Catholics Writing the Nation in Early Modern Britain and Ireland

Abstract

Abstract This book interrogates standard narratives about national identity in early modern England by examining the ways Catholics from the reign of Mary Tudor to the early 17th century contested and shaped discourses of the nation, patriotism, and Englishness. Accused by their opponents of espousing an alien religion, one orchestrated from Rome and sustained by Spain, English Catholics fought back by developing their own self-representations that emphasized how the Catholic faith was an ancient and integral part of true Englishness. After the accession of the Protestant Elizabeth, the Catholic imagining of England was mainly the project of the exiles who had left their homeland in search of religious toleration and foreign assistance. English Catholics constructed narratives of their own religious heritage and identity, however, not only in response to Protestant polemic but also as part of intra-Catholic rivalries that pitted Marian clergy against seminary priests, secular priests against Jesuits, and exiled English Catholics against their co-religionists from other parts of Britain and Ireland. Drawing on recent reassessments of English Catholicism this study foregrounds the faultlines within and between the various Catholic communities of the Atlantic archipelago. The book examines a range of genres, texts, and documents both in print and manuscript, including ecclesiastical histories, polemical treatises, antiquarian tracts, and correspondence. The argument weaves together a rich historical narrative of people, events, and texts while also offering contextualized close readings of specific works by under-studied figures like Edmund Campion, Robert Persons, Thomas Stapleton, and Richard Verstegan.

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