The confessional divisions and battles of the post-Reformation period are well known. In accounts that now seem démodé, emphasis tended to be on the vast gulf that existed between Catholics and Protestants. Scholarship has now long underlined the insufficiency of that analytical framework by, for example, accentuating the differences within confessions. In the past couple of decades, much work has also focused on the ways in which neighbors overcame these divisions, either because syncretic dynamics mitigated differences or because there was de facto tolerations for those who diverged in matters of ritual and belief. Susan Cogan's book examines this dynamic through the lens of the English Catholic nobility during a time of deep religious tensions at the end of the sixteenth century and early seventeenth centuries. While it is easy to imagine a beleaguered Catholic caste cursed by the state's distrust, in fact, Cogan ably shows that nobiliary networks undermined the potential negative consequences of being Catholic within a context of confessional dissensions.
Cogan's argument is premised on the notion that kinship and social networks forged before the Reformation established firm roots. Her study of these webs of connectivity is focused geographically in Leicestershire, Northamptonshire, and Warwickshire and chronologically between 1400 and 1630. This long period is important because, as she suggests in chapter 2, kinship networks of the post-Reformation period did not emerge out of thin air, and, importantly, the underlying logic of these networks were not ephemeral. They existed and then continued to exist because they “could stabilize or augment [. . .] social status, economic health, and political influence and [. . .] those connections could protect individuals or families from political tumult” (64). These established relationships allowed Catholics—even recusants—to maintain access to patronage and clientage as a function of “coexistence.” One manifestation of the cultural unities that bound families and groups of different religious allegiances is in the realm of architecture and gardening where aesthetic values, assumptions about the communicative possibilities of home design, and patronage connections were reinforced. As she explains, “common interests drew people closer to one another and helped to bind them to patrons and the state.” Not only did these networks share craftsmen, but they could articulate reverence for patrons by encoded messages in these aesthetic endeavors, or by means of imitation. Aside from such cultural affinities, Cogan emphasizes the extent to which the Catholic nobility was ensconced in political spheres as office holders, soldiers, and petitioners to central authorities, thus forging a tight bond to “the state” and thus establishing a form of “citizenship.” Ultimately, the possibilities of Catholic embeddedness in the State relied on bonds of patronage, the establishment of protection, and promotion in exchange for services and loyalty. This system only worked when parties developed relationships based not on confession but on commonalities and mutual interests. These relationships were of particular import for Catholics as it was a matter of raw survival within a cultural-political sphere that often publicized hatred for them.
These network connections take on a gendered quality. A set of particular bonds established among women themselves were “part of a family's coordinated strategy to maintain their wealth and status, and to provide women their own networks of power” (107). Women's power sometimes intervened in the realm of masculine authority as they became defenders and petitioners on behalf of husbands who had come into trouble with authorities, a symptom of a particular kind of recusant “problem” of masculinity. In a society in which “normative masculinity” emphasized a strong, virtuous, and well-connected pater familias, recusancy often prevented performing or reflecting these ideals, therein lay the importance of network formation across confessional boundaries, even if those patronage networks ended up affirming subordination to patrons. To be outside of these networks undermined the possibility of fulfilling masculine ideals.
Cogan's book ably shows—using a range of archival and other sources—that the permanence of some kind of Catholic “community” depended on mutual support among confessional allies and among people across confessional boundaries. Without a doubt Catholics had a range of responses to their position in post-Reformation England and this variety evolved within families and changed over time. Throughout her book, there are intimations of times when a family (or individuals within the family) stopped playing “nice” with authorities, thus puncturing the semblance of unity that existed, even if frailly. I would have appreciated just a little more discussion of these dynamics, the ruptures that might shed light on the norm of coexistence as she frames it.
Overall, however, this book allows us to look at the social groupings and positionings that recusancy (and other states of Catholicism) required and that, as political and cultural studies of recent years have inevitably argued, the “Catholic” story is messy—and perhaps more importantly, that the Catholic story cannot be told outside of the realm of English history as a whole.
