham ‘complained of the popes Bull which was deliuered … to a dissolute Subiect of her hightnes with intent to have it publickly set vpp in lvndon’.26 Cobham reported that the emperor ‘meaneth to shoe his discontentacion which he now hath, apon this occasion of her hightnes complaining therof’.27 Eight days later, the emperor wrote to Pius v, describing how Elizabeth ‘has besought Us to do our endeavour to induce your Holiness either to revoke the sentence of excommunication not long since pronounced and published against her Serenity, or at least to take care that it be not published in print’, and ‘earnestly entreat[ing] your Holiness duly to perpend these matters’.28 The pope rejected these overtures, but it is telling that Elizabeth tried to have her excommunication revoked after it was published in England. Clearly the government was concerned about the bull’s potential to foment unrest, enough so that they found it necessary to ask the Holy Roman Emperor to intervene with Pius v. While it was ultimately unsuccessful, this exchange between England, the Holy Roman Empire, and the papacy points to how serious an issue the excommunication became for the Elizabethan regime. The fact that Elizabeth’s ministers were willing to negotiate with a figure who was vilified as the antichrist in English Protestant discourse shows that they considered the papal censure a grave threat to the kingdom’s security and were willing to go to considerable lengths to neutralise it. Since the pope refused to revoke the sentence against Elizabeth, her government resorted to other means to dissuade her subjects from adhering to it. A royal proclamation published in July 1570 banned the circulation of ‘seditious and trayterous bookes, billes, and writinges’.29 Another proclamation followed in November, condemning and calling for the arrest of those who spread ‘false rumors and newes, both by speache, and by bookes and wrytinges … to procure more partners with them in their treasons and rebellions’.30 When 26 27 28 29 30

TNA SP 70/​114 f. 21. Ibid. csp Rome, vol. 1, 354–​55. Arnold Meyer mentions the emperor’s intervention with the pope on Elizabeth’s behalf in England and the Catholic Church under Queen Elizabeth (London: Paul, Trench, and Trubner, 1916), 78. A proclamation made agaynst seditious and trayterous bookes, billes, and writinges (London: Jugge and Cawood, 1570). A proclamation agaynst maynteyners of seditious persons, and of trayterous bookes and writinges (London: Jugge and Cawood, 1570).

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the third parliament of Elizabeth’s reign convened in April 1571, the papal excommunication featured prominently in proposed legislation. A bill passed in May made it treason to bring papal bulls from Rome into the realm. The use of papal bulls to convert or reconcile people to Catholicism was also declared a treasonable offence.31 In addition to anti-​Catholic measures, parliament also passed legislation prohibiting further discussion of the succession and a bill was proposed to make it treason to say that Elizabeth ‘is not lawfull Queene, or to say shee is an infidell, or hereticke, or schismaticke, or such like’.32 Both of these measures were introduced in the House of Commons by Thomas Norton, one of the Privy Council’s ‘men of business’ in parliament who also published several polemics against the excommunication.33 The introduction of these measures simultaneously points to concern amongst members of the council that further debates about the succession to the English crown would also invite debate about the papal bull and the queen’s legitimacy. This concern shows that anxiety about the succession became closely tied to fears about the challenge the papal deposition presented to Elizabeth’s authority. It helps to explain why the Elizabethan regime monitored public discourses about the succession so closely for the rest of her reign. The excommunication and deposition also help to explain why anxiety about the succession within government assumed increasingly confessional tones from the 1570s onwards.34 The risk that debates about who should follow Elizabeth as ruler of England would lead to questions about whether she should even be queen in the first place was simply too great, especially in light of the wide availability of information about the papal bull. The excommunication also factored into some of Elizabeth’s negotiations with France for a marriage alliance with the duke of Anjou, which took place from 1570–​71. A memorandum compiled by Nicolas Bacon in 1570 on the benefits that might be gained from Elizabeth’s proposed marriage to the duke expressed hope that ‘the popes mallice with his bulls and excommunication and the spyte of all his dependentes as well at home here as abrode shalbe suspended and vanish away in a smoke’, and listed this possibility as a potential

31 32 33 34

13 Eliz. I  c.2, in Statutes of the Realm, vol. 4.1 (London:  HM Stationery Office, 1819), 529–​32. T. E. Hartley, ed., Proceedings in the Parliaments of Elizabeth I, vol. 1 (Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1981), 203–​04. See Michael Graves, Thomas Norton: Parliament Man (Oxford: Blackwell, 1994); Patrick Collinson, ‘Puritans, Men of Business, and Elizabethan Parliaments’, in idem, Elizabethan Essays, 187–​211. See the previous chapter for an assessment of Norton’s writings. Doran and Kewes, Doubtful and Dangerous, 38.

122 chapter 4 ‘commoditie’ of the match.35 The queen and council used the marriage negotiations to forge an anti-​Spanish alliance and dissuade the French king, Charles ix, from sending military assistance to Mary Queen of Scots’ supporters in Scotland, who had gained the advantage in the civil wars there after the earl of Moray’s assassination in January 1570.36 As we have seen, the publication of the bull in May had raised alarm about a possible Spanish invasion. The gains of the Scottish queen’s supporters in the civil wars earlier in the year also opened England to invasion through its northern border, if France and Spain decided to send troops to assist them. As with Spain, the government feared that Mary’s supporters could use Regnans in Excelsis to justify such an enterprise. If Queen Elizabeh could negotiate a suitable marriage agreement or at least use the talks to gain political concessions from the French, then she might be able to prevent them from pursuing more aggressive action against England on Mary’s behalf.37 While the match certainly would have helped Elizabeth to contain some of the threats to England’s borders, Bacon’s certainty that a successful marriage between the queen and Anjou would also neutralise the papal deposition is worth considering further. In the aftermath of the Northern Rebellion, Bacon became increasingly vocal in his opposition to and distrust of Mary Queen of Scots, viewing her as a threat to the succession. Indeed, another advantage of the Anjou match listed in the 1570 memorandum noted that Elizabeth ‘shalbe deliuered of the continuall feare of the practises of the Queen of Scottes’.38 However, Bacon also shared Lord Burghley’s concerns about Catholic threats from Europe, believing that England needed to be cautiously proactive in supporting the cause of Protestantism in the Low Countries and France in order to check the major Catholic powers.39 It is worth remarking that Bacon saw a marriage between Elizabeth and Anjou, a devout Catholic for whom the queen’s Protestantism became a sticking point during negotiations, as the lesser of two evils in this context, and demonstrated enthusiasm about the match’s potential to render the papal deposition politically null. His attitude demonstrates how critically the excommunication shaped the succession question

35 TNA SP 70/​115 f. 96. 36 Doran, Monarchy and Matrimony, 103–​04. 37 Ibid., 108. 38 TNA SP 70/​115 f. 96. 39 Robert Tittler, ‘Bacon, Sir Nicholas’, ODNB (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), available from https://​doi.org/​10.1093/​ref:odnb/​1002 [accessed 2 Oct 2018]. See also idem, Nicholas Bacon: The Making of a Tudor Statesman (London: Jonathan Cape, 1976).

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from 1570 onwards, to the point where Elizabeth and her ministers at times felt prepared to make concessions for the sake of quelling threats from the papacy. The discovery of the Ridolfi Plot in 1571 and the government’s handling of the aftermath also demonstrate the extent to which the excommunication influenced the emerging succession problem in the early 1570s. The plot involved a scheme to assassinate Elizabeth and replace her with Mary Queen of Scots, who would marry the duke of Norfolk and rule England jointly with him. Roberto Ridolfi, a Florentine banker based in London, served as the architect of the plot and travelled to Spain and Rome to solicit support from Philip ii and the pope.40 Philip responded with enthusiasm to Roberto Ridolfi’s plea for assistance against Elizabeth in the summer of 1570. In a letter Philip wrote to the duke of Alba in July he expressed hope that the duke of Norfolk could easily kill or capture Elizabeth, if he provided the plotters with assistance.41 Roberto Ridolfi had played a central role in the publication of Regnans in Excelsis in London, smuggling multiple copies of the bull into England and distributing them to ambassadors at court.42 Although Ridolfi escaped to the continent, those arrested and questioned about the conspiracy from 1571–​72 were repeatedly asked about Elizabeth’s excommunication and its part in motivating the plot’s participants. When William Barker, secretary to the duke of Norfolk, was interrogated in October 1571, he was asked ‘What Bull  or Wrytinge doe yow knowe, that the Duke hath receaved frome the Pope?’43 Several others in the duke of Norfolk’s entourage, including Sir Thomas Gerrard, Francis Rolleston, Thomas Cobham, Lawrence Banister, and John Hall were also asked what they knew about the bull and its connections to the plot.44 Mary’s advisors were also closely questioned about Regnans in Excelsis and their role in procuring it. The bishop of Ross was questioned about the excommunication in October 1571. Interrogators asked Leslie whether he knew of anyone who ‘hath receaved the Pope’s Bull … and what Speache have yow 40

Summaries of this plot are available in multiple political histories of this period. See for instance Retha Warnicke, Mary Queen of Scots (London:  Routledge, 2006), c­ hapter  8; Wallace MacCaffrey, The Shaping of the Elizabethan Regime (Princeton:  Princeton University Press, 1968), 399–​453. 41 Parker, Imprudent King, 205–​07. The letters Parker quotes are in the Archivo de la Casa de los Duques de Alba, Biblioteca de Liria, Madrid, vol. 7 f. 58, and printed in Luciano Serrano, ed., Correspondencia Diplomatica entre España y la Santa Sede Durante el Pontificado de San Pio V, vol. 4 (Madrid: 1914), 382. 42 For Ridolfi’s involvement in posting the bull in London see the second chapter of this book. 43 CP vol. 2, 108. 44 cms Salisbury, vol. 1, 539–​41.

124 chapter 4 harde passe, by any Man, touchinge those Matters’.45 Leslie replied that Sir Thomas Stanley, Sir Thomas Gerrard, and Francis Rolleston ‘were reconciled to the Pope, accordinge to the late Bull, and that so were many other in Lancashire, and the Northe Partes’.46 Leslie also mentioned a meeting he had held with Henry Wriothesley, the earl of Southampton, shortly after the bull was published in London in the previous year. Leslie claimed that Southampton ‘bore great Favor to the Quene of Scots, and axid of the Bull now set up, what he [Leslie] thought of it; and whither, with his Conscience, he ought to obey the Quene’s Majesty, or no’.47 Southampton initially denied all of this when he was arrested, but later admitted to requesting and receiving a copy of the bull from Leslie in May 1570.48 This line of questioning intensified in the leadup to the first session of parliament convened in 1572, which was called to address the fallout of the Ridolfi plot and Mary Queen of Scots’ role in the conspiracy. On 4 May, days before the first meeting, the Privy Council ordered another examination of the bishop of Ross, with more questions about the bull. These included What Advertyssement was geven to you, or to the Scots Quene, frome any Person, of the late Bull that was sent into this Realme agaynst the Quene’s Majestie, at any Tyme before the same Bull was soe sett uppe here in England, and by whome, and what was Theffect therof? Howe many doe you knowe that were privey to the bringing in or setting uppe of the sayd Bull; and how long were you privey to yt before yt was soe sett uppe; and howe many Copies thereof doe you knowe were geven or dispossed to any Person? Whoe sent that Bull to the Scots Quene, and abowt what Tyme; and whoe dyd fyrst make her privey to the same Bull before yt was sett uppe? What Intelligens was geven to you, or to the Scots Quene, of the sayd Bull before yt came into this Realme; and by or from whome?49 Leslie replied that neither he nor Mary had known anything about the excommunication before it was published in London and denied knowing 45 46 47

48 49

CP vol. 2, 35. Ibid. CP vol. 2, 20. Southampton was married to Mary Browne, the daughter of Anthony Browne, Viscount Montague. The Browne family remained staunchly Catholic throughout Elizabeth’s reign. See Michael Questier, Catholicism and Community in Early Modern England: Politics, Aristocratic Patronage and Religion, c.  1550–​ 1640 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006). cms Salisbury, vol. 1, 558–​62. CP vol. 2, 63.

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anything about John Felton or anyone involved in its publication.50 Yet when parliament met on 8 May, members railed against the Scottish queen, using the excommunication as proof of her complicity in Ridolfi’s plans. In his opening speech the Lord Speaker described to Elizabeth how the pope ‘did publishe a most vyle, tyrannicall and seditious bull of deprivacion … against your Majestie, your nobility, realme and subiectes’. The Speaker claimed that ‘the said bull was knowen to the said Mary. Uppon which bull hath bene founded … the most trayterous perswasion of … subiectes against your Majestie’s undoubted right to your most royall crowne and the maintenance of her pretenced tytle to the same’.51 Other speeches echoed this accusation, observing ‘how sins the publication of the Pope’s bull, the evill subiectes of this realme sticke not to name the Queen of England the pretensed and lat Queen, and the Scottish Queen thei call our Quene’.52 As the first session of parliament drew to a close in June 1572, Lord Burghley drew up a number of articles with which to charge Mary, including that she had ‘been previe to the procuring of a seditiouse Bull from Rome, against the Quene’s Highnesse, and her State’, and that ‘Diverse of your Friends, Favourers, and Ministers, have in the Parts beyond the Seas, by your Means and Consent, affirmed and published you to be Quene of  England’.53 Mary rejected these charges when they were presented to her, denying ‘vtterly the procurement of the Bull set forth [against] the Quenes Maiestie’, although she admitted that she ‘had a printed copie therof, sent vnto her a moneth after the publishing of the Bull, which after the reding therof she burned’.54 The Privy Council and parliament wanted to put Mary on trial for treason, but Elizabeth rejected this proposal, since Mary would likely have been found guilty and sentenced to death.55 From Elizabeth’s perspective, the execution of an anointed monarch would have set a dangerous precedent, especially given the attitude which more extreme Catholic factions had taken towards the removal of Elizabeth herself. The debate over Mary’s fate at the 1572 parliament exemplifies the difficult political situation in which the papal deposition placed the queen. While the aspersions it cast upon Elizabeth’s right to rule made the Scottish queen a threat, any attempts to remove Mary through execution would also open

50 Ibid. 51 Hartley, Proceedings in the Parliaments, vol. 1, 305. 52 Ibid., 323. 53 CP vol. 2, 218. 54 TNA SP 53/​8 f. 129. 55 Susan Brigden, New Worlds, Lost Worlds:  The Rule of the Tudors, 1485–​1603 (London: Penguin, 2000), 237–​38.

126 chapter 4 England further to retaliation from Spain and France. Elizabeth’s handling of Mary Queen of Scots can be read as an attempt to strike a delicate balance when it came to dealing with the bull’s political consequences, one that protected her from both domestic threats and international reprisals. The excommunication sometimes proved a stumbling block to relations with potential allies. In 1572, when the Privy Council was deciding whether or not to send financial and military assistance to William of Orange for his revolt against Philip ii in the Low Countries, the fact that Elizabeth’s excommunication had been openly advertised in some of the provinces seeking assistance became problematic to their suit.56 England’s Protestant allies also attempted to use Elizabeth’s excommunication for their diplomatic advantage. In 1573, during a long conversation with one of Burghley’s agents in the provinces, the prince of Orange lamented how ‘the Popes bull and other declaracions fastened in open places and dispersed abroad aswell without Englande as within by the saide King of Spaine and his adherentes to the blemishing of her Maiesties honor and greatenes’ had contributed to ‘the stirring vpp of her subiectes and people against her by sedicion treason and tumulte and lastelie in proposing her Realme for a pray to those that by invencion or practise coulde first cease [seize] of it’.57 Here Orange shifted the blame for the bull’s publication in the Low Countries to Philip ii to allay English concerns about whether they could trust their Dutch allies, but his use of Elizabeth’s excommunication in this exchange also speaks to its diplomatic importance for England after 1570. The incident indicates that England’s allies were well aware of the government’s fears about the bull provoking a religious uprising in England, as well as the potential for a religiously motivated invasion from abroad. Bringing the bull up in diplomatic negotiations was an easy way to stoke those anxieties and could help to convince the English diplomats that supporting resistance in the Low Countries would defray Spanish interest in attacking England. The papal bull became a kind of bargaining chip that Protestant rulers on the continent could use in their efforts to gain support from the Elizabethan regime. Although the feared invasions from Spain and Scotland did not materialise in the 1570s, the government remained alert to signs of any activities that could be connected to the papal deposition. Where possible the Privy Council monitored letters passed between English Catholic exiles on the continent and their friends and relatives in England. In September 1574 the council intercepted a letter written to Sir Thomas Shirley by an informant in Brussels, which

56 57

cms Salisbury, vol. 2, 40–​42. TNA SP 70/​127 f. 174b. The agent in question is William Herle.

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reported that ‘Many of our Clergy heere be muche tickld with a sweete hope of an accorde and agreement that the kyng of Spayne travailleth to make betweene the Pope and our Queen: wherof they be informed from Rome that the excommunicacion is in towardnes to be revolked’.58 In November the council obtained a letter written by Sir Francis Englefield to Jane Dormer that corroborated this report. Englefield and Dormer were both exiles who had been living on the continent since Elizabeth’s accession in 1558. Englefield wrote that in Rome ‘the Spanish Ambassador there hath and doth so earnestly sollicit the revocacion of the excommunicacion and hath made suche overtures on the behalf of the Queen that the matter hath ben disputed by the Iesuytes there’ and was ‘by the Popes order treated in consistory’.59 These reports of Spain’s intervention in the conflict between Elizabeth and the papacy merit further scrutiny, in light of Philip’s apparent enthusiasm for the Ridolfi plot only a few years earlier. No surviving records indicate that Elizabeth ever asked Philip to intervene with the pope on her behalf to get the excommunication rescinded, though it is possible given her previous overtures to the Holy Roman Emperor.60 Both of these letters relayed second-​hand intelligence from the exile community; neither writer had spoken directly with anyone who may have been involved in these diplomatic exchanges.61 Pope Pius v had died in 1572, and it is also possible that these letters reflect the hopes of some English Catholics that the new pope, Gregory xiii, might be willing to reverse his predecessor’s decree. By this time the dangers of invasion which had so preoccupied the Elizabethan government after the bull’s initial publication had subsided somewhat. In the mid-​1570s Spain suffered significant setbacks in its wars in the Low Countries and against the Ottoman Empire in the Mediterranean. Philip ii had sunk tens of millions of ducats (the Spanish currency) into these conflicts, driving the royal treasury to bankruptcy by 1576. Spain was in no position to mount any sort of military offensive against England, although the king’s brother John of Austria expressed enthusiasm for the project.62 The civil wars in Scotland had come to an end in 1573, following a long siege of Edinburgh from which the King’s party emerged victorious, with the pro-​English earl of Morton installed as regent for the young King James vi. The leaders of Mary’s forces at Edinburgh 58 59 60

TNA SP 15/​23 f. 158. BL Cotton MS Caligula C/​III f. 513. England had also resumed full trade and diplomatic relations with Spain by 1574. See Croft, ‘England, Spain, and Europe’, 185–​86. 61 BL Cotton MS Caligula C/​III f. 513, TNA SP 15/​23 f. 158. 62 Parker, Imprudent King, 219–​35.

128 chapter 4 were either executed or had died in prison, lessening concerns about an invasion through the north for the time being.63 In France the resurgence of Huguenot resistance left the government with little attention and fewer resources for much else. In 1576, the duke of Alençon, King Henri iii’s younger brother and presumptive heir to the throne, escaped arrest at the French court to join the Huguenot forces led by the prince of Condé and the king of Navarre in the south. The Huguenots’ alliance with the German Palatinate had helped them to amass an army at least 30000 strong, well beyond what the crown was able to raise. Henri was compelled to re-​open negotiations with the Protestants, but this alienated Catholic militants in the Estates General, who formed their own league to fight the Huguenots in defiance of the king. When Henri agreed to the Peace of Bergerac in 1577, many Catholics refused to recognise it and royal officials in the provinces refused to enforce it. On top of this, a series of peasant revolts in the south-​east also kept royal forces occupied in restoring order from 1578–​80.64 The military obligations of Spain and France within their own borders and on the continent in the mid-​1570s made it unlikely that either power would be willing or able to enact the deprivation of the queen. 2

Regnans in Excelsis and the Coming of War, ca. 1580–​1588

The Elizabethan regime continued to monitor signs of resistance and subversion at home. Government officials tried to confiscate any copies of the excommunication that people smuggled into the country. From 1574 Catholic priests trained at the English colleges on the continent began returning to England to minister to Catholics there, bringing papal bulls and other illicit Catholic materials with them.65 Anxiety about how English Catholics and their allies in continental Europe might use the excommunication against the realm intensified again in the 1580s, following the confirmation of the sentence by Gregory xiii and the arrival of the Jesuit mission in England. Fears of an invasion, sanctioned by the bull and enabled by a committed band of priests who might use it to turn Elizabeth’s subjects against her, also increased again, fed in part by the intelligence the Privy Council received from its agents and diplomats on the continent.66 Letters that Henry Brooke, Lord Cobham wrote to the council 63 MacCaffrey, Shaping of the Elizabethan Regime, 372–​89. 64 Mack Holt, The French Wars of Religion, 1562–​1629 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 98–​120. 65 See the second and fifth chapters of this book. 66 See Brigden, New Worlds, Lost Worlds, especially ­chapters 7–​9 for more on this context. See also Thomas McCoog, The Society of Jesus in Ireland, Scotland, and England, 1541–​1588

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whilst serving as ambassador in France are filled with accounts of the bull’s renewal, plans for its redistribution, and potential invasion schemes connected to its republication.67 Several messages written between January and April 1580 described intelligence Cobham received about a planned invasion of the kingdom by Spanish and papal forces, supported by the printing and distribution of new copies of Elizabeth’s excommunication, and of Jesuits headed towards England with copies to disperse amongst the people.68 Thomas Stokes, one of Francis Walsingham’s agents in Bruges, later confirmed that Spanish mercenaries paid by the pope were bound for Ireland to assist the Fitzgeralds in their rebellion.69 Concerns about the bull surfaced during renewed marriage negotiations with France which took place from the end of the 1570s. A long discourse written to the queen in 1580 concerning the proposal of marriage with the new duke of Anjou (King Henri iii’s younger brother, formerly the duke of Alençon) listed the many inconveniences that would result from another failed match. ‘The principall Perrells that may growe to your Majesty by the Lacke and Breach of this Marriage’ included ‘The joyning of those Kings and all the Papist Princes in Warres agaynst you … The styrryng of Rebellion in Irland, and the assystyng of it with forren Power and Collor of Religion’.70 The memorandum warned the queen that ‘The styrryng of the lyke in England by the same Meanes’ would also be a danger, ‘By convertyng of all … the Forces of the Rebells of both Realms, to impeache your Majestie in the Right of your Crownes, and to sett up the King and Quene of Scotts in your Place, or some other Competitor’.71 To prevent these disasters, the memorandum advised the queen to ‘presently put your Realmes in best Force … that you do spedely fortefye your necessary Havens, the Places where your Shippes lye, and Places aboute the Mouth of

67

68 69 70

71

(Leiden: Brill, 1996), 140–​45. For a summary of the channels through which the Privy Council received its intelligence see John Cooper, The Queen’s Agent: Francis Walsingham at the Court of Elizabeth I (London: Bloomsbury, 2011), 170–​89. Julian Lock, ‘Brooke, Sir Henry  (1537–​1592)’,  ODNB (Oxford:  Oxford University Press, 2004), available from http://​www.oxforddnb.com/​view/​article/​5743 [accessed  24 July  2015]. For the English embassy in France, see Mitchell Leimon and Geoffrey Parker, ‘Treason and Plot in Elizabethan Diplomacy: the “Fame of Sir Edward Stafford” Reconsidered’, English Historical Review 111 (1996), 1134–​58. See the series TNA SP 78/​4A. TNA SP 83/​13 f. 53. William Murdin, ed., A Collection of State Papers, Relating to Affairs in the Reigns of King Henry VIII, King Edward VI, Queen Mary, and Queen Elizabeth, Transcribed from Original letters and Other Authentick Memorials, Left by William Cecill Lord Burghley, vol. 2 (London: William Bowyer, 1759), 339. Ibid.

