Extravagant, whimsical, and hot-tempered, Elizabeth was the epitome of power, both feared and admired by her enemies. Dubbed the "pirate queen" by the Vatican and Spain's Philip II, she employed a network of daring merchants, brazen adventurers, astronomer philosophers, and her stalwart Privy Cou...
The enterprise is begun. —Edmond Campion, 1580 Dr. William Allen and Francis Englefield believed heart and soul in the pope’s right to depose Elizabeth. With the expulsion of the seminary from Douai, Allen had procured papal approval for a second seminary at Rome where students reportedly flooded...
It wasn’t a perfect or tidy solution, but for Elizabeth it was the only one. She had been right to believe that in choosing an heir, the seeds of destruction would be sown. Where Tudor statecraft had raised England from little more than a tribal community in her grandfather’s time, Elizabeth’s ta...