When Catholicism was illegal in England for centuries, Catholics had secret masses in hiding from the government

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Have you read the book Autobiography of a Hunted Priest by Father John Gerard. It is one of my favorite historical books. Father Gerard was a Jesuit Priest who ministered to Catholics in England during Elizabethan times. Ive read his autobiography probably half a dozen times. It’s one of the only first hand accounts by a priest that I have been able to find. His own story is really interesting. He was eventually captured and held in the tower of London. He did escape. But I also find his narrative of the faithful Catholics who housed him and cared for him to be very inspiring as well.
 
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It is nice to see that the “Wanderer” is still publishing great articles.
The article does not tell, says hundreds but gives us about 75 years where the mass was forbidden/underground under Elisabeth and James I.
 
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It was reported that the famous William Shakespeare owned a property housing undercover Catholic priests.
 
This is also why Spain had a captain named O’Reilly be the governor during the New Orleans Spanish period in its colonial history and why one of Argentina’s independence heroes was named O’Higgins.
 
It is widely thought that William Shakespeare was Catholic or at least had strong Catholic sympathies and it it believed that he secretly spent two years as a teacher of the De Hoghton family children at Hoghton Tower in Lancashire, before returning to Stratford and then on to London. The De Hoghton family (who still own the property) were Catholic in Elizabethan times and had a rather tumultuous time with the authorities because of their faith. Incidentally, this is the place where a loin of beef was “knighted” by KIng James the First of England and the term “sirloin” was generated. The tower has a priest`s hole used by priests who were visiting secretly to provide the Sacraments, if they were raided by the authorities attempting to capture clerics. The hole was built, I think, by St Nicholas Owen, who was a carpenter and who built many such hideaways in English country houses. This is a good book about St Nicholas:
https://www.amazon.com/St-Nicholas-Owen-Tony-Reynolds/dp/085244849X
and here is some info about the tower itself.

 
Two books on the period:

Hogge/GOD’S SECRET AGENTS: QUEEN ELIZABETH’S FORBIDDEN PRIESTS AND THE HATCHING OF THE GUNPOWDER PLOT.

Caraman/HENRY GARNET -1555-1606 - AND THE GUNPOWDER PLOT.

Recommended.
 
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Yes it is interesting to read Shakespeare’s play from a Catholic bent.

William set many of his plays in either Catholic Europe of the time or in the past where all of Europe was Catholic. He also had plays where the monarch was in error in some way.

People can speculate that his plays taught people to see that royalty could be in error and also to keep the Catholic culture alive in the English public’s mind.
 
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