‘The Popish Army of the North’: Anti-Catholicism and Parliamentarian Allegiance in Civil War Yorkshire, 1642–46

Andrew Hopper

doi:10.1017/s0034193200031964

Abstract

By the time of the outbreak of the Civil Wars, may educated British Protestants considered Roman Catholicism to be an anti-religion; indeed, the Cambridge divine William Fulke went so far as to equate it with devil worship. Wealthy and powerful English Catholics attracted extreme hostility in moments of political crisis throughout the early modern period, but in 1642, fear of Roman Catholicism was even used to legitimate the terrible act of rebellion. Keith Lindley has emphasized the civil war neutrality of English Catholics, while many current historians, nervous of displays of religious prejudice, have portrayed the anti-Catholic fears of parliamentarians as cynical propaganda. Michael Finlayson has condemned anti-Catholicism as ‘irrational paranoia’, to be compared with anti-Semitism, which might, had it not been for the growth of liberal traditions in nineteenth-century England, have led to some sort of ‘Final Solution’.

Highlights

1 Wealthy and powerful English Catholics attracted extreme hostility in moments of political crisis throughout the early modem period, but in 1642, fear of Roman Catholicism was even used to legitimate the terrible act of rebellion
Michael Finlayson has condemned anti-Catholicism as 'irrational paranoia', to be compared with anti-Semitism, which might, had it not been for the growth of liberal traditions in nineteenth-century England, have led to some sort of 'Final Solution,.[3]
'the image presented in much of the secondary literature-of a Catholic laity which was largely passive and quiescent-is in need of modification.,[4] So propaganda apart, antiCatholicism expressed genuine fears in Yorkshire, and its complicated manifestations require more considered analysis than that given by impulsive condemnation

Summary

HISTOR Y

THE CATHOLIC RECORD SOCIETY 'THE POPISH ARMY OF THE NORTH': ANTI-CATHOLICISM AND PARLIAMENTARIAN ALLEGIANCE IN CIVIL WAR YORKSHIRE, 1642-46 by AN'DREw HOPPER. 'To play at boh peepe our Catholikes strive, Who lately with the Devill a bargaine did drive, The peace of the kingdome for ever to marre, To change our late plenty to famine and warre: But 'tis believed theyle pay the whole shott When th'reckoning doth come, God a'mercy, good Scott.'[27] he allegedly uttered that the 'souldgeares were all roges that came against the Scotes, and if it had not been for the Scotes, thirty thousand Irish had risen in armes and cut all our throtes He hoped ere long Laslaye[28] would be Kinge, for he was a better man any was in England.' 29. Devoted to anti-Catholic stories, it especially warned of the dangers of Irish troops and Catholic risings in northern England.[34]

THE POPISH ARMY OF THE NORTH

Newman correctly stresses how the inexact usage of the