“‘Scorn and Scandal:’ English Catholicism and Anti-popery in the Wake of the Irish Rebellion of 1641”

My presentation strives to provide a fuller understanding of how anti-popery served to frustrate the attempts of English Catholics to construct an identity for themselves as both loyal Englishmen and devout Catholics in the context of the mid-seventeenth-century crisis of the three Stuart kingdoms. Throughout the 1630s, English Catholics attempted to secure official toleration, by proposing alternative forms of the Oath of Allegiance – thereby providing the opportunity to demonstrate political loyalty to the king. In the wake of the rebellion in Ireland, however, anti-popish sentiment in England peaked and it became too dangerous for the king to entertain discussions of Catholic toleration even in private. Indeed, when the news of the discussions of the 1630s came to light it significantly damaged Charles’s position with his Parliament,precipitating, to some extent, the political crisis that would lead to civil war. During the breakdown in order that attended the political crisis between the Irish rebellion (October 1641) and the English civil war (August 1642), English Catholics became prime targets for manifestations of anti-popish behavior designed to rid the kingdom of an insidious menace –including both parliamentary policies and popular violence. Through an examination of various primary materials – including pamphlets, personal correspondence, and parliamentary records– I propose to explore how the Irish rebellion and its resultant anti-popish backlash stymied the attempts of Catholics to integrate more fully into English society.