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Catholic book circulation at the Spanish embassy in Early Stuart London: transnational exchange, collaboration and conflict

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 July 2026

Diego Herrero García Open the ORCID record for Diego Herrero García [Opens in a new window]
Diego Herrero García*
Affiliation:
University of Valladolid , Spain
*
Email: diego.herrero.garcia@uva.es
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Abstract

Spanish confessional diplomatic efforts in London greatly influenced English Catholicism during the first half of the seventeenth century, including through the circulation of illicit Catholic imprints across the Channel. A survey of Spanish and English sources showcases the different actors and mechanisms that allowed for the flow of English Catholic books through the embassy courier, from the Spanish ambassadors themselves to English transnational family networks tied to their entourage. This article identifies the activities and attitudes of key protagonists, thus revealing patterns of transnational exchange, collaboration and conflict involving Spanish diplomats and local Catholics. It argues that the Spanish embassy in London functioned as a vibrant site of cross-border mobility that fostered the integration of the English Catholic community within Global Reformed Catholicism. The dynamics of book circulation simultaneously expose some of the fundamental tensions that underlaid its patronage relationship with the Spanish Monarchy.

Keywords

Anglo-Spanish diplomacyconfessional diplomacyprint cultureGlobal Catholicismseventeenth century

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Research Article
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British Catholic History , First View , pp. 1 - 18
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© The Author(s), 2026. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Catholic Record Society

As recently stated by James E. Kelly, the study of English Catholic print culture is currently in the midst of a significant historiographical boom.Footnote 1 Building on fundamental late-twentieth-century bibliographical works,Footnote 2 Alexandra Walsham argued in the early 2000s that books of controversy and piety were crucial for the English Mission and became a central pillar of English Catholic household religious life. For Catholics living under the penal laws, the printed word operated as a proxy for scarce and potentially troublesome priests, thus making the press a valuable missionary tool. Additionally, catechetical, theological, devotional, polemical, martyrological, hagiographical and historical works allowed the community to challenge the Protestant status quo, establish ties with coreligionists abroad and conduct its devotional practices without clerical supervision.Footnote 3

Walsham’s contributions sparked a renewed interest in the vibrant underground world of English Catholic literary culture, which heavily depended on continental presses and smuggling networks that enabled the entry of illicit publications.Footnote 4 In the face of Tudor and Stuart legislation against printing, procuring or selling Catholic literature, missionary and commercial presses at Douai, St Omer, Antwerp, Rouen, Paris, Lyon and other continental typographic centres supplied the community with printed materials, thus situating it within global reformed Catholicism.Footnote 5 However, insufficient attention has been paid to the study of the abovementioned transnational smuggling networks, particularly after the Elizabethan period (1558–1603).Footnote 6 One such neglected aspect is the key role played by the Spanish embassy in London as a crucial vector for Catholic book distribution, circulation and consumption throughout the early Stuart period (1603–1649).

Soon after the accession of James I (1603–1625) to the English throne, the signing of the Treaty of London (1604) brought a pacification of diplomatic relations with the Habsburg courts of Philip III (1598–1621) in Madrid and of Archdukes Albert and Isabel Clara Eugenia (1598–1621/–1633) in Brussels. This climate of Anglo-Habsburg entente fostered new opportunities for illegal book circulation, while Douai and St Omer—both located in the Habsburg Netherlands—became the main centres of English Catholic publishing.Footnote 7 In this changed context, the reestablished Spanish embassy in London could function as a point of exchange between the British Isles, the Iberian Peninsula and the Low Countries, and was in a unique position to become an entry point for continental Catholic literature into Britain.Footnote 8 Yet its prominent role as a significant component of the transnational book smuggling mechanisms remains essentially unexamined, apart from some scattered references in Albert J. Loomie’s works and the notable exception of Ernesto Oyarbide Magaña. The latter, noting the presence of a small selection of English Catholic books in the private library of Diego Sarmiento de Acuña, Count of Gondomar, has recently speculated that the renowned Spanish ambassador may have contributed to English Catholic print culture.Footnote 9

This lack of interest in the topic must be framed within a significant lacuna in recent research on the Spanish embassy in London and its relationship with English Catholicism during the first half of the seventeenth century.Footnote 10 Since Loomie’s extensive publications from the 1960s to the 1990s,Footnote 11 few scholars have delved into the complex and ever-changing correspondence between the Spanish Habsburgs, the Stuart court and the Catholics of England, Scotland and Ireland, notwithstanding several investigations into certain topics, such as the circulation of texts, religious artifacts and ideas between Spain and England, the negotiations of the Spanish Match, the agency of Luisa de Carvajal, the Armada scares of the 1610s, the establishment of the Scottish College in Madrid and the Irish Mission.Footnote 12

Drawing on a wide range of Spanish and English manuscript and printed sources from the reigns of James I and Charles I (1625–1649), this article addresses this historiographical gap by demonstrating that the Spanish embassy in London served as a crucial node in English Catholic book circulation. It examines the mechanisms by which Catholic works found their way from continental presses into the underground English Catholic literary culture. This circulation is highlighted as a substantial aspect of Spanish confessional diplomacy which sheds light on hitherto unexplored dynamics of transnational exchange, collaboration and conflict between Spanish diplomats in the British Isles and their Catholic communities.

The embassy courier as a vehicle for cross-Channel book circulation

Before the development of formal legal protections for the diplomatic courier and bag, European rulers routinely issued safe-conducts from the late middle ages onward to protect foreign envoys and their messengers from searches, exactions or other disturbances by local officials. With the later rise of permanent embassies, a de facto norm of ambassadorial inviolability gradually developed, and the exemption from customs duties and examination on goods to be used by diplomats and their households became tacitly accepted.Footnote 13 Benefiting from this privilege, Spanish ambassadors and their associates routinely imported Catholic books into England through the embassy courier. In doing so, they contributed directly and indirectly to the transnational circulation of English Catholic literature. They created a social space for literary encounters and exchange with English Catholics, as well as avenues for the discreet introduction of forbidden works into their host realm.

Recent research indicates that early modern diplomats cultivated a close relationship with print culture, and Spanish representatives in early Stuart England were no exception.Footnote 14 As was the case for other seventeenth-century ambassadors, it was common practice for Spanish diplomats in London and their closest associates to send and receive books from their post, many of which were religious works necessary to sustain the embassy’s intense devotional life. Shortly after his second arrival in England as extraordinary ambassador in 1612, Pedro de Zúñiga requested that ‘some books of devotion and some breviaries for my priests’ be sent to him from Flanders.Footnote 15 In January 1640, ordinary ambassador Alonso de Cárdenas received several bundles with a total of thirteen books—two of them identified as singing books—together with pictures and altar cloaks for the embassy chapel.Footnote 16 As Mark Allen puts it, Catholic ambassadors’ chapels in early Stuart London sustained a ‘popular, vibrant, and outward form of Tridentine piety’ with an ‘inherently public character’.Footnote 17 In particular, the Spanish embassy chapel—far from a private oratory—attracted large crowds of English Catholics who attended mass and received the sacraments there. Gondomar claimed that more than 800 people took communion in his chapel on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day 1614,Footnote 18 while one of his chaplains, Simón de Ariza, reported a hundred communicants on the feast of the Assumption 1618.Footnote 19 Along with their Spanish chaplains, the ambassadors also employed several English priests, who may have distributed some of these imported books to local attendees.Footnote 20 Given the large attendance, the presence of English priests and the availability of devotional works, the chapel clearly had the potential as a site for consumption and circulation of continental Catholic literature.

Apart from importing strictly religious books, Spanish diplomats expanded their libraries with local literature as part of their representation and knowledge-gathering efforts.Footnote 21 During his two separate missions to Jacobean London (1613–1618; 1620–1622), Gondomar acquired for his personal collection and delivered to correspondents across Europe a myriad of manuscripts, imprints, maps and engravings as a form of public diplomacy.Footnote 22 Other ambassadors engaged in analogous practices. For instance, in August 1624 Gondomar’s successor, Carlos Coloma, sent an original copy and a translated version of John Reynolds’ anti-Spanish pamphlet Vox Coeli to Cardinal De la Cueva.Footnote 23 Both Coloma and Gondomar lent support to Scottish Catholic author James Maxwell, who had been imprisoned for publishing a book against the Prince Palatine and in favour of the Habsburg claim to the Bohemian crown.Footnote 24

Given the evidence of Spanish legates introducing religious literature from abroad, acquiring works in England and engaging with local Catholic authors, it seems plausible that some of those books could have reached English Catholics via the ambassadors or their confessors. In this regard, Gondomar noted to the Spanish king that his Dominican confessor, Fray Diego de la Fuente—best known in English sources as Padre Maestro—refused to accept ‘from any Catholic nor any other person […] any book or anything of value’.Footnote 25 Yet the very fact that he felt compelled to explicitly excuse his confessor suggests that such literary exchanges were indeed expected to occur, particularly considering De la Fuente’s regular contact with English Catholics and his prominent role at the embassy chapel.Footnote 26 Several of his fellow Dominicans in Spain were clearly under this impression, as they consulted him for historical facts accessible only through English works or through specialised authors living in England. For instance, Fray Alonso Fernández asked De la Fuente to inquire about the history of the Dominican Order in England and Ireland.Footnote 27 In November 1620, Fray Domingo de Mendoza, likewise a Dominican friar, requested a true relation of the story of St Ursula and the Eleven Thousand Virgins of Cologne based on English sources.Footnote 28

De la Fuente also received religious works from fellow Dominicans at St Gregory’s Dominican convent in Valladolid.Footnote 29 In exchange, he sent books from England intended for the convent library.Footnote 30 His role as an agent in the transnational circulation of printed items is further attested by the presence among his personal papers of a Latin manuscript dedicated to Gondomar narrating Thomas Maxfield’s martyrdom, a copy of Exemplar literarum a quodam sacerdote Collegii Anglorum Duaceni and various notes on pre-Reformation Dominican convents in England, together with Spanish works for confession and pastoral care.Footnote 31 All this evidence signals De la Fuente as a modest agent of book—and, more broadly, cultural—transfer between the Iberian Peninsula and the British Isles operating from the Spanish embassy in London. Although no direct instance of him exchanging books with English Catholics has been documented, it is reasonable to assume that his intellectual endeavours and close ties with prominent members of the community translated into bilateral literary exchanges. Consequently, embassy confessor De la Fuente may be regarded as a significant agent of Catholic books circulation in early Stuart England.

