Edmund Campion

Edmund Campion (b. 1540–d. 1581) was born in London and educated there and at Oxford, as a member of the newly founded St John’s College, a pillar of Mary Tudor’s Catholic revival. By the time he graduated Mary had been succeeded by Elizabeth I and Catholicism by an episcopally led form of Protestantism. Campion remained in Oxford, as tutor, lecturer, and orator, and was ordained as a deacon of the Church of England in 1569, but retained strong Catholic sympathies. In 1570 Elizabeth was excommunicated by Pius V and Campion retreated to Ireland. The following year he made his way to Douai in the Spanish Netherlands, where he recanted his Protestantism, and, in 1573, proceeded to Rome, where he entered the Society of Jesus. His Jesuit novitiate was undertaken in Brno, after which he taught in Prague. In 1579 he was chosen to undertake a mission to England, supporting those of his fellow countrymen who had remained loyal to Rome and endeavoring to convert those who had not. Together with Robert Persons (or Parsons [b. 1546–d. 1610]) and Ralph Emerson, Campion left Rome in April 1580. Arriving in England, he issued a challenge to debate doctrinal matters with leading Protestants. This was his so-called Brag. It was followed by the lengthier Rationes decem. All the while, he ministered in secret to the Catholic minority, until he was arrested at Lyford Grange, Berkshire, on 17 July 1581. During his imprisonment in the Tower of London he was granted his wish to debate with Protestant divines, but the four events were rigged against him. In November he was tried and found guilty of treasonable conspiracy against the queen, and on 1 December hanged at Tyburn with two other priests, Ralph Sherwin and Alexander Briant. He was beatified by Leo XIII in 1886 and canonized (as one of the Forty Martyrs of England and Wales) by Paul VI in 1970. As this article confirms, Campion’s story is related in numerous Reference Works, expanded and/or placed in context in Overviews and examined in detail in Journals and Collections of Papers. For present purposes, his career is divided chronologically: up to 1570 under London and Oxford, 1570–1571 under History of Ireland, and the self-explanatory Mission to England, 1580–1581, which is subdivided into Primary Sources and Analysis. His afterlife is addressed under Legacy, first for the period 1581–1618, and then From Hagiography to Biography.

Decoding Misfortunes: Advice to Elizabeth I and Her Subjects

This article positions Misfortunes within the context of drama and literature offered as counsel. Such contextualization demonstrates that the play drew upon Senecan drama, mirror for princes texts, and the Inns play Gorboduc in order to more authoritatively offer counsel about counsel itself to Elizabeth I, her court, and readers of the play in print. Considering both Misfortunes’s wider circulation in print and in a recent performance by The Dolphin’s Back, this article argues that the play’s counsel had value beyond its application to the queen. We can fully decode the play’s political messages only by looking across these different contexts.

Introduction. Changing Fortunes: Reviving and Revisiting The Misfortunes of Arthur

The dramatic mixture of Arthurian legend and Senecan tragedy inspired the revival of The Misfortunes of Arthur in 2019, a play originally written by lawyers at Gray’s Inn and performed before Elizabeth I in 1588. A small but significant body of scholarship has highlighted the play’s function as a vehicle for offering monarchic counsel. As the essays in this Issues in Review demonstrate, however, there are alternative ways of approaching Misfortunes through its theatricality, its dramatization of Inns ideology, its composition, and its publication. This introduction outlines why the play merits further attention.

Royal Opportunity: Noble Marriages in the Reigns of Elizabeth I and James VI/I, 1558-1625

<p>This thesis explores Queen Elizabeth I’s and King James VI/I’s management of and involvement in noble marriages from 1558 to 1625 by merging two methodologies: an analysis of an extensive, custom-made database of 380 noble marriages with an examination of primary sources like state papers, personal correspondence, diaries, and ambassadorial reports. This study demonstrates that “noble-marriage management” was a single but efficient method for the implementation of many facets of early modern rule—this made it an important apparatus of the monarchical office and a significant conduit of power. Illuminated within this thesis are Queen Elizabeth’s and King James’s tactics for handling noble marital alliances which included participation and support, avoidance and opposition. They applied their exclusive crown privileges like plural prerogatives of wards’ and widows’ marriages and in loco parentis rights in attempts to control marital unions and they inaugurated new monarch-noble bonds through their patronage of weddings. They communicated religious, succession, and Anglo-Scottish union policies, brought peace, and cultivated a crown-supportive aristocracy by means of their noble marriage involvement. Both monarchs employed multiple aspects of the royal prerogative to manage marriages which, at times, involved manipulating courts, bypassing Parliament, and prolonging punishments. Elizabeth and James also used the royal prerogative to forge their respective legacies of a Protestant kingdom and a unified England and Scotland. By utilising their exclusive privileges, both monarchs secured the freedom and power to intervene in noble marital alliances which preserved the hierarchical system of monarchy, achieving a pro-monarch balance of power and internal stability. In particular, it was through supportive involvement in marriages that Elizabeth and James perpetuated the patronage system and established all-important monarch-noble connections which upheld royal authority. Monarch-noble links became especially important as parliamentary debates on the legitimacy and use of crown privileges increased in the Elizabethan and Jacobean periods, exposing both monarchs’ absolutist tendencies.</p>

