"The Face of a Protestant, and the Heart of a Papist": A Reexamination of Sir George Calvert's Conversion to Roman Catholicism

Abstract

With the Elizabethan religious settlement of 1559 all English men were by definition members of the Ecclesia Anglicana. Because the medieval concept of religious uniformity continued its powerful hold on men's minds, and for the more practical consideration of the threat to English security posed by foreign Catholic powers, a series of penal laws attempted to force at least outward conformity to the established church. In time the English Catholic community was thoroughly disrupted. Per haps nothing demonstrated more clearly the confused impact of the Elizabethan religious settlement and its alterations on the individual than the religious life of Sir George Calvert. After March 1625 no one doubted that Calvert, who had recently resigned as secretary of state, was a Roman Catholic.2 The mystery is when Calvert had become a Roman Catholic. Most historians of early Maryland have accepted that Calvert was a Protestant and that his conversion to Roman Catholicism