The Tudor Welshman, Sir Edward Carne (c.1496-1561), gained a wide reputation as an outstanding diplomat and lawyer. Chosen by Cardinal Wolsey to enter the service of King Henry VIII, he was sent to Rome as excusator in the process of annulment of the king’s marriage to Queen Catherine of Aragon. After the Rota had refused to annul Henry’s marriage, Carne returned to Glamorgan, and continued his career as a civil servant. He was appointed justice of the peace, master of requests and was made a member of the Council in the Marches of Wales. His next main appointment was as English envoy to the Holy See during the reign of Mary I. Carne was entrusted with the difficult task of restoring diplomatic relations between England and Rome. He remained in Rome until his death in 1561. His attachment to Wales and his staunch Catholic faith are evident in the burial memorial erected to his memory in a church in Rome by two Welsh friends.

Despite receiving particular praise from a range of early modern commentators, from Nicholas Sander to Pedro de Ribadeneyra, most historians have seen the Italian merchant Antonio Buonvisi playing a fairly negligible role in the history of mid-Tudor Catholicism. This article challenges this interpretation. After reassessing some rather simplistic assessments of Buonvisi’s religious beliefs, this article explores his actions and activities following his self-imposed exile from England in 1549. Using research conducted in both the State Archives of Lucca and the Vatican City, it suggests that Buonvisi played a far more significant role in ensuring the survival of English Catholicism over the first decades of the Reformation than is usually acknowledged. Indeed, it argues that Buonvisi may have helped lay core foundations for the Catholic restoration of Mary I’s reign, the success of which has recently been highlighted by historians such as Eamon Duffy.

In 1624 the playwright John Webster lauded Thomas More as a learned and worthy poet, placing him alongside Chaucer, Gower, Lydgate and Philip Sidney. It is clear that More was celebrated by Webster not only for the quality of his literary writing, but also for the wider political, social and historical influence of his literary output. This article uses the production of the 1557 folio of More’s English Workes to explore the literary, political and religious influence of More’s writing in the 1550s and beyond, and situates More’s Workes within the wider context of folio production in Renaissance England. It also explores how the publication of More’s Workes in folio established a distinct literary position for Thomas More in the mid-1550s, and highlights the unusual nature of the folio’s compilation and production within the mid-Tudor book trade.

In the summer of 1615, a newly discovered Catholic conspiracy prompted William James, bishop of Durham, to vigorously correspond with the archbishop of Canterbury. On 3 August, in the midst of the crisis, the bishop incarcerated a professional dancer, Robert Hindmers (b. 1585). Together with his wife Anne, Robert was associated with the Newcastle-based secular priest William Southerne and involved in Catholic evangelising in the diocese of Durham. This article discusses the biography and career of Robert Hindmers, and speculates about the role of dancing within the Durham Catholic community. It also analyses how the activities of the Hindmers were perceived by the ecclesiastical authorities. The case of Robert Hindmers traverses and links many related issues, such as Counter-Reformation culture, traditional festivity, religious politics, and the interconnectedness of elite and popular cultures. But above all, it expands our understanding of Catholic missionary strategies in post-Reformation England by suggesting that dance instruction might have been used by Catholics to access households and assist the mission.

The success of the Counter-Reformation in Ireland following the restoration of the Catholic hierarchy was a remarkable achievement. Between 1618 and 1630 Rome made a staggering nineteen episcopal appointments in a kingdom that was ruled by a Protestant king. Documenting the achievements of the initial period only paints half the picture, however. The implementation of the Tridentine reforms and the thorny issue of episcopal authority brought the religious orders into a head-on collision with the secular clergy. This protracted dispute lasted for a decade, most notably in the diocese of Dublin where an English secular priest, Paul Harris, led a hostile attack on the Franciscan archbishop, Thomas Fleming. The longevity of the feud, though, owed at least as much to the intervention of Lord Deputy Sir Thomas Wentworth as it did to the internal tensions of the Catholic Church. Despite Wentworth’s influential role, he has been largely written out of the conflict. This article addresses the lacunae in the current historiography and argues that the lord deputy’s interference was a decisive factor in exacerbating the hostilities between the secular and regular clergy in early seventeenth-century Ireland.