Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of illustrations
- Preface
- Note on the text
- List of abbreviations
- 1 Introduction
- 2 The local setting
- 3 The emergence of a Catholic dynasty: the Brownes of Cowdray
- 4 The Brownes, Catholicism and politics until the Ridolfi plot
- 5 The Brownes, Catholicism and politics from the 1570s until the early 1590s
- 6 The entourage of the first Viscount Montague
- 7 A period of transition
- 8 The 1590s to the Gunpowder plot
- 9 Catholic politics and clerical culture after the accession of James Stuart
- 10 The household and circle of the second Viscount Montague
- 11 ‘Grand captain’ or ‘little lord’: the second Viscount Montague as Catholic leader
- 12 The later Jacobean and early Caroline period
- 13 The second Viscount Montague, his entourage and the approbation controversy
- 14 Catholicism, clientage networks and the debates of the 1630s
- 15 Epilogue: the civil war and after
- Appendix 1 The Brownes in town and country
- Appendix 2 The families of Browne, Dormer, Gage and Arundell
- Index
- Titles in the series
1 - Introduction
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 06 July 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of illustrations
- Preface
- Note on the text
- List of abbreviations
- 1 Introduction
- 2 The local setting
- 3 The emergence of a Catholic dynasty: the Brownes of Cowdray
- 4 The Brownes, Catholicism and politics until the Ridolfi plot
- 5 The Brownes, Catholicism and politics from the 1570s until the early 1590s
- 6 The entourage of the first Viscount Montague
- 7 A period of transition
- 8 The 1590s to the Gunpowder plot
- 9 Catholic politics and clerical culture after the accession of James Stuart
- 10 The household and circle of the second Viscount Montague
- 11 ‘Grand captain’ or ‘little lord’: the second Viscount Montague as Catholic leader
- 12 The later Jacobean and early Caroline period
- 13 The second Viscount Montague, his entourage and the approbation controversy
- 14 Catholicism, clientage networks and the debates of the 1630s
- 15 Epilogue: the civil war and after
- Appendix 1 The Brownes in town and country
- Appendix 2 The families of Browne, Dormer, Gage and Arundell
- Index
- Titles in the series
Summary
This book started out as a proposal for a doctoral thesis on the post-Reformation experiences of one aristocratic family – namely the Brownes who dwelt during this period principally at Cowdray in West Sussex, Battle Abbey in East Sussex and in their Southwark residence, Montague House, which was situated in St Saviour's parish on the south bank of the Thames. (The head of the Browne family during Mary Tudor's reign, Sir Anthony, was promoted to the peerage in 1554 as Viscount Montague.) These were the sort of people whose lives and careers could be used, I thought, to explore certain central themes within the social history of the aristocracy of the period, especially with reference to political ideology and religious belief. For the Browne family was predominantly and often openly Catholic in its religious inclinations.
At the time that I was commencing research, however, this topic looked potentially rather unfashionable. It was the ‘popular’ rather than the blue-blooded variety of English Catholicism which was then attracting Reformation historians' attention. Popular conservatism, we are still told, is the key to explaining why the English Reformation failed in its purpose of transforming the English Church into the godly and pious institution which some Protestants wanted. Indeed, popular residual Catholic sentiment would have had even more clout after 1559 had the natural leaders of Catholicism, the high-born, particularly the peerage, not been vertebraically challenged.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Catholicism and Community in Early Modern EnglandPolitics, Aristocratic Patronage and Religion, c.1550–1640, pp. 1 - 29Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2006