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Elizabethan Catholicism: questions of perspective: R.E. Foster emphasises the threat to Elizabeth's regime.

Article Excerpt
Marie Rowlands' article (History Review December 2007) serves as a useful introduction to Elizabethan Catholicism. Seen largely from the perspective of the Catholics themselves, it offers a sympathetic assessment of the struggle to keep the Old Faith alive in the apparently unequal struggle against an overbearing state. In arguing this, its thrust is essentially traditional: the Mission's attempt to reconvert England was doomed to failure (since as Sellar and Yeatman memorably put it in 1066 And All That, 'England is bound to be C of E').

Some recent work, however, reminds us that contemporaries did not regard the triumph of English Protestantism (Anglicanism) as inevitable. This perception is critical to understanding the Elizabethan state's response to Catholicism. In the early years of the reign, religious conservatism was endemic: John Scory, Bishop of Hereford, complained to...

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