Lieutenancy and Catholic Recusants in Elizabethan Kent

Abstract

Unlike the Northern and South-Western counties, Kent has not attracted much recusant study, largely because there was nothing like the same degree of loyalty to the old religion as there was in those parts. Kent's proximity to the seat of government, the general absence of wealthy Catholic landowners, and especially the well-used ways to the Kent coast—all proved deterrents to overt ‘papistry’. The immediate danger of official disapproval appears to have been a greater reason for the comparative lack of recusancy than the alleged fact that the Marian persecution had caused a hatred of Catholicism in the shire of Kent. Whether or not the old religion was to flourish in the village communities depended, in Kent as elsewhere, on the encouragement of the local landed gentry.