dangerous people

Question 1

what was the act of uniformity (1559)

Answer 1

this said that all worship should be the same (uniform). each week everyone had to attend a church service that followed the book of common prayer in english and those who did not attend had to pay a fine

Question 2

what was the act of supremacy (1559)

Answer 2

this said that Elizabeth was the supreme governor of the church in England. she was the head of the church just as she was head of the state. any Roman Catholics who insisted that the Pope was the head of god’s church on earth was a traitor for daring to challenge the queen’s supremacy over all her nation’s affairs

Question 3

why did most english catholics drop their old faith by the 1570s

Answer 3

most priests accepted Elizabeth’s changes, weekly Protestant sermons gradually altered peoples beliefs, few Elizabethans could afford the fines for non-attendance at church and all marriages and baptisms had to follow the Protestant prayer book

Question 4

how many conformers were there in England

Answer 4

this was a large proportion of English Catholics especially in the south and east

Question 5

what were the actions of conformers

Answer 5

the chose to drop their Catholic faith and to conform (to become protestants)

Question 6

what were the reasons for people being conformers

Answer 6

it made life easier, they avoided the social and financial costs of hanging on to Catholicism and persuasive sermons from Protestant preachers and with no Catholic priests to argue back so it made people believe that the old Catholic ways were superstitious and corrupt

Question 7

how many plotters were there in England

Answer 7

this was a very small number of English Catholics (200 ish)

Question 8

what were the actions of plotters

Answer 8

they usually refused to attend Protestant church services and they were fiercely loyal to Catholic beliefs and to the pope

Question 9

what was the reasons for people being plotters

Answer 9

they valued the centuries old Catholic teachings, they believed Elizabeth was not the rightful queen ever since her excommunication in 1570 and they were not prepared simply to wait for Elizabeth to die and they felt a duty to God and to the Pope to replace her with the Catholics (Mary queen of Scots)

Question 10

what was the number of church papists

Answer 10

most english catholics, especially in the north and west

Question 11

what were the actions of the church papists

Answer 11

they attended Protestant church services but they kept Catholic beliefs with some loyalty to the Pope

Question 12

what were the reasons for people being church papists

Answer 12

they valued the centuries old catholic teachings, it avoided social and financial costs of being a recusant and they hoped that the country would return to Catholicism when Elizabeth died as her successor would be Catholic (Mary queen of Scots)

Question 13

how many recusants were there in England

Answer 13

several thousand English Catholics, especially in the north and west and they were usually wealthy

Question 14

what were the actions of the recusants

Answer 14

they refused to attend Protestant church services and kept Catholic beliefs with some loyalty to the pope and arranged their own services of Mass

Question 15

what were the reasons for people being recusants

Answer 15

they valued the centuries old Catholic teachings, could afford to pay recusancy fines and had high social status especially with other catholics and they hoped that the country would return to Catholicism when Elizabeth died as her successor would be the Catholic (Mary queen of Scots)

Question 16

what was the act of persuasions (1581)

Answer 16

it raised the fine for recusancy by 10,000 per cent to 20 pounds per month which was roughly the income of most landowning gentry family, added an extra fine of 200 pounds each year for persistent recusants, imposed a fine of 66 pounds on anyone who attended a service of Mass, allowed the imprisonment of recusants who failed to pay their fines within three months and said that anyone who persuaded a Protestant to become a Catholic was guilty of treason against the queen’s supremacy and should be put to death

Question 17

what was the act against priests (1585)

Answer 17

this allowed the death penalty for anyone who offered shelter or aid to a Roman Catholic priest

Question 18

what was the financial suffering of 1586 to 1603

Answer 18

the repression of Catholics tightened further. the queen wanted to increase her income from fining catholics. in 1587 another Recusancy act allowed the government to take two-thirds of the land owned by any recusant who had fallen behind with paying fine and even the wealthiest Catholics were driven into debt

Question 19

what was the physical suffering of 1586 to 1603

Answer 19

normally someone could be put on trial for sheltering priests could not plead and then sit in gaol but after 1586 a law allowed for the captors to ‘encourage’ the accused into entering a plead and they did this by ‘pressing’ e.g. she was stretched out with a large and sharp stone beneath their back and a door possibly from their own house would be placed over them and enormous weights were added and

