The Trials of Margaret Clitherow: Persecution, Martyrdom and the Politics of Sanctity in Elizabethan England

Thoroughly updated with newly discovered archival material, this second edition of The Trials of Margaret Clitherow demonstrates that the complicated and controversial life story of Margaret Clitherow is not as unique as it was once thought. In fact, Peter Lake and Michael Questier argue that her case was comparable to those of other separatist females who were in trouble with the law at the same time, in particular Anne Foster, also of York. In doing so, they shed new light on the fascinating stories of these unruly women whose fates have been excluded from Catholic and women narratives of the period. The result is a work which considers the questions of religious sainthood and martyrdom through a gender lens, providing important insights into the relationship between society, the state and the church in Britain during the 16th century. This is a major contribution to our understanding of both English Catholicism and the Protestant regime of the Elizabethan period.

Table of Contents:
Acknowledgments Preface to the Second Edition Preface Abbreviations 1. The Controversial Mrs. Clitherow 2. The Radicalisation of the Mid-Elizabethan Catholics 3. Mrs. Clitherow, her Catholic Household and her Catholic Enemies 4. The Quarrels of the Catholic Community 5. Recusancy and its Discontents 6. Thomas Bell and his Enemies 7. Christianity sans Eglise: The Religion of the Heart among Catholics and Puritans 8. Fainthearted Catholics and Real Catholics: Mrs. Clitherow and the Local Politics of Conformity 9. The Reckoning: Arrest, Trial and Execution 10. Mad, Bad and Dangerous to Know? 11. Appealing to the Court of Public Opinion 12. Endgame: From Life to the Quisling 15. Between Resistance and Compromise?: Thomas Bell's Revenge and the 1591 Proclamation 16. Thomas Bell Changes Sides 17. Acting on Information Received 18. Reading against the Grain; or What Thomas Bell had Really been Doing in Lancashire 19. Clitherow Vindicated: The Church under the Cross and the Resort to the Public 20. Thomas Bell and the Politics of Failure 21. Mrs. Clitherow Entirely Vindicated as the Epitome of Catholic Order Aftermath Bibliography Index

About the Author :
Peter Lake is University Distinguished Professor of History, Professor of the History of Christianity and Martha Rivers Ingram Chair of History at Vanderbilt University, USA. He is the author of many books, including Bad Queen Bess?: Libels, Secret Histories, and the Politics of Publicity in the Reign of Queen Elizabeth I (2015), Scandal and Religious Identity in Early Stuart England: A Northamptonshire Maid’s Tragedy (2015; with Isaac Stephens) and The Anti-Christ's Lewd Hat: Protestants, Papists and Players in Post-Reformation England (2002; with Michael Questier). Michael Questier is Professor of Early Modern History at Queen Mary, University of London, UK. He is the editor of Recusancy and Conformity in Early Modern England: Manuscript and Printed Sources in Translation (2010; with G. Crosignani and T. McCoog), and the author of Stuart Dynastic Policy and Religious Politics, 1621-1625 (2009) and Catholicism and Community in Early Modern England: Politics, Aristocratic Patronage and Religion, c. 1550-1640 (2006).

Review :
New archival resources, a deeper contextualization in contemporary case studies, and a keen attention to the roles played by early modern women, government, and religious memorial make this second edition of The Trials of Margaret Clitherow essential to our understanding of a pivotal time in English reformation history. A major achievement. [A] lively new book [with] compelling ideas at play... while this is a work that will resonate with Tudor historians, it is as interesting to a lay reader. Essential reading for anybody engaged in, or embarking on, the study of post-Reformation Catholicism and, by extension, the English Reformation as a whole. In this superb display of historical imagination Peter Lake and Michael Questier demonstrate how one horrendous event — the pressing to death of a Catholic woman, Margaret Clitherow, at York in March 1586 — can be suggestive of a great deal about the community and state in which it occurred.