Over the last two decades, Peter Lake and Michael Questier have been at the forefront of attempts to reintegrate what is frequently branded ‘Catholic history’ back into the mainstream narrative. Previously stranded on the edges of general interest thanks to an ongoing Whiggish victory lap of exclusion combined with strong self-ghettoization by more confessionally inclined historians, the history of British and Irish Catholicism has now made such a return that it is becoming painfully obvious when scholars do leave it out of broader accounts of the early modern period.

As Lake and Questier explain in All Hail to the Archpriest, this book is not a Catholic history, but an attempt to recover the story of post-Reformation England with the Catholics left in rather than anachronistically invisible. As such, it is about striving to reach a more accurate and rounded picture of early modern England, touching on some of the most fundamental questions arising from the Reformation, still relevant today, particularly the relationship between politics and religion.

Rather than an arcane debate of limited significance, the authors seek to restore the Archpriest Controversy to its proper place as a major moment of public politicking, up there with the Marprelate and Elizabethan anti-Presbyterian episodes. Yes, the controversy was about the relationship of English Catholics to the officially Protestant state, but it was also a major religious dispute played out in the public sphere, involving national and international figures from roughly 1598 to 1602.

The opening third of the book traces the history of the Archpriest Controversy, reassembling the evidence to explain the sometimes- labyrinthine ins and outs of events. With its origins in tensions at the Catholic clerical prison at Wisbech Castle and also at the English College in Rome—from where allegations of inappropriate sexual behaviour and moral delinquency found their way into Protestant anti-Catholic polemic—elements within the secular clergy developed a gradual loathing towards the Society of Jesus, judging it a power-hungry entity seeking to control the English mission for its own advantage under the tyranny of the Jesuit Robert Persons. Persons’s response was to purge from the English College what he saw as malcontent troublemakers who, he believed, were always likely to apostatise once back in England. In an attempt to defuse the situation but recognising the appointment of a bishop was not practical—despite the urgings of some secular clergy—Rome came up with the novel idea of creating an archpriest. He would notionally oversee the English mission, but would have no power over the religious orders, despite being expected to consult the Jesuits about pressing matters. Predictably, a group of secular clergy appealed to Rome—hence the name, the appellants—that this was proof of a Jesuit takeover, that the Society’s members were really agents of Spain and extremists who actually stoked the fires of persecution in England. In this campaign, they looked to France and, especially, Henri IV for support, but also found elements within England, in particular the bishop of London, Richard Bancroft, only too willing to help them print their tracts against the Jesuit party. The controversy eventually ended with what Questier and Lake describe as a dishonourable draw: the appellants were cleared of schism; Persons’s claims to a unified Catholic bloc that would back James VI of Scotland for the Crown were discredited much to the satisfaction of the State, though it did have to deal with a harder Protestant faction that found their dalliance with the Catholic enemy unpalatable; and the notionally united English mission split in two, the archpriest prohibited from consulting the Jesuit superior on affairs touching the secular clergy.

The rest of the book presents what could be termed a series of meditations on the various elements of the Archpriest Controversy, tracking its influence and importance in several directions. Piecing together the appellant position from their fierce criticisms of the Jesuits, Lake and Questier acknowledge that the controversy was not a coherent, linear polemical exchange. Nevertheless, what they present is noteworthy, outlining what at times were competing conspiracy theories. Questions surrounding the succession loom large, as already indicated, with the appellants signalling their support for the Stuart claimant, more extreme elements even offering up the Jesuits as proof of their loyalism. In this, the authors capture the turmoil as Elizabeth’s reign drew to a close without any official heir, when all parties saw the chance to publicly lobby for their position, not only Catholic but also Protestant. The questions at play touched on religious pluralism, relations between the state and religion, the authority of the monarch and from where it is drawn. On the Catholic side, it was not simply a question of survivalists versus new missionary zeal, but different visions of what the Catholic Reformation might look like in England. It became a tussle between episcopal authority, state power and papal jurisdiction.

Inevitably, the cast of players and the discussion could be head-spinning for those not at least a little familiar with the period. At the book’s start, the authors provide a very helpful list of the main players, as well as a timeline that puts the controversy against wider national matters, such as treaty negotiations. The authors cleverly cover a lot of different angles on the controversy, though it might have been worth considering how the fanatical appellant William Watson and his more extreme colleagues tapped into wider European anti-Jesuit polemic. There is also one unexplained element of the book: why do the authors refer to Robert Parsons, rather than Persons? The former spelling has generally been discarded, including by the Persons correspondence project.

These, though, are minor quibbles. More important is that Lake and Questier convince with their thesis that the Archpriest Controversy offers a neglected window into the workings of the early modern public sphere. It is an attempt to recover what mattered to the protagonists, not just about the clerical matters at play or questions of the succession, but also wider ambitions and philosophies. Written in the authors’ typically punchy style, All Hail to the Archpriest should be required corrective reading for those who still believe the story of post-Reformation England can be told as if Catholics had disappeared from the scene, only to emerge whenever a handy scapegoat was required.