130 chapter 4 the Temmes … that you do indede plucke downe presently the Strengthe and Government of all your Papysts, and delyver all the Strength and Goverment of your Realm into the Hands of wise, assured, and trusty Protestants’.72 The memorandum exemplifies how the bull’s renewal reinvigorated concerns about the possibility of other kingdoms using it to justify war with England. All of the potential conflicts listed in this brief were justified and made possible by the papal deposition. It also neatly ties together anxieties about both invasion and the replacement of the queen with a Catholic ruler who would return the English Church to papal supremacy. Susan Doran has shown how international confessional tensions of the early 1580s factored into Elizabeth’s decision to revive talk of marriage with France.73 Although Anjou had temporarily aligned himself with the Huguenots in the 1570s, he had now reconciled with his brother the king.74 The second Anjou match did not appeal to all of Elizabeth’s councillors and proved more divisive amongst her Protestant subjects. It provoked the publication of pamphlets like John Stubbs’ Discoverie of a Gaping Gulf, which portrayed the marriage as a plot by the papacy to force England back into submission to Rome, and one which resulted from the failure of the excommunication to elicit any significant results to that end.75 Thomas McCoog has suggested that the prospect of a second Anjou match may have provided the impetus for the Jesuit mission to England, amidst hopes that English Catholics could use the marriage to secure greater freedom of worship.76 In fact, Elizabeth may have allowed the negotiations to proceed for the opposite reason and to delay any of her opponents from moving against her on religious grounds.77 72 Ibid., 340. 73 Doran, Monarchy and Matrimony, ­chapter 6. 74 Holt, French Wars of Religion, 95–​128. 75 John Stubbs, The discouerie of a gaping gulf vvhereinto England is like to be swallovved by another French mariage, if the Lord forbid not the banes, by letting her Maiestie see the sin and punishment thereof (London:  H. Singleton, 1579), 31–​32. See also Natalie Mears, ‘Counsel, Public Debate, and Queenship: John Stubbs’s The Discoverie of a Gaping Gulf, 1579’, Historical Journal 44, no. 3 (2001), 629–​50. 76 See Thomas McCoog ‘The English Jesuit Mission and the French Match, 1579–​1581’, Catholic Historical Review 87, no.  2 (2001), 185–​213. I  am less convinced of this idea in light of the plans for rebellion in Ireland and the renewal of the Holy League which unfolded at the time that the mission began, especially when one considers that the papacy became involved in all three projects. The nuncio in France reported to the Vatican regularly on the progress and difficulties of the marriage negotiations between Elizabeth and Anjou, but his scepticism of their success is apparent in his letters. asv Segri. di Stato, Francia, vol. 14 contains much of the correspondence related to these affairs. 77 For more on this episode see Natalie Mears, ‘Love-​making and Diplomacy: Elizabeth I and the Anjou Marriage Negotiations, c. 1578–​1582’, History 86, no. 284 (2001), 442–​66.

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As in 1570, Philip ii and his agents expressed renewed interest in an ‘enterprise’ against England after the bull’s confirmation in 1580. The religious justification for these plots is clear throughout these exchanges. Juan de Vargas Mejia, the Spanish ambassador in France, wrote to Philip ii from Paris in February just as Cobham was warning the Privy Council of the bull’s renewal and a possible invasion of England, to tell the king that the ‘affair’ could probably be openly undertaken in light of the rebellion in Ireland and the unrest provoked in England by the bull’s renewal and the arrival of the Jesuits.78 In March Bernardino de Mendoza, the Spanish ambassador in England, noted the efforts of the English government to muster soldiers and ships in case of an attack, and told Philip that the forces would not be able to resist a quarter of the Spanish fleet.79 Lorenzo Priuli, the Venetian ambassador in France, corroborated Mejia’s assertions in his dispatches to Venice from Paris in September. Recounting the hopes of the English exiles in Paris, Priuli described their expectation that Philip’s armies would prevail in Ireland and from thence make war on England for the restoration of Roman Catholicism.80 A treaty for the Holy League between Spain, Tuscany, and the Vatican signed in December 1580 confirmed this intent, providing for 30,000 troops gathered from the three parties to attack England, as well as new efforts to publish and publicise Elizabeth’s excommunication.81 In this context, we can appreciate why the bull’s confirmation and its potential to inspire further invasion schemes were at the forefront of debate when the queen recalled parliament in January 1581. A  sense of impending crisis and conflict with Spain in the 1580s moved the Elizabethan regime to spend large sums on outfitting troops and new warships, as well as revisions to military strategy.82 The case made for financing this overhaul in parliament relied heavily on the papal excommunication and deposition. In his speech for supply Sir Walter Mildmay spoke of the ‘inplacable malice of the Pope and his confederates’ against Elizabeth, as evinced by ‘the publishing of a most impudent, blasphemous and malicious bull against our most rightfull Quene’.83 He 78 79 80

csp Simancas vol. 3, 4–​6. Ibid., 20–​22. csp Venice vol. 7, 645–​46. See also Katy Gibbons, English Catholic Exiles in Late-​Sixteenth Century Paris (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2011), 84–​112. 81 csp Venice vol. 7, 650–​51. 82 Paul Hammer, ‘The Catholic Threat and the Military Response’, in Susan Doran and Norman Jones, eds., The Elizabethan World (London:  Routledge, 2011), 636. See also idem, Elizabeth’s Wars:  War, Government, and Society in Tudor England, 1544–​1604 (Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003). 83 Hartley, Proceedings in the Parliaments, vol. 1, 502–​03.

132 chapter 4 warned that ‘the publishing and denouncing of that blasphemous bull against her Majestie, and sithence … the swarming hither of a nomber of popish preistes and monkish Jesuites … must needes prove dangerous to the whole state of this common wealth’.84 Mildmay also stressed the threat from foreign Catholic foes, declaring that ‘the combynacion with the Pope of other monarches and princes devoted unto Rome’ was the ‘most capitall enemy of the Quene and this state’.85 Mildmay’s use of the excommunication in his speech proved effective. Subsidies were granted to the crown to help pay for troops and supplies to quell the rebellion in Ireland, as well as the outfitting of ships and coastal defences.86 To address the threat of seminary and Jesuit priests, parliament passed another bill making it treasonous for anyone to be reconciled to the Roman Catholic Church or to facilitate the reconciliation of others.87 Mildmay’s strategy illustrates how public anxieties about the bull could be played upon for political gain within the Elizabethan government. However, when considered alongside the activities of Philip ii’s agents on the continent and the renewal of the Holy League in the early 1580s, these anxieties appear to have been well-​founded. Although Mildmay’s speech may have been fear-​ mongering to a certain extent, the fears he exploited for the regime’s financial gain had a rational basis, making his allusions to the bull and its repercussions all the more effective. The Privy Council received further worrying intelligence from abroad in the 1580s. The arrival of Esmé Stewart, lord of Aubigny, at the Scottish Court in 1579, and his undue influence over James vi created fresh anxieties about a potential shift in Scottish diplomacy. Stewart had political connections to the powerful Guise family in France, who were relatives of Mary Queen of Scots and leaders of the militant Catholic League, which had formed to counter Henri iii’s concessions to the Huguenots in the mid-​1570s.88 Stewart and his allies turned on the former regent the earl of Morton, who now served as president of the royal council, accusing him of complicity in the murder of Henry Stuart (James vi’s father) back in 1567. Morton was executed in June 1581.89 Elizabeth 84 85 86 87

88 89

Ibid., 504–​05. Ibid., 503–​04. 23 Eliz. I c. 14 and c. 15, in Statutes of the Realm, vol. 4.1, 679–​99. 23 Eliz. I  c. 1, in Statutes of the Realm, vol. 4.1, 658–​59. See also Lucy Underwood, ‘Persuading the Queen’s Majesty’s Subjects from Their Allegiance: Treason, Reconciliation and Confessional Identity in Elizabethan England’, Historical Research 89, no. 244 (2016), 246–​67. Stuart Carroll, Martyrs and Murderers:  The Guise Family and the Making of Europe (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 243–​56. Doran and Kewes, ‘The Earlier Elizabethan Succession’, 33–​34.

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wrote to James personally in 1581 to advise him against relying too heavily on Stewart’s counsel. She warned him that Stewart and the Catholics might try ‘to work some division in Scotland’, saying that she spoke from personal experience. Elizabeth cited the use of ‘certene Bulls from Rome’ to procure a ‘playn renunciacion’ of her subjects’ allegiance, ‘with a profession to serve the Pope or anie other foreine Prince or power sent by him against hir’, as a warning of what might befall the young Scottish king.90 Elizabeth’s tone in this letter differed markedly from the one she took in her discussion of the bull with John Leslie ten years before. There is no sign of the remorse she expressed at being excommunicated in the 1570s; such a strategy would produce no results in the heightened tensions that followed the bull’s confirmation. The urgency with which she outlined the unrest that the papal deposition had stoked between her and her Catholic subjects speaks to the sense of crisis that prevailed in English politics during the early 1580s, as the kingdom became more and more isolated by its Catholic neighbours. In 1582 Lord Cobham received word in France of another possible excommunication of Elizabeth, which the pope had considered joining to an excommunication against Henri iii for refusing to allow the implementation of the Tridentine decrees in his realm.91 To this Cobham added rumours of a potential Catholic rising in Wales, possibly related to fears that the Irish conflicts would spill over into England via the west.92 These developments occurred alongside numerous attempts by priests and laymen to distribute the bull in England and Ireland, as well as various instances of resistance.93 The reactions of the French and Spanish kings when English envoys solicited their assistance in curbing the publication of the recently confirmed Regnans in Excelsis did nothing to reassure Elizabeth and her councillors. When Cobham complained to the French king about the publication of bulls against the queen in 1582, the king replied that ‘havinge made inquires’, he ‘can not finde any suche Bulls of the Popes publisshed (as I certifyed him of) in print within this realme’.94 Overtures made to Philip ii through the Spanish ambassador in England regarding the sending of copies of the bull into Ireland met with similar dissembling.95 The rumours of another excommunication against Elizabeth which Cobham passed to the council may have been connected to the Throckmorton Plot, 90 91 92 93 94 95

TNA SP 52/​29 f. 36. TNA SP 78/​7 f. 38. Ibid. See the second and fifth chapters of this book. TNA SP 78/​7 f. 83. csp Simancas, vol. 3, 20–​22.

134 chapter 4 another scheme to assassinate Elizabeth and replace her with Mary Queen of Scots.96 The plot was organised by Francis Throckmorton, a member of a prominent recusant family in Oxfordshire, as well as the Spanish ambassador in England, Bernardino de Mendoza, and Thomas Morgan, an agent of Mary’s based in Paris. Throckmorton and his brother Thomas met with Morgan in Paris during a tour of Europe. They also secured the support of the duke of Guise (Mary Queen of Scots’ cousin), who agreed to lead an invasion of England with a company of French and Spanish troops as part of the scheme. The army would march into England through Scotland with the ascent of James vi and reinforcements from Spain would join them in Lancashire.97 The plotters considered Elizabeth’s excommunication critical to their endeavours. When Guise sent an envoy to Pope Gregory xiii in 1583 to request financing for the plan, he asked that the pope renew and republish the bull of Pius v if and when the enterprise took place. Guise recommended that William Allen be appointed nuncio for England and granted authority to print copies of the excommunication to distribute to the people.98 Anyone who refused to join the Scottish queen’s army would be excommunicated and considered a traitor.99 Francis Walsingham’s agents uncovered the conspiracy in 1583; Throckmorton was arrested in November and Elizabeth expelled Mendoza in January 1584.100 The importance attributed to Elizabeth’s excommunication by the conspirators is striking. They believed that the sentence was key not only to justifying the plan, but also to winning popular support for their cause. The Scottish queen’s incrimination in these plans intensified the debate about how best to neutralise the threat she posed to Elizabeth’s safety. In April 1583, responding to complaints from Mary about her treatment in England, the earl of Shrewsbury and Robert Beale, who had been sent by the Privy Council to negotiate with her, replied that ‘hir dealinges with the pope, Iesuites, and seminaryes, whose intention is when time shall serue to putt the popes Bull in execucion, by setting vpp hir and deprivinge’ Elizabeth, were the reason ‘why suche favor neyther was, nor could be shewed vnto hir as she required’.101 After the Throckmorton Plot was discovered, Elizabeth’s councillors tried to

96

For an overview of the plot see Cooper, The Queen’s Agent, 206–​11; see also Alford, The Watchers, ­chapter 11. 97 csp Simancas, vol. 3, 503–​05. See Carroll, Martyrs and Murderers, 243–​55, for more on Guise’s involvement in the invasion plot. 98 Ibid. 99 cms Salisbury, vol. 13, 270. 100 Cooper, The Queen’s Agent, 226. 101 TNA SP 53/​12 f. 51.

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get Mary to denounce Regnans in Excelsis and the papal deposing power. Given that ‘a certaine Bull hath bene sent from Rome tending to denounce the Queenes Maiesty not to be the lawfull Queene, and that it is reported that the same is interpreted to have proceeded in her [Mary’s] fauour’ the council demanded that Mary ‘notify and declare that shee avoweth the Queenes Maiesty to be the lawfull Queene of England, and so lawfull as no Prince nor Potentate hath power to deprive her’.102 This demand was made after the formation of the Bond of Association in 1584. The association encouraged Elizabeth’s subjects to subscribe to a pledge to defend her. In the event of any attempt against Elizabeth’s life, those subscribed to the bond vowed to kill those responsible as well as anyone on whose behalf the attempt had been made (i.e. Mary).103 In spite of the association Elizabeth faced increasing aggression from Spain, the papacy, and its English Catholic supporters in the mid-​1580s. This aggression was part of a broader approach on the part of the papacy, aimed at countering the spread of Protestantism in France, the Low Countries, and the German principalities, as well as in England. As with Elizabeth, excommunication and deposition were used against Protestant rulers to encourage resistance to their regimes. In 1582 Gerhard von Waldburg, the prince-​archbishop of Cologne and one of the seven electors of the Holy Roman Empire, converted from Catholicism to Calvinism so that he could marry the Protestant countess of Mansfeld.104 His conversion tipped the balance of the electorate, which had previously consisted of four Catholic and three Protestant princes.105 When the archbishop refused to step down from the electorate, Gregory xiii excommunicated him. Proponents of the archbishop wrote to Elizabeth and Lord Burghley in 1583, hoping that England might send them assistance in the wars that followed. The theologian Johannes Sturm wrote to Elizabeth that ‘To all good and prudent men the matter of Cologne causes the greatest concern. Great hope is reposed in your Majesty. Indeed, the matter is worthy of being referred to the Estates of the realm in your present Parliament’.106 Sturm added that if ‘the abrogation of this Papal penalty and Roman excommunication 1 02 TNA SP 53/​14 f. 56. 103 Collinson, ‘The Monarchical Republic’, 31–​57; see also Alford, ‘The Political Creed of William Cecil’, 75–​90. 104 James Tracy, The Founding of the Dutch Republic:  War, Finance, and Politics in Holland, 1572–​1588 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 222–​23. 105 The electors were nominally responsible for choosing the Holy Roman Emperor. See Peter Wilson, Heart of Europe: A History of the Holy Roman Empire (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2016), 301–​07. 106 TNA SP 81/​3 f. 141. The original letter is in Latin. A translation is available in csp Foreign, vol. 19, 156.

136 chapter 4 will be secured, then Babylon and the whore of Babylon will fall, with her lovers, scoundrels and sorcerers’.107 Sturm’s plea failed and the prince-​archbishop was eventually forced to abdicate in 1588 after five years of war, in which his supporters battled thousands of Spanish mercenaries bankrolled by the papacy. Yet Sturm’s appeal for help is remarkable in the way it made common cause between Elizabeth and Waldburg. Sturm clearly hoped that the queen’s own experience with papal excommunication and deposition might make her sympathetic to the archbishop’s dilemma. It shows how Protestants in Europe continued to use the bull as a means of fostering alliances with England, albeit with varying success. In France the duke of Anjou’s death in 1584 had left the kingdom without a Catholic heir due to its reliance upon salic law to determine the succession.108 Consequently, the only legitimate successor left to the childless king was Henri de Bourbon, the king of Navarre and long-​time leader of the Huguenot resistance in France. When Pope Sixtus V was elected in 1585, he excommunicated the king of Navarre to bolster the position of the Catholic League, which now had the backing of Spain and aimed to prevent at all costs the succession of a heretic to the ‘Most Christian’ kingdom.109 The League earned widespread support in Paris and Henri iii, whom the Leaguers resented for legally recognising the Huguenots in various peace treaties and edicts, struggled in vain to check their rising influence at court and around the city.110 Some of Mary Queen of Scots’ agents tried to exploit these tensions to her advantage, using Elizabeth’s status as an excommunicated heretic to affect treatment of the English embassy at court. Writing to Mary in 1586, Thomas Morgan reported his attempts to disrupt negotiations for an alliance between England and France to assist the failing rebellion against Spain in the Low Countries.111 Morgan endeavoured ‘secretly to remind the cardinals and other good prelates of the sentence of excommunication pronounced by Pius v against her of England, being yet in force, as having never been revoked, and thus I maintained that the said cardinals and prelates could not assist’ in the

1 07 Ibid. 108 Salic law effectively excluded women from the dynastic succession in France. See Craig Taylor, ‘The Salic Law, French Queenship, and the Defense of Women in the Late Middle Ages’, French Historical Studies 29, no. 4 (2006), 543–​64. 109 Holt, French Wars of Religion, 121–​22. 110 Ibid., 124. 111 Wallace MacCaffrey, Queen Elizabeth and the Making of Policy, 1572–​1588 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1982), 337.

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ceremonies that accompanied the negotiations.112 To further his case Morgan ‘delivered into their hands a true copy of the said sentence and bull’. Morgan’s proposal met with some success: ‘thereupon the cardinal of Bourbon declared that he was not minded to assist and to honour by his presence the negotiations of her of England’.113 Morgan was careful not to refer to Elizabeth as queen, reflecting his belief in the papal deposition as well as deference to Mary as her rightful replacement. The exchange shows how the influence of the League and its allies at court provoked more hostility to Elizabeth’s envoys, and how the bull continued to be used to justify this animosity. As tensions grew between England, Spain, and France in the mid-​1580s, Elizabeth’s deposition increasingly became a means of rationalising aggression towards England in multiple spheres. This incident points to how the bull affected attitudes not only towards the queen; it also provoked changes in the treatment of her representatives in diplomatic posts on the continent. Meanwhile the Protestant rebels in the Low Countries had suffered significant losses. In 1578 Philip ii had appointed Alexander Farnese, the prince of Parma and an accomplished military general, to replace his brother as governor of the Netherlands. Over the next few years Parma waged a successful campaign against the rebel provinces, systematically re-​capturing the major towns in the southern Netherlands. The assassination of William of Orange in the summer of 1584 likewise dealt a severe blow to the resistance. In 1585 Elizabeth agreed to send an army to assist the northern provinces under the command of the earl of Leicester, sparking open conflict with Philip ii.114 The decision moved Philip to re-​evaluate Spain’s security priorities in Europe, which had previously focused on the revolt in the Low Countries and preventing Ottoman expansion into the Mediterranean. Elizabeth’s military involvement in the Netherlands, combined with earlier interference in the Portuguese succession and support of attacks on Spanish colonies in the Americas, made her a threat to Spain’s interests across the world.115 Although informal plans for an invasion of England had been presented to Philip in the past, from 1586 preparations for the attack began in earnest, seen as the best way to eliminate the threat to the Spanish empire.116

112 TNA SP 53/​18 f.  97. The original letter is in French. A  translation is available in csp Scotland, vol. 8, p. 232. 113 Ibid. 114 Tracy, Founding of the Dutch Republic, 215–​25. 115 Parker, Imprudent King, 305–​06. 116 Ibid., 306–​13.

138 chapter 4 As hostilities between Spain and England escalated in the 1580s Elizabeth’s excommunication became increasingly important to justifying the conflict between Philip ii and the English queen. Pope Sixtus V had been encouraging Philip to move against England in the name of restoring Catholicism since his election. In February 1586 Philip sent instructions to his ambassador in Rome to outline the enterprise to the pope and request funding for its execution. His proposal stipulated that ‘the object and pretext of the enterprise must be to reduce the country [England] to obedience to the Roman church, and place the queen of Scotland in possession of the crown’.117 The discovery of the Babington Plot in 1586, another scheme to assassinate Elizabeth and replace her with Mary, disrupted this plan. Mary was finally executed in 1587 for her role in this and previous plots to overthrow Elizabeth. Mary’s execution complicated the objectives of the upcoming invasion. Robert Persons, who now lived in Rome and advocated on behalf of English Catholics during the planning of the attack, suggested that Philip claim the English throne once Spanish troops had landed in England and the invasion was underway. Once the armada had landed, Philip’s ‘descent from the House of Lancaster, the inadmissability of the other claimants, the will and testament of the Queen of Scotland, [and] the bull of Pope Pius v’ would all bolster his case for ruling England, as would ‘the fact that conquest in a just war and for a just cause is usually considered to give a very valid right to a kingdom’.118 Another memorandum Persons drafted with William Allen in 1587 used Elizabeth’s excommunication to similar effect. Writing in support of Philip’s claim to England, Allen and Persons noted that ‘‘the decree of the Lateran Council gives to all catholic princes the kingdoms and lands which they can take from heretics, if there is no Catholic heir remaining’, and that this decree ‘will be confirmed in this particular by the bull of excommunication issued by different Pontiffs’.119 In a separate memorandum sent to Philip in the same year, Allen and Persons offered to publish a denouncement of Elizabeth in advance of the invasion. In it they would ‘point out the multiple bastardy of this Queen Elizabeth … her excommunication and deposition by the common law and by the Bulls of various Pontiffs’, promising that ‘it will be very amply demonstrated to all who are subject to the English crown

1 17 csp Simancas, vol. 3, 562. 118 Leo Hicks, Letters and Memorials of Father Robert Persons (London:  Whitehead, 1942), 294. 119 Ibid., 303.

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that they will derive immense advantage from the good success of this enterprise’.120 The memoranda written by Allen and Persons demonstrate the centrality of the excommunication to Catholic views about the succession and invasion schemes for England. Because of Regnans in Excelsis, most Catholics in Europe considered Mary Queen of Scots as the rightful ruler of England until her death in 1587.121 Allen and Persons’s arguments, however, indicate that the bull continued to influence international debates about the succession even after Mary’s execution. With Mary dead, the papal deposition left the throne open to any Catholic ruler willing to reclaim England from heresy. Elizabeth’s government likewise viewed Philip’s handling of her excommunication over the years as a cause for the brewing conflict. A document drawn up in 1586 entitled ‘The principall pointes arguing the king of Spayne his ill affeccion, malice and contempt for her Maiestie’ noted that ‘He suffred the Bull of Pius Quintus: for the excommunication of her Maiestie being to the derogation of her estate to be printed within his dominions’.122 When the Declaration of the Sentence and Deposition Against Elizabeth was published in Antwerp in June 1588, Elizabeth wrote furiously to Valentine Dale, one of her ambassadors in the Low Countries, with instructions to confront the prince of Parma about its publication. Elizabeth told Parma ‘we are well assured both by our eyes and eares of … a certaine bull verie latelie set out by Sixtus the fifte’, in which ‘the said Duke by name is ordeined and hath the Charge to be the Cheif and principall executioner … of this mightie famous warre against vs and our Relm’ and that the bull had been published by ‘the Commaundement or authoritie of the said Duke’.123 Parma denied any involvement in the publication of the Declaration, but added that ‘he could not prevent the Pope and the English cardinal [William Allen] from publishing such things’, and in any case was bound to obey the orders of his king, not Elizabeth.124 The second chapter discussed the importance of the Declaration to publicising the aims of the Armada in England, but the excommunication was equally important to justifying the invasion in the rest of Europe as well. In July 1588 news advertisements from the Holy Roman Empire noted that 120 Ibid., 307. In keeping with this offer, Allen published his Admonition to the Nobility and People of England and Ireland (Antwerp: A. Conincx, 1588). 121 McCoog, ‘A View from Abroad’, 257–​58. 122 TNA SP 94/​2 f. 162. 123 TNA SP 77/​4 f. 171. 124 BL Cotton MS Galba D/​III f. 344; TNA SP 77/​4 f. 267.

140 chapter 4 the Popes holliness hate in presence of the gratious Lord of Salzburche caused the Queene Elizabeth of England, by a Bull openly in the Churche to be published an heretike, of long tyme bad conditioned, aslykewyse all her kindomes, dominions and peopls, obsoluing all her subiects of what state or condition soeuer, of theyr dutes and lealtes by the which they haue thus long benen bownd vnto her, depryuing her of all her Tytels and honnor, geauing the same vnto the Spanishe king, to inuest hym therwith as a lawfull chosen king of England, Spayne and Ireland, defender of the catholych romishe faithe.125 An address read out to the Armada fleet as they set sail for England was full of similar religious fervour. The soldiers were told that ‘God, in whose sacred cause we go, will lead us’ and that ‘The saints of Heaven will go in our company’. The list of saints that followed included Thomas More, Edmund Campion, and several other priests executed by the Elizabethan regime, as well as Mary Queen of Scots, ‘who, still fresh from her sacrifice, bears copious and abounding witness to the cruelty and impiety of this Elizabeth, and directs her shafts against her’.126 The address is careful to omit the use of Elizabeth’s royal titles, thereby reinforcing her deposition, while the attention to her ‘impieties’ likewise recalls her denunciation as a heretic. Publicising the excommunication and deposition of the English queen was crucial to convincing Catholics in Europe of the righteousness of the enterprise. While historians of England have assessed how Protestants subsequently viewed the defeat of the Armada as part of a providential struggle against papistry, European Catholics likewise considered the invasion in similar terms.127 The invasion enjoyed widespread public support in Catholic Europe as a religious crusade against heresy.128 Elizabeth’s declared deposition by the papacy played a critical part in legitimising Philip’s invasion of England and winning popular approval for this undertaking. The public reading of Regnans in Excelsis in churches on the continent in advance of the invasion also speaks to how the invasion was viewed as a universal Catholic enterprise, not simply a conflict between Spain and England.

