What do You think about God's Secret Agents: Queen Elizabeth's Forbidden Priests And The Hatching Of The Gunpowder Plot (2005)?
Many of Oxford's best and brightest, unable to reconcile themselves to the Anglican church, took themselves off to Douai, became Jesuits and came back to Elizabeth I's England covertly, forming a network of secret Catholics active in plots to free Mary Stuart, overthrow the Queen and assist Spanish plans to invade. The author is really taken with the romanticism of all this and ignores the crushing thoroughness with which the Cecils and Walsingham foiled almost everything they hatched. If you really want something ruthless done right, call in 16th century Calvinists.
—Margaret Sankey
