Another Book Review on Elizabeth I’s Catholics

choi

My comment:
(a) On Apr 14, 2014 I had a posting to introduce The Economist’s book review whose title was
English papists | In God We Trust; The strange lives of Queen Elizabeth’s Roman Catholics. Economist, Mar 8, 2014.
(b) That was when an English publisher made the book available in UK. Now an American publisher has the book in US.
(c) The following review is from WSJ.

choi

Henrik Bering, Pope and Dagger; Persecuted Catholic clergymen in Elizabethan England hid in 'priest holes' built into the stately homes of sympathetic nobles. Wall Street Journal, Sept 29, 2014
online.wsj.com/articles/book-review-god-traitors-by-jessie-childs-1411939073
(book review on Jessie Childs, God’s Traitors; Terror & faith in Elizabethan England. Oxford University Press, 2014)

Note:
(a) “As a Protestant, she had been declared a heretic in 1570 by the pope, who threatened those who obeyed her with damnation. Philip II of Spain was hell-bent on waging holy war against her. To him, the St Bartholomew's Day massacre in 1572, when the streets of Paris ran crimson with the blood of butchered Protestants, had seemed a capital idea.”
(i) Philip II of Spain
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_II_of_Spain
(section 7 Relations with England and Ireland)
(ii) St Bartholomew's Day massacre
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Bartholomew%27s_Day_massacre
(in France)
(iii) capital (adj): "EXCELLENT <a capital book>"
www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/capital

(b) “On the home front, many saw Elizabeth's cousin, the Catholic Mary Stuart, as queen in waiting, leaving Elizabeth in constant fear of a Catholic fifth column or a stiletto-wielding priest. William of Orange, the Dutch independence leader, had been shot by a Frenchman intent on collecting the reward that Philip had promised for his death, and Henry III of France was assassinated in his privy-stool by a monk.”
(i) William the Silent
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_the_Silent
(section 5 Assassination)
(ii) Henry III of France
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_III_of_France
(1551-1589; King of France 1574-1589; section 3.2 Assassination and burial)
(iii) privy (n):
"1a :  a small building having a bench with holes through which the user may defecate or urinate
b: TOILET"
www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/privy

It is an euphemism.
(iv) “A privy stool was a lavatory seat and bucket"

(c) “This is the backdrop for Jessie Childs's brilliant ‘God's Traitors,’ which traces the fate of one aristocratic Catholic family, the Vauxes of Northamptonshire, from the 1570s to the Gunpowder Plot of 1605. * * * To launch the Jesuit mission in England, Robert Persons arrived in 1580 disguised as a mercenary captain, ‘dressed in a buff leather coat trimmed with gold braid and a feather in his hat,’ while Edmund Campion, who had been the tutor of Lord Vaux's son Henry, came as a jewel dealer. Campion was apprehended in 1581, then hanged, drawn and quartered.”
(i) buff leather (n): "a strong supple oil-tanned leather produced chiefly from cattle hides"
www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/buff+leather
(ii) buff coat
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buff_coat

choi

(d) “Henry Garnet was named Jesuit superior for England in 1586, with the swashbuckling John Gerard as his No 2, and they emerge in the book as a most effective combination: the careful Garnet, who had written a treatise on equivocation, set the priorities, while Gerard, whose exploits Evelyn Waugh compared to a John Buchan novel, provided the fireworks. * * * Great pains were taken to hide the priests. An ingenious carpenter created a number of ‘priest holes’ for the Vauxes and others to which the priests would repair in the event of a raid. In 1594, it was Gerard's turn to get caught. During his torture at the Tower prison in London, he was left hanging from iron shackles for hours, but his mangled arms did not prevent him from making a spectacular escape in 1597 by rope from the roof. He immediately reverted to his mission of winning souls.”
(i) Henry Garnet
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Garnet
(1555-1606; an English Jesuit priest executed for his complicity in the Gunpowder Plot of 1605)
(ii) John Gerard (Jesuit)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Gerard_(Jesuit)
(1564–1637; English; sections 3 Capture and torture, 4 Escape, and 5 Later life)
(iii)
(A) Evelyn Waugh
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evelyn_Waugh
(1903 – 1966; full name: Arthur Evelyn St John Waugh; an English writer)
(B) Evelyn Waugh, Edmund Campion: Jesuit and martyr. London: Longmans, 1935.
(iv) John Buchan
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Buchan(1875-1940; a Scottish novelist)
(v) priest hole
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Priest_hole
(vi) repair (vi): “GO <repaired to the judge's chambers>”
www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/repair


(e) “With the accession of James I in 1603, Ms Childs writes, England's Catholics hoped for better times: James had a Catholic-convert wife and had dropped hints about an end to persecution, which led the pope to declare a period of calm. Though the early expectations turned out to be overly optimistic, only a handful of fanatics were committed James haters. Among them was Sir Robert Catesby, a Vaux cousin, who became the leader of the Gunpowder Plot. The plan was to blow the king and Protestant establishment sky high by detonating 36 barrels of black powder under the House of Lords on Nov 5, 1605. Uncovered at the last moment, the conspirators fled London and made a stand in Staffordshire, where Catesby was killed. The eight survivors were given death sentences.”
(i) James VI and I
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_VI_and_I
(section 2.1 Marriage: Anne of Denmark, younger daughter of the Protestant Frederick II)
(ii) Anne of Denmark
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anne_of_Denmark
(section 3 Religion)
(iii) Gunpowder Plot
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gunpowder_Plot
(iv)
(A) Holbeche House
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holbeche_House
(now in the Metropolitan Borough of Dudley [created in 1974] but historically in Staffordshire)
(B) Holbeache House; Holbeache Lane, Kingswinford, Dudley. English Heritage, undated
www.english-heritage.org.uk/cari ... ngs/holbeache-house
(“Little is known about the history of Holbeache (also spelled 'Holbeche' and 'Holbeach') House itself”)

The second syllable is pronounced “beach.”

(f) “During the Elizabethan era, Ms Childs writes, many ‘would have loved nothing more than to have been a good Englishman and a good Catholic * * *’ For his convictions, Lord Vaux certainly paid a stiff price. Two-thirds of his estate was confiscated in 1587. There was never any direct evidence that he committed treason, and he died in 1595 a broken man.”
(i) conviction (n): “a firmly held belief or opinion <she takes pride in stating her political convictions>"
www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/conviction

He died before Gunpowder Plot, and thus could not possibly implicated in it.
(ii) The review does not identify “Lord Vaux.”  Besides the quotation in (f), the review earlier mentions “Edmund Campion, who had been the tutor of Lord Vaux's son Henry.”

William Vaux, 3rd Baron Vaux of Harrowden
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Vaux,_3rd_Baron_Vaux_of_Harrowden
(1535-1595; Vaux was several times convicted of recusancy--and harbouring the Jesuit Edmund Campion)
(iii) recusant
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recusancy
(various types of punishment on those who did not participate in Anglican religious activity, such as fines, property confiscation, and imprisonment)