O, it is excellent To have a giant’s strength, but it is tyrannous To use it like a giant. (Isabella, , 2.2.135–137)

Introduction to English Recusants

In the 16th and early 17th centuries, unity of religion was considered essential to civil peace within the state. This was the problem that Elizabeth I faced when she became the Queen in 1558, as she sought to unite England under Protestantism after the tumult of her father Henry VIII’s 1533 break with the Catholic Church, his son Edward IV’s reforms to move the new Church of England even more strongly in a Protestant direction between 1547–1553, and Mary I’s returning England to Catholicism during her brief reign from 1553–1558. The ruling elite and the people of England remained divided about religion, with conflict between moderate Anglicans and more radical Puritans, as well as the presence of a significant Catholic minority. Among this Catholic minority were people termed recusants for their refusal to attend the mandatory services of the Church of England.

In 1559, the Act of Supremacy abolished papal supremacy and made Queen Elizabeth Supreme Governor of the Church of England. At the same time, the Act of Uniformity restored the 1549 as the official order of worship. It also required everyone to attend a Church of England service on Sundays, with fines imposed if they did not comply. Recusants in Elizabethan England denied the fundamental claim of the monarch as the head of church and were viewed as a threat to both political and civil order. They were fined, imprisoned, and sometimes executed for their failure to comply with the law. William Shakespeare’s father, John Shakespeare, was one such recusant citizen, fined in September 1592 for failure to attend required church services.

Religious Disunity in

In Shakespeare’s 1606 play , the turmoil of the state, which the Duke attempts to remedy, reflects what would supposedly happen without religious unity. Yet also present within the play is resistance to the control exerted by the state over religion and morality. The play is set in Vienna, Austria, a Catholic nation, but scholars believe that the situation it depicts also reflect conflicts in early 17th century England. The play’s heroine, a young Catholic novice named Isabella, resists the corrupt regent’s Angelo’s sexual advances at the same time she attempts to control her own and her imprisoned brother’s destinies. Likewise, under the reign of Queen Elizabeth, many women rejected state authority and boldly held onto their own religious convictions and, like Isabella, suffered for their various acts of resistance.

Recusant Women

Since the 1970s, scholars of women’s history and women’s literature have challenged early modern renderings of women as quiet and obedient, documenting case after case of women who were both vocal and obstinate. Historian Merry Wisner Hanks claims that Catholic women left convents, refused to leave convents, preached, prophesied, discussed religion with friends and family, converted their husbands, left their husbands, wrote religious poems, hymns, and polemics, and were martyred on all sides of the religious controversy (314). In fact, William Shakespeare’s daughter Susanna Hall was cited as a recusant in June 1606 for failing to receive Communion in Holy Trinity Church in Stratford-upon-Avon on Easter of that year.

Margaret Clitherow

One English recusant, Margaret Clitherow, was first cited in 1576, when a list of Catholic dissenters in York was demanded. Significantly, many of these were women: 55 of the identified 67 dissenters were women, and of these, 26 were married to conformist husbands, including Clitherow, according to Peter Lake and Michaell Questier, whose 2011 book , discusses the details of her case.

Margaret Clitherow converted to Catholicism in 1574, 3 years after her marriage to John Clitherow, who conformed to the Church of England. She refused to attend the Anglican services, earning for herself the label of recusant. Following her conversion, she transformed her household into a center of Catholic activity; it was used as a priest’s house, a location for the celebration of prohibited Catholic Mass, and a Catholic school. From the mid 1570’s, for a period of about 10 years, she faced continual official harassment, from fines to imprisonments.

Then, in 1586, Margaret was arrested for harboring Jesuit and seminary priests, which had been made illegal in 1585. In two separate appearances in court in March 1586, Clitherow was obstinate, refusing to plead to an indictment under the statute of 1585. Although there were those who certainly did not want to see her executed, due to Margaret’s highly public and rebellious acts, authorities needed to make an example of her. As for Clitherow, she was willing to be martyred for her beliefs. If she were to die, she accounted it a great comfort…to die in God’s quarrel (Lake and Quartier 99).

Her case was presided over by Judge Clench, who explained what would happen to her: If you will not put yourself to the country, this must be your judgement: you must return from whence you came, and there, in the lowest part of the prison, be stripped naked, laid down, your back upon the ground, and as much weight laid upon you as you are able to bear, and so to continue three days without meat or drink, except a little barley bread and puddle water, and the third day to be pressed to death, your hands and feet tied to posts, and a sharp stone under your back.(Lake and Questier 95)

Historians Lake and Questier note that this punishment was called the peine forte et dure, a French phrase translated as strong and harsh punishment, a medieval method of torture used on those who refused to plead. About 200 English Catholics were executed by this and other means, included hanging and burning. Clitherow and 39 other English Catholics executed for their faith were canonized by Pope Paul VI in October 1970.

Key Print Sources Ellison, James. and the Executions of Catholics in 1604. vol. 33, no. 1, 2003, pp. 44–87. Houliston, Victor, and Aislinn Muller. . . Ed. Paul Middleton. John Wiley & Sons, 2020, pp. 322–337. Lake, Peter, and Michael Questier. . Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, 2011. Smith, Frederick E. . vol. 60, no. 2, 2017, pp. 301–332. Wiesner, Merry E. . vol. 18, no. 3, 1987, pp. 311–321.

Key Online Sources Best, Michael. . . . University of Victoria, 4 Jan. 2011. https://internetshakespeare.uvic.ca/Library/SLT/reference/chronology/years1591-1592.html. Accessed 11 Feb. 2026. Best, Michael. . . . University of Victoria, 4 Jan. 2011. https://internetshakespeare.uvic.ca/Library/SLT/reference/chronology/years1604-1606.html. Accessed 11 Feb. 2026. Nelson, Katie, and Olivia Meikle. . . 1 Jan. 2018. https://whatshernamepodcast.com/margaret-clitherow/. Screti, Zoe. . . https://www.historic-uk.com/HistoryUK/HistoryofEngland/Margaret-Clitherow. Accessed 5 Mar. 2025. Teysko, Heather. . . Episode 26. 13 June 2017. https://www.englandcast.com/2017/06/throwback-episode-catholics-elizabethan-england/. The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica. . . 1 Jan. 2025. https://www.britannica.com/biography/Saint-Margaret-Clitherow.