Alan Dures and Francis Young (Dures’s former student) have produced a second, revised edition of Dures’s introductory history of English Catholicism, first published in 1983. This new edition is part of Routledge’s Seminar Studies series, which aims to ‘provide the reader with a clear introduction to a major topic in history’ (p. ii). It is primarily aimed at undergraduates new to the study of the Reformation in England. In addition to providing an overview of key events, the book also includes a selection of excerpts from historical documents as well as recommendations for further reading.
In six chapters, Dures and Young chart the history of Catholicism in England from the beginning of Elizabeth I’s reign to the outbreak of the Civil Wars in 1642. The introduction begins by emphasising the complexity of the Catholic community in England, and that this community did not exist in a vacuum. It situates English Catholicism within its wider North Atlantic contexts, drawing comparisons amongst the impacts of the Reformation in England, Scotland, and Ireland as well as the Scandinavian kingdoms and the Netherlands. The first chapter then turns to Catholics in early Elizabethan England, focussing on the first fourteen years of the reign (1558 –72). Dures and Young outline critical events and their repercussions for the Catholic community, including the slow and patchy implementation of the 1559 religious settlement, the growth of Catholic recusancy in the 1560s, the Northern Rebellion of 1569, and the subsequent papal excommunication of Elizabeth I in 1570.
The second chapter covers late Elizabethan England and the intensification of government persecution in the 1580s as a result of the Catholic missions, the political fallout of the Anjou match, and the varying degrees of loyalty and resistance to the Elizabethan regime that Catholics demonstrated. The real strength of this chapter is its final section, which discusses Catholic mobility between England and its neighbours, both within the archipelago and continental Europe. This section of the book truly presents a revised and updated account of Catholic history, drawing from recent literature that has examined the rich and varied experiences of English, Irish, and Scottish Catholics who settled outside the British Isles.
Chapter three surveys the Catholic missions to England, in a traditional sense: the foundation of English colleges in Europe to train priests to return to England, the beginnings and growth of the Jesuit mission there, and other religious orders such as the Benedictines and Capuchins that (re)gained a foothold in the seventeenth century. The focus is entirely on the secular and regular clergy who ministered to Catholics and on the disputes that arose between them over the governance and administration of the Catholic Church in England. The fourth chapter outlines the Catholic ‘community’ in early modern England, considering devotional practices, ritual, and education, as well as the interactions between Catholics and their non-Catholic neighbours. Chapter four also discusses how most Catholics in early modern England were church papists, and the various ways in which Catholics participated in the English polity; the latter consideration centres primarily on the gentry. In its assessment of ritual and devotion, the chapter highlights a revival of interest in the material culture of English Catholicism and how it can be assessed to study continuities and evolutions in the practise of the faith.
The final chapters of the book cover the reigns of James I and Charles I, up to the outbreak of the Civil Wars in 1642. Here the book returns to its focus on high politics, considering how the royal court, parliament, and shifting diplomatic relations with Europe affected the position of Catholics in England, swinging between periods of relative leniency and persecution. Dures and Young assess the impact of the Gunpowder Plot on anti-Catholic legislation and particularly the Oath of Allegiance. They characterise the government’s response to the plot as ‘measured’ overall, pointing out that it was actually the assassination of Henry IV in France in 1610 that prompted increased enforcement of the oath, despite its passage in 1606.
The last chapter examines how shifts in policy, popular attitudes towards Catholicism, and the actions of Catholics themselves intersected with the breakdown of the polity and the outbreak of the Civil Wars. Although Catholics continued to pay high fines under Charles I’s policy of composition, more stringent penalties such as imprisonment for recusancy were relaxed. The open practice of Catholicism by Queen Henrietta Maria and other important figures at court, alongside the rise of Laudianism within the Church of England, contributed to the perception that popery had infiltrated the highest levels of government, despite the significant financial burdens that most Catholics continued to endure. This, combined with the presence of notable Catholic figures in the royal forces that suppressed the Covenanters in 1639, and the outbreak of the Irish rebellion in 1641, stoked fears of wider Catholic insurrection, which, although never realised, did contribute to the political crisis of the 1640s.
The book concludes with a ‘Documents’ section, which contains nineteen excerpts of sources that Dures and Young have chosen as illustrative of Catholic history during the near-century covered by the book. These are presented in chronological order and are reprinted from other publications rather than taken from the original documents. The kind of source from whence the excerpt came (letter, memorandum, etc.) and the date of the source are not always made clear, nor is the identity of the writer — if these details are not widely known, it would have been helpful to state this explicitly. There are some puzzling gaps in the chronology of the chosen documents. For example, between Document 3, an excerpt of a sermon by Alexander Nowell from 1563, and Document 4, an excerpt of a letter written by Edmund Campion during the Jesuit mission in 1580, there is a gap of seventeen years in which several events occurred that were important to English Catholic history (not least of which are the Northern Rebellion and papal excommunication of Elizabeth I), and for which an abundance of primary sources exist.
There is also a guide to further reading with recommendations by chapter, drawn principally from the scholarship that has been cited throughout the book. Dures and Young have had to incorporate forty years of new scholarship into this updated edition, which is no easy task, and no doubt some difficult choices had to be made as to what subject matter to include and how best to organise it. The in-text citations make apparent the fact that Dures and Young have relied principally on a handful of books by Michael Questier (and Peter Lake) to revise Dures’s original work, despite the extensive bibliography listed at the end of the book. This is perhaps because the book’s main focus is the interaction of English Catholics with the state; in chapter four, which considers some of the social and cultural aspects of Catholicism, they engage with a more diverse range of authors. Recognising that this book is meant to be an introduction to English Catholicism and cannot cover everything, there are nevertheless some noticeable omissions if this book is meant to be an introduction to the Catholic experience in early modern England which draws from the most up-to-date literature. Given the political focus of the book, the absence of any reference to Stefania Tutino’s work on English Catholic political thought from the first and second chapters is a surprising one. Dures and Young state that the papal excommunication of Elizabeth was ‘a critical juncture in relations between the regime and Catholics at home and abroad, and thus deserves detailed examination’ (p. 12). This is a puzzling declaration, given that a book and several articles have been published on this topic by two different authors in the past five years. While Anne Dillon’s study of martyrdom is included in the bibliography it is absent from in-text discussions of this topic; Brad Gregory’s influential work in this area does not appear at all.
The political focus of the book is worth considering in and of itself. Dures and Young have organised the book’s chapters principally around regnal dates and political events, rather than thematically. English Catholic studies have evolved considerably since the first edition of Dures’ history was published in 1983, and I do wonder whether this structure allows for acknowledgement of the broad range of approaches and methodologies employed by historians working in this field. Catholic resistance, for example, is still considered in terms of violence here, whereas current scholarship tends to consider the many forms of resistance that were possible more holistically.
Nevertheless, the book offers a comprehensive introduction to Catholicism in post-Reformation England. It provides an overview of all of the significant events of the century between the beginning of Elizabeth I’s reign and the outbreak of the Civil Wars. Dures and Young consider the experiences and viewpoints of different lay and religious groups, from recusants to church papists to missionary priests and expatriates. They explain cogently the intricacies of how and where Catholics fit into the political zeitgeist of post-Reformation and pre-Civil Wars England. Undergraduates who are completely new to the history of the English Reformation and its political afterlife, and to Catholicism’s place in this history, will find in this book a clear and concise overview of the key events and their repercussions.