Question 20

what was the social suffering of 1586 to 1603

Answer 20

in 1593 the government added to Catholics social isolation by passing the act restraining recusants and this act required Catholics over the age of 16 to stay within 5 miles of their homes at all time and it also banned them from holding large gatherings

Question 21

what were seminary priests

Answer 21

these were young English Catholic who trained at seminaries (colleges) abroad. they were also trained to support catholics in England e.g. leading them in services of Mass and hearing confessions of their sins and they were told not to try to convert Protestants to Catholic ways

Question 22

what were the Jesuit priests

Answer 22

Jesuits were priests who were specially trained to persuade people either to become Catholics or to deepened their existing Catholic faith. they also had a direct loyalty to the Pope

Question 23

who were Francis Walsinghams spies

Answer 23

Anthony Munday, William Parry, Charles Sledd and George Elliot

Question 24

how was Edmund Campion captures

Answer 24

after months of travelling in disguise between gentry houses (because he was an english catholic priests). campion was captured in July 1581 at Lyford Grange in Oxfordshire. George Elliot (the priest catcher) arrived at the house acting on a tip off. Elliot needed two days and many assistants to find Campion and three other priests hiding in a hollow space behind a wall. all four were taken to London to be tried. In August 1580 a pamphlet written by Campion was printed an distributed by Catholics from a secret printing press in Oxfordshire

Question 25

what was Edmund Campions trial like

Answer 25

campion was tortured on the rack (a machine that slowly stretched his arms and legs out of the joint). he then revealed the names of Catholics who had helped him e.g. Thomas Tresham. however even under torture he insisted that he never encouraged rebellion against Elizabeth. at his trial in November 1581 the only witness who swore that they had heard Campion call on Catholics to rebel against their Queen were the government’s own spies

Question 26

what was the execution of Edmund Campion

Answer 26

on the 1st December 1581 Campion and two other priests were dragged by horses to their place of execution at Tyburn in London. His captors told him to beg for the queens forgiveness but Campion said no because he said he had done nothing wrong

Question 27

what was the bloody question

Answer 27

when put on trial after 1585 priests always had to answer what became known as the ‘bloody question’ and this asked them whose side they would take if a foreign power were to obey the pope and invade England to remove Elizabeth from the throne and if they replied that they would support Elizabeth their credibility as a priest was gone but if they declared their support for the pope they had shown themselves to be a traitor they would be executed

Question 28

why was Mary queen of scots a danger to the throne

Answer 28

Mary was directly descended from the first Tudor king (henry VII) and if Elizabeth died without children, Mary would be next in line to the English throne and she would turn England back to Catholicism and almost as soon as Mary arrived England Catholics started causing trouble for Elizabeth and a Catholic rebellion in the north of England was put down in 1569 and a plot to murder Elizabeth and Mary’s presence in England as a ready mad Catholic replacement for the Protestant queen Elizabeth led the pope toe excommunicate Elizabeth in 1570

Question 29

what was Mary’s trial and execution like

Answer 29

on the 12th October 1586 Mary was put on trial at Fotheringhay castle in Northamptonshire. to argue her execution she said that god had made her a queen and no court had the right to try her and nor original messages existed and evidence was forged and that Babington, Ballard and others gave their evidence against her under torture. however mary was found guilty but Elizabeth refused to sign a warrant for mary’s death for several weeks becuase she hated the idea of killing another woman but when she did eventually sign the warrant William Cecil immediately sent it to Fotheringhay. Mary was executed on the 8th February 1587

Question 30

what were the reasons for rivalry with Spain

Answer 30

Elizabeth I had refused to marry Philip II of Spain at the start of her reign, and throughout the 1570s English sailors such as Drake and Hawkins acted like pirated and attacking Spanish ports and ships in the new world, and Spain ruled the Netherlands and Philip II was angry when Elizabeth sent money to aid Protestant Dutch rebels there in the 1570s and Philip II was a deeply religious Catholic and in 1580 when Pope Gregory said that it would not be a sin to kill Elizabeth and Philip started to support plotters who wanted to replace her with Mary queen of Scots