1 25 TNA SP 101/​27 f. 37. 126 csp Simancas, vol. 4, 295. 127 The classic example is David Cressy, Bonfires and Bells: National Memory and the Protestant Calendar in Elizabethan and Stuart England (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1989). 128 Robert Scully, ‘ “In Confident Hope of a Miracle”:  The Spanish Armada and Religious Mentalities in the Late Sixteenth Century’, Catholic Historical Review 89, no.  4 (2003), 643–​70.

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Wars with Spain, France, and Ireland, ca. 1589–​1603

The threats to security posed by the excommunication did not pass when the Armada failed to land in England in 1588. The government collected intelligence and news connected to Elizabeth’s excommunication until the end of her reign.129 Throughout the 1590s England faced continued conflict with Spain and France, as well as sustained rebellion in Ireland. From 1589–​95 Elizabeth sent 20000 troops to France to assist Henri of Navarre in his wars against the Catholic League for the French crown, following Henri iii’s assassination by a monk.130 Although nominally the soldiers were sent to assist the Huguenot cause, they were also there to counter Spanish interference in the religious wars, as the Catholic League enjoyed financial and military backing from Philip ii. Following an unsuccessful counterattack against the Spanish navy in 1589, Elizabeth and Philip focused most of their resources to the semi-​proxy war in France. When Henri iv capitulated to popular demand and converted to Catholicism to make peace, overt attacks resumed on both sides. Spanish raids in Cornwall in 1595 were met with a reciprocal raid on Cadiz, followed by the launch of another naval fleet against England in 1596, which was once again wrecked by storms before it could land.131 The war with Spain unfolded simultaneously with the Nine Years’ War in Ireland, where the queen’s excommunication played a substantial role in fomenting resistance. Although Philip ii died in 1598, his successor Philip iii sent troops and financial aid to assist the rebels at various points, notably during the battle of Kinsale in 1601.132 Consequently, the Elizabethan regime remained concerned about how the bull could be used to justify resistance and foreign interference. As the next chapter explains, the earl of Tyrone and his allies used Elizabeth’s excommunication to raise support for their war against the English in the 1590s. The papal sentence also appeared in squabbles amongst the English governors with the Elizabethan regime. During an investigation of Sir John Perrot’s conduct whilst serving as Lord Deputy of Ireland in 1590, his reaction to the bull’s publication in Ireland was used as proof of his good character. The dean of Armagh, testifying on Perrot’s behalf, recalled how the Lord Deputy ‘vnderstanding of my

129 On the last years of her reign see John Guy, ed., The Reign of Elizabeth I: Court and Culture in the Last Decade (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995). See also Brigden, New Worlds, Lost Worlds, chapters ten and eleven. 130 Brigden, New Worlds, Lost Worlds, 317. The leaders of the Catholic League had, as noted above, used Elizabeth’s excommunication to justify plots against the queen in the past. 131 Croft, ‘England, Spain, and Europe’, 193–​97. 132 On which see Hiram Morgan, ed., The Battle of Kinsale (Bray: Wordwell Press, 2004).

142 chapter 4 determination to preach the sonday followinge did send for me, and shewed me a Bull of Pius quintus which had been ‘fownd in a howse he had searched in Rosse’. Perrot had urged the dean ‘in my sermon that day to publish the same and to discover the vanitye and absurditye of so vile and popish abhomination’.133 The accusations made against Perrot included several instances of seditious and slanderous speech against Elizabeth, including some in which he cast aspersions on her legitimacy.134 The dean of Armagh’s testimony was meant to counteract these allegations by demonstrating Perrot’s vigilance in confiscating copies of Regnans in Excelsis and facilitating public preaching against it. Here again, we can see how the excommunication became inextricably linked to the succession question after 1570. In the midst of a war with Spain, in which Philip ii and English Catholic exiles cited the bull to justify the use of military force against Elizabeth, the queen’s deputies could not be heard expressing any doubts about her right to rule. This rang especially true in Ireland, where the bull had already been employed as a means of legitimising the Desmond Rebellion in the early 1580s, and many Irish considered Elizabeth’s claim to the country tenuous at best. The regime’s response to Perrot points to persistent anxiety about the bull’s impact on perceptions of Elizabeth and her authority as England became increasingly embroiled in wars of religion. Use of the excommunication to justify invasions of England also remained a concern in light of the wars in France as well the omnipresent threat of Spain. Rumours surfaced once again that Elizabeth might try to have the sentence revoked. In 1591 William Sterrell wrote to the agent Thomas Phelippes about the possibility that Elizabeth and her government might attempt to make peace with Spain using William Allen and other Catholic exiles as mediators, in order to avoid another possible invasion and the total spoliation of the country.135 Sterrell also reported that the new pope, Gregory xiv, ‘would call in his excommunicatione agaynst hir Maiestie vpon future hope’ of certain concessions for English Catholics.136 Others, however, remained sceptical about a peace with Spain. William Orme reported to Burghley in 1594 his conversation in Rouen 1 33 TNA SP 63/​152 f. 94. 134 See Roger Turvey, The Treason and Trial of Sir John Perrot (Cardiff:  University of Wales Press, 2005). 135 TNA SP 12/​239 f. 171. Thomas Phelippes was one of Francis Walsingham’s agents. See Cooper, The Queen’s Agent, 203–​25. 136 Ibid. It has been posited that William Sterrell may have been an alias used by Antony Rivers, a Jesuit active in London during the early seventeenth century. See Patrick Martin and John Finnis, ‘The Identity of “Antony Rivers” ’, Recusant History 26, no.  1 (2002), 39–​74.

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with one Shelton Cuddington, who referred to Elizabeth and Henri de Bourbon, who had now been crowned Henri iv of France, as ‘both beinge heretickes theone excommunicated and the other in the relapce’ and daily expected ‘that the kinge of Spaine will shortlie invade the Realme, or ells by some vngodlie practice to procure the death of our gratious Soueraigne’.137 As Elizabeth grew older, the Privy Council remained concerned about how her excommunication would affect the succession. In 1595, the earl of Shrewsbury and his servant Nicholas Williamson were questioned about their involvement in a plot to reconcile James vi to the Catholic faith. Although Elizabeth refused to officially name a successor for the English throne, James vi was busily manoeuvring for support of his claim in England and Europe, sending agents to members of the English Privy Council as well as the papacy to win support for his case.138 The prospect of James’s conversion was especially alarming, given the steps the regime had taken to stamp out Catholicism in England over the past thirty years. When Williamson was questioned about the plot, he admitted that the excommunication had influenced the plotters’ contingency plans. The conspirators believed that the papal deposition made James the rightful heir through his mother, but if James proved unreceptive to conversion then the crown could revert to Philip ii with the pope’s support.139 When Philip ii prepared to send another fleet to attack England in 1596 he received a lengthy memorandum from Robert Persons, in which Persons advised that ‘the excommunication of the Queen should be renewed by the Pope, and there should [be] some such public printed pronouncement as was to be made by Cardinal Allen in 1588’.140 In the same year, Persons published his Conference About the Next Succession to the Crowne of Ingland. Persons’s book argued in favour of the Infanta Isabella’s succession to the throne following Elizabeth’s death, as well as the ability of subjects to resist heretical rulers. These connections between the bull, the succession, and invasion plans illuminate a consistent thread in concerns about the fate of the English crown after Elizabeth. Although Mary Queen of Scots had been dead for nearly ten years when these schemes took place, the declared deposition of Elizabeth by the papacy still remained a problem for her regime when it came to choosing her successor, because in the eyes of some Catholics it cast aspersions on her ability to select who would follow her as king or queen of England.

1 37 138 139 140

TNA SP 12/​248 f.185. McCoog, ‘A View from Abroad’, 263–​68. cms Salisbury, vol. 5, 251–​52. csp Simancas, vol. 4, 631.

144 chapter 4 Rumours about the possible renewal or revocation of the sentence against the queen persisted as wars with Spain and Ireland dragged on. Shortly after Philip ii died in 1598 Giles van Harwick wrote to Secretary Robert Cecil from Lisbon of a conversation he had with a Jesuit priest, who told him that before Philip’s death the pope had planned to renew Elizabeth’s excommunication yet again, and this time would extend the sentence to any Catholic princes who did not assist in the Spanish wars against England.141 These rumours intensified during the Appellant Controversy from 1598–​1603. During this controversy a group of English Catholic secular priests tried to negotiate with Elizabeth and the Privy Council.142 These ‘appellant’ priests offered to intercede with the pope to have the Jesuits expelled from England in exchange for limited toleration by the government. The Attorney General Edward Coke wrote to Robert Cecil in 1601 of rumours that some Catholic priests had gone to Rome ‘to procure absolution for her Majesty or the cancelling of the bull’.143 Coke reported these rumours with some alarm, warning Cecil that if Elizabeth ‘be not acquainted with their message, it must be that the honour of her Christian resolution is most treacherously undermined’.144 In 1602 news advertisements sent to Robert Cecil from Rome were full of these developments, reporting that ‘The Queen of England … offers to the Pope to tolerate Catholic worship publicly in her realm, provided His Holiness annuls the excommunication of Pius v, confirmed by Gregory xiii and Sixtus V, against such of her subjects as obey and recognise her as Queen’.145 A declaration made to the Privy Council by a group of secular priests at the end of January 1603 offered an alternative solution:  ‘yf vppone anye excommunication denounced … agaynst her Maiestie or vppone anye suche conspiracyes, Invasions, or forcible attemptes, the Pope should also excommunicate everye one borne within her Maiesties dominions that would not forsake’ the queen, the priests ‘did thincke our selues and all the laye Catholickes … not bounde in conscience to obeye this or anye such lyke censures’.146 The offer of the appellant priests to either secure the revocation of the sentence in Rome or else persuade English Catholics to ignore it may have 1 41 TNA SP 12/​268 f. 97. 142 For an overview of the appellants see Arnold Pritchard, Catholic Loyalism in Elizabethan England (London: Scolar Press, 1979), see also Peter Lake and Michael Questier, ‘Taking it to the Street? The Archpriest Controversy and the Issue of the Succession’, in Doran and Kewes, Doubtful and Dangerous, 71–​91. 143 cms Salisbury, vol. 11, 572–​73. 144 Ibid. 145 cms Salisbury, vol. 12, 253. 146 TNA SP 12/​287 f. 23b.

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had multiple motives. While the move would have appeased the Elizabethan regime, the appellant priests may also have hoped that the gesture would appeal to James vi in Scotland and might persuade him to adopt more moderate policies towards English Catholics if and when he succeeded Elizabeth.147 Nevertheless, these events show how significantly the bull continued to influence England’s relations with Rome and the rest of Catholic Europe so late in Elizabeth’s reign. The repeated appearance of the papal sentence in diplomatic relations, invasion schemes, succession debates, and the government’s policies towards Catholics does much to explain why the appellants became willing to use it as a bargaining chip. To the very end of her reign, Elizabeth’s excommunication continued to be a critical point of contention between the government and English Catholics, as well as amongst Catholics themselves. Elizabeth’s excommunication remained a constant problem in the background of international and domestic affairs. Its appearance in diplomatic exchanges with France, the Low Countries, and Spain indicates that the bull played a much more central role in international politics than has previously been recognised. The significance ascribed to the excommunication in government documents also confirms that public criticism and mockery of the papal bull discussed in previous chapters were rooted in concern about its consequences. Considering these responses together enables a clearer understanding of the impact of the papal bull upon English Protestant political views, and may also help to explain why anti-​Catholic fervour became so embedded in public discourse after 1570. In the context of the succession, the excommunication’s political importance also helps to explain the continuities in Protestant and Catholic anxieties about the future of the kingdom from 1570 to the end of Elizabeth’s reign, even after the elimination of Mary Queen of Scots as a contender for the throne. Additionally, the bull’s impact on foreign policy and the succession may explain why Elizabeth’s councillors went to such lengths to develop contingency plans for her death, providing the impetus for the development of the monarchical republic as described by Patrick Collinson and others. The responses of Queen Elizabeth’s government to her excommunication demonstrate a deep fear of the sentence’s implications that pervaded multiple levels of government and society during her reign, highlighting the government’s tenuous control of the confessional and political situation in Elizabeth’s

147 Lake and Questier, ‘Taking it to the Street’, 86. For an extended look at the controversy see their new book, All Hail to the Archpriest: Confessional Conflict, Toleration, and the Politics of Publicity in Post-​Reformation England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019).

146 chapter 4 kingdoms.148 Yet these fears were not unfounded:  the correspondence and memoranda of various agents on the continent show that the bull proved indispensable in justifying multiple Catholic schemes for the invasion of England and the removal of Elizabeth from power, as well as in securing public support for those schemes. On the other hand, Elizabeth’s ministers occasionally used the bull to persuade her to acquiesce to particular policies or negotiations, as in the case of her French marriage contracts. Even the queen herself used the sentence on occasion to gain an advantage in her affairs. When one takes all of these repercussions into account, we can appreciate how critical Elizabeth’s excommunication became to the shaping of her regime’s domestic and international agendas. To be sure, the bull did not have the effect Pius v originally envisioned when he pronounced the sentence, but its influence on contemporary discourse and the role it acquired in political strategy had other long-​term implications for anti-​Catholic sentiment and policy in English history. 148 More recent studies of Elizabeth’s reign have questioned earlier portrayals of this stability. See for instance Susan Doran and Norman Jones, eds., The Elizabethan World (London: Routledge, 2014); also Guy, The Reign of Elizabeth I.

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Political Engagement, Subversion, and Resistance in England and Ireland Once news of Elizabeth’s excommunication and deposition by the papacy had spread throughout England and Ireland, Catholics faced difficult choices about how to respond. Originally, Pius v had envisioned a united front of resistance against the queen, preferably with assistance from Spain and other Catholic countries. By the time news of the excommunication reached England, the failure of the Northern Rebellion and retribution exacted by the government made further attempts at violent protest unappealing. As the previous chapter showed, the Elizabethan regime considered the papal sentence of critical importance to foreign and domestic policy. The expansion of the treason laws in 1571 and 1581 was a direct response to the publication and subsequent reissue of Regnans in Excelsis, as well as increased ministry on the part of Catholic missionaries. With the threat of excommunication and anathema still hanging over them, people who considered the sentence valid needed to find other means of resisting the queen that were more feasible in their circumstances, but might still spare them from the papal ultimatum. Studies of post-​Reformation Catholicism and narrative histories of the Reformation typically have characterised Catholic responses to the excommunication as muted, emphasising that the papal bull provoked little, if any, violent resistance against the queen.1 Yet this approach to resistance fails to account for the ways in which it was possible to resist the rule of law without resorting to violence.2 Recent work on rumour, seditious speech, and public 1 See for instance J.H. Pollen, The English Catholics in the Reign of Queen Elizabeth (London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1920), 153–​55; A.F. Pollard, History of England from the Accession of Edward VI to the Death of Elizabeth (London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1910), 369–​ 70; Arnold Meyer, England and the Catholic Church under Queen Elizabeth (London:  Paul, Trench, and Trubner, 1916), 50–​91, 135–​144; Arnold Pritchard, Catholic Loyalism in Elizabethan England (London: Scolar Press, 1979); Adrian Morey, The Catholic Subjects of Elizabeth I (London: Allen and Unwin, 1978); Elliott Rose, Cases of Conscience: Alternatives Open to Recusants and Puritans under Elizabeth I and James I (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975); Thomas Clancy, Papist Pamphleteers: The Allen-​Persons Party and the Political Thought of the Counter-​Reformation in England (Chicago: Loyola University Press, 1964). 2 See the volume of essays edited by Lowell Gallagher, Redrawing the Map of Early Modern English Catholicism (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2012); Victor Houliston, Catholic Resistance in Elizabethan England: Robert Persons’s Jesuit Polemic, 1580–​1610 (Aldershot: Ashgate,

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protest has shown the myriad ways in which it was possible to demonstrate resistance in early modern England, Wales, and Ireland.3 Catholics harnessed these methods to express their dissent from official religious policy. Political histories of Catholic resistance and resistance theory have also tended to focus on England; they have taken little notice of the situation in Ireland, where the excommunication became a means of justifying violent resistance to English rule. While Hiram Morgan has recognised the importance of Elizabeth’s excommunication to the development of resistance theory in Ireland during her reign, there remains ample room to consider the political consequences of these theories.4 When the range of subversive activities in which Catholics in England participated is considered alongside religiously-​toned resistance to Elizabethan rule in Ireland, a more sobering picture of the excommunication’s effects on dissent emerges, one which in turn helps to explain the regime’s concerns about the sentence. 1

Sedition as Resistance: Perceptions of Elizabeth after 1570

Despite the existence of a significant minority of English Catholics throughout Elizabeth’s reign, her excommunication never provoked widespread violent resistance in England.5 While most English Catholics did not resort to 2007); Sandeep Kaushik, ‘Resistance, Loyalty and Recusant Politics:  Sir Thomas Tresham and the Elizabethan State’, Midland History 21 (1996), 37–​72; Ronald Corthell, Francis Dolan, Christopher Highley, and Arthur Marotti, eds, Catholic Culture in Early Modern England (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2007). 3 See for instance Tim Harris, ed., The Politics of the Excluded, ca. 1500–​1850 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2001); John Walter, ‘The Politics of Protest in Seventeenth-​Century England’, in Michael Davis, ed., Crowd Actions in Britain and France from the Middle Ages to the Modern World (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), 58–​79; Lloyd Bowen, ‘Information, Language, and Political Culture in Early Modern Wales’, Past & Present 228, no. 1 (2015), 125–​58; Clodagh Tait, ‘Riots, Rescues, and “Grene Bowes”: Catholics and Protest in Ireland, 1570–​1640’, in Robert Armstrong and Tadhg Ó’Hannracháin, eds., Insular Christianity: Alternative Models of the Church in Britain and Ireland, ca. 1570–​1700 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2013), 67–​87; Fiona Williamson, ed., Locating Agency: Space, Power, and Popular Politics (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars, 2010); Ethan Shagan, Popular Politics and the English Reformation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003). 4 Hiram Morgan, ‘Faith and Fatherland in Sixteenth Century Ireland’, History Ireland 3, no. 2 (1995), 13–​20. 5 Patrick McGrath, however, has offered illuminating statistical evidence of how English Catholics might have responded if the Armada landed. See ‘The Bloody Questions Reconsidered’, Recusant History 20, no. 3 (1991), 305–​19. See also Francis Edwards, Plots and Plotters in the Reign of Elizabeth I (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2002); Stephen Alford, The Watchers: A Secret History of the Reign of Elizabeth I (London: Allen Unwin, 2012).

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violence against the government or the queen after news of the excommunication reached England, many of them withdrew from official services of the English Church, employed or harboured Catholic priests, read prohibited Catholic devotional texts, made seditious remarks against the queen and the English Church, and secretly used outlawed devotional objects. All of these actions constituted a breach of law in some way, or at least violated royal commands and proclamations. Those who engaged in these practices therefore technically complied with the papal order to disobey the laws and mandates of the queen. Some of these activities, especially recusancy, had been going on for years before the bull was issued. Yet the persistence and increase of some of these practices after 1570 indicates that English Catholics found the papal excommunication, and the pope’s threat of excommunication against obedient subjects, deeply troubling. The endurance of different forms of resistance illuminates the ways in which the bull compelled Catholics to reconsider the extent to which they were willing to defy the regime. Examining English Catholic attitudes towards Elizabeth after 1570, as they appear in surviving writings and records of seditious speech, can help to explain how people thought about the religious and political conflicts brought about by Regnans in Excelsis. The ways in which the excommunication affected English Catholics’ opinions of Elizabeth suggest much about the bull’s ramifications and how they negotiated them.6 After 1570, English Catholics formulated different ways of thinking about their allegiances and spiritual ties, and different conceptions of what loyalty to their monarch, government, and country entailed. Seditious speech, of course, was also subversive by nature, a public act of defiance that reflected an altered view of the queen’s legitimacy. In some cases, Regnans in Excelsis markedly influenced perceptions of Elizabeth, amongst English Catholics living on the continent as well as at home. A letter written to Pius v by an exile in the Low Countries illustrates how negatively Elizabeth’s excommunication had affected his opinion of her. The letter, written from Brussels in the autumn of 1570, is unsigned, but based on its place of origin and other exiles mentioned in the letter, was possibly written by Sir Francis Englefield, an English pensioner of Philip ii who served as an advisor to the duke of Alba.7 The contempt in which the writer held Elizabeth 6

7

On Tudor beliefs in the power of words see Carole Levin, ‘ “We Shall Never Have a Merry World While the Queen Lyveth”: Gender, Monarchy, and the Power of Seditious Words’, in Julia Walker, ed., Dissing Elizabeth: Negative Representations of Gloriana (Durham: Duke University Press, 1998), 77–​96. asv Misc. Arm. ii no. 100 f. 184–​87. The letter mentions the earls of Northumberland and Westmoreland, the Nortons, two other members of the Neville family and their attendants dwelling in the Low Countries, numbering around forty. The original document is

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is plain: he described her as ‘subject to many diseases … vastly increased since her excommunication by the Apostolic See, insomuch that those who are next to her person are suffused by a grievous smell’.8 Throughout the letter the author referred to Elizabeth as ‘an accursed and excommunicated woman’ and expressed dismay ‘that she, whose society plebeians are bound on pain of excommunication to avoid, is by Princes, who should lead others by their example, courted with the utmost reverence as still lawful Queen’.9 The writer hinted that his fellow exiles in the Low Countries shared his views. He observed that the Catholic nobility who fled England after the Northern Rebellion ‘faced no slight temptation’ to return home and submit to the queen in exchange for their restored property. Yet ‘since they learned that the Apostolic See had declared that same Elizabeth … excommunicate, all talk about compromise has been abruptly terminated; and now they think of nought else but either to return to their native land openly professing the faith, or to suffer a glorious exile for the name of Christ’.10 He added that ‘moreover other three nobles of great repute have since betaken them from England to Flanders, lest for obeying the excommunicated [queen] they should be compelled to undergo sentence of excommunication’. The writer assured the pope that ‘the Catholics here have derived much encouragement from this excommunication [of Elizabeth]; and this they would themselves have shown before now but that they lost their opportunity this year, while awaiting from others aid which seemed to be promised them’.11 While the author devoted a great deal of the letter to belittling Elizabeth, he also dwelt at length on the financial destitution of English Catholics who fled to the continent after the rebellion. The author never directly asked the pope to provide for their relief, but his assurances of English Catholics’ devotion to the papacy and their commitment to resist the queen were probably intended to persuade the pope to that end. The author may also have felt that referring to Elizabeth by her titles in a letter to the pope who deposed her would have been unwise if he wished his application to be successful, though his vivid description of Elizabeth as disease-​ridden and his despair at the failure of

8 9 10 11

written in Latin. A full translation is provided in CSP Rome, vol. 2, 549–​54. On Englefield see Albert Loomie, The Spanish Elizabethans: The English Exiles at the Court of Philip II (London: Burns and Oates, 1963), 14–​51. csp Rome, vol. 2, 549. Ibid., 550. Ibid., 551–​52. Ibid., 552–​53. The writer is referring here to the northern rebels who fled into Scotland. See Krista Kesselring, The Northern Rebellion of 1569:  Faith, Politics, and Protest in Elizabethan England (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), 91–​117.

