When I decided to write Treason, set in sixteenth-century England, I read a great deal. The novel purposely avoided the more famous names of that period (like Robert Southwell, Edmund Campion, etc.) and it avoided the famous Jesuit missionary priests—because my purpose was to tell what life would have been like for ordinary people, and for an ordinary young Englishman, one of many over the years, returning to his homeland as a priest after attending seminary at Douai. We know the famous names, and their stories, but we know nothing about the unknown, nameless thousands who suffered, enduring unfulfilled hope year after year of Elizabeth’s long, torturous rule. History gives us facts and information, but it can’t tell us about unknown people, or their experience; for that, we have to turn to fiction.
Treason has been getting wonderful reviews on Amazon, I’m glad to say. But recently, one reviewer cited what she called “a historical inaccuracy.” Stephanie Mann, author of Supremacy and Survival and an expert on the English Reformation, wrote very kind remarks about the story, and about my writing, but expressed regret that “missionary priests” did not face arrest and execution until after 1585—and my novel is set in 1581. She posted the review on Amazon, on her blog, and it was apparently picked up on many other sites as well. Where, I wondered, had I gone wrong? I had been careful to read only reliable sources. Finally, I leafed through one of my major sources. Here is my response to Ms. Mann:
Dear Ms. Mann,
Thank you for your wonderfully kind remarks about my novel. I’m very grateful, and I’m so glad you enjoyed it. The “one issue of historical accuracy” you had with it was the date of 1581. I chose that date after reading your own excellent history of the period, Supremacy and Survival, where, on page 57, I found: “In January of 1581, Parliament met and passed a new set of penal laws, making it high treason to be a Catholic priest in England….” On the same page, you quoted Ronald Knox’s description of the young priests’ lives on their return to England from the seminary at Douai: ” …they left home to study for the priesthood and returned home to live ‘the life of an outlaw’ and die in agony in their early thirties.” These were ordinary young English Catholic men, not “missionary priests.”
Thank you for your review and for your own excellent study of the period, which was a major source of historical background for me in writing Treason.
Dena Hunt
Do you know if the Pilgrimage of Grace or the Prayer Book Rebellion or any other popular uprising in Tudor England has received a worthwhile literary treatment? Those events haven’t really found their place in the general memory of the Anglophone world. I went to a (first rate, I should say) Protestant high school and never heard of these things, or of Ss. John Fisher, Edmund Campion et. al. I remember hearing a good word or two said on behalf of St. Thomas More, but only on the false supposition that he died for “tolerance.” Sad.
Dear Thomas,
I know of very little “literary treatment” of one of the most outrageous (and longest) periods of religious persecution in global history.
R.H. Benson wrote some fiction at the turn of the century, but there was nothing before that, and almost nothing since.
Some historians have attempted to deal with it, mostly unsuccessfully, since the revisionist history of the Church of England has prevailed over history like the British Empire prevailed over geography. Add to that the influence of subsequent mainstream American Protestantism, and history became a closed door. Little wonder that “literary treatment” never reached even a conceptual stage.
The events of Henry VIII’s reign are recorded and known, but thereafter, Catholic England entered the Dark Ages. The curtain descended–the “Reformation” had to be protected. The empire (and the monarchy) depended on it.
Dear Thomas,
I wrote a rather lengthy response to your comment the day it appeared, but although new posts have appeared since, my response to you vaporized somewhere. Unfortunately, though this has happened before and I should know better, I didn’t keep a copy. I’ll attempt a little reconstruction and keep a copy this time:
There has almost no “worthwhile literary treatment” dealing with the Reformation in England or the centuries-long persecution of Catholics in England. The novels around the turn of the century of R.H. Benson are the exception.
Why? Likely because historical fiction is dependent on history and the religious history of England was written by the English Protestants–as the Empire ate geography, the English Church ate religious history of English-speaking peoples.
Now, in the last few decades, it would appear that the spirit of secularism has allowed some of that bias to be set aside, and some English historians (notably, Eamon Duffey) to see publication and acceptance. But “literary treatment” remains embryonic.