In a similar vein, and as noted in the introduction, Gondomar’s library catalogue included religious works by English Catholic authors such as Thomas More, Nicolas Sanders, William Reynolds, Robert Persons, Richard Walpole, Joseph Creswell and John Floyd.Footnote 32 Additional evidence suggests an even more active involvement in English Catholic literary circles. In 1616, Gondomar commissioned Spanish translations of manuscript accounts of the martyrdoms of Thomas Maxfield and Thomas Tunstall, which were later forwarded to Philip III.Footnote 33 This interest in English Catholic martyrological texts echoes a broader tradition of Anglo-Spanish textual production represented by authors such as Diego de Yepes, Bishop of Tarazona, and Jesuit Pedro de Ribadeneira, who communicated to Spanish-speaking audiences the suffering of their fellow coreligionists in England.Footnote 34 In March 1620, English Jesuit Joseph Creswell—then residing in the English College at St Omer, where he oversaw the printing operations—presented Gondomar with a copy of his bilingual translation of Salvianus of Marseille’s Quis dives salvus? Footnote 35 This work does not appear on Gondomar’s library inventory. Creswell also told the ambassador that if he ‘wants more of them to distribute among friends, let me know and I will serve you in this as in everything else’.Footnote 36

Beyond personally contributing in such ways to the spread of Catholic works across the English Channel, Spanish diplomats allowed their customs privileges to be used to convey books indirectly to third parties. It is well-known that Spanish missionary Luisa de Carvajal employed the diplomatic courier to supply herself with Catholic literature during her residence in London between 1605 and 1614.Footnote 37 Doña Luisa typically instructed her correspondents to address the books to the Spanish ambassador via Ribas de Ribalte, the embassy’s courier.Footnote 38 In other instances, they were carried over by the legate himself on his arrival or by one of his Spanish servants in regular transit between Iberia, the Low Countries and the British Isles.Footnote 39 Even the correspondence of the Flemish ambassadress, Ana María de Zamudio, was occasionally exploited by doña Luisa to introduce Catholic works.Footnote 40

In a similar fashion to doña Luisa, certain English Catholics were permitted to receive books and dispatches from the continent via the embassy, thereby circumventing scrutiny and potential penalties from crown officials. In a letter to Philip III signed 8 April 1620, Gondomar explained in cypher how ‘by my own hand His Holiness [the Pope] sends letter dispatches to the archpriest of this kingdom, and the generals and superiors of the religious orders to their subordinates, as well as holy oils, altars, Agnus Dei medallions, ornaments, books, and a thousand other things which, if they were discovered, would be burned’. Furthermore, book crates intended for English priests were regularly transported over the Channel under De la Fuente’s name.Footnote 41

This collaborative practice, which must be framed as part of Spanish confessional diplomatic efforts, had been in place at least since Alonso de Velasco’s residency (1609–1613) and continued throughout the rest of the early Stuart period. In early September 1623, ‘divers books and other particulars’ were brought from overseas by one Goodlacke to Juan de Seres, servant to Coloma, and intercepted at Dover. The extraordinary Spanish ambassador immediately sent a letter to customs officials demanding the return of the three packages, which contained a total of 152 titles unequivocally intended for an English Catholic audience, as will be discussed below.Footnote 42 In the early 1630s, Spanish agent Juan de Necolalde authorised the despatch of a crate of books, intended for the superior of the Benedictines in England, to be sent from Dunkirk to London under his name. After the shipment was detained, Necolalde spent 78 reals to get it back and delivered to its true addressee, which he described as ‘a good and religious work’.Footnote 43 By the 1640s, the tacitly authorized smuggling of books via the embassy courier had become a routine practice. When in March 1640 the extraordinary ambassador Marquis of Velada consulted with Henry Taylor, then Flemish agent in London, on whether he should allow, as requested by certain English clergymen in Flanders, for some ‘chests and bundles of books in English’ to be transferred into England among his luggage, he was informed that it was ‘customary for the ambassadors of His Majesty [the king of Spain] to grant this favour to those Catholics’.Footnote 44

Spanish diplomatic agents in London, therefore, procured English Catholic printed texts through importation and local acquisition as part of their collecting practices to further their confessional aims. While some books were forwarded abroad, others were kept at the embassy chapel. Potentially, they were even circulated among English Catholics by the ambassadors and their confessors, as in the case of Gondomar and De la Fuente. At the same time, the ambassadors quietly allowed the embassy courier to operate as a discreet conduit for the conveyance of books, primarily for the benefit of trusted English clergymen. These sanctioned and collaborative channels, however, were not the only nor the most significant embassy-adjacent means by which books from the continent made their way to the English Catholic literary underworld.

English embassy personnel involvement in the Catholic book trade

Alongside the embassy courier’s regulated flow of books, English men and women associated with the Spanish embassy independently trafficked substantial shipments of Catholic literature under the cover of diplomatic privileges. It is evident that their involvement in cross-Channel smuggling networks was not strictly authorised by the ambassadors. On the rare occasions when Spanish records provide direct evidence of native embassy personnel smuggling books without ambassadorial consent, it appears in connection with protests on the part of the envoy.

The Spanish ambassadors’ entourage included a high proportion of English Catholics whose particular circumstances enabled them to profit from the Catholic book trade. The liminal situation of the English occupants of the Spanish embassy, as subjects to English law living under a privileged jurisdiction, mitigated the severe financial and personal hazards that surrounded the transfer of illicit literature. Serving the Spanish ambassador also meant very little scrutiny at the border. Gondomar noted that when a parcel was taken into England by individuals known to be his servants, custom officials ‘neither touch nor look at it’.Footnote 45 Lastly, their proficiency in multiple languages and their wide network of acquaintances both inside and outside of the ambassadorial quarters were essential for operations that entailed the crossing of multiple geographical, political and linguistic barriers.

The most prominent book smugglers operating from the embassy were the male and female members of the Taylor-Fowler family network. With a presence in both England and the Habsburg Low Countries, this transnational family took advantage of its unique position to profit from the Catholic book trade by turning the Spanish embassy into a portal between England and the principal expatriate centres on the continent. The Taylors were a staunchly Catholic gentry family from West Yorkshire. During Elizabeth I’s reign, some of the family fled to the Continent, amongst them Dr Robert Taylor. He spent thirty years studying and teaching law at the University of Douai while serving as attorney and consultant for the institution.Footnote 46 In June 1603, he returned to England as part of the entourage of Charles de Ligne, Count of Arenberg, extraordinary ambassador of the Archdukes Albert and Isabel Clara Eugenia. He was instructed to conduct negotiations regarding toleration for Catholics and an alliance between James I, Philip III and the archdukes.Footnote 47 After the signing of the Treaty of London, Dr Taylor joined the household of the new Spanish ordinary ambassador, Pedro de Zúñiga, as agent and secretary of languages—something akin to an interpreter. From 15 June 1605 until his death on 22 September 1609, he received an annual base salary of 500 ducats, supplemented from April 1606 by 200 ducats a year at the request of his Spanish master, who considered him to be a key diplomatic agent.Footnote 48 Dr Taylor was tasked with negotiating with crypto-Catholic Jacobean courtiers and prominent figures within the English Catholic community. At least since 1606, he also acted as a go-between for the secret Spanish correspondence with Robert Cecil, Earl of Salisbury, the most powerful minister at the Jacobean court until his passing in 1612.Footnote 49

As well as being a valuable diplomatic asset, Dr Taylor was closely linked to the underground world of the Catholic book trade. Before entering the service of the Spanish ambassador, he was already familiar with the transnational Catholic smuggling routes linking the British Isles with mainland Europe. In March 1594, the informer Simon Knowles—who had once served under the King of Spain’s banner—declared that Mr. Taylor, then an English law student at Douai, had recently come into England from Calais, a route that he frequented in order to secretly escort young Catholics across the Channel.Footnote 50 Dr Taylor’s family connections with the printing business also date from his years in continental Europe. One of his sisters, Ann Taylor, was married to John Fowler II, son to the Bristol-born John Fowler I, widely regarded as the most prominent of the early English Catholic printers based in the Low Countries. When John Fowler I died, his widow Alice Harris assumed control of her late husband’s printing operations, while their son John Fowler II and his wife were tasked with the smuggling of books into England with the assistance of their Taylor relatives in London.Footnote 51 Importantly, Dr Taylor himself married Mary Fowler, daughter of John Fowler I. The marriage took place in Antwerp, the Fowler family’s printing base.Footnote 52