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foreign princes to oppose her appear earnest. Nevertheless, the memorandum illustrates how in some circumstances English Catholics could use Elizabeth’s excommunication for personal and political gain. By assuring the pope of the exile community’s respect for the sentence, the author hoped to obtain greater financial security for himself and his associates. Thomas Stucley’s correspondence with the papacy expressed similar attitudes towards Elizabeth, albeit in less colourful language.12 Prior to 1570 Stucley had a complex relationship with the different Tudor regimes. As a career soldier Stucley fought in France, England, and Scotland in the wars of Henry viii and Edward vi, but he fled to France in 1551 to escape his debts. He returned to England in 1552 and was placed under arrest in the Tower of London until Queen Mary released him in 1553. Stucley returned to the continent and entered the duke of Savoy’s army, fighting for the Habsburgs against France before returning to England again in 1557. During the early years of Elizabeth’s reign Stucley took up privateering with the queen’s support, but lost favour when he began attacking neutral ships. Stucley then went to Ireland and served under the Lord Deputy Henry Sidney, but he never regained the queen’s trust and his requests for promotion in the Irish administration were repeatedly denied. Peter Holmes has suggested that Stucley’s subsequent personal grievances against the Elizabethan regime, combined with his Catholic sympathies, inspired him to leave Ireland and resettle in Spain in April 1570.13 Throughout the 1570s Stucley wrote a series of letters to the pope and the king of Spain to garner support for an invasion of Ireland and England to reclaim them for the Catholic Church.14 Stucley carefully referred to Elizabeth as ‘la pretensa Regina’ in his correspondence with the pope and the papal nuncios.15 His letters indicate how the excommunication of the queen and the threat of excommunication he faced as her subject influenced

12

13 14 15

Most scholarship on Stucley has concentrated on the Elizabethan plays about his life. See for instance Brian Lockey, ‘Elizabethan Cosmopolitan: Thomas Stukeley in the Court of Dom Sebastian’, English Literary Renaissance 40, no. 1 (2010), 3–​32; Juan Tazon, ‘The Menace of the Wanderer: Thomas Stukeley and the Anglo-​Spanish Conflict in Ireland’, in Juan Tazon and Isabel Suarez, eds., Post/​Imperial Encounters: Anglo-​Hispanic Cultural Relations (Amsterdam:  Ridopi, 2005), 33–​50; Emily Bartels, ‘The Battle of Alcazar, the Mediterranean, and the Moor’, in Goran Stanivukovic, ed., Remapping the Mediterranean World in Early Modern English Writings (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), 97–​116. Peter Holmes, ‘Stucley, Thomas (c.1520–​1578)’, ODNB (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), available from http://​www.oxforddnb.com/​view/​article/​26741 [accessed  7 June 2016]. Ibid.; Gerard Kilroy, Edmund Campion: A Scholarly Life (Farnham: Ashgate, 2015), 126–​27. asv Misc. Arm. II no. 100 f. 180, 199, 219.

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his actions. In a letter to the nuncio in Spain Stucley described how he wished ‘to effect the complete restoration of religion in the three realms [England, Ireland, and Scotland], that I may be quit of the excommunication which I have incurred, and may confess and communicate as a true Christian’.16 In Stucley’s case a mix of personal grievance and religious conviction appears to have contributed to his change in attitude towards Elizabeth. His invocation of the queen’s excommunication in his correspondence with Philip ii and the pope would have helped to present his cause as a religious crusade rather than a simple desire for restitution. Nevertheless, from 1570 to the end of his life Stucley spent considerable energy trying to secure support to lead an invasion of Ireland and England.17 This suggests a true commitment to his cause, and there can be little doubt that Elizabeth’s excommunication helped to justify Stucley’s schemes. Ultimately, however, Stucley failed in his designs. In 1578 he joined forces with James Fitzgerald in Rome and obtained the pope’s blessing for an expedition against Ireland, but changed course upon docking in Lisbon, where he agreed to join the Portuguese King Sebastian’s war against Morocco. Sebastian promised he would provide Stucley with ships to attack Ireland once the Moroccans were defeated, but they were both killed in a battle at Alcazar shortly thereafter.18 The exile Thomas Copley’s correspondence reveals a more nuanced conflict between his sense of duty to his country and his desire to remain Catholic. Copley was a cousin of William Cecil and Francis Walsingham and distantly related to the queen. He fled to the continent in 1570 after refusing to take the oath of supremacy required for his post as commissioner of peace, and spent the rest of his life in exile. Because he left the realm without a licence, his property was forfeited to the crown; much of his surviving correspondence with Lord Burghley deals with his suit to have his proprietary incomes returned. The expressions of affection and duty to Elizabeth which appear in his letters must therefore be treated cautiously, particularly since he became a pensioner of Philip ii.19 On occasion, however, Copley’s explanations for his actions 16

17 18 19

Ibid., f. 219 ‘He depado mi casa y mi hazienda, y mi mujer por uenir a buscar socorro para ayudar a los Catolicos de Irlanda Inglaterra, y scocia, y para restituyr enteramente la Religion en estos tres Reynos para que pueda andar libre de la descumunion, en que he incurrido, y pueda confesar y promulgar como fiel Christiano’. A summary translation is available in csp Rome, vol. 1, 354. Holmes, ‘Stucley, Thomas’. Ibid. Despite the abundance of letters he left behind, little work has been done on Copley’s life outside of the ODNB. See Michael Graves,  ‘Copley, Thomas  (1532–​1584)’,  ODNB (Oxford:  Oxford University Press, 2004), available from http://​www.oxforddnb.com/​ view/​article/​6273 [accessed 15 Nov 2015].

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provide insight into how some English Catholic exiles conceived of their relationship to Elizabeth and their country after her excommunication, especially those who chose to leave rather than actively seek her deposition at home, but still considered the sentence legitimate. Copley hoped that ‘by private talk’ with Burghley he could convince him ‘to think otherwise’ in matters of religion and eventually persuade him to embrace the Catholic faith.20 Despite their religious differences, he had no trouble referring to Elizabeth as ‘the Qweenes most Excellent Maiesti his most gracious soueraign Lady and Maystresse’ in his letters to her.21 Copley’s decision to live in exile, however, could itself be considered an act of resistance. His departure from England in 1570 suggests that the excommunication provided more motivation for his leaving than he was willing to admit in official correspondence. Copley had been recusant from English services and legally prohibited from practising Catholicism since the 1560s: if, as Copley claimed, he left the country only for liberty of conscience, then it is worth considering why he departed only after the queen to whom he assiduously claimed allegiance was excommunicated.22 Tudor governments throughout the sixteenth century continued to consider religious exiles as under their jurisdiction, branding them as ‘fugitives’ and ‘traitors’.23 The views of English Catholics living abroad about whether or not they remained subjects of the queen, and especially whether they remained subject to her laws, were more varied, although Copley appeared comfortable referring to himself as a ‘moste loyall subiecte … to his earthlie prince’.24 In a way Copley might be considered representative of many of the queen’s English Catholic subjects who chose to resist her through nonviolent violations of law. By leaving without a licence and thereby resisting her laws, he may have considered himself in compliance with the demands of Regnans in Excelsis. The methods for resistance differed amongst English Catholics, but these actions appear to have enabled them to consider themselves as meeting the obligations placed on them by their faith and its leadership whilst remaining obedient to the queen in other respects.

20 21

22 23 24

TNA SP 15/​23 f. 20, 168. See also BL Lansdowne MS 16/​91 f. 218. BL Lansdowne MS 16/​94 f.  224b. It is also worth mentioning that the cases of conscience established for English Catholics allowed them to use the queen’s titles without fear of committing a sin or error. See Peter Holmes, ed., Elizabethan Casuistry (crs vol. 67) (London: Catholic Record Society, 1981), 121–​22. TNA SP 15/​23 f. 20. Peter Marshall, ‘Religious Exiles and the Tudor State’, Studies in Church History 43, (2007), 263–​84. Ibid.; see also BL Lansdowne MS 16/​91 f. 218.

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Richard Shelley’s letters and career likewise shed light on a complex process of reconciling obligations to the Roman Church with what he considered his duty to a technically heretical ruler. Shelley served the Tudor monarchs as a diplomat abroad for most of his career. He had been a member of the Catholic order of the knights of St John for much of that time and became grand prior of the society in 1561. Due to the obligations of the order Shelley lived outside of England for some years before the excommunication was pronounced. He did, however, undertake an unofficial role representing English merchants in Venice, and his correspondence with Burghley and Walsingham relates mostly to this role; he also occasionally reported on the activities of English Catholics abroad.25 Although he remained a devout Catholic he expressed a sense of duty and allegiance to Elizabeth, which, as with Copley, seems to stand in puzzling contrast with his activities on the continent during her reign. Like Copley, Shelley often expressed his sense of duty to his ‘prince and cowntrey’ in general terms, but he also voiced distaste at some of his countrymen abroad who wished to take more extreme action against Elizabeth, characterising their plots as in ‘no wey to be alowed by the Catholike Creede, but rather detestable even in Ciuell pollicie’.26 In a letter he wrote to Burghley in 1583, Shelley described himself as ‘a morall and a religious but no wey a partiall nor a factious Catholique, which I hu[m]‌blie beseche your Lord to take in good parte … and to compare it with my deades in executing Zelouslie my dewtie of allegeance these xxiiii yeres, that I haue bene abroade’.27 Shelley’s correspondence with the Roman Catholic leadership, however, suggests different motives for his absence from England. In an undated letter to the pope Shelley expressed his sorrow at the state of religion in England, and pledged his life and service to the knights of Malta (an alternate name for the knights of St John) and to the pope, until the Catholic cause in England had ‘matured’ enough to warrant his return.28 His correspondence with the papacy suggests that Shelley may simply have been biding his time. He may have hoped that Elizabeth would have a change of heart and return to the Roman Church of her own volition, or that Catholicism in England might gain enough strength eventually to compel her to reconcile with Rome. The distaste that Shelley expressed for conspiracies and the Jesuits’ activities in his letters 25 26 27 28

Michael Mullett, ‘Shelley, Sir Richard (c.1513–​1587)’, ODNB (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), available from http://​www.oxforddnb.com/​view/​article/​25313 [accessed 15 Nov 2015]. BL Lansdowne MS 38/​41 f. 103. BL Lansdowne MS 38/​49 f. 122. asv Misc. Arm. II no. 67 f. 290.

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to Burghley was not necessarily incompatible with this view.29 Some English Catholics adopted a more providential attitude to their situation, reasoning that God would enable the restoration of Catholicism in England when he saw fit, and discouraging interference with this plan.30 Shelley may have viewed the activities of the Jesuits and conspirators as an example of such interference.31 Like Copley, his career abroad was plagued by financial difficulties; he also accepted pensions from Gregory xiii at different points in the 1570s and 1580s.32 Shelley may be representative of another group of English Catholics, those who did not resort to direct violence against Elizabeth, but who were prepared to take on more significant roles in service for their faith if necessary. This would have been a sentiment in keeping with the amendments that Gregory xiii made to Regnans in Excelsis, which allowed English Catholics to obey the queen until circumstances became more favourable for the restitution of Catholicism in England. Others, however, remained convinced that only violence would prevail. The exile Shelton Cottington, who was living in Rouen in 1594, still believed ‘it is lawfull for him or others to kill the Quene of England or the kinge of Fraunce both beinge heretickes’.33 Cottington had been ‘a dealer with Frauncis Throgmorton’ prior to Throckmorton’s execution in 1584 for trying to depose the queen.34 A  report delivered to Cecil from the continent in 1590 described a grimmer view of the effects of Elizabeth’s excommunication amongst her Catholic subjects: that ‘all Inglishe Catholikes her Maiesties true subiects beyond the seas’ believed that ‘thexcommunication of her Maiesties person by the Pope, nor yet of her subiects vnless they disobey her’, could not ‘avayle so bluddily against her: were it but for this: that (admitting the deede never donne) yet haue not catholikes heer in Ingland (by reason they are kept vnder) the meanes nor the might to prosecute of them selues theyr farther freedom; but rather (as is sayd) it may be an occasion of theyr severer persecution’.35 In other words, according to the English Catholics represented in this report, the 29 30 31 32 33 34 35

BL Lansdowne MS 38/​49 f. 122, Shelley referred to ‘The mischief, that all Christendome nowe suffreth for, by the sending of these Iesuytes into England’. Peter Holmes, Resistance and Compromise:  The Political Thought of the Elizabethan Catholics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), 33–​36. In his memoirs, Robert Persons also noted Shelley’s disapproval of the society’s activities. See crs Miscellanea, vol. 2 (London: Arden, 1906), 64. See BL Lansdowne MS 45/​5 f. 12–​13, Lansdowne MS 42/​16 f. 47. See also Mullett, ‘Shelley, Sir Richard (c.1513–​1587)’. TNA SP 12/​248 f. 185. Ibid. BL Lansdowne MS 63/​59 f. 154.

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legal restrictions imposed by the Elizabethan regime had driven Catholics to desperation, making them more likely to commit acts of violence than they otherwise would have been. The viewpoints of the different Catholics presented here illustrate the difficulties of negotiating and maintaining their positions abroad after the queen’s excommunication and deposition. On the one hand, signalling one’s belief in the validity of the papal bull could be useful in appeals for financial assistance and patronage on the continent. On the other hand, assistance from the Catholic European kingdoms and the papacy was often intermittent and not always sufficient to live on. Some therefore found it expedient to maintain connections with Elizabeth and her ministers, in the hope that they could negotiate the return of assets they forfeited by leaving England without permission.36 In such circumstances it would have been necessary to dissimulate views about Elizabeth’s legitimacy. Many English Catholic appeals were addressed directly to Elizabeth or Lord Burghley and admitting one’s belief that the queen was an accursed heretic would have led nowhere. Nevertheless, all of the individuals presented here seem to have considered the excommunication a legitimate sentence. For some like Stucley and Copley, the sentence probably provided an impetus for leaving England; for others like Shelley it provided an excuse to stay away. Once abroad, they used the queen’s excommunication to serve their own needs when necessary, either by acknowledging its importance to gain favour with Catholic powers, or by playing to the regime’s concerns about their allegiances.37 Elizabeth’s excommunication also affected perceptions of her amongst Catholics who lived in England. Following the exposure of the Ridolfi Plot in 1571, John Leslie, the bishop of Ross, was examined regarding a conversation he had with Henry Wriothesley, the earl of Southampton shortly after Felton published the bull in London in May 1570. Southampton had been raised as a Catholic and was married to Mary Browne, a member of one of the leading 36

37

Katy Gibbons has discussed this dilemma in ‘ “When he was in France he was a Papist and when he was in England … he was a Protestant”: Negotiating Religious Identities in the Later Sixteenth Century’, in Nadine Lewycky and Adam Morton, eds., Getting Along? Religious Identities and Confessional Relations in Early Modern England (Farnham: Ashgate, 2012), 169–​84. Recent work on English Catholics living abroad has shown the variety of motives and reasons for which they chose to remain on the continent, particularly for the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. See for instance Liesbeth Corens, Confessional Mobility and English Catholics in Counter-​Reformation Europe (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018); Brian Lockey, Early Modern Catholics, Royalists, and Cosmopolitans: English Transnationalism and the Commonwealth (London: Routledge, 2016).

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Catholic families in England.38 During his conversation with Leslie, Southampton ‘bore great favor to the Quene of Scots’ and asked about ‘the Bull now set up’, particularly ‘whither, with his Conscience, he ought to obey the Quene’s Majesty, or no’.39 According to Leslie, Southampton went on to say that ‘sundry … are departed thes Realme for the same Cause’, including the Lord Morley, ‘and not long before, Mr. Schelly, Mr. Shelton, and otheris’.40 Southampton categorically denied these allegations in his own examination, admitting only that he asked Leslie about the Queen of Scots’ whereabouts.41 Others implicated in the plot included Sir Thomas Stanley (the earl of Derby’s brother) and Sir Thomas Gerard, who ‘were reconciled to the Pope, according to the late bull’. Leslie testified that ‘many others in Lancashire and the north parts’ had undergone a similar reconciliation following the publication of Regnans in Excelsis.42 Leslie’s testimony illuminates how some Catholics wrestled with questions regarding allegiance and obedience to the queen in light of her excommunication. If Leslie is to be believed, Southampton apparently worried about the implications of continuing to obey Elizabeth and considered leaving England as a possible solution to his moral dilemma. His concern is interesting in light of his connections through his wife to the Browne family:  Mary’s father Anthony Browne, viscount Montague, has received considerable attention as one of Elizabeth’s ‘loyalist’ Catholic administrators.43 In others the bull apparently prompted a decision to ‘reconcile’ with the Catholic Church, which could possibly refer to their conversion from Protestantism, or to a strengthening of their faith if they already identified as Roman Catholic. Furthermore, Leslie’s description of reconciliations in Lancashire aligns with reports given by Richard Barnes, the bishop of Carlisle, who in 1570 complained that people had begun refusing to come

38

JG Elzinga, ‘Wriothesley, Henry, second earl of Southampton (bap. 1545, d. 1581)’, ODNB (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), available from https://​doi.org/​10.1093/​ref:odnb/​ 30072 [accessed 13 Nov 2018]. 39 CP vol 2, 19. 40 Ibid., 38. 41 cms Salisbury vol. 1, 558. 42 cms Salisbury vol. 2, 555. 43 See for instance Elizabeth Heale, ‘Contesting Terms:  Loyal Catholicism and Lord Montague’s Entertainment at Cowdray, 1591’, in Jane Archer, Elizabeth Golding, and Sarah Knight, eds., The Progresses, Pageants, and Entertainments of Queen Elizabeth I (Oxford:  Oxford University Press, 2007), 189–​206; Michael Questier, ‘Loyal to a Fault:  Viscount Montague Explains Himself’, Historical Research 77, no.  196 (2004), 225–​53; idem, Catholicism and Community in Early Modern England: Politics, Aristocratic Patronage and Religion, c. 1550–​1640 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006).

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to church upon learning of the bull’s publication in London.44 Leslie’s corroboration of these activities suggests that the effects of the bull on church attendance in the north were known more widely at the time. Others voiced their opinion of the excommunication in more drastic terms. In 1572 a priest named Thomas Woodhouse, who was ordained during Queen Mary’s reign and had been imprisoned in the Fleet in London since 1561, made perfectly clear how his view of Elizabeth had changed in a letter to Lord Burghley: my pore advice ys, that ye … acknowledge and confesse your great iniquytie and offense aganste almightie gode especially in dysobeyng that supreme authorytie and power of the sea apostolyque so ordened and established by the kynge of kynges and lorde of lords Iesus Christe…. Lykwyse that ye earnestly perswade the Lady Elyzabeth (Who for her ouergreat dysobedyence ys moste iustly deposed) to submytte her self vnto her spyriytuall prynce, and father the popes holynes and wyth all humylytie to reconsyle herself vnto him that she may be the childe of saluacyon.45 Indeed, if Burghley did not persuade Elizabeth to seek absolution, Woodhouse warned him ‘I feare yt wyll be to the great desolacyon and ruyn of our beloued contrye and people, and to the vtter subversyonn and perishing of you and yours for euer in hell’.46 The change which Elizabeth’s excommunication wrought in Woodhouse’s perception of her is plain: he referred to her as ‘Lady’ rather than as ‘her Majesty’ or queen, reflecting his explicit belief that her deposition was just. Yet the tone of his letter implies a genuine concern for Elizabeth and the consequences of her excommunication for the kingdom. Woodhouse wrote this letter from prison and took great personal risk in expressing his opinions as frankly as he did; indeed, he was executed in 1573 for treason because of his actions.47 Despite the danger, he believed that he had to try to persuade Elizabeth to repent and seek reconciliation with the pope.48 44 45 46 47 48

TNA SP 15/​19 f. 39. BL Lansdowne MS 99/​1 f. 1. For a description of Woodhouse’s career see Thomas McCoog, ‘Woodhouse, Thomas (d. 1573)’, ODNB (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), available from http://​www.oxforddnb.com/​view/​article/​29927 [accessed 7 June 2016]. BL Lansdowne MS 99/​1 f. 1a. McCoog, ‘Woodhouse, Thomas’. His attempt may also have stemmed from a perceived duty to try to correct the queen’s behaviour. See Jacqueline Rose, ‘Kingship and Counsel in Early Modern England’, Historical Journal 54, no. 1 (2011), 47–​71; Natalie Mears, Queenship and Political Discourse in the Elizabethan Realms (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005); John Guy, ‘The

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Elizabeth’s excommunication changed perceptions of the queen at all levels of society, not just amongst the priesthood and elites. Records of seditious speech in the assizes for the Home Counties include several cases in which people spoke of the queen’s legitimacy, and may point to how the bull affected opinions of her right to rule. The second chapter of this book surveyed some of this speech as evidence of the extent of awareness of Regnans in Excelsis. This communication in and of itself became quite subversive. David Cressy, Natalie Mears, and Julia Walker have assessed seditious speech about Elizabeth and the doubts it showed about her legitimacy because of her parentage, but the language used in some of these cases also indicates that her excommunication influenced these speeches.49 In 1580, for instance, John Pullyver, a clerk from Writtle in Essex, was heard to say ‘that the masse was up in Lyncolneshier very brym’; he also ‘did saie that some did saie that we had no queen’.50 David Brown, a husbandman from East Tilbury, was found guilty of sedition in 1581 for lamenting that ‘yt was a mery worlde when the servyce was used in the latten tunge and nowe we are in an evill waye and goinge to the devill and have all nacions on our necks, for ther is no christian prince that hathe suche crewell lawes as … are nowe used in this Realme’.51 Brown’s choice of words indicates some familiarity with the language used to denounce Elizabeth in Regnans in Excelsis. His use of the phrase ‘going to the devil’ draws parallels with the sentence of anathema pronounced against the queen and any subjects who remained loyal to her, suggesting worry about the pope’s sweeping condemnation of the kingdom and its potential to open up conflict with other countries. Other records of seditious speech point to how people thought about the implications of the bull for resistance against the Elizabethan regime. A labourer from Kirdford in Sussex named Thomas Davy was convicted in 1583 for saying ‘A great manye have gonne out of this realme and resisted the Crowne, and so would I, yf I could have free passage for a time’ and that he would ‘resist the quene and Crowne’.52 In 1584 a Benedictine friar attached to the French ambassador’s house in London told one of Lord Burghley’s

49 50 51 52

Rhetoric of Counsel in Early Modern England’, in Dale Hoak, ed., Tudor Political Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 292–​310. David Cressy, Dangerous Talk:  Scandalous, Seditious, and Treasonable Speech in Pre-​ Modern England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010); Mears, Queenship and Political Discourse; Walker, Dissing Elizabeth. J.S. Cockburn, ed. Calendar of Assize Records, Elizabeth I: Essex Indictments (London: HM Stationery Office, 1977), 203. Ibid., 213–​14. J.S. Cockburn, ed. Calendar of Assize Records, Elizabeth I: Sussex Indictments (London: HM Stationery Office, 1975), 181.

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informants that ‘he would gladlye wyshe that he had a Bull of Excommunication against the Quenes Maiestie and those that be … Caluens’, if he did, ‘he would hange the Bull at Powles gate’.53 The friar’s statement reflected a desire to imitate John Felton by hanging another copy of the bull near St Paul’s Cathedral and Churchyard. In the same year a yeoman in Canterbury was accused of ‘intending to subvert the true religion and to incite the queen’s subjects to rebellion’ for saying that he hoped to see a change of religion in England within three years, and that ‘the pope of Rome should have as great auctorytye’ in England ‘as ever he dyd in Rome’.54 Doubts about the queen’s authority over the Church also continued to be voiced. A weaver named Stephen Slater stood trial at Brentwood in 1585 for saying ‘he thought that the Quene was not Quene and supreme hedd of Englande’, that he ‘praye god she not be’, and that he ‘so wolde saye before the best in Ingland’.55 In 1588, during the height of concerns about the Spanish Armada, David Ramsay, a labourer of Moulsham in Essex, publicly professed himself a Catholic and said that ‘he wolde praye for the pope’.56 Similarly, in the same year a yeoman in Canterbury named John Gardener was accused of saying publicly that ‘the pope and his religion muste needs have good succes heare in Englande’, and that ‘the Jesuits that suffered lately at Canterbury were better then the protestants and died better then they would doe’.57 A tailor named George Bynckes publicly declared in 1592 that the pope was ‘supreme hedd over all Christendome’ that Philip ii was the ‘right kinge of Ingland’, and that if he ‘be commanded to doe any service in the Queenes behalfe, the same wold goe ageynste his conscience’.58 In 1593 a scribe named Wilfred Lutey also declared publicly that Philip ii was ‘our anointed kinge’, and that any Englishman who fought against him in the Low Countries ‘were rebells and dampned’.59 These statements indicate that Bynckes and Lutey, or whoever accused them, was familiar with the Declaration of the Sentence and Deposition of Elizabeth, which was printed in 1588 for circulation in England in advance of the Spanish Armada’s attack. In addition to repeating the excommunication and deposition of the queen, the Declaration also exhorted

53 54

BL Lansdowne MS 42/​77 f. 173. J.S. Cockburn, ed., Calendar of Assize Records, Elizabeth: Kent Indictments (London: HM Stationery Office, 1980), 214. 55 Cockburn, Essex Indictments, 272. Slater was found not guilty. 56 Ibid., 331–​32. 57 Cockburn, Kent Indictments, 290–​91. 58 Cockburn, Essex Indictments, 390. Bynckes was also found not guilty. 59 Ibid., 416. Lutey was found not guilty.

