Well Rob, I'm very sorry for having let my political passions get the better
of my civility. Like you, I wonder whether England feared something like
"encirclement" from Catholic (or Imperial, or both) powers: Henry VIII was
constantly concerned to keep Francis I and Charles V from forming a pact.
One question this brings up is whether we ought to be suspicious of English
fears of a Spanish invasion of or through Ireland. Such fears were
certainly legitimate, but were they manipulated by powerful nobles & the
crown for some other purpose? In 1553/4, the rebel Sir Thomas Wyatt the
Younger did fabricate claims that Spanish soldiers had landed at Dover, in
order to paralyze opposition to the rebellion by sowing fear of something
worse: the hated Spanish. So could an English crown prey on more-or-less
legitimate fears of the Spanish or of the Catholics to justify a brutal
occupation of Ireland? Do we students of history have an obligation to
register suspicion of tactics like that?
--contrite but still curious in Central Florida (Joel Davis)
on 3/25/2003 1:35 PM, rdyer at [log in to unmask] wrote:
> Dear me, Joel, I didn't mean any of those analogies. I was indeed
> thinking a little of the old Soviet preoccupation with encirclement -
> and modern Russian fear, as we speak - and wondering whether the Irish
> ever appeared part of an encirclement. I accept that I may be hopelessly
> out-of-date in my view of Elizabeth's Catholic policy, but I know that
> there were many fanatical families in the West of England who believed
> unconditionally in her time that the anglican church was founded there
> by Joseph of Arimathea before the "later" catholic church by Peter in
> Rome. I have always seen these traditions as entirely lunatic, and
> merely exploited by the Court, but they should not be denied. (I was
> even taught them as still valid in my childhood!) The discussion has
> wisely skirted the Rosicrucian elements in the Faerie Queene, but
> perhaps, I wished delicately to suggest, at the price of not asking
> important questions about the Irish as part of an encirclement.
> I would be grateful for modern work on British Catholic policy after the
> fall of Leicester and his minions.
> Rob Dyer
>
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