The Taylors and the Fowlers, therefore, constituted a transnational family network with a presence both in the Spanish embassy and in the principal printing centres for English Catholic books. Moreover, they undertook regular crossings of the Channel. Although Zúñiga stated that Dr Taylor left his family behind in Douai,Footnote 53 Luisa de Carvajal gives testimony to the presence of his wife and children in England around 1609.Footnote 54 Three years later, the then widowed Mary Fowler was awarded 400 ducats by Philip III to support her seven children.Footnote 55 One of them has already been mentioned: Henry Taylor. He became Gondomar’s personal librarian at the end of his first mission to England in 1618, and was later employed on several diplomatic missions by the courts of Madrid and Brussels.Footnote 56 Whilst her son was serving the Count in Spain, widowed Mary appears to have moved to Dunkirk with her mother Alice, the widow of John Fowler I.Footnote 57 She remained in touch with the Spanish ambassador in London: between April 1619 and December 1623, Mary Fowler received 300 ducats on two separate occasions from Gondomar.Footnote 58

Other members of the Taylor-Fowler family also lodged more or less frequently at the Spanish embassy and engaged in its operations. According to Richard Bancroft, Archbishop of Canterbury, a brother and a nephew to Dr Taylor lived at the house of the Spanish ambassador.Footnote 59 Dr Taylor introduced his brother-in-law Francis Fowler to the role of agent and secretary of languages and, crucially, to the key individuals at court with whom he had mediated on behalf of the Spanish ambassadors. Following Dr Taylor’s death in September 1609, Francis Fowler succeeded him in this post at the embassy.Footnote 60 Another Fowler, William Fowler, also acted as a courier for the Spanish legate.Footnote 61

The family’s transnational mobility across the English Channel, combined with such heavy presence around and privy access to the ambassadorial quarters, allowed them to turn the embassy into a warehouse for illicit Catholic books. In September 1606, Zúñiga informed Philip III that English authorities had accused Dr Taylor of allowing Catholics into the embassy chapel through a door from his own house, which, presumably, was attached to the ambassador’s.Footnote 62 It is therefore likely that, just as Dr Taylor was surreptitiously bringing people in and out of the embassy through his residence, he was doing the same with books. This is supported by the fact that in November 1609 Privy Counsellor Julius Caesar informed Robert Cecil about certain books that had been taken out of the house of the Spanish ambassador and later intercepted by crown officials.Footnote 63

How did the group manage to smuggle the books into England in the first place? As demonstrated, Dr Taylor himself was no stranger to regularly crossing the Channel in the company of other Catholics, before resettling in England. Subsequently, he returned to the continent at least once more. An English intelligence report indicates that, around January 1604, Dr Taylor entered England from Flanders carrying letters from Katheryn Roper to archpriest George Blackwell and Jesuit superior Henry Garnet.Footnote 64 Nevertheless, judging by the available evidence, it seems that Dr Taylor’s role mostly consisted of coordinating his family’s operation from the embassy, which was the site of distribution.Footnote 65

To conduct the smuggling voyages, the Taylor-Fowler network primarily relied on other male and female relatives both within and beyond England. Thanks to Luisa de Carvajal, we know that in July 1606 Mary Fowler took William Richardson over to Calais and arranged for him to be sent to the Habsburg Low Countries.Footnote 66 The fact that Dr Taylor’s wife engaged in the smuggling of people, combined with her family connections and extensive record of Channel crossings, heavily suggests that she may also have been involved in the transport of books. Meanwhile, John Fowler II and his wife Ann Taylor certainly coordinated book shipments through the embassy. In March 1606, crown authorities intercepted a total of thirty-four English volumes, mostly from Catholic authors, such as Thomas More, John Leslie, William Allen, Robert Persons, William Reynolds, John Rastell and Thomas Stapleton, along with some translations. Even though they were ostensibly addressed to the Spanish ambassador, John Fowler II had shipped them from the Low Countries to his wife Ann Taylor—sister to Dr Taylor—for her to sell.Footnote 67

John Fowler II’s younger brother Francis Fowler was involved in book smuggling, most likely to an even greater extent. Before inheriting Dr Taylor’s office, Francis Fowler was mainly tasked with demanding reparation for piracy incidents on behalf of the ambassador, which required frequent travel to the English ports.Footnote 68 For instance, in July 1609, he was sent to deliver weapons to a Spanish tercio stranded at Dover.Footnote 69 These journeys to Dover and in and out of England on official business provided Fowler with excellent opportunities for private book smuggling. In the summer of 1608, William Udall, informant to the English government, caught sight of a shipment of 2500 unspecified books smuggled by Francis Fowler, ‘Taylor’s man and kinsman’, and later distributed from the Spanish embassy.Footnote 70 The following year, in June 1609, the Archbishop of Canterbury warned that Francis Fowler, ‘a principall spreader of bookes’, was arriving from Dunkirk with a consignment of recently printed Catholic imprints.Footnote 71

The Taylor-Fowler transnational network seems to have ceased its businesses around the time Francis Fowler left his post at the Spanish embassy in 1618.Footnote 72 Some family members, however, remained involved in similar operations to at least some degree, even several decades afterwards. In 1638, when Jesuit William Johnson decided to deliver a book from Cádiz to King Charles via the Spanish ambassador, he forwarded it through Dr Francis Taylor. This Dr Taylor was the cousin or brother of Henry Taylor, the abovementioned son of Dr Taylor and Mary Fowler.Footnote 73

By the 1620s the spot at the embassy once occupied by the Taylor-Fowler family was filled by other English men and women equally eager to take advantage of their posts to profit from the Catholic book market. Among them was Henry Barber, the embassy porter. As Gondomar noted, the porter was entrusted with the critical role of allowing people in and out at the ambassador’s discretion. This involved ensuring that the English subjects who regularly visited his house and chapel were genuine Catholics and not spies in disguise.Footnote 74 Because of the extremely delicate nature of the post, the position was awarded to a trustworthy local Catholic. Henry Barber was described by Spanish agent Jacques Bruneau as an ‘English Catholic who had served for many years as porter to the ambassadors of His Catholic Majesty in England’. He was also closely connected to key figures within the Catholic community: although Bruneau was in no real need of his services during his brief residency (1624–1625), he continued paying Barber’s salary ‘with the counsel and at the request of prudent and zealous ecclesiastical persons, moved particularly by having learned that the said Barber knew the Catholics and certain confidants who frequented the house’.Footnote 75 In short, this apparently minor official exercised tremendous influence over the flow of goods and information between the privileged space of the ambassadorial quarters and the surrounding city of London. As a respected and well-connected Catholic, Barber was well placed to participate in the secret circulation of books around the embassy.

Barber’s role in the trade is evidenced through an incident involving Mathew Kellison’s book The Right and Iurisdiction of the Prelate and the Prince, first published in 1614 and reprinted in 1621. Kellison’s tract was an attack against the Benedictine Thomas Preston’s defence of the Jacobean oath of allegiance.Footnote 76 During the Christmas season of 1622–1623, royal favourite George Villiers, Marquis of Buckingham, and the long-time ambassador to Spain, Francis Cottington, jointly protested to Spanish extraordinary ambassador Carlos Coloma on behalf of King James. Their complaint was that Kellison’s recently republished work was being sold from the ambassador’s house through the hands of the porter. Coloma immediately ordered a search of Barber’s belongings, which revealed many copies of unspecified English Catholic books, but none of The Right and Iurisdiction of the Prelate and the Prince. The porter later confessed ‘having sold four [copies of Kellison’s book] that were left here a year ago among others by a certain Englishman’.Footnote 77 While direct evidence of Barber’s later participation in the trade is lacking, he continued to be employed by Spanish legate Alonso de Cárdenas in the 1640s, which suggests that he might have maintained this profitable side activity for several more years.Footnote 78 This activity seems also to have mirrored those with similar roles at other embassies: porters in the French and Venetian ambassadorial households were also embedded in book smuggling networks.Footnote 79

The last English Catholic book distributor employed at the Spanish embassy for whom there is clear evidence was Mary Silvester.Footnote 80 She was described as ‘an old English laundry maid; who had for these 9 or 10 years served in that quality in the houses of divers succeeding Spanish Ambassadors’; she was still in service under Alonso de Cárdenas in May 1640.Footnote 81 At that time, crown officials raided the house of Alexander Lea, a Catholic tailor in Bloomsbury, and found a trunk containing around 200 ‘Popish books’ belonging to Silvester.Footnote 82 Among them were ‘Jesus Psalters, Invectives & times against Luther & Calvin, Rheims testaments, preparative prayer bookes, & catechismes’. The constable and his officers were informed that Silvester ‘drived a trade in sending for such books out foreign parts, & venting them here to Papists’.Footnote 83 In doing so, she followed the precedent set by the female members of the Taylor-Fowler family, suggesting that English Catholic women were active agents in these trafficking operations.

