With the recuperation into mainstream history of so much Catholic-related material from Reformation-era England, it is not surprising that large claims should now be made for the significance of the archpriest controversy (1598–1602), in which Catholic secular priests in England, the appellants, challenged what they saw as a Jesuit-inspired decision to appoint an archpriest to govern them. Peter Lake and Michael Questier, each fresh from publishing, through the same press, provocative monographs—Lake's Bad Queen Bess? Libels, Secret Histories, and the Politics of Publicity in the Reign of Queen Elizabeth I (2016) and Questier's Dynastic Politics and the British Reformations, 1558–1603 (2019)—in which Elizabeth I is seen through new lenses, attempt to raise what has generally been taken to be intra-Catholic mudslinging to a case study in the politics of early modern publicity. Questier puts his intimacy with the archival sources to use in providing a blow-by-blow account of the exchanges in print and manuscript, while Lake mines the evidence to develop his characterization of the public sphere in early modern England. The two methods dominate parts one and two of the work respectively.

The dustjacket opposes the likeness of the Jesuit leader Robert Persons with that of the bishop of London, Richard Bancroft, who sponsored some of the appellants’ anti-Jesuit publications. The choice of Bancroft reminds us that none of the appellants has a recognizable presence in Elizabethan historiography. Lake and Questier duly simplify the controversy to a conflict between Persons—as both writer and mastermind of the Jesuit approach to English Catholicism—and a clutch of almost interchangeable secular priests. Where Persons worked for the succession of the Spanish infanta to the throne soon to be vacated by Elizabeth and a restoration of Catholicism according to a blueprint—first published by Edward Gee as The Jesuit's memorial for the intended reformation of England under their first popish prince (1690)—that would privilege Jesuit power and preference, the appellants were ready to settle for a Scottish succession that might allow Catholic priests, free from Jesuit constraint, to operate under their bishops in a way that would not disturb the Protestant establishment.

Although Lake and Questier are careful not to take sides in the controversy, their treatment is marked by a particular stance taken toward Persons, whom they regard with a mixture of cynicism and awe: hardly anyone could get the better of him, they aver, and he anticipated the maneuvers of many of the political players in the succession drama so that they found themselves, it seems, dancing to Persons's tune (12). It is abundantly clear, even from the judiciously fair presentation of opposing printed works, that Persons was by far the superior writer and controversialist, quite apart from the question whether he was right. But Lake and Questier not only give a voice to his opponents; they allow a coherent political and ecclesiastical doctrine to emerge from their books. This restores the balance, giving much greater conviction and intellectual sophistication to the appellant position than did Mark Tierney and T. G. Law, who in past centuries took their part. Perhaps in sympathy with them, Lake and Questier eschew the spelling of Persons's name supported by almost all the manuscript evidence, and name him “Parsons,” as the appellants did.

Lake and Questier go further. They claim that the controversy has at least as much claim on our attention as the Marprelate and admonition controversies. Accordingly, they infer a model of public engagement from the quarrel by assembling the claims and counter-claims of honest dealing: controversialists should appeal frankly to a wide readership, put their case modestly and with restraint, and base their proposals on agreed legal and constitutional precedent. They should not try to pit the people against the state, or advance party interest against the common good. All Hail to the Archpriest thus admirably complements the account of the controversy in the third volume of Thomas McCoog's history of the Jesuits in the British Isles, Lest our Lamp be Entirely Extinguished (2017), which deals mainly with the moves and countermoves in Rome, rather than the public polemic.

The book is enlightening and perverse in almost equal measure. The reader is expected to keep a host of obscure book titles in mind simultaneously as the footnotes pile MGF upon IC, RNL, CBN, AA, BA, RCL, ID, AL, and the like. Much is made of the appellants’ interest in toleration and the French connection, but the authors pass over in silence the public debate staged by Henry IV in 1600, of which Persons wrote an intriguing report: A relation of the triall made before the King of France, upon the yeare 1600 betweene the Bishop of Evreux, and the L. Plessis Mornay: About certayne pointes of corrupting and falsifying authors, wherof the said Plessis was openly convicted (1604). The concurrent and overlapping Watchword controversy, in which Persons was fighting a parallel and entirely relevant public battle in print, also has no place in the story. Finally, the analysis of political philosophy offered here suffers from Lake and Questier's overlooking the standard account by Harro Höpfl, Jesuit Political Thought: The Society of Jesus and the State, c. 1540–1630 (2004), which would at least rescue Persons from the enforced isolation in which they place him. Whether All Hail to the Archpriest will rescue the appellant writers from obscurity remains to be seen; but readers will find a great deal to entertain and bemuse them here.