The Imprisonment of Catholics for Religion under Elizabeth I

Abstract

A great deal of attention has rightly been given to those Catholics who were put to death under Elizabeth I, but imprisonment as distinct from execution has not received the attention it deserves. Catholics sometimes sing about ‘our fathers chained in prisons dark’, but they are not always aware of what imprisonment meant to their ancestors. It is the purpose of this article to consider some aspects of this large and neglected subject, since imprisonment and the threat of imprisonment made a big impact on the Elizabethan Catholic community and must have discouraged a great many people from persevering in their religion when they contemplated what could at best be an irritating deprivation of liberty and at worst a long ordeal which might end in death.