Although scarce and dispersed, evidence from Spanish and English sources demonstrates that, throughout the entire early Stuart period, separate smuggling rings transformed the Spanish embassy in London into a secure gateway and a discreet distribution platform for English Catholic book production centres in the Habsburg Low Countries. The lay agents involved in the operations came from a variety of backgrounds, ranging from influential and visible English embassy personnel, such as Dr Robert Taylor or Francis Fowler, to their relatives and ostensibly minor officials, such as porters and laundrywomen. Catholic women particularly stand out for their active involvement within the framework of transnational collaborative networks structured around kinship ties. All of those involved participated from the same environment ripe for transnational Catholic mobility, fostered by the Spanish embassy in London.

The politics of book circulation: ambassadorial responses towards the discovery of English Catholic literature

As noted above, Spanish ambassadors were not always aware of, or complicit with, the full scope of book trafficking that occurred at their residences, leading to a number of incidents when they noticed that scandalous works were pouring out of their own quarters. The first known incident arose in October 1610, during Alonso de Velasco’s tenure. Amongst the luggage of the ambassador’s sister and children that was transported from Dunkirk upon their relocation to the embassy, were crates of books conveyed under his name by ‘people who have correspondence in here’. When this came to Velasco’s attention, he examined the books’ contents and discovered that ‘a great quantity of them [were] against the King and his ministers’.Footnote 84 Although Velasco’s letter only provides very limited information on the books themselves, the allusion to a similar incident at the Venetian embassy, where several hundred copies of the slanderous pamphlet Prurit-Anus had been recovered a year prior, suggests that the scandalous imprints may have been copies of that particular salacious libel. Printed under a pseudonym in St Omer in 1609, its title conflated ‘Puritanus’ with ‘Prurit-anus’—literally ‘Itchy Bum’ in Latin—and its contents satirized the English sovereigns and the established Church from the reign of Henry VIII (1509–1547) onwards.Footnote 85 Whether Prurit-Anus was among the works identified by Velasco or not, bearing in mind the Venetian precedent, he chose to prevent their discovery by crown officials by having them burnt, only after setting aside the strictly devotional works. Velasco justified his decision by reasoning that, if local authorities realized that such polemical works were being distributed from his residence, persecution against Catholics would intensify. Personally, too, he would have faced disgrace, rendering him unable to intercede on behalf of his coreligionists. The Council of State in Madrid unanimously sided with the ambassador. It recommended that Velasco remind recipients of the book shipment that it was thanks to the Spanish ambassador that ‘they and many other [Catholics] still had their heads over their shoulder, and from now on they should proceed in such a way as not to expose themselves to these dangers’.Footnote 86

Both the Spanish legate and the ministers in Madrid were clearly irritated by what they perceived as a reckless initiative by certain English Catholics that could have had a negative impact on Anglo-Spanish diplomatic relations, to the extent that they deemed it necessary to paternalistically remind their coreligionists of their dependence on the Spanish embassy. By independently trafficking polemical tracts, these Catholics were undermining Spanish confessional diplomacy, which aimed to further their cause discreetly. A comparable, though ultimately distinct, stance was taken by Carlos Coloma during the abovementioned Christmas incident involving Mathew Kellison’s The Right and Iurisdiction of the Prelate and the Prince and the embassy porter.

Once again, it was perceived by the Spanish ambassador that by importing such a work through the embassy, its English Catholic servant had significantly jeopardized the peaceful correspondence between the courts of Madrid, Brussels and London, even referring to Kellison’s tract as ‘the black book’.Footnote 87 In consequence, he initially promised the English authorities that he would punish his porter and that he would petition Isabel Clara Eugenia, then sole governor of the Habsburg Low Countries, to ask Kellison’s superior to ‘reprehend him severely should his book prove so reckless as to presume to treat improperly the person of the King of Great Britain’. However, after having the tract examined by his chaplains, Coloma was informed that nothing in it was inflammatory nor against the doctrine of the Catholic Church, and thus let the English ministers know that the author could not be punished.Footnote 88 In short, after establishing that, unlike Prurit-Anus, The Right and Iurisdiction of the Prelate and the Prince did not constitute a direct attack on the English regime, the Spanish ambassador refrained from further involvement.

In the early autumn of 1623, he reacted again in a similar manner. While Prince Charles was in Spain, engaged in the well-known and ultimately ill-fated attempt to conclude his match with the Spanish Infanta María Ana of Austria,Footnote 89 Coloma was tasked with reaching an agreement on the terms under which King James would grant religious freedom to his Catholic subjects. In July, the English sovereign had taken a secret oath as part of the Prince’s marriage treaty, to refrain from enforcing recusant laws and imposing penalties on Catholics who practised their religion in private. Over the following months, Spanish representatives held prolonged discussions with crown officials and prominent Catholics to explore the means by which to implement this promise through proclamation, individual pardons and/or dispensations.Footnote 90 In the midst of negotiations, Coloma was compelled to recover from custom officials at Dover 152 books addressed to him. The shipment consisted entirely of English Catholic works, some of them of a decidedly polemical and political nature.Footnote 91 Among the dozens of manuals, primers, abridgements, catechisms and other devotional texts were what appears to be five copies of the English translation of French ligueur Jean de Caumont’s Du firmament des Catholiques contre l’abisme des heretiques,Footnote 92 another five of Thomas Fitzherbert’s Treatise concerning policy and religion,Footnote 93 four of Sylvester Norris’s The pseudo-scripturist Footnote 94 and five of The image of bothe churches, Hierusalem and Babel, vnitie and confusion, attributed to a certain M. Pateson.Footnote 95 These were likely the works that Secretary of State Henry Conway was referring to when he informed Coloma that some of the books he had received touched on matters of State and therefore required careful examination before being returned.Footnote 96 The ambassador asserted—as he had done several months prior regarding Kellison’s treatise—that none of them were explicitly against the authority of King James. Moreover, he argued that given that the sovereign had recently acquiesced in the request to grant toleration to his Catholic subjects, it was only logical that they would be allowed access to their ‘aliments spirituels’.Footnote 97

Spanish ambassadors only reacted negatively when scandalous or overtly political books were detected, in so far as they could have resulted—or had already resulted—in a diplomatic incident that might endanger their confessional diplomatic efforts. On the other hand, they resented that the agents responsible for moving such works acted without their explicit consent or supervision. In early 1623, Coloma placed the embassy porter under house arrest in view of the English king’s outrage.Footnote 98 The ambassador entertained the idea of punishing him, even going as far as temporarily expelling him from his service. Yet he ultimately decided against it, ‘with due consideration that it is also necessary to satisfy the Catholics, who are on the lookout’.Footnote 99

Coloma’s decision illustrates how Spanish ambassadors refrained from suppressing English Catholic book circulation around their quarters, in light of the need to ingratiate themselves with key members of the embassy personnel engaged in the trade and with the English Catholic community as a whole. During the Kellison book affair, Coloma and his main religious advisor, Archdeacon Francisco de Carondelet, held correspondence on the issue with Kellison himself.Footnote 100 Kellison was one of the most prominent figures within the secular wing of English Catholicism, which had cultivated exceptionally close ties with Spanish diplomats in London during the preceding years.Footnote 101 A similar reasoning may be behind the fact that the Taylor-Fowler family network was never reprimanded for its activities, despite representing an obvious hazard to the standing of the Spanish legates in the eyes of the Jacobean regime. In the words of Pedro de Zúñiga, Dr Taylor was ‘most zealous of the service of God and of Your Majesty, to such a degree that we might be ill at ease here without him, because of the pleasure that the friends take in dealing through his hand’.Footnote 102 Luisa de Carvajal likewise emphasized that Dr Taylor was ‘as necessary to the embassy as bread is to the mouth’ and also a ‘very close friend of our fathers’— that is, the English Jesuits.Footnote 103 Disrupting the Taylor-Fowler family enterprise could have led both to the loss of a significant diplomatic asset and to the deterioration of relations with the Jesuit wing of the Catholic community.

As Henry Taylor reminded the Marquis of Velada in 1640, facilitating the smuggling of continental works through the embassy constituted ‘a work of great service to the Catholic religion’ that reinforced the Spanish ambassadors’ claimed position as representatives of the sole protector of Catholics in the British Isles.Footnote 104 Consequently, whenever the legates interfered with the usual order of business, they faced a potential backlash. In a clear criticism of the destruction of a shipment of Catholic works by Velasco, doña Luisa remarked, when recommending Agustín Pérez, the ambassador’s secretary, to Joseph Creswell, that ‘[h]ad it been down to him, no books would ever have been burned’.Footnote 105 Luisa de Carvajal was closely associated with the English Jesuits, who were critical of don Alonso’s behaviour regarding confessional issues, to the point where their criticisms contributed to Velasco’s discredit in Spain by the time he left his post. In short, English Catholics, or, at least, the most militant elements among them, expected the Spanish ambassador to allow the flow of books through the embassy, and condemned any obstruction as a failure to fulfil his obligations. Context is also key to the ambassadors’ stances towards English Catholic book smuggling activities. Whereas in 1610 Alonso de Velasco had been careful to avoid any backlash from English authorities, in the Autumn of 1623, Carlos Coloma felt that the significant—albeit illusory in hindsight—climate of toleration allowed him to openly recognise that English vernacular Catholic literature was circulating via the embassy courier.