Royal Opportunity: Noble Marriages in the Reigns of Elizabeth I and James VI/I, 1558-1625

<p>This thesis explores Queen Elizabeth I’s and King James VI/I’s management of and involvement in noble marriages from 1558 to 1625 by merging two methodologies: an analysis of an extensive, custom-made database of 380 noble marriages with an examination of primary sources like state papers, personal correspondence, diaries, and ambassadorial reports. This study demonstrates that “noble-marriage management” was a single but efficient method for the implementation of many facets of early modern rule—this made it an important apparatus of the monarchical office and a significant conduit of power. Illuminated within this thesis are Queen Elizabeth’s and King James’s tactics for handling noble marital alliances which included participation and support, avoidance and opposition. They applied their exclusive crown privileges like plural prerogatives of wards’ and widows’ marriages and in loco parentis rights in attempts to control marital unions and they inaugurated new monarch-noble bonds through their patronage of weddings. They communicated religious, succession, and Anglo-Scottish union policies, brought peace, and cultivated a crown-supportive aristocracy by means of their noble marriage involvement. Both monarchs employed multiple aspects of the royal prerogative to manage marriages which, at times, involved manipulating courts, bypassing Parliament, and prolonging punishments. Elizabeth and James also used the royal prerogative to forge their respective legacies of a Protestant kingdom and a unified England and Scotland. By utilising their exclusive privileges, both monarchs secured the freedom and power to intervene in noble marital alliances which preserved the hierarchical system of monarchy, achieving a pro-monarch balance of power and internal stability. In particular, it was through supportive involvement in marriages that Elizabeth and James perpetuated the patronage system and established all-important monarch-noble connections which upheld royal authority. Monarch-noble links became especially important as parliamentary debates on the legitimacy and use of crown privileges increased in the Elizabethan and Jacobean periods, exposing both monarchs’ absolutist tendencies.</p>

HISTORICAL CONNECTIONS BETWEEN JESUS COLLEGE, OXFORD, AND LLANDYSUL IN CEREDIGION: INSIGHTS FROM THE COLLEGE ARCHIVE

Jesus College, a constituent college of the University of Oxford, was founded in 1571 by Elizabeth I. The college has benefitted from parish patronages, with the right of advowsons, which have assisted the college's development. By the middle of the nineteenth century, the college held twenty such advowsons, including a relationship with Llandysul parish in Ceredigion (Cardiganshire) that was established in 1680 and survived until 1944. This study uses the college archive to provide an initial investigation into the historical connections before and since 1680, so raising awareness of the historical link with Llandysul and providing a framework for future research.

The Marriage of Thames and Rhine

This chapter details the public solemnization of the wedding of Elizabeth Stuart and Frederick V. Three days before the solemnization, King James, Elizabeth, and Frederick, accompanied by practically the entire population of London, watched a spectacular fireworks display. These public festivities sought to establish a connection between Princess Elizabeth, English Protestant chivalry, and the late Queen Elizabeth's fervent Protestantism. Indeed, the program was a thinly disguised version of the first book of Edmund Spenser's allegorical celebration of Elizabeth I, The Faerie Queene. The chapter then looks at the cancelled masque, which was un-titled but is now known as The Masque of Truth; it was pro-Protestant, and emphasized Britain's alignment with the Palatine, portraying his Calvinism as the true faith that would convert Catholic powers. The Protestant propaganda shows just how divided the country had become, as large swathes of the Protestant faithful now appeared to have more belief in Elizabeth than they did in their king. The Palatine wedding had turned Elizabeth Stuart into their new warrior queen, a mystical heir to both Henry and the late queen Elizabeth, her godmother.

John Prestall: A Complex Relationship with the Elizabethan Regime

<p>This thesis is the biography of John Prestall (c.1527-c.1598) an unsavoury, nefarious, spendthrift, Catholic gentleman from Elizabethan England. A conspirator, opportunist informer, occult conjurer, conman and alchemist, Prestall's biography provides an alternative perspective from which to view Elizabethan history, exposing the dark fringe of the Elizabethan Court and the murky political underworld it attracted. In the polarised politico-religious ferment of late Tudor England, Prestall perennially in debt, utilised his occult powers for his own ruthless self-interest and preservation. Always looking for the best deal, he oscillated between using sorcery and astrology in conspiracies against both Mary I and Elizabeth I, and then traded alchemical promises with members of the Elizabethan establishment for patronage, pardons, and returns from exile. Through an examination of the surviving manuscript correspondence and contemporary print material, this thesis situates Prestall in the broader context of Elizabethan England and uses his life as a conduit linking together a sequence of previously unrelated plots, conspiracies and patronage relationships. Prestall's life, as documented in the manuscripts, was not primarily directed by his Catholic faith which played a secondary role to his search for the best deal and cure for his debt-ridden circumstances. This presents an interesting contrast to members of the Elizabethan regime whose Protestant ideological view of the Catholic-Protestant clash directed many of their actions. This biography explores Prestall's use of conjuring and alchemy to demonstrate the important influence magic had in Elizabethan political conspiracies and Court politics. Within a society whose belief system held magic to be an inherent part of the natural world, Prestall unscrupulously used his astrological and alchemical talents to whatever ends he thought would provide him the biggest payoff.</p>