Chafing at the Bit

The early years of the seventeenth century saw the accession of a new ruling dynasty and the rise of elite urban sociability. Chapter 2 explores Herbert’s move to London with his mother, wife, and siblings and his struggle to assert his authority as the head of a cadet branch of the Herbert family in both public and domestic spheres. It examines his introduction to the Elizabethan court at the dangerous time of the Essex revolt, his initial success in securing advancement as Knight of the Bath at the Jacobean court with the help of Sir George More, and his fascination with chivalric notions of honour. It follows his attempts, encouraged by family and friends, and in the face of local rivalry, to establish himself as a leading county governor in Montgomeryshire and as a county MP in Wales, and his role in the pursuit of the Gunpowder Plot conspirators. It considers the friction caused by primogeniture and Herbert’s battle with his mother to reduce his financial responsibilities for his siblings. It explores his relationship with his wife; the management of their estates in Wales, England, and Ireland; and his attitude towards his infant children.

‘The Kinge and His Cubbs’ in Peril

This chapter examines Elizabeth Stuart's ledger to show how her spending patterns reveal the rhythms of her life at Oatlands. It also considers several plots against her family. The first is a pair of overlapping plots whose combined intention was to overthrow King James in favour of his first cousin, the English-born Lady Arabella Stuart and thence install Thomas Grey, 15th Baron Grey of Hilton, as de facto king, and secure greater religious toleration for Catholics in England. The famed Elizabethan explorer and privateer Sir Walter Raleigh was amongst the backers of this plan. The conspirators escaped execution but not imprisonment. The second is the Gunpowder Plot. The confession of Guy Fawkes showed beyond doubt that although the primary aim had been to blow up parliament with James and Henry in attendance, this was merely a clearing of the way, as 'they intended that the king's daughter the Lady Elizabeth should have succeeded'. The chapter then explores Elizabeth Stuart's education, looking at how Henry and Elizabeth behaved and were in many ways treated as if they were twins.

Life of Guy

The Life of Guy: Guy Fawkes, the Gunpowder Plot, and the Unlikely History of an Indispensable Word. By Allan Metcalf. Oxford University Press, 2019. Pp. 176. $18.95 (hard back), ISBN 9780190669201; $12.99 (ebook)

Catholic marriages and family politics: the Vaux children vs. Sir Thomas Tresham

The recusant brothers-in-law William, third Baron Vaux of Harrowden (1535-95) and Sir Thomas Tresham (1543-1605), are best-known as exemplars of stalwart Catholicism and for their claims of fidelity to queen and country. They rose to prominence for their connection to the Jesuit proto-martyr Edmund Campion in 1581, and Vaux’s daughters Anne and Eleanor are celebrated — or notorious — for their support of the Jesuit Henry Garnet and suspected complicity in the Gunpowder Plot. Tresham’s sister Mary married Vaux, and the two men enjoyed a close friendship. Vaux leant heavily on Tresham for counsel, and the families have thus been absorbed into arguments for a closed Catholic community who drew closer together amid persecution. Yet these families were also divided, not by religio-political matters of great weight, but by more earthly causes of family unhappiness: youthful disobedience, scandalous marriage, and money. Through a close analysis of three linked episodes of family strife, this article looks beyond the singular fact of their confessional identity to argue that, like their Protestant counterparts, Catholics were not immune to acrimony. Disruptions to family unity could heap further tribulation on Catholics, and shared confessional identity might not be sufficient to repair bonds once severed.

Terrorism and Culture

This article addresses the question ‘can literature help us with terrorism?’ by interrogating the common assumption that terrorism always ‘has an agenda’ that needs to be understood and addressed. The article offers a critique of Robert Applebaum’s argument that Shakespeare’s Macbeth represents a denial of the political agenda of the Gunpowder Plot, and argues that terrorism – especially contemporary Islamic terrorism – is nihilistic, merely destructive and offers (in Derrida’s words) ‘nothing good to be hoped for’. The achievement of Macbeth is to expose the ‘mystery of iniquity’ (2 Thess. 2.7) that lies behind all terrorism.