Description: "This book explores the role of children and young people within early modern England's most controversial minority: Catholicism. It examines Catholic attempts to capture the next generation, Protestant reactions to these initiatives, and the religious, social, legal and political contexts in which young people formed, maintained and attempted to explain their religious identity. The young, it argues, were not inevitably pawns in a world governed by hierarchies of kinship, workplace, church and state. The motives and even the voices of those who challenged various manifestations of authority in the early modern world can often be recovered, and the choices they made tell us much about the complex and changing relationships between society, church and state in the post-Reformation world"--
Review Quotes:
"An ingeniously and exhaustively researched study of a subject which we had thought was largely irrecoverable, collecting some very scattered and fragmentary evidence to do so. ... Many of the book's themes come together in a delightful coda, which leads us through a pair of interludes written as family entertainments ... ." (Alec Ryrie, Journal of Ecclesiastical History, Vol. 68 (2), April, 2017)
"Lucy Underwood makes a significant contribution towards answering the pertinent question of what it meant to be catholic, and to live as a member of the most 'controversial minority' in post-Reformation England. ... she fills a notable gap in the burgeoning field of the history of early modern youth andchildhood. ... Underwood paints a vivid picture of the multifaceted experiences of early modern English catholic children and young people, and has paved the way for future research." (Emilie K. M. Murphy, English Historical Review, Vol. 131 (552), October, 2016)
"Underwood has provided an excellent narrative and analysis of children and young people's encounters with the challenging religious landscape of Tudor-Stuart England. She succeeds in bringing English religious history and English childhood history fruitful conversation. ... Scholars of children and youth constantly wrestle with similar tensions and questions about autonomy; Underwood provides a good working model for analyzing those tensions." (Amy Harris, The Journal of the History of Childhood and Youth, Vol. 9 (1), 2016)