Conclusion

Despite the fragmentary nature of the evidence discussed, it is clear that the Spanish embassy in London served as a significant hub within the illicit networks of transportation and dissemination of Catholic literature in early Stuart England. Frequent communication with the Habsburg Low Countries, import privileges and exemption from anti-Catholic legislation, combined with a cosmopolitan and humanistic milieu, made the Spanish embassy in London an ideal platform for the circulation of printed works. The individuals involved did not experience a stark separation between the community in England and abroad; rather, they lived in a state of routine transnational mobility in which kinship and service to the ambassador structured the mechanisms of clandestine print exchange.

More broadly, the Spanish embassy became a critical node in the wider transnational Catholic networks that supported the flow of people, information and goods between the British Isles and continental Europe. As a result, it became the setting of frequent intercourse between the English Catholic community on both sides of the Channel and Spanish diplomatic agents. The relationship was fluid, but remarkably ambiguous, as the book trade illustrates. The politics of Catholic book circulation entailed constant exchange, collaboration and conflict. Spanish diplomats aimed to please a community on which they heavily depended both ideologically and practically, without angering the Protestant authorities. For their part, English Catholics sought to benefit from Spanish patronage and simultaneously leveraged embassy privileges to circulate books independently of their patrons’ oversight.

Building on this analysis, further work would greatly benefit from examining—through comparative lenses—the contribution of other embassies to the book trade. Similarities with the French and the Venetian plenipotentiaries have already been hinted at, but remain unexplored. Likewise, these findings invite closer investigation of the politico-confessional functions of the Spanish embassy chapel, of the interactions between ambassadorial confessors and chaplains and the English Catholic community and of the agency exercised by ‘minor’ English Catholic servants of the Spanish ambassador—both men and women. Book circulation was only one of the ways in which the Spanish embassy impacted and interacted with British Catholics as a cosmopolitan and polyglot outpost of global reformed Catholicism. Attending more closely to Spanish confessional diplomacy in London offers a promising avenue for advancing our understanding of early Stuart Catholicism and its transnational entanglements.

Footnotes

*

This research has been supported by an FPU grant (FPU22/02753) awarded by the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities. It has also benefited from a research stay at Durham University, funded by an FPU complementary short research stay grant (FPUES2022-00071). The Department of History at Durham University also provided additional funding to support archival research in London. I would like to express my utmost sincere gratitude to Professor Toby Osborne for facilitating this departmental grant and for his invaluable personal and academic support during my time at Durham. I am also grateful to Maddy Keightley-Phillipps—who is conducting research on Jacobean book smuggling networks, primarily from a gender perspective—to all the anonymous reviewers and to Katy Gibbons, for her patience and support as editor.

References

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2 T. A. Birrell, ‘English Counter-Reformation Book Culture’, Recusant History (hereafter RH) 22/2 (1994): 113–22; A. F. Allison and D. M. Rogers, A Catalogue of Catholic Books in English Printed Abroad or Secretly in England 1558–1640 (Arundel Press: Bognor Regis, 1956); A. F. Allison and D. M. Rogers, The Contemporary Printed Literature of the English Counter-Reformation between 1558 and 1640, 2 vols (London: Scolar Press, 1989–94) (hereafter ARCR 1 and 2); Thomas H. Clancy, English Catholic Books 1640–1700: A Bibliography (Chicago: Loyola University Press, 1974); Frans Blom, Jos Blom, Frans Korsten and Geoffrey Scott, English Catholic Books 1701–1800: A Bibliography (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1996).

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4 Susannah Brietz Monta and Salvador Ryan, ‘Catholic Written Cultures’, in James E. Kelly and John McCafferty, eds. The Oxford History of British and Irish Catholicism, Volume I: Endings and New Beginnings, 1530–1640 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2023), 78.

5 J. Christopher Warner, ‘The Business of Catholic Controversial Literature: Alan Cope, Christopher Plantin, and the Printing and Distribution of Nicholas Harpsfield’s Dialogi sex’, in Earle A. Havens and Mark Rankin, eds. The Elizabethan Catholic Underground: Clandestine Printing and Scribal Subversion in the English Counter-Reformation (Leiden: Brill, 2025), 49; A. Soetaert and V. Soen, ‘A Catholic International or Transregional Catholicism? The Printing Press, English Catholics, and Their Hosts in the Early Modern Ecclesiastical Province of Cambrai’, The Catholic Historical Review (hereafter CHR) 106/4 (2020): 551–75 at 553; Earle A. Havens, ‘Lay Catholic Book Ownership and International Catholicism in Elizabethan England’, in Teresa Bela, Clarinda Calma and Jolanta Rzegocka, eds. Publishing Subversive Texts in Elizabethan England and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (Leiden: Brill, 2017), 219 and 233; Cyndia Susan Clegg, Press Censorship in Elizabethan England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 42–3 and 79.

6 Victor Houliston, ‘Missionary Printing, Robert Persons’s Letters, and the Logistics of Rapid Response’, in Havens and Rankin, eds. The Elizabethan Catholic Underground, 134–59; Gerard Kilroy, ‘Wrapped in Deceit: Book Smuggling from Rouen in 1584’, in Havens and Rankin, eds. The Elizabethan Catholic Underground, 160–96; Victor Houliston, ‘Recusant Literary Culture in England and Wales’, in Robert E. Scully, ed. A Companion to Catholicism and Recusancy in Britain and Ireland (Leiden: Brill, 2021), 514–5; Earle Havens and Elizabeth Patton, ‘Underground Networks, Prisons and the Circulation of Counter-Reformation Books in Elizabethan England’, in James E. Kelly and Susan Royal, eds. Early Modern English Catholicism: Identity, Memory and Counter-Reformation (Leiden: Brill, 2017), 165–88; Earle A. Havens, Printers, papists, and priests: Roman Catholic print culture and the religious underground in Elizabethan England (Ph.D. dissertation, Yale University, 2010), 220–74; Paul Arblaster, Antwerp & the World: Richard Verstegan and the International Culture of Catholic Reformation (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2004), 47–65; Leona Rostenberg, The Minority Press & The English Crown. A Study in Repression 1558-1625 (Nieuwkoop: Hes & De Graaf, 1971), 31–9; John Bossy, ‘The Character of Elizabethan Catholicism’, P&P 21/1 (1962): 39–59 at 47; A. C. Southern, Elizabethan Recusant Prose 1559–1582 (London: Sands & Co, 1950), 34–5.

7 A. Soetaert, ‘Catholic refuge and the printing press: Catholic exiles from England, France and the Low Countries in the ecclesiastical province of Cambrai’, British Catholic History (hereafter BCH) 34/4 (2019): 532–61 at 551–5.

8 After Bernardino de Mendoza’s infamous departure in January 1584, no Spanish diplomat resided at the English court until September 1603, when Juan de Tassis, Count of Villamediana, arrived in London to congratulate King James on his accession to the throne. He was succeeded by three consecutive ordinary ambassadors: Pedro de Zúñiga, Marquis of Flores Dávila (1605–1609); Alonso de Velasco, Count of Revilla (1609–1613); and Diego Sarmiento de Acuña, Count of Gondomar (1613–1618 and 1620–1622). Thereafter, two extraordinary ambassadors served in London: Carlos Coloma, Marquis of Espinar (1622–1624); and Juan de Mendoza, Marquis of Hinojosa (1623–1624). Between their departure and the beginning the Anglo-Spanish War (1625–1630), Jacques Bruneau was left in London as chargé d’affaires. Following the signing of the Treaty of Madrid (1630), diplomatic relations were restored with the appointment of the agent Juan de Necolalde (1631–1637), followed by the three extraordinary envoys—Íñigo Vélez de Guevara, Count of Oñate (1636–1638); Antonio Sancho Dávila, Marquis of Velada (1640–1641); and Virgilio Malvezzi (1640–1641)—and the ordinary ambassador Alonso de Cárdenas (1638–1655).

9 A. J. Loomie, ‘Francis Fowler II, English Secretary of the Spanish Embassy, 1609–1619’, Recusant History (hereafter RH) 12/1 (1973): 70-8 at 71; Ernesto E. Oyarbide Magaña, The First Count of Gondomar’s Library and Diplomatic Practice (1613–1622) (Ph.D. dissertation, Oxford University, 2019), 187–94.

10 For the second half of the century, see C. Bravo Lozano, ‘Popular Protests, the Public Sphere and Court Catholicism: The Insults to the Chapel of the Spanish Embassy in London, 1685–1688’, Culture & History Digital Journal 6/1 (2017). For Catholic ambassadors in Jacobean London, see Roberta Anderson, ‘Catholic ambassadors in a Protestant court: London, 1603–1625’, in Roberta Anderson and Charlotte Backerra, eds. Confessional Diplomacy in Early Modern Europe (London: Routledge, 2020), 141–59.

