All Hail to the Archpriest is a study of public politics and polemical dispute in late Elizabethan England. It focuses on the debate among Catholic clergy about the appropriate mode of ecclesiastical government to be exercised over them, which allowed them to make a series of interventions in very major political issues of the day.

This volume discusses the development of governmental proto-bureaucracy, which led to and was influenced by the inclusion of professional agents and spies in the early modern English government. In the government’s attempts to control religious practices, wage war, and expand their mercantile reach both east and west, spies and agents became essential figures of empire, but their presence also fundamentally altered the old hierarchies of class and power. The job of the spy or agent required fluidity of role, the adoption of disguise and alias, and education, all elements that contributed to the ideological breakdown of social and class barriers. The volume argues that the inclusion of the lower classes (commoners, merchants, messengers, and couriers) in the machinery of government ultimately contributed to the creation of governmental proto-bureaucracy. The importance and significance of these spies is demonstrated through the use of statistical social network analysis, analyzing social network maps and statistics to discuss the prominence of particular figures within the network and the overall shape and dynamics of the evolving Elizabethan secret service. The Eye of the Crown is a useful resource for students and scholars interested in government, espionage, social hierarchy, and imperial power in Elizabethan England.

This volume brings together cutting-edge research by some of the most innovative scholars of early modern Britain. Inspired in part by recent studies of the early modern ‘public sphere’, the twelve chapters collected here reveal an array of political and religious practices that can serve as a foundation for new narratives of the period. The practices considered range from deliberation and inscription to publication and profanity. The narratives under construction range from secularisation to the rise of majority rule. Many of the authors also examine ways British developments were affected by and in turn influenced the world outside of Britain. These chapter will be essential reading for students of early modern Britain, early modern Europe and the Atlantic World. They will also appeal to those interested in the religious and political history of other regions and periods.

This study utilises John Donne’s works concerning the Jacobean Settlement as a contextualised case study to examine a seriously pressing issue in contemporary society: the issue of Catholic loyalism post-1603 and the disputes that thistopic sparked over the matter of conformity.Altman examines Donne’s polemic in line with the vast expanse of literature relating to the pamphlet war and situates Donne’s arguments within a strong contemporary tradition of conformist thought. Within this context, the study argues that Donne articulated a theory of royal absolutism that would have struck home with many contemporaries who, whether Catholic or not, were faced with a regime determined to bring them into conformity. It further contends that the religio-political standpoint represented by Donne was not only fairly obvious to the English state but was also widely accepted by it.