Law, Nationhood and Religion: Trial Defences of English Priests, 1585–c.1640

Abstract

Abstract This article examines how defendants indicted under the 1585 statute against seminary priests and Jesuits conducted their defences at trial. It explores why, although the indictment—for having returned to England after Catholic ordination overseas—accurately described defendants’ actions, and although chances of acquittal were remote, many priests spent considerable effort defending themselves. The paper argues that strenuous efforts to make good a not-guilty plea illustrate Catholic engagement with the English polity and enabled Catholics both to acknowledge and to circumscribe its authority; also explored are refusals to plead, which were more common than studies of Catholic martyrs have usually recognised, and their motivation. Exploiting these multiple descriptions of low-profile (if not ordinary) criminal trials also enhances our understanding of how law and justice were perceived, and how they operated, during this relatively information-sparse period, and is thus of interest to historians of the law. The essay argues that examining trials of Catholics shows how legal proceedings can reveal dissidents’ engagement with political authority, and how they negotiated its claims while maintaining the justice of their oppositional cause.