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Introductionintroduction 1 Introduction IntroductionIntroduction 1 Introduction A Jesuit Reading of Elizabethan Catholic History In 1596, a few years before the seismic eruption of the so-called Archpriest/ Appellant Controversies as anti-Jesuit sentiment intensified, the English Jesuit William Holt composed a short history of post-Reformation Catholicism as a prelude to his argument in favour of the establishment of an episcopacy. Holt had played a significant but unmentioned role in the narrative, and remained a divisive, controversial figure among the Catholic exiles in the Spanish Netherlands because of his privileged access to the Spanish authorities. Holt had earlier worked in England and Scotland. Ordained before he entered the Jesuits in 1578, he and Jasper Heywood, S.J., son of the playwright and epigram- matist John Heywood and uncle of the poet John Donne, arrived in the kingdom in 1581, nearly a year after the more famous mission of Robert Persons1 and Edmund Campion. Unlike Persons who had advocated a Jesuit mission to England, Campion reluctantly abandoned a successful and satisfying ministry in Prague. Persons sent Holt first to northern England and then into Scotland where he subsequently participated in negotiations regarding the liberation of Mary, Queen of Scots, and her succession to the English throne. Arrested at Leith in March of 1583, Holt escaped with the connivance of King James VI, and remained in Scotland until March of 1586. After an abbreviated, unsatisfactory rectorship at the English College, Rome, Holt accompanied another English Jesuit Joseph Creswell to Flanders in early 1588 to serve as chaplain to the Spanish army in preparation for an invasion of England. Creswell had assisted Campion and Persons in England before he abandoned the kingdom to enter the Jesuits in 1583. Holt remained as a chaplain for ten years after the Armada’s failure, and gained considerable influence at the court of the Infanta Isabella and her husband Archduke Albert. Disappointed English exiles blamed Holt for the reduction or elimination of Spanish pensions to any one not endorsing Spanish pretensions to the English throne. Moreover, they criticised his unquestioning support for King Philip II’s intermittent schemes for the inva- sion of England. Throughout the 1590s Holt generated more vitriol than any 1 Often one reads “Parsons” instead of “Persons.” Robert himself always used Persons. The vari- ant spelling originated in polemical efforts to discredit him by asserting that he was the ille- gitimate son of a parson. I shall use Persons except, of course, in direct quotations. © Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2017 | doi 10.1163/9789004330689_002 2 Introduction other Jesuit with the exception of Persons himself.2 Nonetheless Richard Barret, a secular priest and President of Douai College, the only English semi- nary not totally controlled by the Society of Jesus, but dismissed by many as a Jesuit lackey, sought Holt’s advice on the feasibility of establishing an English episcopacy to fill the ecclesiastical vacuum left by the death of the mission’s prefect William, Cardinal Allen in 1594, and to quell or curb the increasingly acrimonious dispute between some secular clergy3 and English Jesuits. These clergy perceived the Jesuits as overweening in their domination of continental seminaries, partisan in their control of the common purse for clergy on the mission, and nearsighted in their devotion to Spain then at war with England. Holt ignored their complaints and suspicions as he lauded the Society’s role in the preservation of Catholicism without any suggestion that he himself and others participated in discussions and manoeuvres that questioned if not undermined the common refrain of the totally spiritual nature of the mission.4 In 1559 Elizabeth, denigrated by Holt as the “self-styled Queen of England,” suppressed free exercise of Catholicism, imprisoned Catholic bishops, clergy and nobles, and imposed Protestant beliefs and rituals on a reluctant king- dom.5 Many priests and some laymen, according to Holt, suffered torture and execution for their faith. More fortunate ones endured only the loss of tempo- ral goods and imprisonment. Catholic exiles challenged Protestant ministers in learned treatises published on the continent and smuggled into England. Their expositions enlightened and thus saved many and may, indeed, have enticed other Englishmen to flee to the continent. Students leaving England to 2 See Albert J. Loomie, “Holt, William (1545-1599),” in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, (eds.) H.C.G. Matthew and Brian Harrison (Oxford, 2004), online edn., (ed.) David Cannadine (hereafter ODNB online), <http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/13615> (accessed Sep tem- ber 22, 2016); Monumenta Angliae, (ed.) Thomas M. McCoog, S.J. (2 vols, Rome, 1992), vol. 2, p. 359. 3 Contemporary parlance would call these clergy diocesan priests. Because of the abolition of Roman Catholic dioceses in England and Scotland, this designation is inappropriate. Thus they are generally referred to as “secular” clergy as opposed to “regular” clergy who are mem- bers of religious orders. This may result in occasional confusion because “secular” is also used to describe non-clerical, lay activities and methods. 4 AAW, IX, 443 (published in The First and Second Diaries of the English College, Douay, [ed.] Thomas Francis Knox [London, 1878], pp. 376-84, and translated in Henry Foley, S.J., Records of the English Province of the Society of Jesus [7 vols. in 8 parts, Roehampton/London, 1877- 1884], vol. 7/2, pp. 1238-246). 5 Numerous studies highlight this reluctance. See, for example, Eamon Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars (New Haven/London, 1992); J.J. Scarisbrick, The Reformation and the English People (Oxford, 1984)..
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