11 Albert J. Loomie, Spain and the Early Stuarts, 1585–1655 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1996); Albert J. Loomie, English Polemics at the Spanish Court: Joseph Creswell’s Letter to the Ambassador from England: The English and Spanish Texts of 1606 (New York: Fordham University Press, 1993); A. J. Loomie, ‘London’s Spanish Chapel Before and After The Civil War’, RH 18/4 (1987): 402–17; A. J. Loomie, ‘The Spanish Faction at the Court of Charles I, 1630–8’, Historical Research (hereafter HR) 59/139 (1986): 37–49; A. J. Loomie, ‘Canon Henry Taylor, Spanish Habsburg Diplomat’, RH 17/2 (1984): 223–37; A. J. Loomie, ‘Alonso de Cárdenas and the Long Parliament, 1640–1648’, The English Historical Review (hereafter EHR) 97/383 (1982): 289–307; Albert J. Loomie, ed. Spain and the Jacobean Catholics, 2 vols Catholic Record Society 64 and 68 (London: Catholic Record Society, 1973 and 1978); Loomie, ‘Francis Fowler II’, 70–8; A. J. Loomie, ‘Gondomar’s selection of English officers in 1622’, EHR 88/348 (1973): 574–81; A. J. Loomie, ‘A Grandniece of Thomas More: Catherine Bentley’, Moreana 8–29/1 (1971): 13–6; A. J. Loomie, ‘Guy Fawkes in Spain: the ‘Spanish Treason’ in Spanish documents’, HR special suppl. 9 (1971): 1–67; A. J. Loomie, ‘King James I’s Catholic Consort’, Huntington Library Quarterly (hereafter HLC) 34/4 (1971): 303–16; A. J. Loomie, ‘Richard Berry: Gondomar’s English Catholic Adviser’, RH 11/1 (1971): 47–57; A. J. Loomie, ‘Sir Robert Cecil and the Spanish Embassy’, HR 42/105 (1969): 30–54; A. J. Loomie, ‘Olivares, the English Catholics and the Peace of 1630’, Revue belge de Philologie et d’Histoire 47/4 (1969): 1154–66; A. J. Loomie, ‘A Jacobean Crypto-Catholic: Lord Wotton’, CHR 53/3 (1967): 328–45; A. J. Loomie, ‘Toleration and Diplomacy: The Religious Issue in Anglo-Spanish Relations, 1603–1605’, Transactions of the American Philosophical Society 53/6 (1963): 1–60.

12 See, among others, Berta Cano Echevarría and Ana Sáez Hidalgo, eds. Exile, Diplomacy and Texts: Exchanges between Iberia and the British Isles, 1500–1767 (Leiden: Brill, 2021); Anne J. Cruz, ed. Material and Symbolic Circulation between Spain and England, 1554–1604 (London: Routledge, 2008); Glyn Redworth, The Prince and the Infanta: The Cultural Politics of the Spanish Match (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003); Alexander Samson, ed. The Spanish Match: Prince Charles’s Journey to Madrid, 1623 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006); K. Marshalek, ‘Luisa de Carvajal in Anglo-Spanish Contexts, 1605–14’, Renaissance Quarterly 75/3 (2022): 882–916; J. Burrieza Sánchez, ‘La santidad femenina y el martirio en el Colegio de Ingleses: Luisa de Carvajal’, Magallánica: Revista de Historia Moderna 6/12 (2020): 30–63; Glyn Redworth, The She-Apostle: The Extraordinary Life and Death of Luisa de Carvajal (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010); Calvin F. Senning, Spain, Rumor, and Anti-Catholicism in Mid-Jacobean England: The Palatine Match, Cleves, and the Armada Scares of 1612–1613 and 1614 (New York: Routledge, 2019); Beatriz Álvargez García, ‘Estrategias de promoción y circulación de la información de la comunidad escocesa: los agentes de la Misión de Escocia y la Monarquía Hispánica (1627–1635)’, in José María Imízcoz Beunza, Javier Esteban Ochoa de Eribe and Andoni Artola Renedo, eds. Los entramados políticos y sociales en la España Moderna: del orden corporativo-jurisdiccional al Estado liberal (Vitoria: Fundación Española de Historia Moderna, 2023), 1309–25; Cristina Bravo Lozano, Spain and the Irish Mission, 1609–1707 (New York: Routledge, 2019).

13 Matthew Smith Anderson, The Rise of Modern Diplomacy 1450–1919 (London: Longman, 1993), 24–5 and 55; Garrett Mattingly, Renaissance Diplomacy (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1955), 269–75.

14 Tracey A. Sowerby, ‘Early Modern Diplomatic History’, History Compass 14 (2016): 441–56 at 447; Joanna Craigwood, ‘Diplomats and International Book Exchange’, in Ann Thomson, Simon Burrows and Edmond Dzeimbowski, eds. Cultural Transfers: France and Britain in the Long Eighteenth Century (Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 2010), 57–69.

15 ‘vnos libros de deuoçion y vnos breviarios para mis clerigos.’ Archivo General de Simancas, Estado (hereafter AGS, E), leg. 2589, 90, Pedro de Zúñiga to Philip III, 3 October 1612. All dates are given in New Style unless otherwise noted. The shipment was initially seized by customs officials and later handed over to the ambassador. Senning, Spain, Rumor, and Anti-Catholicism, 20. Luisa de Carvajal had mentioned a similar incident two years prior. When citing doña Luisa’s letters in this article, both Abad’s Spanish edition and Redworth’s English translation are referred to. All direct English quotations are taken from Redworth unless otherwise noted. Luisa de Carvajal y Mendoza, Doña Luisa de Carvajal y Mendoza. Epistolario y poesías, ed. Camilo María Abad Puente and Jesús González Marañón (Madrid: Biblioteca de Autores Españoles, 1965) (hereafter BAE), L 113, 298, to Inés de la Asunción, 4 June 1610. Luisa de Carvajal y Mendoza, The Letters of Luisa de Carvajal y Mendoza, ed. Glyn Redworth, trans. David McGrath and Glyn Redworth, 2 vols (London: Routledge, 2016) (hereafter Redworth, Letters), vol. 2, L 113, 104.

16 ‘I acknowledge to have receaved those things for the use of don Alonso to whome they belong. [Signed] John Fish: one little pack, wherein is wearing linen, II: little picture and two singing books/a glove of beades/a packet derected to Don Alonco de Cardenas wherein is a box and three books/two bookes more they up and directed to Don Alonço/a bundle of linen for Altar Cloackes/six books/three packets of letter to the mar: of velada and one to don Alonço.’ The National Archives, State Papers (hereafter TNA, SP) 94/41, f. 355r.

17 Mark Allen, ‘London Catholicism, embassy chapels, and religious tolerance in late Jacobean polemic’, BCH 36/2 (2022): 153–181 at 155–6 and 174.

18 Real Biblioteca de Palacio Real (hereafter RBPR), II/2228, 74, to Philip III, 10 February 1615.

19 Biblioteca de la Real Academia de la Historia, Salazar y Castro, A–84, f. 140r, to Gondomar, 27 August 1618.

20 In 1624, Carlos Coloma was supporting four English clergymen at his house: William Loo, born in Flanders to English parents; Carmelite priest Simon Stock; and the secular priests Thomas Wentworth and George Fisher. Ushaw College Archive, LC, C 12, Carlos Coloma to Cardinal Mellino.

21 D. Carrió-Invernizzi, ‘La biblioteca como espacio diplomático del embajador español en la edad moderna’, Mélanges de l’École française de Rome - Italie et Méditerranée modernes et contemporaines 134/1 (2022): 79–87.

22 Ernesto E. Oyarbide Magaña, ‘Collecting “Toute l’Angleterre”: English Books, Soft Power and Spanish Diplomacy at the Casa del Sol (1613–1622)’, in Nina Lamal, Jamie Cumby and Helmer Helmers, eds. Print and Power in Early Modern Europe (1500–1800) (Leiden: Brill, 2021), 316–37; Oyarbide Magaña, The First Count of Gondomar’s. For other instances of book circulation by early modern diplomats in the context of public diplomacy efforts, see H. Helmers, ‘English public diplomacy in the Dutch Republic, 1609–1619’, The Seventeenth Century 36/3 (2021): 413–37; J. Craigwood and T. A. Sowerby, ‘Introduction: English Diplomatic Relations and Literary Cultures in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries’, HLC 82/4 (2019): 491–517.

23 ‘Aqui embio a VSI. el libro de uox celi traducido y normal, despues aca han salido otros muchos quele exceden en malicia y desuerguença, pero este a ellos en donayres que me dizen lo son en el idioma ingles, en el nuestro no deuen de sonar tan bien, y assi no los allo, sino es alguno quando trata de Gondomar.’ Archivo de los Duques de Alba, C. 233, 24.

24 AGS, E, leg. 8789, 57, Coloma to Cardinal De la Cueva, 12 February 1623.

25 ‘de ningun catolico ni de otra persona ha querido recibir aqui un libro ni cosa que ualga.’ AGS, E, leg. 2596, 145, 15 November 1617.

26 Ernesto E. Oyarbide Magaña, ‘A most venerable provisional envoy: Friar Diego de la Fuente’s diplomatic missions to Jacobean London, 1618–1620 and 1624’, in Anderson and Backerra, eds. Confessional Diplomacy, 100-19.

27 Biblioteca Nacional de España (hereafter BNE), Mss. 18420, f. 66v, Bishop of Monopoly to De la Fuente, 7 July [1616?].

28 BNE, Mss. 18422, f. 259r. The disputed legend of the Holy Virgins of Cologne gradually developed during the middle ages. According to its canonical version, Ursula was a Christian princess from Britain who, in order to avoid marriage to a pagan prince, embarked on a pilgrimage to Rome, during which she amassed a following of eleven thousand virgins. After visiting the Eternal City, Ursula and her female companions were eventually martyred en masse at Cologne by the besieging Hun army. See Scott Bradford Montgomery, St. Ursula and the Eleven Thousand Virgins of Cologne: Relics, Reliquaries and the Visual Culture of Group Sanctity in Late Medieval Europe (Berlin: Peter Lang, 2009), 9–17.

