Content area
Full Text
ALICE HOGGE. God's Secret Agents: Queen Elizabeth's Forbidden Priests and the Hatching of the Gunpowder Plot. New York, New York: Harper Collins, 2005. Pp. vii + 414, bibliography, index. $27.95.
Though St. Andrews-educated Alice Hogge is not an academic historian, her detailed and clear account of the festering conflict between the persecuted English Catholic minority and the English government partnering with a consolidating Anglicanism after the defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588, and ending with the execution of accused Gunpowder Plot conspirator and Jesuit superior Father Henry Garnet in 1606, is riveting religious history told from contemporary primary source documents, some newly discovered. God's Secret Agents objectively relates these events from the Jesuit perspective and deftly nuances the evolution of thought and mission from the sustenance and protection...