Towards Toleration?

Abstract

Abstract The brief turn of the Stuart court in the later 1610s towards the House of Austria prompted speculation that the law governing Catholic separatism might be undermined, even if it was unlikely that any of the relevant statutes would be repealed by a parliament. The diplomacy designed to secure a confessionally mixed dynastic union triggered speculation about an incipient popish plot. In turn, some Catholics denounced puritanism, even as Rome intervened to assist the king’s Spanish diplomacy and, perhaps sensing a future toleration, to appoint a bishop to govern directly in England. This triggered further attempts to use the treason law against Catholic clergy, attempts that were blocked by the king. Despite the so-called ‘blessed revolution’ when the treaties with Spain were formally broken in 1624, a kind of de facto tolerance persisted into the reign of Charles I, that is, despite the difficulties associated with the new dynastic treaty with the French court. All through the chaotic early Caroline years, and then during the king’s personal rule, the Catholic issue was a constant point of reference for political commentators. Catholics, even as they continued to compile martyr catalogues, discussed whether there had finally been a form of toleration granted to (the majority of) the Catholic community, albeit one which retained financial penalties for recusant separatism.