Question 31

what was the anglo-Spanish war

Answer 31

in 1584 a Catholic subject of Philip II shot and killed the leader of the Dutch Protestant rebels (Prince William of Orange) and this murder shocked Elizabeth and she also knew the same could happen to her. Elizabeth’s advisers had been trying to get her to send an army to help the Dutch rebels for many years and after his murder she finally decided to do so. in 1585 she signed a treaty withe the Dutch rebels and sent the Earl for Leicester with an army of 7000 men to fight against the Spanish in the Netherlands and so England and Spain were at war. Despite Leicester’s poor leadership the English troops did stop Spanish advances in the Netherlands and at the same time Francis Drake sailed to the West Indies and attacked Spanish ports there and returned with treasure from Spanish ships

Question 32

what was the journey of the Spanish armada in 1588

Answer 32

Philip put the Duke of Medina Sidonia in charge of the Armada but he had little experience of sailing, the Armada of 130 ships sailed up the English channel chased by English ships and it waited at Calais for the Duke of Parma’s army, the Dutch ships blocked the Duke of Parma’s army in the Netherlands stopping it from joining up with the Armada, the English set fire to some old ships and let them drift into the Armada as fireships and then the Spanish panicked and but their anchors and sailed north, near Gravelines the English ships attacked the Spanish and one spanish ship sank and also the spanish guns were unreliable but the English ones worked well e.g. 1000 spanish men died and only 50 english were killed, the armada was driven north by the winds and headed back to spain by sailing north around Scotland, powerful storms wrecked about 44 spanish ships off Scotland and Ireland and about 80 ships eventually struggled back to spain

Question 33

what were the myths about the Armada

Answer 33

the english calmly waited for the armada to arrive and Drake finished a game of bowls, Drake commanded the English fleet and brought England victory, the armada heavily outnumbered the English fleet, smaller english ships pluckily defeated large spanish ones, the tactic of sending fireships into the armada while it waited at Calais made all the difference, Elizabeth made a stirring speech at Tilbury that gave the English confidence, if the armada had succeeded then England would have become a spanish colony, the english suffered barely any casualties, the defeat of the armada meant that Britain ruled the waves

Question 34

what were the truths of the armada

Answer 34

the english wanted to attack the armada before it fot into the english channel but the wind kept their ships in Plymouth, lord Howard of Effingham was the commander, the armada had many troop carrier ships but each side had about 30 to 35 warships, the ships were the about the same size but the english ships changed direction more easily and had better guns, if Dutch ships had not blocked the duke of Parma’s armies at Bruges the armada would have picked up the troops and would not have been anchored at Calais, Elizabeth made her speech days after the armada cut its anchors and was driven north by the wind and it was near Scotland when Elizabeth made her speech, Philip II did not want to rule England and he just wanted to restore the Catholic faith, Elizabeth kept the sailors on board ship for weeks after as she could not afford to pay them and thousands died of hunger and disease, Britain only achieved control of the seas in the eighteenth century

Question 35

what are the most important dates in the spanish armada war

Answer 35

1589- Francis Drake led an ‘English armada’ to attack Portugal and stir the Portuguese to revolt against spain and it was an expensive failure, 1594- the northern Netherlands became a secure Protestant area and virtually independent from Spain and Spain still ruled a weakened Southern Netherlands but was much less likely to attack England, 1595- Francis Drake and John Hawkins died at sea while attempting to raid Spanish ships and ports in the new world, 1596- England formed an allience with France and with the protestant Netherlands against spain, 1596- the earl of Essex led a successful raid on the Spanish port of Cadiz, 1596 and 1597- Philip II sent spain’s second and third armadas against England but both were wrecked by storms, 1601- a spanish army landed in Ireland and the earl of Tyrone had started a Catholic rebellion against English rule in 1594 and the spanish hoped to help him win and create a base for an invasion of England and the spanish force was defeated and Tyrone’s rebellion finally ended in 1603, 1604- one year after Elizabeth’s death the war with spain was ended by the treaty of London and it had lasted almost twenty years

Question 36

what happened to the English Catholics by 1603

Answer 36

by 1603 when Elizabeth died almost all England’s Catholics had given up their faith or were attending Protestant church services weach week without complaint. since the death of mary queen of scots there was no obvious Catholic leader to replace Elizabeth so the heir to the throne became Marys son James VI who was a protestant. but still a small core of English Catholics remained and in 1605 just two years after Elizabeth died a few of these die hard Catholics planned the famously unsuccessful gunpowder plot that aimed to assassinate king james and his government