WHEN Philip II of Spain sent his Armada to invade England in an attempt to cut off support for the Dutch rebels, he did so in the name of God and the Catholic faith. Elizabeth, in turn recognised the propaganda value of an identification of monarch, country and Protestant church at times of national crisis. It was widely believed that, as the Spaniards wanted to overthrow the Protestant church, the English Catholics must have been pro-Spain. Elizabeth had always regarded the Catholics as a danger to her government; it was now easy for her to portray them as traitors to their country. The attempts by Catholics to claim to be patriotic were, understandably, treated with scepticism. But this had not always been the case. The purpose of this article is to outline the struggle to monopolise patriotic propaganda which took place between the government and the English Catholics throughout Elizabeth’s reign.

IT is well known that during the latter part of the reign of Elizabeth I prominent papists were, from time to time, imprisoned in castles or large houses. That was done whenever the privy council felt that there were dangers threatening England which would become more dangerous if influential papists were allowed to remain at liberty. It was a cheap way to restrain the liberty of papists, as the owners of the buildings used as prisons were required to put them into repair and maintain them at their own expense, while the prisoners were required to pay for their board and lodging. Although the practice is a commonplace, its origins and development are less well known.

FOR nearly four hundred years the story of the betrayal, in York Castle, of four laymen and two women by a criminous clerk pretending a desire to become a Catholic, has been known from recollections of Lady Babthorpe; the precise particulars, however, were unknown to her. The discovery of a very remarkable letter, giving many new details, suggests that the patient reading of the catalogues of our national collections of manuscripts might, even now, throw light into other dark corners of recusant history.

IN 1584 A brief introduction to the art of music, one of the earliest books in English on the theory of music, was published in London. William Bathe the author was then a student at St. John's College, Oxford. The young man's promise of a greatly improved system for the teaching of singing and music is not central to our purpose. His dedication of the work to Gerald Fitzgerald, 11th Earl of Kildare, was imprudent. This highlighting of his ‘uncle’, or more accurately granduncle, was intended to gain wider acceptance for his work but the ‘Wizard Earl’ was at that time lodged in the Tower suspected of complicity with Viscount Baltinglass in ‘actual rebellion’.

IT has been commonplace in the literary criticism of the past thirty years to acknowledge the influence of the Counter-Reformation devotional tradition on English metaphysical poetry of the seventeenth century. The sonnets of William Alabaster, a little known recusant poet writing just before the dawn of the century, provide an early example of this influence. Even when Alabaster does not rise above his craftmanship, his poems offer insights into the cultural equipment and habits of mind of the age in which he lived, revealing how meditation could vivify rhetorical invention, injecting it with feeling and passion and transforming the persona of a lyric poem into a dramatic speaker.

CHARLES BUTLER, who knew Thomas Hussey well, wrote of him that he ‘would long live the memory of his friends:—a man of great genius, of enlightened piety; with manners at once imposing and elegant; and enchanting conversation. He did not come into contact with many whom he did not subdue: the highest rank often sunk before him. One notes, straightaway, the language of avoirdupois: the man ‘imposes’, he ‘subdues’, and beneath him others ‘sink’. Thomas Hussey had weight. That is evident in the portrait which hangs today in the building that rests on his foundations, Spanish Place: it conveys the force of character of one who was, in the words of another acquaintance, ‘by talents, nerves, ambition and intrepidity fitted for the boldest enterprise’.