Of the many topicalities which fill the writings of the Elizabethan pamphleteers, Gabriel Harvey and Thomas Nashe, two concern the now almost unknown recusant poet and Cambridge tutor, Stephen Vallenger. In each allusion, as the subject of a long standing esoteric joke, he is referred to with obvious irony as “noble.” In Catholic eyes, at least, he merited the title, for he risked life imprisonment, if not worse, in an attempt to vindicate the cause for which Edmund Campion died, and when arrested, shielded his associates, taking full punishment upon himself.

On 23rd November, 1584, the fifth Parliament of Queen Elizabeth introduced a bill against “Jesuits, seminary priests and such other like disobedient persons,” which proposed to order all Catholic priests ordained since the feast of the Nativity of St. John the Baptist, 1559, to leave the country within forty days after the end of the current session of Parliament or suffer pain of death for high treason, their aiders and abettors to be adjudged felons and condemned to death as felons. This bill passed its third reading in the House of Commons on December 19, 1584, but it was not taken up by the House of Lords until after the Christmas recess.