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the English to ‘vnite them selfs to the Catholike army conducted by the most noble and victorious Prince, Alexander Farnesius, Duke of Parma in name of his Maiesty’ Philip ii, who ‘for the olde Amity betvvene his house and the Croune of England’ had been chosen by the pope to carry out Elizabeth’s deprivation.60 The language of Bynckes’ and Lutey’s seditious speeches shares parallels with the call to forsake Elizabeth and join with the king of Spain which appears in the proclamation. Even after the Armada’s defeat people continued to publicly voice challenges to Elizabeth’s authority. A  tailor named William Cobham was indicted at Maidstone in 1595 for publicly stating that ‘yt may be he was a traytor, or that he might be a seminary … and hath spit in the face of the boholders depute [deputy] in dispite of hir majestie’.61 A labourer living near Rochester was convicted for saying ‘That the Queenes Majestie was Antechrist and therefore she is throwne downe into hell’ in 1599.62 At Wilmington in 1600 a yeoman named Henry Elliott was sentenced to a traitor’s death for saying ‘the Queene writeth hirselfe Queene of England, France, and Ireland, but … is thrust out of France already and shortly she will also be thrust out of Ireland’.63 Nearby in Cliffe an Irish labourer was whipped and put in a pillory for declaring that he ‘love[d]‌ not the Queene, nor yet hir lawes, but I love the pope and his lawes with all my hart’.64 All of these incidents point to some familiarity with the implications of Elizabeth’s excommunication. The Rochester labourer’s reference to the queen as ‘throwne down into hell’ indicates recognition of the sentence of anathema pronounced against her. In some cases the language suggests exposure to the casuist questions that arose from the papal deposition of the queen. The tailor George Bynckes, for instance, apparently believed that doing any service in the queen’s name would be morally wrong, using phrases remarkably similar to questions about civic obedience that appeared in cases of conscience related to the excommunication.65 These people were accused of making these statements publicly, which would have been quite a bold act of dissent given that questioning the queen’s titles could land one on trial for treason. In this context, it is also worth noting that Bynckes and

60

A declaration of the sentence and deposition of Elizabeth, the vsurper and pretensed quene of Englande (Antwerp: A. Conincx, 1588). 61 Cockburn, Kent Indictments, 380. 62 Cockburn, Sussex Indictments, 404. 63 Ibid., 374. 64 Ibid., 381. 65 See the first chapter of this book for some examples of these debates.

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the scribe Wilfred Lutey, who stood accused of making more extreme statements, were found not guilty. It is unclear in these instances whether the defendants were the victims of local grudges, or if the judge wished to spare them the harsh punishments reserved for treason; it is also possible that the witnesses of their speeches may not have been credible. Nevertheless, these cases point to the political power of Elizabeth’s excommunication at the local as well as national levels. Because the government treated the papal deposition with such concern, any speech that expressed support for resisting the crown or hinted at doubts about Elizabeth’s legitimacy became politically dangerous, a fact which could be exploited to express dissent and sometimes settle scores. 2

Alternatives to Violence: Prohibited Objects, Recusancy, and Public Disobedience

While the circulation of papal bulls and information about Elizabeth’s excommunication through print, manuscript, and seditious speech constituted a significant share of Catholic resistance to the crown, other forms of resistance also point to the impact of the sentence on Catholic attitudes towards subverting the regime. One form of resistance that increased after 1570 was the circulation and use of outlawed devotional materials, such as crucifixes, rosaries, the agnus dei (a wax pendant blessed by the pope), and banned Catholic polemical and devotional books. Other activities can be assessed as resistance to the queen’s laws in light of the bull’s publication as well. Some cases of recusancy, for instance, show clear links with the papal excommunication. Although it was relatively uncommon for Catholics to commit acts of violence against crown officials after the rebellion of 1569, occasional outbursts also merit reconsideration in light of the papal command to resist the queen. The following section considers this range of activities. Despite the treason laws passed by parliament in 1571 and 1581, people continued to import, circulate, and use prohibited objects in their devotions. However, the parliamentary bans on these objects imbibed them with political associations which they had never had before. After 1571, the possession of banned devotional objects signified not only one’s Catholic faith, but also one’s willingness to defy the queen’s laws and resist her government, thereby challenging her legitimacy and that of her successors as rulers. Although sacred objects functioned as aids in Catholic devotion and sometimes offered their owners protection from harm, they were not essential to the practice of

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Catholicism in the way that the sacraments and the Mass were.66 Where records survive of people using such objects after their prohibition, it is therefore possible to discern the extent to which people were willing to engage in political subversion against the English government. From 1571 the Elizabethan government tried to keep track of those who circulated and kept Catholic materials, sometimes sending out special orders for their search and seizure. In 1577, for instance, the queen’s Ecclesiastical Commission directed a ‘diligente searche’ for anyone ‘knowne to be nourishers harborers mayntaynors or kepers of any popishe pristes to say masse’, as well as for any ‘crosses sencers hanginges for alters beades Images popishe bookes Agnus Dei Bulles and all other suche like trumpery’.67 Searches in Devon and Cornwall in the late 1570s turned up copies of papal bulls and agni dei, while in London searches conducted by the bishop led to the arrest of several priests who had been distributing blessed beads and agni dei to people in the city.68 Circulation of Catholic materials increased with the arrival of missionary priests from Europe. From 1574, priests trained at the English colleges on the continent began returning to England to minister to Catholics in secret. The priests were encouraged to bring sacred objects with them into England and to distribute them to people who asked for them, despite the penalties they faced if caught with the objects. Priests were also permitted to distribute sacred materials to people who were not yet members of the Catholic Church.69 It was thought that objects like blessed beads, rosaries, and agni dei ‘can be most useful, because they turn people’s minds towards the Apostolic See and warm men’s cold charity, and because they can produce many other spiritual beliefs’.70 In 1580 the Society of Jesus approved its mission to England and began sending members of its order to assist the seminary priests in ministering to English Catholics. Initially, the General of the Society prohibited Jesuits from carrying sacred objects with them on the mission, because it would increase the risk of their being caught and executed by the Elizabethan authorities.71 Nevertheless, some members of the mission overlooked this order, and from the mid-​1580s the Jesuits played an important role in the circulation of devotional materials in England.

66 Robert Scribner, The German Reformation (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), 7–​17. 67 BL Lansdowne MS 25/​81 f. 167. 68 TNA PC 2/​12 f. 141, 341; BL Lansdowne MS 25/​30 f. 63. 69 Holmes, Elizabethan Casuistry, 91–​92. 70 Ibid., 66. 71 Thomas McCoog, The Society of Jesus in Ireland, Scotland, and England, 1541–​1588 (Leiden: Brill, 1996), 133–​140.

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­f igure 5.1  The Lyford Grange Agnus Dei, ca. 1580. Courtesy of the Master and Community of Campion Hall, Oxford. This agnus dei was consecrated by Pope Gregory xiii, and supposedly given to Edmund Campion before he left for the English mission.

The Elizabethan government made every effort to catch the missionary priests travelling around England, using searches for banned objects to detect where they had been and who they had visited. In June 1580 the Privy Council ordered another search for outlawed sacred materials, having been informed that ‘diuers persons not onelie forbeare to … conforme them selues in matters of religion according to the lawes but also secretlie haue vsed other popishe service and by Bulles Agnus Dei and other vnlawfull stuffe’.72 Officials tracked Robert Persons, the leader of the first Jesuit mission, to a house in London in 1581. Although Persons had already left, they found ‘all his stock of pious articles which he had brought from Rome to excite the devotion of the Catholics, such as beads, medals, pictures, crucifixes’ and a large number of devotional 72

TNA PC 2/​13 f. 59.

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books.73 A similar stockpile was found in the town of Lewes in Sussex in 1582, which included a box of agni dei, thirty-​six pairs of blessed beads, nineteen crucifixes and brooches, and some relics of St Edward, St William, and Mary Magdalene.74 In Norwich, a priest named Monford Scott was indicted in 1584 for giving out blessed beads to recusants in the city.75 Catholic laymen and women also participated in the circulation of outlawed sacred objects. In 1580 two ‘young papists’ named William Middlemore and William Hildesley were arrested with ‘certen crucifixes and the picture of Mary Mawdlyn holowed and certen other tryffles’ which they had brought back from the continent.76 A search of the Lady West’s house in Winchester in 1583 yielded several agni dei consecrated by Pope Pius v, which had been broken into pieces.77 In 1585 Robert Debdall, a student at the English College in Rheims, sent a gilded crucifix home to his father, two pairs of blessed beads to his mother and sister, and two strings of blessed grains of incense to be shared amongst the family.78 When officials searched the house of George, Elizabeth, and Bridget Brome in Oxfordshire in 1586, they found an agnus dei and a pair of blessed beads, several crucifixes, blessed grains, and relics, along with images of the Virgin Mary and the Apostles.79 The family had actually tried to smuggle the agnus dei and prayer beads out of the house, but the servant charged with carrying them away was caught at the gate. The correspondence of priests working in England also points to the widespread popularity of sacramentals amongst English Catholics. Writing from England in 1586, the Jesuit Robert Southwell wrote to Robert Persons, who was now living at the English College in Rome, asking him to petition the pope to allow missionaries to bless 2000 rosaries and 6000 grains of incense. The demand for these objects amongst the laity was so great that current supplies would not be sufficient. Reflecting the adverse circumstances in which the mission operated, Southwell also requested that priests be permitted to fashion rosaries and prayer beads from whatever materials they deemed appropriate.80 73

Henry Foley, Records of the English Province of the Society of Jesus, vol. 4. (London: Burns and Oates, 1878), 346. 74 TNA SP 12/​156 f. 27. 75 John Pollen, Unpublished Documents Relating to the English Martyrs (London: Whitehead, 1908), 100. 76 TNA SP 12/​143 f. 89. 77 TNA SP 12/​164 f. 24. 78 TNA SP 12/​179 f. 5. 79 BL Lansdowne MS 50/​76 f.  164. The Bromes were known recusants with connections to the Throckmorton and Vaux families. See John Fox, ‘The Bromes of Holton Hall:  A Forgotten Recusant Family’, Oxoniensa 68 (2003), 69–​88. 80 Pollen, English Martyrs, 319.

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Some cases also show clear connections between the collection of outlawed devotional objects and altered views of the queen. In Geldeston near Norwich, Henry Chauncy was caught in 1581 ‘at sundrie times’ with ‘sedicious and … traterous letters, bulls, books, and other popish trashe’ which he ‘couertly conceled, and … also dispersed them abrode’.81 Chauncy had also ‘openly seid, in the herynege of sundrie persones … that hir hyghnes dothe vsurpe the popes aucthoritie in cauling hir selfe supreme head’ and ‘that this realme standeth accursed and excomunicated of the popes owne mouth’. Chauncy added that the pope ‘haythe reneued the seid curse, and thervppon sent an armie to invade’ England.82 In 1584 Sir John Horsey and Edward Seintbarbe, the commissioners of peace for Dorset, reported to the Privy Council that they had apprehended ‘one Iames Baker a very rebellious papiste and sedicious person’ for using a forged licence from the royal exchequer to ‘range about the contreye from place to place’. Baker carried with him several of ‘Edmond Campions bookes, to playe the Subsemynarie’, and had been using them to ‘perswade her Maiesties subiectes to the Romishe Religion, and from there obedience to her Maistie and her lawes’.83 Similarly, in 1586 John Hanmer, a member of the Hanmer family of Flintshire in Wales, delivered ‘papisticall bookes to his kynred in the contrey and to his men that attend him … to the ende to wynne theme to his religion’.84 When Anthony Babington was arrested in the same year for conspiring to kill the queen and replace her with Mary Queen of Scots, officials found a stockpile of outlawed Catholic books amongst his belongings, including devotional and polemical works by Robert Persons, Nicholas Sander, and Edmund Campion.85 Similar titles were found in the house of George, Elizabeth, and Bridget Brome when it was searched in the same year.86 This kind of disobedience persisted into the 1590s. In 1594 a Catholic layman named Hilary Dakins caught the attention of the Privy Council for his defiant exploits in Lancashire. Dakins had ‘defrauded the Queen and others of 81

82 83 84 85 86

TNA SP 12/​151 f.  64. Chauncy was from a minor family of landed gentry. His elder brother, Maurice, had been a monk in the Carthusian Charterhouse in London before it was dissolved by Henry viii. Maurice fled to the continent and moved between the Charterhouses of Bruges, Louvain, and Paris before his death in 1581. See Michael Sargent, ‘Chauncy, Maurice (c. 1509–​1581), prior of Sheen Anglorum and martyrologist’, ODNB (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004) available from https://​doi.org/​10.1093/​ref:odnb/​ 5199 [accessed 12 Feb 2019]. Ibid. TNA SP 12/​167. TNA SP 12/​189 f. 34. BL Lansdowne MS 50 f. 167–​68. Ibid., f. 164.

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100 marks per annum’, which he had taken from the estate of a man executed for harbouring priests, and given to the man’s son. In addition to aiding the children of condemned Catholics, Dakins had circulated ‘divers seditious and libelling books’, which he received regularly from his brother Edward, who was a seminary priest.87 On top of this Dakins had publicly ‘lamented to hear of the death of any traitor or enemy of the Queen, and calleth them martyrs’.88 In 1596 a man named Edward Knight was apprehended by the lord lieutenant of Gloucestershire for ‘matters concerning his alleadgeance vnto her Maiestie’ –​he had been ‘keeping and vseing of papisticall Bookes, and an Agnus dei brought from Rome’ along with ‘certeine Beades and suche other stuffe’.89 Why did people continue to use sacred objects in England when they risked imprisonment, loss of property, and prosecution for treason if caught? Although the English colleges in Europe and the Society of Jesus sent priests to minister to English Catholics throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the dangerous conditions in which they worked meant that priests could not always settle in one place and had to travel frequently to avoid detection. Consequently, those who wanted to continue to practise Catholicism had infrequent access to the sacraments and the Mass.90 Because of these conditions, lay Catholics became increasingly dependent on sacred objects and personal devotional aids to practise their faith.91 Recognising these difficulties, the papacy ascribed a number of indulgences, or pardons from sins, to different sacred objects, which people could obtain by using the objects in prayer.92 Indulgences granted to the English Colleges, for instance, stated that anyone who kissed a crucifix or blessed medal would gain a hundred days’ indulgence.93 87 88 89 90

91

92 93

cms Salisbury vol. 5, 98. Ibid. TNA PC 2/​21 f. 288. See Lucy Underwood, ‘Persuading the Queen’s Majesty’s Subjects from Their Allegiance:  Treason, Reconciliation and Confessional Identity in Elizabethan England’, Historical Research 89, no. 244 (2016), 246–​267, for more on the political implications of reconciliation and the sacraments during Elizabeth’s reign. Alexandra Walsham, Catholic Reformation in Protestant Britain (Farnham: Ashgate, 2014), 369–​398; see also Lisa McClain, ‘Using What’s At Hand: English Catholic Reinterpretations of the Rosary, 1559–​1642’, Journal of Religious History 27, no. 2 (2003), 161–​176; Anne Dillon, ‘To Seek Out Comforts and Companions of His Own Kind and Condition:  The Benedictine Rosary Confraternity and the Chapel of Cardigan House, London’, in Lowell Gallagher, ed., Redrawing the Map of Early Modern English Catholicism (Toronto: Toronto University Press, 2012), 272–​308. For an overview of how indulgences functioned see Robert Swanson, Indulgences in Late Medieval England: Passports to Paradise? (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 113–​120. cms Salisbury, vol. 6, 558.

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The papacy renewed these indulgences periodically throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.94 Ironically, the English government’s attempts to eradicate the practices of Catholicism through the extension of the treason laws and the prohibition of the Mass probably increased English Catholics’ need of objects that could aid in private devotion, especially sacramentals which could be used in the absence of priests.95 However, because Catholic devotional objects had also been outlawed by the English parliament, their continued use inescapably became an act of defiance against the queen’s laws, and therefore an act of political subversion. During Elizabeth’s reign, the persistent enthusiasm for sacramentals amongst English Catholics struck a raw nerve with the government. Because the pope had declared Elizabeth unfit to rule, the refusal of Catholic communities to obey her laws constituted a direct challenge to her authority; it could not be dismissed simply as religious recalcitrance. Thus, when Elinor Brome and her servant, Elizabeth Barram, were each caught wearing an agnus dei out in public in 1578, they were engaging in a bold statement of resistance to the queen’s authority.96 On occasion, English Catholics used sacramentals as aids in more drastic acts against the government. In 1583 John Somerville rode to London planning to assassinate the queen, wearing an agnus dei to protect himself from the dangers of his quest.97 Somerville died in prison, but his father-​in-​law, Edward Arden, was also executed for his alleged role in the conspiracy; Somerville’s wife Margaret and his mother-​in-​law, Mary Arden, were also arrested on charges of treason but the charges were later dropped.98 Anthony Babington, who also plotted to assassinate Queen Elizabeth, kept a rosary during his imprisonment in the Tower of London, and wore it to his execution for treason in 1586.99 The Catholic Church also encouraged the political connotations of sacred objects. 94

See for instance TNA SP 14/​128 f. 7; Foley, Records of the English Province, vol. 6, 100. For a comparative study of indulgences see Elizabeth Tingle, Indulgences After Luther: Pardons in Counter-​Reformation France, 1520–​1720 (London: Routledge, 2015). 95 Walsham, Catholic Reformation, 376–​82. 96 John Cordy Jeaffreson, ed., Middlesex County Records, 1550–​1603, vol. 1 (London: Middlesex County Record Society, 1886), 111–​116. 97 TNA SP 12/​163 f. 141. 98 LF Salzman, ed., A History of the County of Warwick, vol. 4 (London: Institute of Historical Research, 1947), 45, 62. 99 See the catalogue entry for Anthony Babington’s rosary in the online exhibition, Remembering the Reformation:  https://​exhibitions.lib.cam.ac.uk/​reformation/​­artifacts/​ remembering-​with-​beads-​anthony-​babingtons-​rosary/​ [accessed 13 Feb 2018]. See also Penry Williams, ‘Babington, Anthony (1561–​1586)’, ODNB (Oxford:  Oxford University Press, 2004), available from https://​doi.org/​10.1093/​ref:odnb/​967 [accessed 13 Feb 2018].

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The papal faculties for indulgences granted in 1596, for instance, stipulated that only those ‘which dedicate themselves to the restoration of the Faith in England, or any way do labour for that cause, or do pray for England’ would be able to gain the full benefits of the pardons attached to the sacred objects listed in the faculties.100 Those who possessed blessed grains could gain a plenary indulgence for each time that they prayed for the conversion of England, Ireland, and Scotland.101 In these circumstances, even prayer could become an act of subversion against the government. On occasion Catholics in England did employ more aggressive tactics to make their dissent known. In 1582, for instance, Hugh Erdeswick, the head of a recusant family in Staffordshire, went to a meeting of justices of the peace at the parish church of Sandon and struck one of them over the head with his staff. An observer noted that for ‘a papist to stryke a Iustice of peace, sittinge in the Queenes service … in the Churchyard and before the whole multitude, yt was a verye boulde and malitiouse part’.102 The significance of such an act would not have been lost on witnesses: by striking an official of the queen’s government, Erdeswick publicly exhibited his contempt and disregard for her regime’s laws. In the same year, servants of Thomas Paget, an ally of Mary Queen of Scots who fled to the continent in 1583 after he was implicated in the Throckmorton Plot, went into Colewich Church in the middle of a service and cursed the people taking communion.103 Paget had also previously tried to force the church to use ‘lytttle singinge cakes after the olde popishe fasion’ for the communion service.104 This, too, would have been a pointed challenge to Elizabeth’s authority over the English Church and a public sign of resistance to her laws. Occasionally Catholics were connected to larger schemes for violence as well. In 1586, around the time Anthony Babington was plotting to assassinate Elizabeth, the earl of Sussex wrote urgently to Lord Burghley from Portsmouth, concerning a ‘certene mutenye and assembly to be shortlie practised within this Shire’, which had been organised through ‘the perswasion of forrayne Rebelles and fugitives, and by practise of domesticall recusantes’.105 Sussex mobilised local constables and justices to investigate the planned uprising and no disturbances broke out, but the spectre of religious riot continued to haunt the Elizabethan regime. Several riots that took place in Yorkshire and Lancashire 1 00 101 102 103 104 105

cms Salisbury, vol. 6, p. 557. Ibid. BL Lansdowne MS 36 f. 48b. Ibid., f. 48b-​49. Ibid., f. 49. BL Lansdowne MS 50 f. 43, 47.

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towards the end of Elizabeth’s reign appear to have been overtly Catholic in motivation. In 1598, for instance, Catholics invaded the parish church of Middlesmoor and placed a straw figure in the pulpit, while in Garstang seventy-​ seven people were arrested after a riot in 1603 in which locals attacked the vicarage and shot at the vicar.106 Recusancy, or refusal to attend the services of the official, Protestant English Church, is perhaps the best known and most studied form of Catholic resistance during Elizabeth’s reign.107 Because of this, it will not be treated in great detail here, but there are some aspects of recusancy worth remarking upon in light of the papal excommunication and deposition. The Elizabethan government certainly became more interested in trying to detect and prosecute recusants after the queen was excommunicated, and this is perhaps where the bull exerted the clearest impact on recusancy. Recusants became much more visible and appeared more frequently in legal records after 1570. In Hampshire, for instance, where only fifteen recusants were prosecuted in 1566, 116 were charged in the second half of 1570.108 Prison records for London are somewhat piecemeal for these decades, but an increase in those imprisoned for religion is discernible. A  survey of London prisons in 1561 revealed approximately forty-​five persons incarcerated for Catholicism, most of whom were Marian clergy, whereas by 1580 that number had risen to just under 200, the majority of whom were laymen and women.109 While government interest may partly explain why the numbers of recusant cases increased in the 1570s and 1580s, it is unlikely that it entirely accounts for the higher numbers of these decades. Writing to William Cecil in October 1570, Richard Barnes, the bishop of Carlisle, reported that in Lancashire ‘sythince Felton sett vppe the Bull ec the gretest there never came at anie service nether wold suffer anie to be said in theire houses but haue openly entrteyned sondrie rennegate lovainiste 106 Marie Rowlands, ‘Hidden People:  Catholic Commoners, 1558–​1625’, in eadem, ed., Catholics of Parish and Town, 1558–​1778 (Totton: Catholic Record Society, 1999), 23–​24. 107 Recent work includes Fred Smith, ‘The Origins of Recusancy in Elizabethan England Reconsidered’, Historical Journal 60, no. 2 (2017), 301–​32; Ellen Macek, ‘Devout Recusant Women, Advice Manuals, and the Creation of Holy Households “Under Siege” ’, in Alison Weber, ed., Devout Laywomen in the Early Modern World (London: Routledge, 2016), 235–​ 52; Lucy Underwood, ‘Recusancy and the Rising Generation’, Recusant History 31, no. 4 (2013), 511–​33. For long-​range studies see the influential jch Aveling, The Handle and the Axe: The Catholic Recusants from Reformation to Emancipation (London: Blond and Briggs, 1976); John Bossy, The English Catholic Community, 1570–​1850 (London: Darton, Longman, and Todd, 1975); Rowlands, Catholics of Parish and Town. 108 JE Paul, ‘The Hampshire Recusants in the Reign of Elizabeth I’ (PhD Thesis, University of Southampton, 1958), 47–​48. 109 crs Miscellanea, vol. 1 (London: Whitehead, 1905), 49–​50, 61–​72.

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massers’. To this complaint Barnes attached a list of thirty-​one gentlemen residing in Cumberland and Westmoreland whose recusancy he attributed to the bull.110 A special visitation of Barnes’s diocese in 1571 detected a further fifty-​ four recusant gentlemen in Lancashire, along with thirty-​eight priests ministering in the county.111 Despite the potentially crippling financial penalties, seminary and Jesuit priests persuaded many English Catholics to persist in or turn to recusancy from the late 1570s and 1580s. A meeting of the priests in Southwark in 1580 confirmed that this should be central to their ministry, and that attending Protestant services signified a betrayal of the Roman Catholic faith.112 Yet the bull also appears to have been bound up in concerns about the missionaries’ work in England. Casuist questions drawn up in advance of the Jesuit mission and presented to Gregory xiii for clarification pondered whether Catholics were compelled in conscience ‘to consider her [Elizabeth] illegitimate, deprived of all right to rule, and a tyrant’, and whether anyone who believed otherwise ‘cannot be absolved if sufficiently instructed about the bull’.113 In other words, questions had arisen amongst the Catholic clergy about whether anyone who questioned Regnans in Excelsis should be denied receipt of the sacraments, such as absolution from sins. The responses to these questions, compiled in Rome, gave an inconclusive answer:  everyone should consider Elizabeth excommunicated regardless of the papal bull, but if ‘from some possible ignorance’ they did not, this should not bar them from the sacraments.114 Given the amount of information available about the sentence in England, the priests would have had difficulty finding anyone ignorant of Elizabeth’s deprivation. In these circumstances, the administration of the sacraments to Catholic recusants potentially became linked with a tacit acknowledgement of Regnans in Excelsis, depending on the missionary priest’s interpretation. Some reports of recusancy, like that of Richard Barnes above, also indicate connections with Elizabeth’s excommunication. A  summary of the lawyer Edmund Plowden’s interrogation in 1580 noted that ‘he came to church untill 1 10 TNA SP 15/​19 f. 39. 111 Christopher Haigh, English Reformations: Religion, Politics, and Society Under the Tudors (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993), 260. 112 Robert Persons, ‘Of the Life and Martyrdom of Father Edmund Campion’, in Henry Foley, ed., Letters and Notices, vol. 12 (Roehampton: Manresa Press, 1878), 35–​36. 113 Ginevra Crosignani, Thomas McCoog, and Michael Questier, eds., Recusancy and Conformity in Early Modern England:  Manuscript and Printed Sources in Translation (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, 2010), 95. For a more detailed discussion of this question’s implications see the first and second chapters of this book. 114 Ibid., 98.

