Spanish Diplomacy and English Recusancy in Early Elizabethan England

Abstract

Reformation governments devoted considerable assets toward monitoring the activities of their wayward subjects who went into exile. Monarchs also provided resources for exiles seeking their support; the "Elizabethan Exiles" who sought refuge at the court of Philip II, and urged the king to undertake a conquest of England on behalf of the faith, are merely among the most famous. However, an even greater task was to provide spiritual, financial and even martial support for those who sought to go into exile, or else could not or would not go into exile. This task largely fell on the shoulders of the diplomatic representatives maintained at foreign courts. For English would-be exiles and recusants, their most likely source of support lay in the form of the Spanish ambassador; all of Philip's representatives offered money and moral encouragement to their coreligionists to varying degrees. There were many instances, especially in the early years of Elizabeth's reign, in which the Spanish ambassadors networked with these recusants and monitored the activities of would-be exiles. The 1562 case of Arthur Pole, an English Catholic, would-be exile, and aspirant to the crown, serves as a powerful reminder that the Spanish could, and did, support early efforts against Elizabeth's government.