Introduction
Queen Elizabeth I‘s 45-year reign is often remembered as the "Golden Age" of English history, an era of unprecedented prosperity, exploration, and artistic flourishing. But for England‘s sizable Catholic minority, especially its Catholic aristocracy, the Elizabethan period was a time of difficult choices, punctuated by fear, persecution, and the ever-present threat of financial and personal ruin.
Historical Context: The English Reformation
To understand the fraught position of Elizabethan Catholic nobles, we must look back to the reigns of Elizabeth‘s father Henry VIII and siblings Edward VI and Mary I. Henry‘s split from the Catholic Church in the 1530s launched the English Reformation and made the monarch supreme head of the new Church of England. His young son Edward VI accelerated the country‘s Protestant trajectory, only for the devoutly Catholic Mary to reverse course and brutally persecute Protestants during her 5-year reign.
When Elizabeth took the throne in 1558, she aimed to chart a "middle way" with her Religious Settlement, a compromise between Henry‘s Catholicism without the Pope and Edward‘s more radical Protestantism. This settlement reinstated the monarch as head of the church and imposed the Book of Common Prayer, but allowed for some Catholic-style ornamentation in churches. Catholics were permitted to believe in transubstantiation (the literal transformation of the Eucharist into Christ‘s body and blood), but the mass could only be conducted in English, not Latin.[^1]
The Elizabethan State and Catholicism
Despite this compromise, many English Catholics, especially the nobility, found it impossible to accept a head of church other than the Pope and considered the mass invalid in any language other than Latin. As Elizabeth‘s reign progressed and the last generation of Catholic clergy began to die out, the state took an increasingly hard line against Catholic recusancy, or refusal to attend mandatory Church of England services.
Crippling fines for recusancy, as high as £20 per month (the equivalent of tens of thousands of dollars today), could easily bankrupt even wealthy noble families. Those unable or unwilling to pay were subject to having their land and property confiscated by the Crown.[^2] Catholic priests caught saying mass or administering sacraments were imprisoned, tortured, and even executed under charges of treason. In total, approximately 130 Catholic priests were executed and dozens more perished in prison during Elizabeth‘s reign.[^3]
The Precarious Position of Catholic Nobility
For Catholic nobles, this state of affairs presented an impossible choice between remaining true to their faith and securing their wealth, status, and personal safety. Some chose to flee England and join expatriate Catholic communities in France, Spain, and Italy, where they often conspired with foreign powers to overthrow Elizabeth and re-Catholicize England by force.
Others, like Lord William Vaux, mentioned in my previous post, tried to toe an impossible line by outwardly conforming to the Church of England while secretly continuing to practice Catholicism. Vaux hosted clandestine masses on his estate and hid Catholic priests in secret chambers called "priest holes" to avoid detection.[^4] But after his former tutor Edmund Campion was caught, brutally tortured, and gruesomely executed for secretly ministering to English Catholics, Vaux himself was imprisoned and financially ruined.
Even more tragic was the fate of nobles like Lady Margaret Clitherow, arrested for the crime of harboring Catholic priests. A mother of three, Clitherow refused to enter a plea to avoid a trial that would endanger her children and servants. She was sentenced to be pressed to death, a slow and painful execution where the victim is crushed beneath gradually heavier weights. Clitherow endured this horrific fate naked, with a sharp stone beneath her back, in one of the most shocking examples of the state‘s brutality against even aristocratic Catholics.[^5]
Other scions of noble families spent years imprisoned under harsh conditions for their Catholicism. Philip Howard, the Earl of Arundel, was arrested while attempting to flee England and join the Catholic expatriate community. He spent ten years in the Tower of London, dying of dysentery in 1595.[^6]
As Elizabeth‘s reign progressed and more Catholic plots against her were discovered, persecution of even the highest-ranking Catholics only intensified. Following Pope Pius V‘s excommunication of Elizabeth in 1570 and the uncovering of the Ridolfi Plot to assassinate her and elevate the Catholic Mary, Queen of Scots to the throne, the Elizabethan state took an even harder line.[^7] New laws levied even higher fines for recusancy and attendance at illegal Catholic masses, and threatened those caught harboring Catholic priests with charges of treason and death.
This climate of fear and suspicion stoked paranoia on both sides. Many Catholics believed they could not display loyalty to the Crown without betraying their faith, while the Crown became convinced that the Catholic nobility‘s true loyalties lay with foreign Catholic monarchs. By the time of the Spanish Armada‘s attempted invasion in 1588, many recusant Catholic aristocrats were preemptively rounded up and imprisoned to prevent them from fomenting rebellion.[^8]
The Gunpowder Plot and Its Aftermath
Even after Elizabeth‘s death and the accession of James I, the persecution of aristocratic Catholics continued, albeit in slightly less overt forms. Although James was the son of the Catholic Mary, Queen of Scots, he largely upheld the Elizabethan Religious Settlement and its penalties for recusancy.
Frustration with this state of affairs, combined with James‘ broken promises of toleration, led a group of Catholic nobles including Robert Catesby and Thomas Percy to hatch the Gunpowder Plot of 1605. This audacious but ultimately unsuccessful scheme to blow up Parliament and kill the King brought nationwide opprobrium upon England‘s Catholics and a fresh wave of governmental restrictions.[^9]
In the wake of the Plot‘s discovery, James I imposed the Oath of Allegiance, which required all English subjects to swear loyalty to him as head of the church and state. Many Catholics found the oath impossible to reconcile with their religious beliefs. Continued recusancy and refusal to take the oath resulted in Catholics being barred from professional occupations, inheriting or purchasing land, and even traveling more than five miles from their homes.[^10]
Conclusion
The story of Elizabethan and Jacobean England‘s Catholic nobility is one of individuals torn between faith and crown, facing persecution from a state that viewed their religious convictions as inherently treasonous. Whether they chose outward conformity or defiant recusancy, fled abroad or adapted within England, even the wealthiest and most powerful Catholics lived in a precarious position, at the mercy of an increasingly authoritarian government determined to stamp out religious dissent.
Their plight has sometimes been overshadowed by the more overt brutality of the Marian persecutions of Protestants or the Civil War that ultimately unseated James‘ successor Charles I. But the systemic campaign of financial, legal, and sometimes physical oppression levied against England‘s Catholic nobility stands as a chilling example of the fragility of pluralism in a state wedded to authoritarian ideology. It is a reminder that even for the most privileged, the cost of conviction can be higher than most are able to pay.
[^2]: Arnold Pritchard, Catholic Loyalism in Elizabethan England (UNC Press, 1979), 27-28.
[^3]: Jessie Childs, God‘s Traitors: Terror and Faith in Elizabethan England (Bodley Head, 2014), 8.
[^4]: Childs, God‘s Traitors, 103-105.
[^5]: Pritchard, Catholic Loyalism, 153-154.
[^6]: Pritchard, Catholic Loyalism, 202-203.
[^7]: Duffy, Stripping of the Altars, 593.
[^8]: Pritchard, Catholic Loyalism, 74-77.
[^9]: Mark Nicholls, Investigating Gunpowder Plot (Manchester University Press, 1991), 1-4.
[^10]: Nicholls, Investigating Gunpowder Plot, 224-226.