29 BNE, Mss. 18420, ff. 53r–67r, Bishop of Monopoly to De la Fuente, [1614–1617].

30 BNE, Mss. 18420, f. 152r-v, Fray Francisco de la Cruz to De la Fuente, 12 July 1616.

31 The exemplar was first printed in Douai in 1616. ARCR 1, n. 314; BNE, Mss. 18420. Erroneously identified by Luis Tobío as belonging to Gondomar. Luis Tobío, Gondomar y los católicos ingleses (A Coruña: Ediciós do Castro, 1987), 101.

32 Oyarbide Magaña, The First Count of Gondomar’s, 191–3 and 282–3.

33 AGS, E, lib. 372, f. 105v, Gondomar to Philip III, 2 September 1616. On Gondomar and Maxfield, see Alexandra Walsham, ‘Relics, writing, and memory in the English Counter Reformation: Thomas Maxfield and his afterlives’, BCH 34/1 (2018): 77–105.

34 See, among others, Freddy Cristóbal Domínguez, Radicals in exile: English Catholic books during the reign of Philip II (Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2020), 65–92, 102 and 142–6.

35 ARCR 1, n. 280.

36 ‘quiere mas dellos para dispensar entre amigos, me auise y le serbire en esto como en todo lo demas.’ AGS, E, leg. 8341, 78, Creswell to Gondomar. On this particular work, see Antony F. Allison, ‘The Later Life and Writings of Joseph Creswell, S.J. (1556–1623)’, RH 15/2 (1979): 79–144 at 123–4.

37 María J. Pando-Canteli, ‘Letters, Books, and Relics: Material and Spiritual Networks in the Life of Luisa de Carvajal y Mendoza (1564–1614)’, in Alison Weber, ed. Devout Laywomen in the Early Modern World (London: Routledge, 2016), 296–302; Anne J. Cruz, The Life and Writings of Luisa de Carvajal y Mendoza (Toronto: Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies, 2014), 74; Redworth, The She-Apostle, 162–3; F. Bouza, ‘Contrarreforma y tipografía ¿Nada más que rosarios en sus manos?’, Cuadernos de Historia Moderna 16 (1995): 73–87 at 82–3.

38 BAE, LL 93–4 and 143, 245, 249 and 354, to Joseph Creswell, 23 April 1608, 29 June 1608 and 3 August 1612; Redworth, Letters, vol. 1, L 93, 307 and vol. 2, LL 94 and 143, 7 and 222.

39 BAE, LL 88 and 167, 231 and 395, to Creswell and Alonso de Carvajal, 4 October 1607 and 7 May 1613; Redworth, Letters, vol. 1, L 88, 279–80 and vol. 2, L 167, 305.

40 BAE, L 113, 299, to Inés de la Asunción, 4 June 1610; Redworth, Letters, vol. 2, L 113, 106.

41 ‘por mi mano embia su sd. los pliegos al Archipresbitero deste Reyno, y los generales y sus superiores de las ordenes asus religiosos, y los olios, las aras, los agnusdeis, los ornamentos, los libros, y otras mil cosas que si aqui lo abriesen lo quemarian.’ For the original letter, see AGS, E, leg. 2600, 86. For a contemporary copy, see RBPR, II/870, ff. 167r–8r. For the printed version, see Conde de Gondomar, Diego Sarmiento de Acuña, Documentos inéditos para la historia de España: Correspondencia oficial de Don Diego Sarmiento de Acuña, Conde de Gondomar, vol. 2 (Madrid: Imprenta de la Viuda de Estanislao Maestre, 1943) (hereafter DIHE II), 310–11.

42 Acts of the Privy Council of England, 1623–1625, vol. 39 (London: Stationery Office, 1933), 82, 23 August 1623 o.s.; TNA, SP 94/27, f. 220r, 5 September 1623; TNA, SP 14/151, ff. 111r–12v, 30 August 1623 o.s.

43 ‘buena obra y de causa de religion.’ AGS, Tribunal Mayor de Cuentas (hereafter TMC), leg. 2633, 14; B. Álvarez García, ‘Diplomacia informal, finanzas y redes de sociabilidad en la corte de Carlos I de Inglaterra: la agencia de Juan de Necolalde en Londres a través de sus cuentas (1631–1637)’, Hispania 83/274 (2023): 1–20 at 15. The exact date of the incident must be somewhere between his arrival in the summer of 1631 and November 1632, judging by a dispatch on a later conflict of a similar nature from Necolalde to Secretary of State John Coke, TNA, SP 94/36, f. 192r–v.

44 ‘es costumbre quelos embaxadores desu magd hagan esta comodidad a aquellos cattolicos.’ Lambeth Palace Library (hereafter LPL), Ms. 4192.

45 ‘quando ay criado conoçido del Embaxador, ni lo tocan ni lo miran.’ DIHE II, 310, to Philip III, 8 April 1620.

46 T. Lindquist, ‘John Taylor (1597–1655), English Catholic Gentleman and Caroline Diplomat’, RH 28/1 (2006), 75–94 at 75–9; Loomie, ‘Sir Robert Cecil’, 36. ‘El doctor Teller natural ingles cassado en Amberes Doctor por Duay donde ha uiuido 30 años abogado y consilier dela uniuersidad.’ AGS, E, leg. 841, 118.

47 Thomas M. McCoog, The Society of Jesus in Ireland, Scotland, and England, 1598–1606: “Lest Our Lamp Be Entirely Extinguished” (Leiden: Brill, 2017), 426–7; Loomie, ‘Francis Fowler II’, 70–1; Loomie, ‘Toleration and Diplomacy’, 18, 21 and 31.

48 AGS, TMC, leg. 2633, 6; AGS, E, leg. 2571, 166, Philip III to Zúñiga, 27 March 1606; Loomie, ‘Sir Robert Cecil’, 36.

49 AGS, E, leg. 841, 118 and 150; AGS, E, leg. 2571, 153, Philip III to Zúñiga, 14 December 1605; AGS, E, leg. 2585, 54, Zúñiga to Philip III, 26 July 1606; Hatfield House, Cecil Papers (hereafter HH, Cecil Papers), vol. 118, f. 83r, Zúñiga to Salisbury, 8 December 1606; AGS, E, leg. 2586, 24, 124 and 144, Zúñiga to Philip III, 30 April 1607, 9 July 1608 and 15 September 1608; AGS, E, leg. 2513, 42, 17 September 1608; Loomie, ‘Sir Robert Cecil’, 36.

50 HH, Cecil Papers, vol. 26, ff. 1r–2v.

51 Willem Schrickx, ‘John Fowler, English Printer and Bookseller in the Low Countries (1564–1579)’, De Gulden Passer 54 (1976), 1–48; Lindquist, ‘John Taylor (1597–1655)’, 80; Loomie, ‘Francis Fowler II’, 75–7; Rostenberg, The Minority Press, 26.

52 AGS, E, leg. 841, 118; Loomie, ‘Francis Fowler II’, 77.

53 AGS, E, leg. 2585, 5, to Philip III, 17 January 1606.

54 BAE, L 102. 282, to Creswell, 6 March 1609; Redworth, Letters, vol. 2, L 102, 63.

55 AGS, E, leg. 2774, n.f., Consulta of the Council of State, 11 February 1612.

56 Loomie, ‘Canon Henry Taylor’, 223–37.

57 ‘dexamos en cassa de su Madre y hermana al buen liçendo fuller, que no ha sido pequeña azaña’; ‘we left good licentiate Fuller [Fowler] at his mother and sister’s home, which was no small accomplishment.’ BNE, Mss. 9133, f. 60r, De la Fuente to Gondomar, 23 September 1618.

58 RBPR, II/2108, 81.

59 HH, Cecil Papers, vol. 109, 218–9, to Salisbury, 17 January 1606 o.s., calendared M. S. Giuseppi, ed. Calendar of the manuscripts of the Most Honourable the Marquess of Salisbury (London: Stationery Office, 1940), vol. 18, 23.

60 AGS, E, leg. 2587, 89, Alonso de Velasco to Philip III, 14 June 1610.

61 HH, Cecil Papers, vol. 113, f. 16r, William Fowler to Salisbury, n.d., calendared M. S. Giuseppi, ed. Calendar of the manuscripts of the Most Honourable the Marquess of Salisbury (London: Stationery Office, 1968), vol. 20, 176.

62 AGS, E, leg. 2585, 61.

63 HH, Cecil Papers, vol. 195, n.f., calendared G. Dyfnallt Owen, ed. Calendar of the manuscripts of the Most Honourable the Marquess of Salisbury (London: Stationery Office, 1970), vol. 21, 160. The letter does not provide any details on the books themselves.

64 HH, Cecil Papers, vol. 140, f. 134v, calendared M. S. Giuseppi, ed. Calendar of the manuscripts of the Most Honourable the Marquess of Salisbury (London: Stationery Office, 1933), vol. 16, 32. AGS, E, leg. 2585, 61.

65 P. R. Harris, ‘The reports of William Udall, informer, 1605–1612’, RH 8/4 (1966): 192–249 at 228.

66 BAE, L 59, 182, to Magdalena de San Jerónimo; Redworth, Letters, vol. 1, L 59, 176–7. Both Abad and Redworth erroneously identify ‘miss Teylar’ as Henry Taylor’s daughter.

