Gods Secret Agents: Queen Elizabeth's Forbidden Priests and the Hatching of the Gunpowder Plot
(Paperback)
Publishing Details
Gods Secret Agents: Queen Elizabeth's Forbidden Priests and the Hatching of the Gunpowder Plot
By (Author) Alice Hogge
HarperCollins Publishers
HarperPerennial
19th September 2006
United Kingdom
Classifications
General
Non Fiction
Religion and politics
Religious mission and Religious Conversion
Roman Catholicism, Roman Catholic Church
Political oppression and persecution
History of religion
Conspiracy theories
942.055
Physical Properties
Paperback
400
Width 129mm, Height 198mm, Spine 30mm
365g
Description
A thrilling account of treachery, loyalty and martyrdom in Elizabethan England from an exceptional new writer.
As darkness fell on the evening of Friday, 28 October 1588, just weeks after the defeat of the Spanish Armada, two young Englishmen landed in secret on a Norfolk beach. They were Jesuit priests. Their aim was to achieve by force of argument what the Armada had failed to do by force of arms: return England to the Catholic Church.
Eighteen years later their mission had been shattered by the actions of a small group of terrorists, the Gunpowder Plotters; they themselves had been accused of designing that most horrid and hellish conspiracy; and the future of every Catholic they had come to save depended on the silence of an Oxford joiner, builder of priest-holes, being tortured in the Tower of London.
Gods Secret Agents tells the story of Elizabeths other England, a country at war with an unseen enemy, a country peopled according to popular pamphlets and Government proclamations with potential traitors, fifth-columnists and assassins. And it tells this story from the perspective of that unseen enemy, Englands Catholics, a beleaguered, alienated minority, struggling to uphold its faith.
Ultimately, Gods Secret Agents is the story of men who would die for their cause undone by men who would kill for it.
Reviews
'Vivid and moving!Hogge is brilliant at evoking the climate of suspicion and fear.' The Spectator 'A compelling and at times harrowing story!beautifully told!Hogge's eloquent account of religion, desperation and extremism is unexpectedly timely.' Waterstones Quarterly 'Hogge paints a vivid picture of the stresses of operating in secret, under false identification, in constant fear of betrayal, and deprived even of contact with their fellow priests.' Sunday Times
Author Bio
Alice Hogge read History of Art at the University of St Andrews. This is her first book.