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the Bull came in that Felton was executed for and the Northerne Rebells arose uppon and after that he hath utterly refused booth service sacrem[en]tes and every other meane to comunicate with the church’.115 In 1581 the bishop of Coventry and Lichfield complained that out of the 100 people accused of recusancy in his diocese, only four presented themselves at court for sentencing, ‘the rest refusing most obstinately to come before them’.116 Like the actions of Hugh Erdeswicke and Thomas Paget, failing to attend ecclesiastical court for sentencing signalled a refusal to recognise royal authority, which would have been in keeping with the papacy’s call for disobedience. In Hampshire in 1584 the bishop reported that 400 recusants had been presented by the parish churchwardens, complaining that ‘a great nomber more ar omitted’ through the wardens’ laxity.117 In London in 1591 a Church of England priest in Clerkenwell took bribes from several church papists to keep their refusal to take communion quiet.118 Following a survey of his diocese in 1596, the bishop of Worcester reported the region to be ‘as dangerous as any place that I know’ due to the number of recusants in the area ‘denying obedience to her Majesty’s proceedings’.119 This dimension of recusancy illuminates how the practice could fit within the broader papal demand that Catholics stop obeying the queen’s laws and commandments. Refusing to answer charges in the ecclesiastical courts, refusing communion, and withholding the names of recusants from the local bishops would have been widely recognised as resistance to the queen’s laws and authority. The examples illustrated here demonstrate that English Catholics had at their disposal a variety of means to subvert the queen’s laws and commandments, in accordance with the demands set out in Regnans in Excelsis. In light of the bloody consequences of the Northern Rebellion for Catholics, it perhaps makes sense that they resorted to other means of resisting the Elizabethan regime besides violence and open revolt. Indeed, the language of the papal order for resistance opened itself to multiple interpretations; it never specified that Catholics should use force to resist the queen. Thus, English Catholics could disobey the crown through practices like recusancy, the use of prohibited sacred objects, and seditious speech, and technically comply with Pius V’s demand if a more liberal interpretation was applied to the orders. All of these actions incurred great personal risk: though they would not automatically be 1 15 116 117 118 119

TNA SP 12/​144 f. 93. BL Lansdowne MS 33 f. 27. BL Lansdowne MS 42 f. 99. TNA SP 12/​238 f. 185. cms Salisbury, vol. 6, 265–​66.

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prosecuted and executed for treason, Catholics still faced heavy fines, imprisonment, the loss of property, and even bodily harm for committing these smaller offences. That these activities continued in spite of the dangers is a testament to how much concern Elizabeth’s excommunication generated amongst English Catholics about the degrees of resistance that were appropriate. The lack of violence from Catholic communities did not mean that they considered the excommunication of little importance. On the contrary, the range of subversive activities that developed amongst Catholics after 1570 suggests that the bull inspired numerous, diverse challenges to Elizabeth’s rule. 3

Regnans in Excelsis and Resistance in Ireland

In contrast with England, Elizabeth’s excommunication played a significant role in justifying violent resistance to the colonial English regime in Ireland. English control over Ireland had always been tenuous since the Anglo-​Norman invasions in the twelfth century. Although Henry viii tried to streamline governance of the country, proclaiming himself king of Ireland in 1541 and introducing English systems of law, landholding, and taxation, the Gaelic and Anglo-​Irish lords retained control of most of Ireland, accepting these changes only if or when it served their interests.120 After Elizabeth succeeded in 1558 she remained reluctant to allocate sufficient money or troops to effectively impose English rule.121 Consequently, attempts to introduce religious reform in Ireland under successive Protestant regimes had met mostly with failure in the sixteenth century.122 The Gaelic Irish remained largely and staunchly Catholic, as did many Anglo-​Irish families. Although English Protestants began immigrating to Ireland in higher numbers after 1570, significant numbers of English Catholics settled there as well, fleeing the penal laws introduced after 120 David Heffernan, ‘The Reduction of Leinster and the Origins of the Tudor Conquest of Ireland, 1534–​46’, Irish Historical Studies 40, no. 157 (2016), 1–​21; Steven Ellis, ‘Thomas Cromwell and Ireland, 1532–​1540’, Historical Journal 23, no. 3 (1980), 497–​519; Steven Ellis and Christopher Maginn, The Tudor Discovery of Ireland (Dublin: Four Courts, 2015). 121 Hiram Morgan, ‘ “Never Any Realm Worse Governed”:  Queen Elizabeth and Ireland’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 14, no. 1 (2004), 295–​308. 122 Henry Jefferies, ‘Why the Reformation Failed in Ireland’, Irish Historical Studies 40, no. 158 (2016), 151–​70; Fiona Fitzsimons, ‘Cardinal Wolsey, the Native Affinities, and the Failure of Reform in Henrician Ireland’, in David Edwards, ed., Religions and Rulers in Ireland, 1100–​1650: Essays for Kenneth Nicholls (Dublin: Four Courts, 2004), 78–​121; Nicholas Canny, ‘Why the Reformation Failed in Ireland:  Une Question Mal Posée’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History 30, no. 1 (1979), 423–​50.

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the publication of Regnans in Excelsis in London.123 The religious differences between the majority of Irish Catholics and the colonial English regime, combined with little historical sense of affection for or loyalty to the English monarchy, meant that the papal excommunication and deposition of the queen found a receptive audience in Ireland, especially at times of rebellion and protest against English rule. The role that the excommunication played in justifying resistance in Ireland demonstrates that it was capable of inspiring the kind of rebellion that Pius v envisioned when he issued the sentence against the queen. The Desmond Rebellions, led by James Fitzmaurice Fitzgerald from 1569–​74 and 1579–​83, exemplify how some of this potential was realised. The first Desmond Rebellion had multiple causes, many of which stemmed from the Lord Deputy Henry Sidney’s establishment of new English colonies in the southwest province of Munster, but religious differences between Irish Catholics and their English governors were central to Fitzgerald’s initial justification for the conflict.124 In 1569, before the rebellion started, Fitzgerald and other Irish lords convened an assembly in Munster. There they discussed how Henry viii, Edward vi, and now Elizabeth had tried to impose heretical religious polices in Ireland. Fitzgerald argued that these policies violated the terms of the papal bull Laudabiliter, issued by Adrian iv, which had granted Ireland to Henry ii of England on the condition that he uphold and propagate the Roman Catholic faith there. The lords concluded that the Elizabethan religious settlement of 1559 violated these conditions, and that the English crown had thereby voided its right of sovereignty over Ireland. As a result, the Irish were no longer obliged to show Elizabeth loyalty or obedience.125 Consequently, Fitzgerald sent a petition to King Philip ii of Spain, asking him and the pope to nominate a new monarch to rule Ireland.126 Philip rejected the request, but Fitzgerald proceeded with the rebellion anyway, gaining the support of the Gaelic lords of Munster as well as the Anglo-​Irish Butlers and their allies. In July 1569 Fitzgerald captured the towns of Kilmallock and Cork, demanding the restoration of Roman Catholicism and the 123 David Edwards, ‘A Haven of Popery: English Catholic Migration to Ireland in the Age of Plantations’, in Alan Ford and John MacCafferty, eds., The Origins of Sectarianism in Early Modern Ireland (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 95–​126. 124 Colm Lennon, Sixteenth-​Century Ireland:  The Incomplete Conquest (Dublin:  Gill and Macmillan, 2005), ­chapter 8. 125 Nicholas Canny, The Elizabethan Conquest of Ireland:  A Pattern Established, 1565–​76 (Hassocks: Harvester Press, 1976). 126 William Sheils, ‘Catholics and Recusants’, in Norman Jones and Robert Tittler, eds., A Companion to Tudor Britain (Chichester: Wiley-​Blackwell, 2004), 256.

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expulsion of Protestants. These victories were short-​lived: English forces recaptured Kilmallock in September, and Fitzgerald lost the support of his major allies by February 1570.127 Despite these setbacks, Fitzgerald evaded capture, conducting a series of guerrilla raids over the next two years and taking control of several strongholds in Munster. Fitzgerald continued to use the religious differences between the English and Irish to justify his resistance, and Elizabeth’s excommunication appears to have strengthened his convictions.128 It was Fitzgerald who was blamed for posting a copy of Regnans in Excelsis at the gates of Limerick in 1571.129 The escape of Fitzgerald’s cousin, the earl of Desmond, from crown protection in 1573 led to a resurgence in the resistance, but a campaign led by the Lord Deputy in the summer of 1574 overwhelmed the rebels again, and they finally submitted.130 After the rebellion, Lord Deputy Sidney embarked on a restructuring of the English colonial government, appointing presidents and councils for the Irish provinces (Ulster, Connacht, Leinster, and Munster). Sidney introduced a new system of rents and taxation and tried to disband the private armies of the Gaelic lords who had traditionally protected the territories, replacing them with soldiers loyal to the English government. This new system of ‘composition’ provoked widespread backlash, even in the Pale surrounding Dublin, which had historically been more or less loyal to the crown but now refused to pay for the upkeep of royal soldiers. Plantation also continued in Ulster and Munster, where the provincial presidents imposed martial law.131 Sidney’s attempts to reform the Irish government created conditions ripe for rebellion, which James Fitzgerald capitalised upon when he returned to Ireland in 1579. Elizabeth’s excommunication became central to Fitzgerald’s justification for renewing the conflict.132 Fitzgerald had fled to the continent in 1575 after his first rebellion ended unsuccessfully, and spent most of his 127 Anthony McCormack, ‘Fitzgerald, James fitz Maurice (d. 1579)’, ODNB (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004)  available from http://​www.oxforddnb.com/​view/​article/​9562 [accessed 15 Nov 2015]. 128 Ibid. 129 TNA SP 63/​32 f. 169. 130 McCormack, ‘Fitzgerald, James fitz Maurice’. See also Lennon, Sixteenth-​Century Ireland, ­chapter 8. 131 Jane Ohlmeyer, ‘Conquest, Civilization, Colonisation’, in Richard Bourke and Ian McBridge, eds., The Princeton History of Modern Ireland (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2016), 34–​36. 132 For more on the political and social origins of the rebellion see Ciarán Brady, ‘Faction and the Origins of the Desmond Rebellion’, Irish Historical Studies 22, no.  88 (1980), 289–​ 312. See also Benvenuta MacCurtain, ‘The Geraldine War –​Rebellion or Crusade?’ Irish Ecclesiastical Record 103 (1965), 148–​57.

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sojourn wandering between France, Spain, and Italy trying to obtain military and financial support for an invasion of Ireland. He found a willing listener in Pope Gregory xiii. Portraying his cause principally as a religious one, Fitzgerald claimed that he intended to free Ireland from the rule of an excommunicated and heretical queen. The pope gave him a small company of Spanish and Italian troops, along with copies of Elizabeth’s excommunication and an indulgence for Fitzgerald that could be published when they landed in Ireland, which they did at Munster in 1579.133 Fitzgerald’s declaration to the people of Ireland, which circulated in manuscript, portrayed Elizabeth’s excommunication as the inspiration for his cause: Oure holly father pope Gregorie the thirtenthe Christes vicare in earthe … perceaving also that neither the … sentence of pope Pius the fifth his praedecessor, nor the longe suffrance of god coulde cause her to forsake her [s]‌Chisme heresie and wicked attemptes: as he nowe purposeth (not withoute the consent of other Catholick potentates) to deprive her actually of the vniuste possession of these kindomes whiche shee vsethe for the cheefe instrumentes of her impietie: so he first of all attempteth her said actuall deprivation by the meanes of our deere contre.134 Fitzgerald portrayed Ireland as the first battleground in the reclamation of the British Isles for Catholicism, emphasising the honour of its being chosen for this enterprise: Seing then it is most honorable for his hollines to remedy so greate disorders as by the said Elizabeth haue bene these many yeares comitted is it not also most honorable for vs to be made the frist and cheefe instrumentes of so honnorable a reformacion. … Even so her dispossessing shalbe the quenching of the fire wherewith they haue bene soe dangerously combered these many yeares. Yf we then dispossesse her first shall not our contry of Ireland thereby obtayne the greatest glorie that ever it had since it was an Ireland? Shall not also this our glorie be accompanyed with godes honor, with libertie of conscience, with doing good to our neighbors and with enioying of our owne good, which hetherto haue bene at the vniust comaundement of heretickes.135 133 See Morgan, ‘Faith and Fatherland in Sixteenth-​Century Ireland’; McCormack, ‘Fitzgerald, James fitz Maurice’. 134 lpl Carew MS 607 f. 35. 135 Ibid.

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Fitzgerald even appealed to English Catholics across the sea, asking ‘is not the most parte of England desirous to enioy the Catholick faithe? Dothe not the martiredom of many, the prisonment of others, the voluntarie exile of moe, and the due comotions of whole states and shires declare and witnes the same? howe then can they being Catholickes fight hartely against vs whoe seek nothing soe principally as the restitucion of the Catholick faith’.136 The extent to which the wider population of Ireland embraced Fitzgerald’s religious rhetoric is less clear. Virtually all of the sources that survive from the Desmond rebellions are from an English perspective, and it can be difficult to determine how accurately the English officers and governors in Ireland read the motivations of the people they tried to subjugate.137 The correspondence of English leadership in Ireland certainly indicates that they feared religious conviction would sustain the rebellion. Based on this intelligence, Elizabeth’s government worried that the religious zeal of the Irish rebels might inspire Catholics to instigate open rebellion in England, and how these concerns shaped the crown’s military response to the rising.138 Fitzgerald died in August 1579 during a skirmish with the Burkes of Clanrickard, a month after he had returned to Ireland. The earl of Desmond and his brother Sir John Fitzgerald subsequently assumed leadership of the resistance. The justification of resistance on grounds of religion and Elizabeth’s excommunication persisted beyond James Fitzgerald’s death.139 In November 1579 William Pelham, who oversaw defence of the Pale, wrote to the Privy Council of ‘the rumors that rome emongse the Irishe that … forraine aid is dailie expected, how the Campe of the Rebelles is called the Campe of his hollines’, and ‘how the cause of the warre is the pretence of religion’.140 John Fitzgerald and the earl of Desmond continued to justify their rebellion against Elizabeth’s rule on religious grounds after their kinsman’s death. Desmond and Fitzgerald issued a joint letter to their allies at the end of November 1579 to appeal for more military support, in which they explained ‘that I and my bretherne, are entred in defence of our Catholicke faith … Wherin we are to desire yow to take parte with vs … And yf yow be afraid we should shrinke from yow after yow should enter this cause, 1 36 Ibid., f. 35b. 137 Anthony McCormack discusses the problem of sources in ‘Social and Economic Consequences of the Desmond Rebellion, 1579–​1583’, Irish Historical Studies 34, no. 133 (2004), 1. 138 Kilroy, Edmund Campion, 145–​46, 179–​84. 139 Lennon, Sixteenth-​Century Ireland, ­ chapter  8; McCormack, ‘Fitzgerald, James fitz Maurice’; see also Anthony McCormack, The Earldom of Desmond, 1463–​1583:  The Decline and Crisis of a Feudal Lordship (Dublin: Four Courts, 2005). 140 lpl Carew MS 597 f. 122.

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yow shall vnderstande that we tooke this matter in hand with greate authoretie, both from the popes hollines, and from kinge Phillipe’.141 Their appeals, combined with James Fitzgerald’s call to English Catholics, may have struck a chord with some of the English soldiers sent to the island. A proclamation issued by the Lord Justice and the Irish Privy Council in 1579 announced that ‘sondrie of the souldiours latelie sent ouer from England are come from thier Captaines, leavinge the quenes highnes service, and are purposed to escappe by sea’. Still others remained in Ireland, and ‘kepe them selves in sondrie partes of this Realme, to vse espiall vpon the occurrauntes yn the same … and also workinge of farder dysquiett and mischifes, by settinge vpp libelles in corners to seduce the simple people’.142 The Fitzgeralds’ entreaties seem to have resonated with many of the Irish living under English rule as well, or at least their governors feared they did. Some months later, the Spanish ambassador in England, Bernardino de Mendoza, wrote to Philip ii that Elizabeth continuously received sobering reports from her commanders in Ireland:  that the number of rebels increased steadily and that insurgents were moving through the country burning down any villages that recognised Elizabeth as queen.143 Similarly, the Lord Justice of Ireland wrote to Francis Walsingham in July 1580 of ‘an expectation of the popes forces which yf theie come not, do greatlie disapointe the opinion of all the Natiues here, and yf theie come, I know verie fewe, whose weapons will not be torned into our bosomes, for a setled hatered, and a generall contrairetie in Religion is setled’.144 In October 1580 the last of the troops sent into Ireland by Gregory xiii were massacred at Smerwick, on the southwest coast of Ireland. The earl of Desmond and his allies were cut off from assisting the papal forces by the earl of Ormond’s troops, and the resulting slaughter at the garrison is considered a turning point in the rebellion.145 The papacy sent no further assistance to Ireland after the disaster at Smerwick. Though the war dragged on for three more years, it progressed mostly in a series of intermittent guerrilla skirmishes, with English and rebel Irish forces committing acts of brutality against civilians and villages in their way.146 John Fitzgerald died during a raid in August 1 41 142 143 144 145

Ibid., f. 131. Ibid., f. 133b-​34. csp Simancas, vol. 3, 24. lpl Carew MS 597 f. 383-​83b. Vincent Carey, ‘Atrocity and History:  Grey, Spenser, and the Slaughter at Smerwick’, in David Edwards, Pádraig Lenihand, and Clodagh Tait, eds., Age of Atrocity: Violence and Political Conflict in Early Modern Ireland (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2007), 79–​94. 146 Lennon, Sixteenth-​Century Ireland, ­ chapter  8; McCormack, ‘Social and Economic Consequences of the Desmond Rebellion’, 1–​15.

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1582, leaving the earl of Desmond to lead what resistance survived. With little hope of obtaining a pardon from the queen, Desmond spent another year on the run before he was finally captured and killed in 1583.147 For a brief period from 1579–​80, however, the Irish rebels had been relatively united in how they represented their resistance to English rule. Fitzgerald’s efforts to rally the Irish lords under a religious cause was unprecedented in its use of ideology, and the evidence described above certainly supports this.148 There can be little doubt of the importance of the excommunication to these ideas, especially in the early 1580s. James Fitzgerald and his kinsmen believed they could garner support amongst the Irish and in Europe by portraying their rebellion as legitimate resistance to a heretical and excommunicated queen, even if this was not its sole motivation. Elizabeth’s excommunication continued to play a role in legitimising Irish resistance for the rest of her reign, and became central to the earl of Tyrone’s justification for the Nine Years’ War. English forces had laid waste to Munster during the suppression of the Desmond Rebellion in the 1580s, leaving it open to plantation by Protestant settlers. In Connacht, the provincial governor Richard Bingham embarked on a brutal campaign of martial law between 1584 and 1589, slaughtering mercenary soldiers, denying the rights of local Gaelic lords, and enforcing his rule by appointing his friends and relatives to military offices in the province. The Lord Deputy, Sir John Perrot, continued efforts begun by his predecessors to reorganise Ireland according to England’s system of shires, appointing sheriffs, bailiffs, and constables who used their positions to extort food, lodging, and rents from the locals. In Ulster, Perrot’s successor executed two Gaelic lords for treason against Elizabeth and divided their lands amongst new freeholders.149 In the midst of these abuses, Hugh O’Neill had assumed the lordship of Tyrone in 1585 and consolidated power with most of the other lords of Ulster. When his son-​in-​law Hugh Maguire rebelled against the sheriff of Fermanagh in the south of Ulster in 1593, O’Neill refused the Privy Council’s orders to suppress the revolt. In 1594, O’Neill’s alliance of Ulster lords joined forces with rebel lords from the province of Leinster to the south, moving into open war against the crown.150 147 John McGurk, ‘Fitzgerald, Gerald fitz James, fourteenth earl of Desmond (c.1533–​ 1583)’,  ODNB (Oxford:  Oxford University Press, 2004), available from http://​www. oxforddnb.com/​view/​article/​9556 [accessed 28 June 2016]. 148 Morgan, ‘Faith and Fatherland’. 149 Hiram Morgan, Tyrone’s Rebellion: Hugh O’Neill and the Nine Years’ War in Tudor Ireland (Woodbridge: Boydell, 1993), 16–​54. 150 Ibid. 139–​66. See also Darren McGettigan, Red Hugh O’Donnell and the Nine Years’ War (Dublin: Four Courts, 2005).

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Like James Fitzgerald, Hugh O’Neill invoked Elizabeth’s excommunication to validate the conflict.151 In a 1599 proclamation written to the Anglo-​Irish Catholics he pointed to contemporary events in France, where Catholic-​led revolts had eventually persuaded the Protestant Henri iv to seek absolution from his own excommunication, convert to Roman Catholicism and submit to the pope.152 Reports of the fighting throughout the war suggest that invoking the bull of Pius v and threats of excommunication could be effective in persuading people to support the earl, or at least in keeping them from assisting Elizabeth’s troops. In 1594 at the outbreak of the conflict, Privy Councillor Robert Cecil received a report from Ireland describing how the rebels denounced ‘all such as observe her Majesty’s laws [to be] excommunicated and in estate of perdition’.153 The use of this threat became more frequent from the late 1590s. In August 1598 O’Neill and his allies delivered a crushing defeat to crown forces at the Battle of the Yellow Ford, cementing their control over three major provinces in Ireland: Ulster, Connacht, and Leinster. Shortly afterwards they sent raiding parties into Munster, where Irish inhabitants who had been dispossessed by English settlers quickly joined the revolt. The tactics O’Neill’s men used to persuade people to join the rebellion point to how effective the papal deposition could be in instigating resistance. Writing from Munster in October 1598, William Weever described how ‘there was a Primate latelie come from the Pope … whoe had brought a Bull, Pardoninge all people both in Towne and Cuntrie, that had healde for her Maiestie and woulde receaue and acknowledge ONeale for their kinge and such as woulde not to be excommunicate and reputed for Heretiques and Dogges, and that it shoulde be lawfull to kill them’.154 Sir Thomas Norris reported to the Privy Council in December that ‘there is come vnto them certeine Preestes … taking vpon them great authoritie from the Pope, wherwith they haue incited the whole Province to ioyne in this acc[i]‌on, hauinge … proclaymed in the contrey, the Bull of Pope Pius Quintus, and the like wold they haue don in the Townes, yf theis forces had not at this instant landed’.155 Norris expressed uncertainty about how the Irish would react, ‘for that the Townesmen generally shew themeselues greatly fallen from their duties, and affection to her Maiesty’.156 151 On O’Neill’s religious intentions see Thomas O’Connor, ‘Hugh O’Neill:  Free Spirit, Religious Chameleon, or Ardent Catholic?’ in Hiram Morgan, ed., The Battle of Kinsale (Bray: Wordwell Press, 2004), 59–​72. 152 See TNA SP 63/​207/​6 f. 338 for a summary and response to this document. 153 cms Salisbury, vol. 4, 564–​65. 154 TNA SP 63/​202/​3 f. 278. 155 TNA SP 63/​202/​4 f. 20. 156 Ibid.

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As with the first Desmond rebellion, it can be difficult to discern how many of the Anglo-​and Gaelic Irish accepted the religious ideology Tyrone encouraged. The sources surviving from the war, as with earlier rebellions, are overwhelmingly from the perspective of English officers and administrators.157 Publicly, Tyrone portrayed the cause of religion as the principal motivation for the war. In a list of twenty-​two demands drawn up by Hugh O’Neill and presented to the crown in 1599, the first article required ‘that the Catholike apostolike and Romaine religion be openly preached and taught through out all Ireland … by Bisshops, seminari preistes, Iesuits, and all other religious men’. The second article demanded ‘that the Churche of Ireland be wholy governed by the pope’.158 Yet the role of Elizabeth’s excommunication, and the threat of excommunication against reluctant rebels, is pronounced in correspondence that survives from the war. At the beginning of June 1600 the Irish Secretary of State Sir Geoffrey Fenton grimly observed that ‘in theis incursions I noate this one thinge specially, that though both tyrone and all the Iesuittes had prepared the harts of the pale beforehand, by the denunciacion of a popish Bull, which they had strongely settled in the hartes of the people, yet in th’execucions of their burnings, and other rages, they haue made no difference between one and an other’. Fenton hoped that ‘by this tyrannyzinge, the subiects of the pale will better bethinke them selues, both [on] the point of religion, and their loyalty to their prince, when they see that sowre effects follow the sweet disembled promises, and offers made by the bull’.159 In Limerick, however, the opinions of the inhabitants appeared different. In the same month Sir George Carew complained about ‘how obstinattlye the traytors in this realme are ledd by the perswasion of the priestes agaynst her Maiestie and her government, in so muche as many of them which are weary of Rebellion and fayne woulld be subiects, yet darne not for feare of a bull of excommunication latelye brought into this land from Rome, which threatens damnation to all those thatt do euen submitt themselues vnto her Maiestie’.160 The promulgation of Elizabeth’s excommunication by seminary priests also played a part in spurring resistance. An anonymous letter written to Robert

157 See Hiram Morgan, ‘Policy and Propaganda in Hugh O’Neill’s Connection with Europe’, in Mary Ann Lyons and Thomas O’Connor, eds., The Ulster Earls and Baroque Europe: Refashioning Irish Identities 1600–​1800 (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2010), 18–​52. 158 TNA SP 63/​206 f. 152. 159 TNA SP 63/​207/​3 f.  185. See Vincent Carey, ‘ “As lief to the gallows as go to the Irish wars”: Human Rights and the Abuse of the Elizabethan Soldier in Ireland, 1600–​1603’, History 99, no. 336 (2014), 468–​86. 160 TNA SP 63/​207/​3 f. 290.

