For someone who gravitated so close to the centre of the Elizabethan Court and its politics, Sir Christopher Hatton’s political views and his influence over the regime’s policies have proven elusive to historians who have tried to characterise them. Unlike fellow Privy Councillors such as Lord Burghley, Sir Francis Walsingham, and the earl of Leicester, Hatton did not leave behind an extensive archive, and consequently his activities within the regime have received less scrutiny than the actions of those who did. Furthermore, Hatton’s modus operandi within the court has never quite fit with previously described models of Elizabethan politics (p. 5). This, too, has led to him being overlooked, perhaps even underestimated. These arguments form the starting point of Neil’s Younger’s latest book, which undertakes a reassessment of Hatton’s political career as well as his religious beliefs, and the extent to which these conflicted and intersected. Hatton’s religious leanings are central to Younger’s analysis, which fundamentally seeks to answer the question of whether or not Hatton might have been Catholic (pp. 8-9).
The first chapter traces Hatton’s early life and rise to power in Queen Elizabeth’s court. Younger points out that Hatton’s first significant appointment, as Captain of the Guard in 1572, followed a period of intense political crisis (the Northern Rebellion, the Ridolfi plot, the failed marriage plot between Mary Queen of Scots and the Duke of Norfolk), spurred by English Catholic concerns about the succession and discontent with the 1559 religious settlement (p. 23). Younger suggests that Hatton’s religious conservatism may have been part of the reason for his promotion, a signal to Catholics at home and abroad that the Queen had elevated someone close to her who could act as their intermediary. Hatton’s journey to Spa in the Spanish Netherlands in 1573, which he undertook ostensibly to recover from ill health, may also have been part of an unofficial embassy to the English Catholics who fled there after the Northern Rebellion failed, to persuade them to return to England (pp. 26-27).
The second chapter assesses Hatton’s familial and client networks, paying particular attention to their religious persuasions. Although not as large as Burghley’s or Leicester’s, Hatton cultivated a significant patronage network, and one that was distinctly, though not exclusively, Catholic. Hatton’s extended family included many known Catholics, as well as religious conservatives whose beliefs were more uncertain (pp. 63-65). He maintained good relations with the Catholic gentry in his home county of Northamptonshire and the surrounding midlands; his correspondence, for instance, indicates friendly dealings with the Treshams, Lord Paget, and Ralph Sheldon. Younger traces his connections to the plotters of two notorious conspiracies against the Queen’s life. The priest Hugh Hall, for instance, designed Hatton’s garden at Holdenby before he was implicated in John Sommerville’s failed attempt to assassinate the Queen (p. 72), and several members of Hatton’s entourage provided aid to the Babington plotters (pp. 91-94). The latter connections proved highly embarrassing to Hatton, who participated in the interrogations and trials of the conspirators. Hatton’s persistent support for Catholics throughout his life, via employment in his service, various business transactions, and artistic patronage, is remarkable given his prominent position at court. Younger argues that Hatton pursued this course because he thought it was the right thing to do (p. 100), and that his efforts may even have contributed to the survival of a more ‘moderate’ branch of Catholicism in England that countered stricter contingents (p. 98).
In the third chapter, Younger surveys contemporary assessments of Hatton’s religious leanings. The chapter draws on printed, mostly polemical literature as well as private correspondence. Catholic and Protestant commentators more or less agreed that Hatton was some kind of church papist (pp. 128-29). Younger observes that Protestant criticism of Hatton’s religion and reputation was much more open after his death in 1591, suggesting that during his lifetime it was a rather politically charged topic (pp. 135-36).
Chapter four considers Hatton’s role in determining foreign and domestic policy, both within the Privy Council and in parliament. Hatton’s political positions were less obviously informed by confessional leanings than those of his colleagues on the Privy Council (p. 171). With the exception of the second Anjou match, which he opposed in the early 1580s, his positions on policy aligned closely with those of the Queen (p. 144), making him a useful ally and counterweight to the hotter Protestants on the council.
Chapter five builds on the assessment of Hatton’s attitudes towards foreign and domestic policy to look at the extent to which Hatton contested or advocated for specific religious policies within the Elizabethan regime. Here again, Hatton’s activities stand in marked contrast to his support of Catholics in his personal affairs. Hatton seems to have done relatively little to directly intervene in the passage and enforcement of anti-Catholic legislation, though Younger posits that he may have acted as the ‘good cop’ in the state interrogations of Catholics in which he participated (p. 186). He did, however, take a more active interest in suppressing puritans by steering the appointment of more conservative clerics to the episcopacy. His influence is clear, for instance, in the removal of Edmund Grindal as archbishop of Canterbury and the appointment of John Aylmer as bishop of London (pp. 189-95). Younger highlights correspondence between Hatton and Aylmer that suggests that Hatton encouraged his efforts to suppress puritans in London, whilst pressuring him to avoid doing the same to Catholics in the city (p. 192).
The timing of Hatton’s efforts to crack down on Puritan preachers and magistrates, which were most intense between 1588 and his death in 1591, holds interesting implications for the balance of power within the royal court. Younger posits that the deaths of Leicester and Walsingham in 1588 and 1590, respectively, left an opening for Hatton to pursue his anti-Puritan agenda across various levels of state and church governance (pp. 199-200). Hatton’s efforts were stymied by his own untimely death in 1591, after which the regime swung abruptly in the other direction and began a new wave of persecution against Catholics. That the death of a royal favourite seems to have triggered such a dramatic shift in policy suggests that Hatton exercised significant political sway, and that perhaps as a royal favourite his agenda may have carried more weight with the Queen than those of more conventional bureaucrats like Burghley and Walsingham (pp. 210-11).
Ultimately, Younger argues that Hatton, given his family history and lifelong connections to English Catholics in various respects, was likely some kind of church papist (p. 237). Most of the evidence for this is circumstantial, but it is compelling. Hatton’s continuous efforts to protect and employ English Catholics in his social, familial, and business dealings posed a considerable risk to his political career, though they must be evaluated alongside his participation in the regime’s persecution of Catholics at different points. No records of Hatton’s personal religious views survive, and we have no idea how theologically literate he was, but this absence itself could be suggestive; if he was Catholic, he certainly would not have left any evidence of religious leanings that might compromise his position with the queen. The evidence Younger has woven together points to Hatton being a more conservative Catholic, if that is what he was, one who perhaps found pre-Tridentine Catholic practices more compatible with outward conformity to the Elizabethan Church. There are strong parallels here with Susan Doran’s assessment of Elizabeth I as an ‘old sort of Protestant’; indeed, Younger suggests that we might think of Hatton as a ‘Henrician’ sort of Catholic (p. 230).
Younger’s analysis of Hatton’s religious beliefs and their influence over his personal and political affairs builds on work he has published elsewhere which has reassessed the confessional leanings of the Elizabethan regime. This latest book makes apparent the value of revisiting this well-trodden ground. His account of Hatton’s life is meticulously researched, drawing on manuscript materials from every archive where papers known to relate to Hatton may be found, as well as a wide array of printed collections of primary resources. Through his methodical tracing of Hatton’s Catholic connections in his family tree, personal and professional relationships, artistic patronage, and household employment, Younger has drawn upon an established approach in Catholic history to raise stimulating questions about the balance of power within the Elizabethan court, and the extent to which English Catholics could find sources of protection and even influence within it.
