This volume advances scholarly understanding of English Catholicism in the early modern period through a series of essays addressing aspects of the history of the Throckmorton family. Despite their persistent adherence to Catholicism over several centuries, leading members of the family continued to be involved in politics on the national stage in the face of overt Protestant hostility. Leading historians of Catholic England investigate the strategies the Throckmortons employed in this difficult balancing act, and reflect on what this tells us, about both English Catholicism and wider English society. In so doing the volume contributes to recent efforts to integrate the study of Catholicism into the mainstream of English social and political history, transcending its traditional status as a 'special interest' category, remote from or subordinate to the central narratives of historical change.

Contents: Foreword, David Starkey; Introduction: the Catholic gentry in English society, Peter Marshall and Geoffrey Scott; Crisis of allegiance: George Throckmorton and Henry Tudor, Peter Marshall; Reputation, credit and patronage: Throckmorton men and women, c.1560-1620, Susan Cogan; Coughton and the Gunpowder Plot, Michael Hodgetts; Agnes Throckmorton: a Jacobean recusant widow, Jan Broadway; Stratagems for survival: Sir Robert and Sir Francis Throckmorton 1640-1660, Malcolm Wanklyn; The Throckmortons at home and abroad, 1680-1800, Geoffrey Scott; An English Catholic traveller: Sir John Courtenay Throckmorton and the continent, 1792-1793, Michael Mullett; The Throckmortons come of age: political and social alignments, 1826-1862, Alban Hood; Appendix; Index.