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Cecil at the end of 1600 lamented the role of the English colleges, especially Douai, in using the bull to encourage resistance, noting that ‘Harry Fitzsymons now a prisoner in dublin who soe gallantly mayntaynes the bull of Pius Quintus agaynst hir maiesty hathe spent a great part of his tyme in that house and receaued part of his education ther, and his spleene against the state was grafte into him onely ther’.161 The religious intonations of the Nine Years’ War and the importance of Elizabeth’s excommunication to the conflict persisted in strength. Sir George Carew bleakly explained to the Privy Council in 1601 that ‘the best I can expecte is newtralletie’ from the inhabitants of Ulster and Connacht, ‘for against the Catholique cause they are nether willinge nor yet dare for feare of Excommunication, be Actors’.162 Ultimately O’Neill did not sustain his successes as the war entered the seventeenth century. Both Irish and crown forces destroyed harvests and seized livestock wherever they went, resulting in widespread famine that had begun to undermine the rebellion in Munster and Ulster by 1600.163 Philip iii of Spain (whose father, Philip ii, had died in 1598) sent a fleet of ships and troops to Kinsale off the southwest coast, to assist O’Neill and his son-​in-​law Hugh O’Donnell in 1601, but Elizabeth’s new Lord Deputy, Charles Blount (Baron Mountjoy), managed to cut off the Spanish from O’Neill and his allies, routing the Irish forces with a cavalry charge at the Battle of Kinsale.164 O’Donnell fled to Spain, where he died in Simancas a year later, and O’Neill retreated back to Ulster. Infighting broke out between the Irish lords who began seeking pardons and accommodations with the English, and those who held out hope for further reinforcements from Spain. At the end of March 1603, nearly a week after Elizabeth died, O’Neill finally agreed to a truce with Mountjoy, promising to renounce any allegiance to foreign princes in exchange for a pardon and liberty.165 The Irish rebels who held out against the crown continued to use Elizabeth’s excommunication to justify their position up to the end of the war. In 1603 Sir George Carew was still reporting on activities in Ireland that appeared to be inspired by Regnans in Excelsis. He wrote to Robert Cecil to tell him that he had intercepted a letter written to the pope by the Irish rebels, in which they

1 61 TNA SP 12/​275 f. 200. 162 TNA SP 63/​208/​1 f. 0011. 163 Vincent Carey, ‘ “What Pen Can Pain or Tears Atone?” Mountjoy’s Scorched Earth Campaign’, in Hiram Morgan, ed., The Battle of Kinsale (Bray: Wordwell, 2001), 205–​16. 164 Hiram Morgan, ‘Disaster of Kinsale’, in idem, Battle of Kinsale, 101–​46. 165 John McCavitt, ‘The Flight of the Earls 1607’, Irish Historical Studies 29, no. 114 (1994), 159–​73.

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requested ‘that the Pope will renew the Bulle of Excommunication against the queen, as Pius Quintus dyd, and Gregory 13’.166 To the end of the war, English soldiers and commanders in Ireland clearly read the conflict as a struggle between opposing religious views. Yet this dimension of Irish resistance during Elizabeth’s reign has often been passed over or characterised as a cover for other political and economic concerns that helped provoke the unrest. Hiram Morgan has argued that Tyrone’s religious ideology did not resonate widely amongst the Irish people because it failed to unite the feuding clans and families, but if contemporary witnesses of resistance in Ireland observed its religious inspiration, we should not discount their significance because the war had other underlying causes.167 However important local disputes over land and influence may have been to the conflicts in Elizabethan Ireland, religion figured just as prominently in contemporary accounts as an impetus for ­resistance. Although the English Catholic community as a whole never mounted any widespread, armed resistance to the queen as a result of her excommunication, their resistance to her rule of law in other ways after 1570 assumed new political significance whether they wished it to or not. Cases of seditious speech, changes in opinion about the queen’s right to rule, the use and circulation of prohibited sacred objects, and occasional instances of aggression against crown officials all point to ways in which it was possible to resist the regime without resorting to open rebellion. That being said, it was perfectly possible to serve the government in one capacity and express one’s dissent from royal policies in another. Members of prominent Catholic families such as the Brownes (Sussex), the Petres (Essex), and the Ardens (Warwickshire), to name a few, served the Elizabethan regime as local officeholders, acting as sheriffs, commissioners and justices of the peace, and members of parliament.168 Yet all of these families included well-​known recusants; the Petres were known to harbour Jesuits, and members of the Browne and Arden families were connected to plots against the queen. The variation with which Catholics expressed their dissent from Elizabeth’s laws indicates that they did not simply try to ignore Regnans in Excelsis. Rather, they exploited the broad language of the papal rulings against Elizabeth to find ways of subverting the queen’s laws that suited 1 66 TNA SP 63/​212 f. 294. 167 Morgan, ‘Faith and Fatherland’; idem, The Nine Years’ War. 168 Questier, Catholicism and Community; James Kelly, ‘Counties Without Borders? Religious Politics, Kinship Networks and the Formation of Catholic Communities’, Historical Research 91, no. 251 (2018), 22–​38; Cathryn Enis, ‘Edward Arden and the Dudley Earls of Warwick and Leicester’, British Catholic History 33, no. 2 (2016), 170–​210.

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their own particular circumstances. There can be little doubt that Regnans in Excelsis inspired nearly as many different understandings of subversion and resistance as there were Catholics living in England. In Ireland, on the other hand, the use of Elizabeth’s excommunication to justify rebellion against English rule shows that it was possible for Regnans in Excelsis to instigate violence against the government. It was for this reason that the Privy Council sent regular instructions to the ports in the west of England to keep watch for anyone coming into the country from Ireland, as well as for anyone trying to flee to Ireland. There was always a danger that religious violence would spill over into England from its Catholic neighbour, or so the government feared.169 In the Irish context, multiple factors can explain why violent, religiously justified resistance became more prevalent during Elizabeth’s reign than it did in England. The stark differences between Gaelic laws and customs and the English legal models that Elizabeth’s deputies in Ireland tried to impose, combined with the brutal tactics and frequent corruption of English officers, created longstanding resentment against colonial rule. After the Reformation in England, religious differences added to this resentment, and in these circumstances it is perhaps easy to see how Regnans in Excelsis might be invoked to cast off what was seen as the tyranny of a heretical queen. This challenges the idea that religion did not figure prominently in justifications for resistance in Ireland, or become strongly linked to notions of political identity, until the seventeenth century.170 Given the excommunication’s relatively central role in encouraging Irish resistance, a much fuller picture of the bull’s ability to inspire all kinds of violent and nonviolent resistance emerges when its consequences in the two kingdoms are considered together. 1 69 Kilroy, Edmund Campion, 179–​84. 170 See for instance Tadhg Ó’Hannracháin, ‘ “Though hereticks and politicians should misinterpret their good zeale”: Political Ideology and Catholicism in Early Modern Ireland’, in Jane Ohlmeyer, ed., Political Thought in Seventeenth Century Ireland (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 155–​75; Jane Ohlmeyer, Making Ireland English:  The Irish Aristocracy in the Seventeenth Century (New Haven:  Yale University Press, 2012); Colm Donnelly, ‘The I.H.S. Monogram as a Symbol of Catholic Resistance in Seventeenth Century Ireland’, International Journal of Historical Archaeology 9, no. 1 (2005), 37–​42.

Conclusion In 1713, the London-​based printer John Baker produced a short pamphlet entitled A Protestant Memorial for the Seventeenth of November, Being the Inauguration-​Day of Queen Elizabeth. Baker printed the pamphlet in response to the Roman Catholic Church’s canonisation of Pope Pius v, which was undertaken by Pope Clement xi in 1713. The pamphlet consisted principally of the reprinted Latin text of Regnans in Excelsis, alongside an English translation of the bull: the English translation of the sentence is on the left-​sided pages, with the original Latin on the right-​sided pages, so that the reader can observe them together. In the introduction, the anonymous author provided a short history of Elizabeth’s reign. They described how ‘Great and many, were the Felicities of that Reign, though sometimes they were interrupted by Seditions, occasion’d chiefly by the Popish Party, who were often forming Projects against the stability of her Times’, and how in one such case, Pius v ‘did, at last, adventure to issue forth a declaratory Bull against Her, and all Her Adherents’.1 The author observed with indignation that ‘This declaratory Bull, or Sentence of Condemnation … was issu’d without any Authority, out of the plenitude of the Pope’s Usurped and Tyrannical Power’ and that it was therefore ‘pass’d without the common Forms of Justice, used by most Nations of the World’.2 Despite these obstacles, the author declared that ‘This Thunder of Pope Pius, was render’d harmless and ineffectual by the Blessing of Heaven’, and Elizabeth ‘went on prosperously as a Nursing Mother, in Methods conducing to the common good of Church and State’.3 It was for this reason, the author explained, ‘in a grateful Remembrance of God’s Mercy’, that ‘the good Protestants of the Nation … have annually taken notice (and not without some degree of decent and orderly solemnity) of the 17th of November, being the Day on which Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth began Her happy Reign’.4 At the time in which the author wrote, the annual commemoration of Elizabeth’s accession day ‘seems to me not only warranted by

1 Houghton Library *EC7.A100.713p, A Protestant Memorial for the Seventeenth of November, Being the Inauguration-​Day of Queen Elizabeth (London: John Baker, 1713), 6. 2 Ibid., 6–​7. 3 Ibid., 7. These kinds of providential narratives frequently appeared in English Protestant polemics. See Alexandra Walsham, Providence in Early Modern England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 225–​80. 4 Ibid. David Cressy has discussed the continuity of celebrations of Elizabeth’s accession day well into the reigns of her Stuart successors. See Cressy, Bonfires and Bells: National Memory

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2020 | DOI:10.1163/9789004426009_008

186 Conclusion former Motives, but also enforc’d’ by the recent canonisation of ‘the formention’d Enemy of England, Pope Pius the Fifth’.5 The author exhorted all good English Protestants to ‘exert their Zeal, now, and at all Times … against the evil Spirit of Popery, which was cast out at the Reformation, but has ever since wander’d about, seeking for a Re-​admittance’, for if ‘One Pope Anathematiz’d Queen Elizabeth, another may Queen Ann’.6 The author therefore presented Regnans in Excelsis and its English translation as a reminder of the pope’s ‘diabolical Pride and Malignity’, adding that anyone who failed to discern these motives ‘deserves not the Name either of an Englishman, or of a Son of our Establish’d Church’.7 More than a century after Elizabeth’s reign, the memory of her excommunication and deposition by the papacy clearly struck a raw nerve with whoever wrote the Protestant Memorial. That the canonisation of Pius v could evoke such strong feelings amongst English Protestants after so many years is a testament to how profoundly the excommunication affected the politics of religion in England and Ireland. What is particularly striking about this pamphlet is the author’s pronouncement that anyone who could be ‘so blind, as not to discern the diabolical Pride and Malignity’ of Regnans in Excelsis did not deserve to call themselves English. This statement speaks to the hardening of confessional and patriotic identities to which the excommunication contributed in England, particularly the conflation of Protestantism with patriotism. The publication of the Protestant Memorial in 1713 and the circumstances that inspired its production touch upon many of the themes this book has considered. The papal excommunication and deposition of Elizabeth dramatically affected English and Irish politics, and the responses of Elizabeth’s subjects were more varied and complex than has previously been considered. The papal sentence became common knowledge in England and Ireland after its publication, with information about the bull circulating widely amongst both Catholics and Protestants throughout Elizabeth’s reign. This circulation through print, manuscript, and oral communication indicates a high level of interest and concern about the sentence amongst those living in Elizabeth’s kingdoms, disproving any lingering assumptions that few people would have heard of it. Furthermore, missionary priests played a critical role in communicating and and the Protestant Calendar in Tudor and Stuart England (London: Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 1989). 5 Protestant Memorial, 7–​8. 6 Ibid., 9. 7 Ibid., 21.

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explaining the implications of the sentence to Catholics. The first Jesuit mission not only prompted the confirmation of Regnans in Excelsis by Gregory xiii in 1580, it also influenced thinking on the forms of resistance and obedience in which Catholics could participate. The 1580 confirmation and mitigation of Regnans in Excelsis did not settle questions about the obligations of Catholics to resist the queen. On the contrary, it revived discussion of the sentence as well as wider debates about the papal deposing power, sparking new interest in how the excommunication affected Catholic devotional practices and involvement in politics. With this in mind, I would argue that the confirmation of Regnans in Excelsis in 1580 had more serious consequences in England and Ireland with respect to Catholic resistance, Protestant anxiety, and England’s position in Europe than did the bull of 1570. The effects of Pius V’s sentence were not all immediate, and may not have been quite what the pope originally envisioned. Still, the confirmation and renewal of Elizabeth’s excommunication points to its long-​term relevance to England’s foreign policy as well as domestic circumstances. English and Irish Catholic responses to Elizabeth’s excommunication were also more varied than have conventionally been depicted. The excommunication inspired many forms of resistance in England, ranging from seditious speech to the circulation of sacred objects. While this may be due in part to the violent legacy of the Northern Rebellion, the ambiguity of the language in Regnans in Excelsis regarding disobedience, and of the subsequent ruling on the bull in 1580, meant that Catholics could find ways of subverting the queen’s laws without resorting to violence. Furthermore, the bull’s use in Ireland to justify violent resistance to Elizabeth’s rule throughout the 1580s and 1590s indicates the necessity of looking to other parts of the British Isles in order to fully appreciate the consequences of Regnans in Excelsis. The diversity of forms of religious resistance the bull spurred in England, when coupled with the extent of religious resistance in Ireland, indicates a remarkable level of political subversion amongst Catholics in Elizabeth’s kingdoms across social strata. This engagement is also reflected in the English Catholic polemics that circulated in print and manuscript after 1570 that engaged Protestants in debate about the excommunication. Far from avoiding the subject, leading English Catholic polemicists defended Elizabeth’s excommunication using biblical and historical precedent, while others used it to gain political advantages over different Catholic factions in negotiations with the Protestant regime. This evidence places the political agency of Catholics in England in a new light. Studies of networks organised around kinship and patronage have demonstrated that Catholics actively participated in ‘mainstream’ political

188 Conclusion service to English Protestant regimes, focusing on the involvement of the gentry and aristocracy in activities such as officeholding and local government.8 Activities such as seditious speech, transmitting the bull, and circulating or using outlawed devotional objects illuminate how Catholics across a wide social spectrum engaged in politically charged activities, some of which were quite subversive. Political historians such as Neil Younger have begun to look more closely at the religious leanings of those who served the Elizabethan regime in official posts, positing that several members of the queen’s council held more conservative religious views and sympathies at different points in her reign.9 While it is probably true that most English Catholics had little interest in actively trying to overthrow Elizabeth, the forms of obedience and respect they were willing to show her did have limits. It was entirely possible for a Catholic to serve the crown in one way and disobey it in another, sometimes in rather bold ways; recent work on the political, religious, and family networks of Catholics in post-​Reformation England continues to demonstrate this.10 This kind of delicate balance between selective obedience and subversion could be considered in compliance with the papal command for disobedience that appeared in Regnans in Excelsis, depending on how one chose to interpret that particular clause. The scale of discourse and persistent efforts to transmit the sentence amongst Catholics places this balancing act in a different perspective. The bull compelled Catholics to rethink their relationship to the Elizabethan regime and to the queen herself, but the government’s response to the excommunication through the passage of increasingly restrictive laws against Catholicism was equally if not more important in forcing this alteration. In 8

9 10

As in the work of Michael Questier, Cathryn Enis, James Kelly, Francis Young, Carys Brown, and others on particular Catholic families. See for instance Cathryn Enis, ‘Edward Arden and the Dudley Earls of Warwick and Leicester, c. 1572–​1583’, British Catholic History 33, no. 2 (2016), 170–​210; James Kelly, ‘Counties Without Borders? Religious Politics, Kinship Networks and the Formation of Catholic Communities’, Historical Research 91, no.  251 (2018), 22–​38; Francis Young, The Gages of Hengrave and Suffolk Catholicism, 1640–​1767 (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2015); Carys Brown, ‘Militant Catholicism, Interconfessional Relations, and the Rookwood Family of Stanningfield, Suffolk, ca. 1689–​1737’, Historical Journal 60, no. 1 (2017), 21–​45. Neil Younger, ‘How Protestant Was the Elizabethan Regime?’ English Historical Review 133 no. 564 (2018), 1060–​92. See for instance Katie McKeogh’s recent dissertation, ‘Sir Thomas Tresham and Early Modern Catholic Culture and Identity, 1580–​1610’ (DPhil Thesis, University of Oxford, 2018); James Kelly, ‘Conformity, Loyalty and the Jesuit Mission to England of 1580’, in Eliane Glaser, ed., Religious Tolerance in the Atlantic World: Early Modern and Contemporary Perspectives (Basingstoke:  Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), 149–​70; Claire Reid, ‘Anthony Copley and the Politics of Catholic Loyalty, 1590–​1604’, Sixteenth Century Journal 43, no. 2 (2012), 393–​416.

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this context, activities such as recusancy, the circulation of sacred objects, and seditious speech became much more politically charged, and to carry on with these activities in spite of the new penalties signified at least some acceptance of the subversive connotations now ascribed to them. Missionary priests have appeared in every chapter of this book, participating in the circulation of Regnans in Excelsis, debating how best to interpret the sentence and explain it to Catholics, encouraging resistance to anti-​Catholic laws, and engaging Protestant polemicists in debate about the legitimacy of the queen’s excommunication. The excommunication certainly played a more central role in the English missions than has previously been recognised, though the ways in which missionaries encouraged adherence to the papal sentence varied. It influenced the way they interacted with members of the Elizabethan government and the ways in which priests ministered to Catholics in England. It may also have influenced the kinds of religious resistance that the missionaries encouraged. The distribution and circulation of sacred objects and copies of the excommunication in England, for instance, could not have occurred on the scale that they did without the missionaries’ assistance. Scholars of the missions have become increasingly sensitive to the diverse ways in which missionary priests engaged in the politics of the early modern British Isles.11 The importance of Regnans in Excelsis to the planning of the Jesuit mission, and its subsequent influence on how all missionary priests dealt with matters ranging from the administration of sacraments to civic service, indicates that the political consequences of practising Catholicism were a major concern in the missions from an early stage. Another important dimension has been the international context of Elizabeth’s excommunication and its role in English foreign policy. The repeated appearance of the excommunication in diplomatic exchanges with France, the 11 See for instance Hannah Thomas, ‘The Society of Jesus in Wales, ca. 1600–​ 1679:  Rediscovering the Cwm Jesuit Library at Hereford Cathedral’, Journal of Jesuit Studies 1, no.  4 (2014), 572–​88; Jason Harris, ‘The Irish Franciscan Mission to the Highlands and Islands’, in David Edwards and Simon Egan, eds., The Scots in Early Stuart Ireland:  Union and Separation in Two Kingdoms (Manchester:  Manchester University Press, 2016), 203–​29; James Kelly, ‘Panic, Plots, and Polemic: The Jesuits and the Early Modern English Mission’, Journal of Jesuit Studies 1, no. 4 (2014), 511–​19; Lisa McClain, ‘On a Mission:  Jesuits, “Jesuitresses”, and Catholic Missionary Efforts in Tudor-​Stuart England’, Catholic Historical Review 101, no.  3 (2015), 437–​62; Raymond Gillespie, ‘The Irish Franciscans, 1600–​1700’, in Edel Bhreathnach, Joseph MacMahon, and John MacCafferty, eds., The Irish Franciscans, 1534–​1990 (Dublin: Four Courts, 2009), 45–​ 76; Tadhg Ó’ Hannracháin, ‘Irish Diplomatic Missions to Rome During the 1640s’, in Thomas O’Connor and Mary Ann Lyons, eds., Irish Communities in Early Modern Europe (Dublin: Four Courts, 2006), 395–​408.

190 Conclusion Holy Roman Empire, and Spain helps to explain why the papal bull provoked so much concern amongst Elizabeth’s ministers and her Protestant subjects. Correspondence between French and Spanish envoys, English Catholics abroad, and papal agents also indicates that these concerns had substantive foundations. Philip ii was perfectly willing to wage war on England upon religious grounds if and when he had the resources to do so successfully. Elizabeth’s escape from war with Spain in the immediate aftermath of her excommunication may have had more to do with contingency than any tacit disapproval of the king for the pope’s actions. In France, the Catholic League and its allies invoked Elizabeth’s excommunication to justify their own invasion schemes on occasion, and to strain relations between English ambassadors and royal officials at the French court. Protestant allies in the Low Countries and German principalities also tried to use the sentence to their advantage, playing up the need for stronger alliances with England and assistance against Catholic militancy. As with the excommunication’s role in Ireland, its ramifications for England’s relationships with its European neighbours demonstrate the importance of examining religious conflicts in their wider contexts. In domestic politics, English Protestants and politicians found ways to use Regnans in Excelsis for strategic advantage. Members of parliament referred to the bull in speeches to amplify perceptions of Catholic threats and persuade their colleagues to pass more aggressive legislation for the kingdom’s defence. Some of Elizabeth’s ministers played up the threat the bull posed to the realm’s security during her various marriage negotiations, albeit unsuccessfully, in hopes of persuading the queen to accept an alliance. Occasionally, Elizabeth herself used the bull to achieve her ends in diplomatic manoeuvres, dangling the possibility that she might seek reconciliation with the pope to keep Mary Stuart and her supporters in check. In polemical discourse, Protestant writers portrayed the bull as an object worthy of scorn, using humour to disparage the excommunication and the papacy in order to convince the public that it was nothing to worry about. When attacks on the bull in public discourse are considered in tandem with the level of concern government officials expressed about it in correspondence, they appear more as efforts to dispel anxiety than genuine comedy. The paranoia which has been described as the origin of wider anti-​Catholic sentiment and policy in England was not without foundation:  the ramifications of the bull in English foreign affairs indicate that the threats posed by the excommunication were not all unfolding from the desks of Elizabeth’s privy councillors.12 The extent and extremity of these concerns point to deep-​seated 12

Peter Lake in particular has outlined what he deems a ‘politique mode and paranoid style’ in the anti-​Catholic polemics published during Elizabeth’s reign. See Lake, Bad Queen

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insecurities amongst Protestants in the Elizabethan political establishment about the stability of their influence and power. The excommunication uncomfortably illuminated the limitations of the Elizabethan regime’s ability to quell dissent and impose religious uniformity. The root of various attempts to secure the safety and influence of Protestant elites during Elizabeth’s reign, such as the Bond of Association and the eventual execution of Mary Queen of Scots, lay in the Catholic threats which they understood as originating with the papacy and Regnans in Excelsis.13 These fears about the safety and longevity of the Protestant establishment in government and the English Church, real or imagined, had substantial legal and social consequences for English Catholics for hundreds of years after Elizabeth’s death. The excommunication of Elizabeth lay at the heart of many restrictions placed on Catholics in England, which became entrenched in law until the nineteenth century: in addition to the treason laws and stiff recusancy fines, Catholics were also barred from holding public office and attending university.14 To be sure, after Elizabeth’s death the Protestant establishment found other ways of justifying the legal penalties; the Gunpowder and Popish Plots provided just as much impetus for anti-​Catholic legislation. The roots of this movement, however, lay in 1570 and the pronouncement of Regnans in Excelsis. Finally, the responses to Queen Elizabeth’s excommunication from the Roman Catholic Church point to the continued importance of excommunication as a form of political and spiritual censure in the early modern period. The medieval legacy of excommunication from the Catholic Church, especially when pronounced against monarchs, has often been characterised as one of abuse and misuse, such that little respect or fear for this punishment remained in the sixteenth century.15 Yet the aftermath of Elizabeth’s excommunication

13 14 15

Bess? Libels, Secret Histories, and the Politics of Publicity in the Reign of Queen Elizabeth I (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016). Ibid., 155–​77; Patrick Collinson, ‘The Monarchical Republic of Queen Elizabeth I’, in idem, Elizabethan Essays (London: Hambledon Press, 1994), 31–​57. See 13 Eliz. I c. 2, 23 Eliz. I c. 50, 3 Jac. I c. 4. See for instance F. Donald Logan, Excommunication and the Secular Arm in in Medieval England (Toronto:  Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, 1968); Elisabeth Vodola, Excommunication in the Middle Ages (Berkeley:  University of California Press, 1986); Richard Helmholz, ‘Excommunication in Twelfth Century England’, Journal of Law and Religion 11, no.  1 (1994), 235–​ 53; Jay Gundacker, ‘Absolutions and Acts of Disobedience:  Excommunication and Society in Fourteenth-​Century Armagh’, Traditio 64, no.  1 (2009), 183–​212; Brian Pavlac, ‘Excommunication and Territorial Politics in High Medieval Trier’, Church History 60, no. 1 (1991), 20–​36.

