The Rising of the Northern Earls

Abstract

In considering the period from 1559–1603, and the attitudes within the recusant community to the acceptance or rejection of the Elizabethan Settlement, the first major event giving extensive evidence of political attitudes in the northern region is the Rising of the Northern Earls, a crisis which, as elsewhere in Elizabethan England marked the watershed for the fortunes of Catholicism during the reign. An analysis, conducted at some length, of its causes, events and consequences is, indeed, indispensable to understanding Catholic survival in Elizabethan northern England.