Recusants, Church-Papists, and "Comfortable" Missionaries: Assessing the Post-Reformation English Catholic Community

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One of more pronounced shifts in British historical thought in last quarter-century has been re-interpretation of English Reformation. What was once presented as swift and sure Protestant transformation that swept all of England has lately appeared as slow, controversial, and not immediately successful process. The work of A. G. Dickens and Geoffrey Elton, which portrayed speedy Reformation, has lost favor among ecclesiastical historians.1 The emphasis now, as demonstrated by Eamon Duffy's massive The Stripping of Altars, lies less on reform than on resistance.2 An even more recent revisionist effort is Christopher Haigh's English Reformations: Religion, Politics and Society under Tudors, which is product of two decades spent slowing down Reformation.3 Haigh has identified several Reformations as Protestantism and Catholicism, matched more evenly than previously supposed, battled fiercely until Elizabeth's accession. After 1558 Protestantism slowly consolidated its hold, aided both by enthusiastic preachers and government support. Yet old practices did not subside easily To quote Patrick Collinson, who has chronicled rise of Puritan evangelicals: It is only with 1570s that historically minded insomniac goes to sleep counting Catholics rather than Protestants, since only then did they begin to find themselves in situation.4 The debate over speed and strength of English Reformation has produced related debate over nature of English Catholicism in sixteenth century, particularly after Elizabethan Settlement. As views of Reformation have changed, so have ideas about those Catholics who were objects of reform. There is widespread agreement that, after 1559, there emerged separated, sacramental sustained largely by members of gentry within their households and reliant on services of household and roving priests.5 John Bossy's landmark work, English Catholic Community 1570-1850 (Oxford, 1976), has been foundation for such an assessment. Since 1976, however, ecclesiastical historians have divided over questions of origins and membership of such community. This review will explore and compare arguments of past twenty years on three issues central to dialogue: emphasis on in origins of post-Reformation community, and roles of two groups within this body:church-papists and various missionary movements in England. The standard study of English Catholicism had been Bishop David Mathew's, which stressed the of an English Catholic tradition... descended from More through Campion and Sir Thomas Tresham and solid Cavalier Catholics of country party.6 More had fathered this tradition, and various staunch conservatives had adhered to it in decade after 1559 until its rejuvenation by missionaries.7 For Mathew post-Reformation Catholicism was part of larger, more amorphous tradition which had survived upheavals of sixteenth century. Two works, both published in 1976, fundamentally challenged this notion. In The English Catholic Community, Bossy declared that post-Reformation Catholicism did not represent continuation of traditional English Catholicism. More, Mary, and Cardinal Pole were part of posthumous history of `medieval' Christendom in England, and only a fragmentary continuity existed between Marian, hierarchical church and missionary construction which succeeded it.8 Rather, after 1570, arriving missionary priests, including Jesuits and others trained at new Continental seminaries, had engineered creation of totally new, separated, self-defined minority sect or small nonconforming community.9 English Catholics, usually gathered in and around gentry households, effected their religious separation, with encouragement of missionaries, by concentration on sacramental life within these households (in Bossy's words: the rites of passage) and, more importantly, by practice of recusancy, willful non-attendance at established Church services. …