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printing errors, so it may have been a rushed production. Given what else we know about Thomas’s publishing, it seems likely that revelation of this store of arms was intended to support the case for the radical security measures promoted in the Commons during January: it was on 18 January that a parliamentary committee had proposed the Militia Ordinance and, a couple of days later, that John Hampden had called for parliamentary control of strongpoints, including the Tower.45

The pamphlet account of the gunpowder plot in Derbyshire, which was probably fictitious, despite the assurances on the title page

This was also a story to be understood in the light of previous Catholic plots, of course: the resonances with the Gunpowder Plot are strong in general and in the details (Fawkes and his associates had used thirty-six barrels of powder, along with faggots and other materials), and placed this story in a longer history of providential deliveries from Catholic plots. It was this general lesson which was, ostensibly, the main concern of the pamphlet: ‘This kingdom hath had too frequent experience of their mischievous intentions and plots, which had the all-seeing eye of Heaven not prevented, we would long ago been brought to utter ruin and destruction’. Like the plague sore of the previous autumn, the inhumanity of the plot revealed the corruption of the beliefs from which it sprang. Providential delivery bore testimony to God’s favour, and to the persistent blindness of Catholics to His purposes. Their resilience in the face of constant frustration was thus evidence of a more fundamental error: ‘Mischief, the child of heresy, cannot want instruments to prosecute and bring it to perfection, and the devil, who is the author of all unlawful attempts is always ready at hand to further and set forward any dissensions, and damnable enterprises’.46

Anti-popery was not necessarily about Catholics – it was a language with which to denounce the danger of all threats to the Reformation. In the past, it had been possible to distinguish between the threat of popery and the more acceptable presence of Catholic recusants and it is well attested that practical local toleration of Catholics existed alongside a keen awareness of the threat of popery in the abstract.47 In these fraught political circumstances, however, these distinctions were in danger of breaking down. Pym and others had conflated popery with Catholic conspiracy for months, but the Irish rebellion and the year of plots gave this line of argument its maximum appeal. Many parts of the country experienced Catholic scares during these months, fuelled by knowledge that violence in Ireland was extending widely in January and February.48 There is some evidence that it began to erode the practical toleration of recusants in provincial England, and in August anti-Catholic scares were to give way in Essex to attacks on the houses of Catholics.49 This atmosphere was also bad for the prospects of those Catholic priests unfortunate enough to be arrested. Seven priests were arrested and executed in the aftermath of the Irish rising. Two of them, a Benedictine called Alban Roe and an ageing secular priest, Father Thomas Greene, met their ends at Tyburn in late January, and on 22 March further executions followed. This was despite, or perhaps because of, the King’s record in securing reprieves for Catholic priests. Such deaths were gleefully reported in pamphlets, of course. Arthur Browne, a seminary priest, was condemned at Dorchester assizes on 16 August, and his public recantation was reported for the edification of a wider audience in London nine days later. Hugh Green, condemned at the same assizes, met a grotesque end, which reportedly culminated in a game of football using his severed head.50

This heady mix of anti-papistical writing seems to have underpinned mobilizations across most of the country in support for the emerging parliamentary position. In the aftermath of the attempt on the Five Members, a number of county petitions were submitted, co-ordinating provincial concerns