The Catholic Laity in Elizabethan England, 1558-1603

Harvard University Press has partnered with De Gruyter to make available for sale worldwide virtually all in-copyright HUP books that had become unavailable since their original publication. The 2,800 titles in the “e-ditions” program can be purchased individually as PDF eBooks or as hardcover reprint (“print-on-demand”) editions via the “Available from De Gruyter” link above. They are also available to institutions in ten separate subject-area packages that reflect the entire spectrum of the Press’s catalog. More about the E-ditions Program »

The English Catholic experience under Elizabeth I is first presented here as comprehensively as the Puritan record. Utilizing the principal archival sources in England, William Trimble shows that Elizabethan policy toward the Catholics consisted chiefly of mild pressures not consistently enforced. There was no sizable English Catholic bloc; such economic data as tax records indicate that most English Catholics were neither wealthy nor members of great families. From their semi-quiescence in 1558–73 through a brief religious renaissance (1574–83) and a subsequent decline (1584–1603), the author presents an objective nonpartisan picture of the Elizabethan Catholics.