In November 1591 a royal proclamation was published denouncing the activities of seminary priests and Jesuits which inspired a surprising number of Catholic authors to undertake its refutation. Robert Persons, Joseph Cresswell, Richard Verstegan, Thomas Stapelton, and Robert Southwell all attacked it in works printed in English or Latin; a short, anonymous tract on the subject survives in manuscript; and two Spanish writers also dealt with the proclamation, which had touched the honour of Philip II. There was perhaps something of a tradition among Catholic authors of writing refutations of royal proclamations, and the edict of 1591 was indeed strongly worded, but it is clear that its appearance was largely a welcome excuse for the authors of these books to publish their views, which ranged wide in their attacks on Elizabethan policy and formed part of a sustained Catholic propaganda campaign which reached its height at around this time. Robert Persons continued to discuss the proclamation, although at much less length, in two tracts published in 1592 and 1593, which deal with other subjects.