192 Conclusion demonstrates that papal excommunication of rulers could still cause concern in this period, whether or not the monarch was Roman Catholic. Indeed, the late-​sixteenth century papacy seems to have revived the practice as part of its strategy to counter the gains of Protestant movements and their influence in Europe.16 This suggests that the excommunication of monarchs could still exert significant religious and political effects upon rulers and their subjects. Elizabeth’s excommunication was a far cry from the ‘vaine cracke of words’ which William Camden dismissed it as in his biography of the queen.17 Its role in encouraging an increasingly volatile political and confessional climate in England and Ireland after 1570 demonstrates that it deserves a more prominent place in the history of the post-​Reformation British Isles. 16

17

As can be seen in the excommunications of other rulers in the late sixteenth century, including Henri of Navarre and the Prince-​Archbishop of Cologne. See Mack Holt, The French Wars of Religion, 1562–​1629 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 133; Robert Scribner, ‘Why Was There No Reformation in Cologne?’ Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research 49 (1976), 217–​41. William Camden, The historie of the most renowned and victorious Princesse Elizabeth (London: Benjamin Fisher, 1630), Book ii, 10.

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194 Bibliography Sotheby’s Elizabeth i to Charles Howard, 1 September 1570. Letter from the papers of the duke of Northumberland, sold at auction by Sotheby’s 15 July 2014. Sale no. L14404, lot 403. Available from http://​www.sothebys.com/​en/​auctions/​ecatalogue/​2014/​english-​literature-​ history-​childrens-​books-​illustrations-​l14404/​lot.403.html [accessed 30 April 2018]. Westminster Diocesan Archives MS A/​2/​2/​3 (Account of John Felton’s life and execution) MS A2/​32 Oxford Bodleian Library Douce Prints a.48 Rome Archivio Segreto Vaticano Conc. Trid., vol. 68 Misc. Arm. II no. 67 Misc. Arm. II no. 84 Misc. Arm. II no. 100 Segri. di Stato, Francia Segr. di Stato, Polonia Segr. di Stato, Spagna Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana Urb.lat.1041 Washington, DC Folger Library MS G.b.5



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Index Agnus Dei 42n.3, 162–​168 Banned by parliament 41–​42 Mockery in Protestant literature 91–​92 Alba, Duke of (Fernando Álvarez de Toledo) 25–​26, 119, 123, 149 Arrest of English subjects ​49 Circulation of Regnans in Excelsis 46, 58 Alcazar, battle of 152 Allen, William 73, 134, 142–​143 Authorship of Declaration Against Elizabeth 68–​70 Cases of conscience 60 Defence of English Catholics 80–​82 Support for Jesuit mission 58 Support for Spanish armada 138–​140, 142–​143 Ambrose, bishop of Milan (St) 78, 81 Appellant Controversy 5, 83–​85, 111–​112 Appeals for toleration 144–​145 Avignon Papacy 3, 96 Babington, Anthony 169 Book collection 166 Execution 168–​169 Rosary 168–​169 Babington Plot 71, 138 Bacon, Francis 71 Bacon, Nicholas 121–​123 Ballads 87–​88, 90 Barnes, Richard, bishop of Carlisle  Reports on Lancashire resistance 55–​56, 157–​158, 170–​171 Barram, Elizabeth 168 Beale, Robert 134 Blount, Charles, Baron Mountjoy 182 Boleyn, Anne 3 Bond of Association 4, 134–​135, 191 Boniface viii, pope  Conflict with Philip iv 3, 74–​75, 94, 96 Borromeo, Charles 20, 22 Bourbon, Henri, King of Navarre  See Henri iv, King of France Bristow, Richard 76

Brome, Elinor 168 Brome family  Sacred objects 165–​166 Brooke, Henry, Lord Cobham  Ambassador to Holy Roman Empire  49, 120 Ambassador to France 57–​58, 61, 128–​129, 131, 133–​134 Browne, Anthony, Viscount Montague  Links to Ridolfi conspirators 156–​158, 183–​184 Warning to parliament 45–​46 Browne, Mary 156–​158 Bullinger, Heinrich  Confutation of the Popes Bull 93–​94, 104–​106 Reception 104–​107 Importance to English Reformation  103–​104 Bulls, papal  Banning of in England 41–​42, 70–​71, 85, 120–​121 In Coena Domini 31–​32, 82 Laudabiliter 174 Mockery of 88–​90, 92–​93, 97–​98 Publication by the papacy 41, 47 Translations 66–​67, 70 Campion, Edmund 92, 107–​108, 113, 140, 166 Agnus Dei gift 164 Execution, responses to 73, 97, 108–​109 Meeting with Gregory xiii 37–​38 Mission to England 59, 76 Views of Regnans in Excelsis 34–​35, 38–​39, 64, 77–​78 Carew, George  Career in Ireland 13 Reports on Nine Years’ War 72, 181–​183 Casuistry 60–​61, 161–​162, 171 Catholic League 57, 97, 132, 136–​137, 141, 190 Cecil, Robert 111, 144, 180, 182–​183

236 Index Cecil, William, Lord Burghley 6, 42, 122–​123 Articles against Mary Queen of Scots 125–​126 Correspondence from English Catholics 152–​158 Execution of Justice 80–​81, 97–​100 Intelligence gathering 57–​58, 68, 71–​72, 126, 135–​136, 142–​143, 155–​156, 159–​160, 169–​171 Parliamentary activity 18, 89–​90 Charke, William 91–​92, 107 Charles ix, King of France 27–​28, 48, 50, 122 Relations with Mary Queen of Scots 48 Coke, Edward 144 Cologne Wars  Abdication of archbishop 135–​136 Excommunication of archbishop 135–​136 Financing by papacy 135–​136 Copley, Anthony  Appellant writings 83 Copley, Thomas 152–​156 Council of Trent 2, 21 Debate to excommunicate Elizabeth 4, 20–​24, 28 Declaration Against Elizabeth 42, 68, 111, 139–​140, 160–​161 Similarities to Regnans in Excelsis 69–​71 Desmond Rebellion, 1569–​74 14–​15, 50 Colonisation 174 Fighting 174–​175 Religious grounds 174 Desmond Rebellion, 1579–​83 14–​15 Composition, opposition to 174–​176 Martial law 174–​175 Popular support for 177–​178 Repercussions in England 60 Smerwick, siege of 178–​179 Use of Regnans in Excelsis 65–​66, 142, 175–​177 Dormer, Jane, duchess of Feria 127 Dutch Revolt  See Eighty Years’ War Eighty Years’ War 2, 28, 57, 119, Assassination of William of Orange 137 Assistance from England 126, 137 Blockade of Spanish ships 117–​118 Parma campaign 137

Elizabeth i, Queen of England  Advice to James vi 132–​133 Baptism 22–​23 Crimes against the Catholic Church accused of 25–​26, 30–​31 Expulsion of Spanish ambassador 133–​134 First Anjou marriage plan 121–​123 Parentage and the Catholic Church 22–​23 Personal views of Regnans in Excelsis 116–​117 Second Anjou marriage plan 57, 129–​130 Trial in Rome 25–​26 Englefield, Francis 127, 149–​151 English Catholics  Communication 7, 55–​56 Literature 57–​58, 66–​67, 73–​85, 108–​109, 166 Material culture 41–​42, 162, 165–​169 Migration to  Low Countries 126–​127, 149n.7 France 49n.37, 83, 131, 152–​153, 155–​156 Ireland 66, 173–​174 Italian states 154 Spain 151–​152 Political participation 36, 152–​153, 183–​184 Perceptions of Elizabeth i 148–​162 Resistance 147–​184 Recusancy (see separate entry) English Colleges 60–​61, 128, 163, 167 Douai-​Rheims 38, 58, 165, 181–​182, Rome 58, 165 Excommunication  Historical uses of 3–​4, 73–​82, 93–​101 Links to papal deposing power 94–​95 Major vs minor 33 Farnese, Alexander, cardinal 57–​58 Farnese, Alexander, prince of Parma 83, 160–​161 Governor of Spanish Netherlands 137 Spat with Elizabeth i 139 Felton, John 52–​56, 89, 159–​160, 170–​172 Afterlife in polemics 74–​75, 82, 88–​91 Execution 49–​50 Publication of Regnans in Excelsis in London 46–​49, 124–​125, 156–​158

Index Fénélon, Bertrand de Salignac 48 Ferdinand i, Holy Roman Emperor  Opposition to Elizabeth’s excommunication 21–​22 Feria, Duke of (Gómez Suárez de Figueroa y Córdoba) 18–​19 Field, John 107–​108 Fitzgerald, Gerald, earl of Desmond 65, 175, 177–​179 Fitzgerald, James Fitzmaurice 152 Death in battle 177–​178 Declaration to Irish 176–​177 Fled to Europe 175–​176 Leadership of Desmond Rebellions  59–​60, 174 Petition to Gregory xiii 59–​60 Petition to Philip ii 174–​175 Publication of Regnans in Excelsis in Ireland 50, 52–​55, 65–​66, 174–​175 Fitzgerald, John 65, 177–​179 Fogaça, Antonio  Circulation of Regnans in Excelsis ​58 Spanish agent 58 Fourth Lateran Council  Ruling on excommunication 31–​32 Foxe, John  Pope Confuted 95–​97 France  Excommunicated rulers 27–​28 Italian Wars 18, 28–​29 Wars of Religion 2–​3, 27–​28, 49–​50, 67–​68, 127–​128, 130, 136 English intervention 141 Spanish intervention 141 Gregory vii, pope 74–​75, 78, 93–​95, 97–​99 Gregory xiii, pope 16, 56, 58, 61–​62, 80–​81, 83, 101, 107, 127–​129, 134–​136, 155, 171 Confirmation of Regnans in Excelsis  8–​10, 64–​65, 144, 155, 187 Confusion over 40 Creation of Holy League 58, 97, 131 Instructions to English Jesuit mission 37–​38, 59–​60 Support for Desmond Rebellions 65, 176, 178 Guaras, Antonio de 55, 118 Guise, Charles de, cardinal  Head of French delegation to Trent 22

237 Guise, Henri de, duke  Leadership of Catholic League 132–​133 Throckmorton Plot involvement 133–​134 Habsburg, Anna, archduchess of Austria and queen of Spain 117–​119 Hammond, John  Advisor to Privy Council 98 Writings on excommunication 98–​100 Henri ii, King of France 18 Challenge to Elizabeth i’s succession  16–​17 Death in 1559 20 Henri iii, King of France 67–​68, 128 Assassination 141 Conflict with Catholic League 57, 133, 136 Conflict with papacy 133 Duke of Anjou 121–​123 Marriage negotiations with Elizabeth 129–​130 Henri iv, King of France 75 Conversion to Catholicism 141 Challenge to succession 136 Excommunication by Sixtus v 2–​3, 67–​68 Polemical responses 100 War for succession 141 Henry iv, Holy Roman Emperor 97–​98, 100 Comparisons to Elizabeth i 93–​99 Excommunication 3, 74–​75, 77–​78 Henry v, Holy Roman Emperor 3, 77–​78, 98 Henry viii, King of England 115, 151, 173–​174 Act of Supremacy 18–​19 Excommunication 3, 18–​19, 32 Holy League 58, 97, 131–​132 Holy Roman Empire 17–​18, 21, 28, 49, 120, 135, 139, 189 Excommunicated rulers 27–​28 Howard, Thomas, 4th duke of Norfolk  Involvement in Ridolfi Plot 123 Plot to marry Mary Queen of Scots 26 Indulgences 38–​39, 91–​92, 167–​169, 175–​176 Ireland  Circulation of Regnans in Excelsis in 50, 65–​66, 71–​72, 180 English administration of 173–​175, 179

238 Index Ireland (cont.) English Catholic migration to 66, 173–​174 English Protestant settlement 173–​174, 179 Wars with England (see Desmond Rebellions and Nine Years’ War) Italian Wars, 1551–​1559 18, 28–​29 James vi, King of Scotland 6–​7, 26, 48, 127–​128, 133–​134 Candidacy for English throne 5, 115 Concerns over religious beliefs 57, 115, 132–​133, 143–​145 Jesuits 5, 34, 63–​64, 160–​161, 183 Attempts to expel 144, 154–​155 Mission to England 9, 37–​38, 59–​60, 131 Polemics against 83–​84, 107–​109, 111–​112 Role in transmitting Regnans in Excelsis 60–​61, 63, 128–​129 Sacred materials, circulation of 163 Views of Elizabeth i 62 Jewel, John  Correspondence with Heinrich Bullinger 103–​104 Sermon against Regnans in Excelsis  109–​111 John, King of England 3 Comparisons to Elizabeth i 75–​76, 101 Latae Sententiae 30, 32, 76 Leslie, John, bishop of Ross 133 Distribution of Regnans in Excelsis 47–​48 Envoy to Mary Queen of Scots 116–​117 Interrogation about Regnans in Excelsis 123–​125 Involvement in Ridolfi plot 156–​158 Treatise of Treasons 75–​76 Low Countries  Circulation of Regnans in Excelsis in 42, 46, 68, 70–​71, 126, 139–​140 Revolt against Spain (See Eighty Years’ War) Martin, Gregory 76 Martyrdom 62, 73–​74 Mary i, Queen of England 1, 16–​20, 22–​23, 103, 151, 158 Mary Queen of Scots 6, 47–​48, 50–​51, 116–​117, 132–​133, 145, 169–​170

Accused of procuring Regnans in Excelsis 134–​135 Civil wars in Scotland 26, 48, 121–​122 Claim to English throne 4, 16–​20, 114–​116, 122–​123, 125–​126 Execution 139–​140, 143, 190–​191 House arrest in England 48 Interrogations about Regnans in Excelsis 46–​47 Plot to marry duke of Norfolk 26 Plots to oust Elizabeth i 94–​95, 123–​124, 133–​134, 166 Receipt of Regnans in Excelsis 46–​47 Targeted in parliament 124–​126 Maximilian ii, Holy Roman Emperor 27–​28, 48–​49 Appeal to revoke Regnans in Excelsis 120 Mendoza, Bernardino de 131, 178 Assistance to Throckmorton plot 133–​134 Expulsion from England 133–​134 Morgan, Thomas  Disruption of English embassy in France 136–​137 Throckmorton plot involvement 133–​134 Morton, Nicholas  Cooperation with northern rebels 45–​46 Mission to northern England 45 Testimony against Elizabeth i 25–​26 Mush, John  Appellant writings 83–​84 Use of Regnans in Excelsis 82–​83 Neville, Charles, 6th earl of Westmoreland  Escape to Scotland 48 Flight to Low Countries 27 Leadership of Northern Rebellion 28–​29 Letter to Pius v 23–​26 Nine Years’ War 179–​183 Causes, long-​term 179 Kinsale, battle of 182 Religious ideology 180–​181 Support for 181–​182 Tactics 180, 182 Yellow Ford, battle of 180 Northern Rebellion 16, 23–​29, 44–​45, 48, 94–​95, 116, 122, 147, 150, 172, 187 Reports of in Europe 24–​25 Norton, Thomas  Parliamentary career 89–​90, 121

Index Polemics against Regnans in Excelsis  89–​90 Nuremberg  Publication of Regnans in Excelsis in  58 O’Donnell, Hugh 182 O’Neill, Hugh, earl of Tyrone 179–​182 Proclamation to the Anglo-​Irish 180 Ideology 180–​181 Ulster alliance 179 Oral Communication 7 As resistance 56, 85(see also seditious speech) Transmission of Regnans in Excelsis  52–​56, 85, 186–​187 Paget, Thomas 169, 172 Paris  Publication of Regnans in Excelsis in 49–​50 Parker, Matthew 51 Parliament 4–​5, 71–​72, 124–​126, 135–​136, 183–​184, 190 Bills passed  Against conversion to Catholicism  41–​42, 89–​90, 120–​121, 162–​163, 168–​169 Against papal bulls 41–​42, 85, 120–​121 Against reconciliation to Catholicism 131–​132 Against succession discussion 85, 120–​121 Religious Settlement, 1559 1, 18–​19, 45–​46 Speeches for military subsidies 131–​132 Paul iii, pope  Excommunication of Henry viii 19, 32 Paul iv, pope 16–​20 Support of invasion of England 19 Percy, Thomas, 7th earl of Northumberland  Escape to Scotland 48 Execution 27 Leadership of Northern Rebellion 23–​24 Letter to Pius v 23–​26, 28–​29 Testimony regarding Elizabeth’s excommunication 44–​46 Perrot, John  Lord Deputy of Ireland 179, Trial 141–​142

239 Persons, Robert 107–​108, 111–​112 Cases of conscience 34–​35, 60–​61 Meeting with Gregory xiii 59 Mission to England 34–​35, 77, 164–​166 Political thought 5, 9, 83 Support for Spanish succession  138–​139, 143 Views of Regnans in Excelsis 38–​39, 61–​62, 78–​80 Pius iv, pope  Proposal of Elizabeth’s excommunication 20–​23 Pius v, pope 23–​40, 57–​61, 63, 68, 70–​71, 74–​75, 79–​80, 88–​91, 100–​102, 105–​106, 108–​109, 116–​117, 127, 136–​139, 144–​147, 149–​150, 165, 172–​174, 180, 185–​187 Knowledge of Northern Rebellion 24–​25 Publication of Regnans in Excelsis 1, 4, 23–​24, 41, 46–​47, 51–​52, 69, 82, 103–​104, 133–​134 Refusal to revoke Regnans in Excelsis 120 Response to Northern earls 16 Trial of Elizabeth i 25–​26 Philip ii, King of Spain  Assistance to English and Irish Catholics 9, 24, 26–​27, 149–​150, 152–​153, 174–​175 Commitment to Holy League 131 Death 71–​72, 141, 144, 182 Expulsion of English ambassador  48–​49 Knowledge of Ridolfi Plot and Regnans in Excelsis 46–​49, 55–​58, 123, 133 Marriage to Anna of Austria 117–​118 Marriage to Mary i 17 Opposition to Elizabeth’s excommunication 19–​22 Plans to invade England 61–​62, 67–​68, 82–​83, 118–​119, 131–​132, 137–​138, 142–​143, 160–​161, 189–​190 Wars in Low Countries (See Eighty Years’ War) Wars with Morocco 57, 137 Wars with Ottoman Empire 27–​28, 57, 127–​128, 137 Philip iv, King of France 74–​75, 100 Comparisons to Elizabeth i 96–​97 Conflict with Boniface viii 3–​4, 75, 93–​94, 96–​97

240 Index Poland  Circulation of Regnans in Excelsis in 46 Plowden, Edmund 171–​172 Prague  Publication of Regnans in Excelsis in  49 Proclamations 52–​55, 71, 149 Against seditious books and bulls 41–​42, 50–​51, 55–​56, 85 Against seditious persons 55–​56 Quadra, Alvaro de la 19 Reconciliation  Different meanings  From schism 41–​42, 132, 156–​158, Penance 35–​36 Recusancy 12, 63–​64, 82–​84, 148–​149, 162, 170–​173 Regnans in Excelsis  Afterlife, 18th century 185–​187 Attempts to revoke 120, 126–​127, 142 Circulation in print 50–​51, 66–​67 Confirmation in 1580 9–​10, 56, 59–​60, 85, 128–​129, 131–​132, 186–​187 Importance to Jesuit missions 9–​10, 59–​64 Legality 31–​32, 34–​35 Publication for Spanish Armada  67–​68, 140 Surviving copies 42–​43, 52 Translations into English 52, 70, 102–​112 Relics 10, 164–​165, Resistance  Nonviolence  Material culture 162–​169 Recusancy  (see separate entry) Sedition  (see seditious speech) Violence 169–​170 Ireland  (see Desmond Rebellions, Nine Years’ War) Ridolfi, Roberto 47–​48 Involvement in circulating Regnans in Excelsis 47–​49 Ridolfi Plot 94–​95, 123–​125, 127, 156–​158 Rishton, Edward 66–​67 Rosary 90, 162–​163, 165

Sacred Objects  Circulation 163–​166 Devotional uses 162–​163, 167–​168 Prohibition of 162–​163 Salisbury, Frances  Biography of John Felton 47 Sander, Nicholas  Death in Ireland 60, 66–​67 Defence of Regnans in Excelsis 9–​10 De Visibili Monarchia, publication of  50–​51, 58, 74–​75 Polemical responses to 108–​109 Schismatis Anglicani, publication of  66–​67 Scotland  Civil wars 27, 48, 121–​122, 127–​128 Invasion concerns 26–​27, 126–​127, 134 Publication of Regnans in Excelsis in 50 Sebastian, King of Portugal 152 Seditious speech 62–​63, 65, 147–​149, 156–​162 Seminary priests 13, 58, 60–​61, 107–​109, 181–​182 Circulation of sacred objects 163–​167 Role in transmitting Regnans in Excelsis 61–​64, 85, 107 Sermons  Against Regnans in Excelsis 109–​111, 141–​142 Commemorating Elizabeth’s accession 101–​102 Response to the Armada 100–​101 Shelley, Richard 154–​155 Career in Venice 154 Testimony against Elizabeth i 26 Sidney, Henry  Lord Deputy of Ireland 151 Munster, administration of 174 Provinces, restructuring of 174–​176 Sixtus v, pope 42, 68, 70, 144 Excommunication of Henri iv 67–​68, 136 Satire against 101 Support for armada 67–​68, 138 Sommerville, John 168 Spain  English raids against 137, 141 Trade with England 118–​119 Spanish Armada 67, 100, 141, 160–​161, European support 67–​68, 140

Index Justification for 82–​83, 138–​139 Publications related to 70–​71, 139–​140 Spes, Guerau de  Embassy in England 46–​47, 117–​118 Advice on invasion 118–​119 Distribution of Regnans in Excelsis 47–​48 Stewart, Esmé, duke of Aubigny  Connections to Guise family 57, 132–​133 Execution of earl of Morton 132–​133 Influence over James vi 57 Stewart, James, 1st earl of Moray 26–​27, 48, 121–​122 Stucley, Thomas 151–​152 Succession 16, 18, 114–​115, 145, Alternatives to Mary Queen of Scots 114–​115 Confessionalisation of 4–​6, 114–​116, 122–​123, 142–​143, Crisis in France 67–​68, 136 Links to appellant controversy 84–​85, 144–​145 Spanish Catholic candidates 114–​115, 139, 143, 160–​161 Prohibition of discussion 120–​121 Talbot, George, 6th earl of Shrewsbury 134, 143 Theodosius i, Roman emperor 77–​78, 81 Throckmorton Plot 133–​135, 155, 169 Guise involvement 133–​134 Invasion plans 133–​134 Republication of Regnans in Excelsis 133–​134 Treason 1, 13, 113, 125–​126, 158, 167–​169, 172–​173, 179 Catholic polemics (discussion of)  69–​70, 75,

241 Expansion of laws 41–​42, 52, 85, 89–​90, 120–​121, 131–​132, 147, 161–​163, 167–​169, 191 Protestant polemics (discussion of) 77, 106–​109, 111–​112 Valois, Francois, duke of Alençon/​Anjou  Alliance with Huguenots 130 Death and succession crisis 67–​68, 136 Marriage negotiations with Elizabeth i  129–​130 Valois, Henri, duke of Anjou  See Henri iii, King of France Waldburg, Gerhard von, archbishop of Cologne  Abdication 135–​136 Excommunication of 135–​136 Wales  Circulation of Catholic books 166 Former bishops 25 Possible distribution routes for papal bulls 66 Rumours of uprising 133 Walsingham, Francis 6, 129, 134, 152, 154, 178 Embassy to France 49–​50 Reports on circulation of Regnans in Excelsis 49–​50, 67–​68, 70–​71 William i, Prince of Orange  Assassination 137 Audience with English envoys 126 Leadership, Eighty Years’ War 28, 126 Woodhouse, Thomas 158 Wriothesley, Henry, 2nd earl of Southampton  Connections to Ridolfi conspirators 124 Interest in Regnans in Excelsis 48, 124, 156–​157