Trials of Margaret Clitherow

Peter Lake is University Distinguished Professor of History, Professor of the History of Christianity and Martha Rivers Ingram Chair of History at Vanderbilt University, USA. He is the author of many books, including Bad Queen Bess?: Libels, Secret Histories, and the Politics of Publicity in the Reign of Queen Elizabeth I (2015), Scandal and Religious Identity in Early Stuart England: A Northamptonshire Maid’s Tragedy (2015; with Isaac Stephens) and The Anti-Christ's Lewd Hat: Protestants, Papists and Players in Post-Reformation England (2002; with Michael Questier).Michael Questier is Senior Research Fellow in the Department of History at Vanderbilt University, USA. He is the editor of Recusancy and Conformity in Early Modern England: Manuscript and Printed Sources in Translation (2010; with G. Crosignani and T. McCoog), and the author of Stuart Dynastic Policy and Religious Politics, 1621-1625 (2009) and Catholicism and Community in Early Modern England: Politics, Aristocratic Patronage and Religion, c. 1550-1640 (2006).

• AcknowledgmentsPreface to the Second EditionPrefaceAbbreviations1. The Controversial Mrs. Clitherow2. The Radicalisation of the Mid-Elizabethan Catholics3. Mrs. Clitherow, her Catholic Household and her Catholic Enemies4. The Quarrels of the Catholic Community5. Recusancy and its Discontents6. Thomas Bell and his Enemies7. Christianity sans Eglise: The Religion of the Heart among Catholics and Puritans8. Fainthearted Catholics and Real Catholics: Mrs. Clitherow and the Local Politics of Conformity9. The Reckoning: Arrest, Trial and Execution10. Mad, Bad and Dangerous to Know?11. Appealing to the Court of Public Opinion12. Endgame: From Life to the Quisling15. Between Resistance and Compromise?: Thomas Bell's Revenge and the 1591 Proclamation16. Thomas Bell Changes Sides17. Acting on Information Received18. Reading against the Grain; or What Thomas Bell had Really been Doing in Lancashire19. Clitherow Vindicated: The Church under the Cross and the Resort to the Public20. Thomas Bell and the Politics of Failure21. Mrs. Clitherow Entirely Vindicated as the Epitome of Catholic OrderAftermathBibliographyIndex

New archival resources, a deeper contextualization in contemporary case studies, and a keen attention to the roles played by early modern women, government, and religious memorial make this second edition of The Trials of Margaret Clitherow essential to our understanding of a pivotal time in English reformation history.