A Content Analysis of English Catholic Books, 1615-1714

Abstract

The present state of bibliographical studies of Catholic writings in post-Reformation Britain allows us to make some generalizations about the course of Catholic literature in in the seventeenth century. The two volumes of The Contemporary Printed Literature of the CounterReformation between 1558 and 1040 by the late Antony Allison and David Rogers have been well received.' The revised edition of my own Catholic Books 1641-1700 has about 18% more items than the first edition.z the eighteenth century we have Catholic Books 1701-1800 by Dr. Jos Blom and his team.3 Our sense of the term English Catholic Book is that first devised by Allison and Rogers. For our purposes the word `English' covers the four languages of the British Isles . . . Other works written by Catholics [in other languages] are included only if they were printed-or if they claim to be printed-in England.4 We have chosen to analyze the content of books published from 1615 through 1714. Some have called 1615 the close of the real Elizabethan age. From their writings we know that most seventeenth-century Catholics did not like to look back to the days of the Armada and the Gunpowder plot. They rarely discussed this part of their history. After 1615 the number of Catholics executed for their religion decreases sharply. By 1615 most of the Catholic heroes of the Elizabethan age had passed from the scene. The year 1714 is a good place to stop because it is the end of the Stuart era. After that date there are new characteristics of Catholicism in the age of Richard Challoner, who was ordained in 1716. In order to see the trends in Catholic publishing we have divided our century in five-year periods except for the years 1685-1689 during the reign of King James II, when the number of Catholic books multiplied rapidly. During the whole century we count 1,955 Catholic books published. Of these 425 or 22% appeared in the years 1685-1689. Therefore, in order not to totally distort the charts and graphs we have divided these five years into four periods: 1685, 1686,1687, 1688- 1689. This gives us a total of twenty-three periods. The first chart [Figure 1] shows the number of books produced in each of the twenty-three periods. Note that except for the four periods mentioned in the previous paragraph all figures are for five years. If production were evenly distributed each period would have something over eighty-three books. We notice that the below-average periods are 1625-1629, 1635-1639, 1640-1644, 1645-1649,1665-1669,1675-1679,1680-1684,1685, and all five periods from 1690. The rises and dips in the pre-1640 period are consistent with other factors in the history of Catholics. There was a relatively easy period for Catholics in the years 1615-1624, when King James I was trying to make a Catholic match for his son, Prince Charles, first with Spain and then with France. In order to improve the overseas image of England the penal laws were consider-ably relaxed. During the next four years things tightened up considerably. In addition, the war with Spain, which ruled most of Flanders, where Catholic printers had established their businesses, made it difficult to get books into England. The first ten years of the Civil War (1640-1649) were difficult years too with a great deal of animosity toward the Catholic body But ultimately the civil war proved to be an occasion for considerable loosening of the government restrictions on the press. One notes a much higher production of printed items in the 1650's.5 In general, slack periods seemed to follow busy periods as far as the volume of Catholic publishing went. There were a number of other factors that led to a decline in the volume of Catholic publishing after 1635. In the first place, two of the largest printers of Catholic books in the first part of the seventeenth century went out of business. …