67 ‘The Manual of Prayers. Considerations of frequenting the Sacrament, written by Androtius a Jesuit. A dialogue of comfort against tribulation, made by Sir Thomas Moore. The defence of the Queen of Scots title (3 of these). The regiment of women (15 of these). An apology of the constitution of the English Colleges at Rheims and Rome. A Christian directory to salvation. A treatise of the Catholic Faith, written by William Reynoldes a priest. The 3 books entitled, Beware of Mr. Jewell. A confution of Jewell’s sermon. A treatise of the beginning of heresy. Christian Doctrine. A Pearl for a prince, dedicated to Queen Elizabeth. The Fortress of Faith. A consolatory epistle to the afflicted Catholics. A Reply to Mr. Davyson’s Dream.’ HH, Cecil Papers, vol. 115, f. 266r, calendared M. S. Giuseppi, ed. Calendar of the manuscripts of the Most Honourable the Marquess of Salisbury (London: Stationery Office, 1940), vol. 18, 94.

68 BAE, L 115, 302, to Joseph Creswell, 4 July 1610; Redworth, Letters, vol. 2, L 115, 114.

69 Óscar A. Ruiz Fernández, England and Spain in the Early Modern Era: Royal Love, Diplomacy, Trade and Naval Relations 1604–25 (London: Bloomsbury, 2020), 123.

70 Harris, ‘The reports of William Udall’, 237, cited in Loomie, ‘Francis Fowler II’, 71.

71 HH, Cecil Papers, vol. 127, f. 120r, calendared G. Dyfnallt Owen, ed. Calendar of the manuscripts of the Most Honourable the Marquess of Salisbury (London: Stationery Office, 1970), vol. 21, 61.

72 Loomie, ‘Francis Fowler II’, 73.

73 TNA, SP 16/537, ff. 135r–6r, to Dr John Wilson, 12 May 1638. Moreover, in 1624, Ann Taylor is still reported as a woman living in London who frequented the college of St Omers for Catholic books. Harris, ‘The reports of William Udall’, 220.

74 RBPR, II/2168, f. 69v, to Juan Hurtado de Mendoza, 28 January 1614; AGS, E, leg. 2574, n.f., Philip IV to Juan de Necolalde, 13 May 1633.

75 ‘yngles catholico que hauia seruido muchos años de portero alos embaxadores desu Magd. en Inglaterra. con pareçer y a ynstançia de persona eclesiasticas prudentes y çelosas mouidas particularmente por conoçer el dicho Barber alos catholicos y a algunos confidentes que frequentauan la cassa.’ AGS, TMC, leg. 2633.

76 ARCR 2, n. 417.

77 ‘hauer vendido quatro que le dexo aqui vn año a entre otros cierto Ingles.’ AGS, E, leg. 8789, 1, Coloma to Cardinal de la Cueva, 5 January 1623.

78 ‘Don Alonso de Cardenas da de salarios […] al Portero Enrique Barber por semana 14 Reales’; ‘Don Alonso de Cárdenas pays his Porter Enrique [Henry] Barber 14 reales a week.’ British Library, Sloane Mss. 1573, f. 25r.

79 John Bossy, Giordano Bruno and the Embassy Affair (London: Yale University Press, 1991), 19, 33, 54 and 197–200; Horatio F. Brown, ed. Calendar of State Papers Relating to English Affairs in the Archives of Venice 1607–1610, vol. 11 (London: Stationery Office, 1904), 351, Marc’ Antonio Correr to the Doge and the Senate, 24 September 1609.

80 Walsham, ‘“Domme Preachers”’, 86.

81 TNA, SP 16/455, f. 290r.

82 TNA, SP 16/453, f. 229r; printed in John Rushworth, ed. Historical Collections of Private Passages of State, Weighty Matters in Law, Remarkable Proceedings in Five Parliaments, vol. 3 (London: J. D. for J. Wright and R. Chiswell, 1680), 1180. In February 1632, a different Catholic laundrywoman working at the embassy, Margett Clerck, had been apprehended by pursuivants. TNA, SP 94/36, f. 42r.

83 TNA, SP 16/455, f. 290r.

84 ‘personas que tienen aqui correspondencias […] gran cantidad de ellos [eran] contra el Rey y sus ministros’. AGS, E, leg. 2587, 121, Velasco to Philip III, 7 October 1610.

85 ARCR 1, n. 304. See also Harris, ‘The reports of William Udall’, 202–5.

86 ‘por el tienen las cauezas en los hombros ellos y otros muchos, y que de aqui adelante caminen de forma que no se pongan en estos peligros.’ AGS, E, leg. 844, 48, Consulta of the Council of State, 7 December 1610. Velasco might have warned the community leaders either directly or through his Minim confessor, Fray Bartolomé Téllez, who was familiar with English Catholic affairs. He counselled the Pope against the appointment of a Catholic bishop for England, which prompted archpriest Birkhead’s condemnation. Archives of the Archdiocese of Westminster (hereafter AAW), A Series, vol. 11, 439–42, Informatio scripta, a Religioso Hispano Ordine St. Francisco de Paula et eo tempore, confessore ordinario, oratori Hispani in Anglii, s.d. [1612]; [Hugh Tootell] and M. A. Tierney, Dodd’s Church History of England from the Commencement of the Sixteenth Century to the Revolution in 1688, 5 vols (London: Charles Dolman, 1843), vol. 5, 56.

87 AGS, E, leg. 8789, 3, Coloma to Pedro de San Juan, 6 January 1623.

88 ‘le castigare seueramente caso que su libro vuiese sido tan temerario que se atreuiese a tratar indeuidamente con la persona del Rey dela Gran Bretaña.’ AGS, E, leg. 8789, 1, Coloma to Cardinal de la Cueva, 5 January 1623.

89 Redworth, The Prince and the Infanta, 81–140.

90 [Tootell] and Tierney, Dodd’s Church History, 137–45; TNA, SP 14/150, f. 13v, Calvert to Conway, 2 August 1623 o.s.

91 ‘Note of such bookes as are sent to the Rl hoble. Mr Secretary Conway […] 23 Manuells/11 Primers/5 Firme foundations/24 Abridgements/5 Books of Pollicy & Religion written by Fitzherbert a priest/6 Rules of St Clare/4 Pseudo Scripturists/6 Introductions/11 Books of ye following of Christ/10 Keyes of Paradise/18 Chatechismes of Berllarmyne/24 Chatechismes of Vaux/5 Babel or monarchomalia [sic] protestanti[um].’ TNA, SP 14/151, ff. 111r–12v, 30 August 1623 o.s.

92 John Pauncefote, The firme foundation of Catholike religion, against the bottomles pitt of heresies… (Antwerp: Arnold Coninx, 1591). ARCR 2, n. 590.

93 ARCR 2, n. 280–2.

94 ARCR 2, n. 573.

95 ARCR 2, n. 588.

96 TNA, SP 94/28, f. 182r, Conway to Coloma, 18 October 1623 o.s.

97 TNA, SP 94/28, f. 163r, Coloma to Conway, 25 October 1623.

98 Norman Egbert McClure, ed. The letters of John Chamberlain (Philadelphia: The American Philosophical Society, 1939), L 421, 471, Chamberlain to Carleton, 04/01/1623 o.s.

99 ‘auida consideraçion a que tambien es menester cumplir con los cattcos. que estan ala mira.’ AGS, E, leg. 8789, 1, Coloma to Cardinal de la Cueva, 5 January 1623.

100 AAW, A Series, vol. 17, 207–208, Matthew Kellison to Carlos Coloma, s.d. [1623]; Michael Questier, Catholicism and Community in Early Modern England. Politics, Aristocratic Patronage and Religion, c. 1550—1640 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 394.

101 Gondomar recommended Mathew Kellison to succeed George Birkhead as the archpriest of the English clergy in May 1614. RBPR, II/2168, 122, to Cardinal Mellino. An upcoming research project will further explore the Spanish-secular entente and its consequences for both Spanish confessional diplomatic efforts and Early Stuart Catholicism. For some preliminary discussion, see Diego Herrero García, ‘Diplomacia interreligiosa en la Europa confesionalizada: las relaciones Habsburgo-Estuardo (1603-1655)’, in Alexandra Esteves, Liliana Neves, Luís Gonçalves Ferreira, Sílvia Pinto, Cláudia Novais, Fátima Silva, Célia Oliveira and Tânia Ferreira, eds. Histórias Interpeladas (séculos XIII-XX) (Braga: Universidade do Minho, 2024), 71–85.

102 ‘zelosissimo del seruicio de Dios y de VMd. en tanto grado, que podriamos estar aqui mal sin el por el gusto que tienen los amigos de tratar porsu mano.’ AGS, E, leg. 2584, 58, Zúñiga to Philip III, 5 September 1605.

103 ‘tan necesario para la Embajada, como el pan de la boca.’ BAE, L 115, 302, to Joseph Creswell, 7 June 1610. ‘gran estrecho amigo de los padres nuestros.’ BAE, L 102, 283, to Joseph Creswell, 6 March 1609. Both English translations are the author’s own. Cf. Redworth, Letters, vol. 2, LL 115 and 102, 114 and 65.

104 ‘vna obra de gran seruicio ala religion cattolica.’ LPL, ms. 4192.

105 ‘si estuviera en su mano, nunca los libros se quemaran.’ BAE, L 123, 319, 16 April 1611; Redworth, Letters, vol. 2, L 123, 146.