God's Secret Agents: Queen Elizabeth's Forbidden Priests and the Hatching of the Gunpowder Plot [Paperback]

Alice Hogge (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 13, 2006

One evening in 1588, just weeks after the defeat of the Spanish Armada, two young men landed in secret on a beach in Norfolk, England. They were Jesuit priests, Englishmen, and their aim was to achieve by force of argument what the Armada had failed to do by force of arms: return England to the Catholic Church.

Eighteen years later their mission would be shattered by the actions of the Gunpowder Plotters -- a small group of terrorists who famously tried to destroy the Houses of Parliament -- for the Jesuits were accused of having designed "that most horrid and hellish conspiracy."

Alice Hogge follows "God's secret agents" from their schooling on the Continent, through their perilous return journeys and lonely lives in hiding, to, ultimately, the gallows. She offers a remarkable true account of faith, duty, intolerance, and martyrdom -- the unforgettable story of men who would die for a cause undone by men who would kill for it.

Editorial Reviews

Review

“An exciting account of the Catholic resistance in England under Elizabeth.” (New Statesman )

“[A] vivid and moving portrait of the Counterreformation in the Elizabethan age.” (The Spectator )

“Paints a vivid picture of the stresses of operating in secret, under false identities, in constant fear of betrayal.” (London Times )

“The final chapters make moving, even tragic reading.” (Evening Standard )

“Excellently researched and beautifully written.” (Financial Times )

“Hogge’s absorbing narrative of the experience of [Catholic] underground life reads like a historical novel.” (The Guardian )

“Alice Hogge’s vivid narrative culminates in a gripping account of the [Gunpowder] Plot and its disastrous denouement.” (Eamon Duffy, New York Review of Books )

“A tense, taut, real-life political thriller.” (Booklist )

“An illuminating look at an often overlooked period of church-state turmoil . . . Draws surprising parallels with events today.” (National Catholic Reporter )

“Hogge deftly narrates the seething world of religious conflict in late sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century England.” (Publishers Weekly )

“Compelling storytelling.” (The Observer )

“A well-researched, skillfully crafted book that evokes the physical as well as the intellectual world of Renaissance English Catholicism.” (Weekly Standard )

About the Author

Alice Hogge was educated at the University of St. Andrews, Scotland. She lives in London. This is her first book.

Product Details

• Paperback: 464 pages
• Publisher: Harper Perennial (June 13, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0060542284
• ISBN-13: 978-0060542283
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.4 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,625,798 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Outstanding historical work, October 17, 2008

By 

Victoria West "history buff" (Los Gatos, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: God's Secret Agents: Queen Elizabeth's Forbidden Priests and the Hatching of the Gunpowder Plot (Paperback)

Much written history is well documented, but dry reading indeed. Hogge's work is well researched, but flows as well as a historical novel, despite the fact that it is pure history. I picked up this book, intending only to browse through it (because of my interest in the Gunpowder Plot) but wound up reading the entire thing, because it is such a good read. Many historians know their material well, but that doesn't mean that they can write . . . . Hogge is not only an accomplished historian, she is an excellent writer as well. I learned a great deal about the religious divides of the period, as well as the fact that the Gunpowder Plot was not an isolated incident, but the outgrowth of more than 40 years of religious conflict in England. If you have any interest in Elizabethan/Jacobean history, this is a "must read."

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars stunning work, July 15, 2010

By 

an open mind (Virginia) - See all my reviews

This review is from: God's Secret Agents: Queen Elizabeth's Forbidden Priests and the Hatching of the Gunpowder Plot (Paperback)

Alice Hogge was unknown to me. The title was interesting so I gave it a read. This is a stunning work of close historical detail with numerous, fascinating presentations of sources. Detail, detail, detail. Actual words. Specific references to exact addresses and places, how formalities were performed. The uderlying savagery is presented in a fair context of the time. The reference to Moslems is but a small part of the wrap-up of the book, the slightest reference in a section of the author's musing. The rolling presentation is unique. Ponderous - not at all. Boring - never. The age, the policitcs, the personalities all come alive by their own words. This is a stunning work for students of Shakespeare, Religion, the irrationality of formality, and of documented historical technique. It is a study in the extremes of courage, paranoia, and statecraft. It is not for children because it discusses physical realities that must be understood to understand the choices people faced and made. We live in history all our lives, the effects often hidden. Great work by a very, very disciplined writer. A gem.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars ALICE HOGGE'S GOD'S SECRET AGENTS REVIEWED BY JOHN CHUCKMAN, January 7, 2011

By 

John W. Chuckman (Citylights, Ontario) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: God's Secret Agents: Queen Elizabeth's Forbidden Priests and the Hatching of the Gunpowder Plot (Paperback)

Here is a wonderful book - full of scholarship and well-written, often as gripping as a spy novel, and packed with information to help us appreciate the long and painful journey we have made to reach relatively free and tolerant societies in the advanced world.

The Elizabethan era has long been one of my favorites - a time of great change, a notable step towards the modern era, a time packed with high adventures and important achievements, a time of great writers and adventurers, and the time of one of Europe's greatest princes (Elizabeth herself used the term prince), and I have read a good many books. So it was pleasantly surprising that Alice Hogge offered a number of details and anecdotes of which I had little or no knowledge.

Elizabeth's special deputy, as it were, in hunting down Catholic priests in hiding and recusants (Catholics who refused to join the Church of England, despite fines and punishments) assisting them, Richard Topcliffe, was an extraordinarily hideous figure. I had read references to him before, but here are some facts and events of which I was unaware.

Elizabeth herself is known to have been a tolerant in people's dissenting religious beliefs, so long as they were kept private and a public show was made of keeping to the laws governing England's new church arrangements. Everything religious in that time was unfortunately also charged with political meaning, and if ever there were a lesson for keeping church and state separate, this tale is it.

The Parliament of that day was increasingly under the influence of the Puritans, and Elizabeth had to make compromises with them despite not agreeing with their nasty excesses, a story both of the dawning of a new religious era and the decline in the power of the monarch as part of the long journey towards democratic government.

Still, the details offered of Topcliffe's special relationship with Elizabeth are surprisingly unpleasant to learn.

But it was a terrible time - one we can barely fully appreciate - especially after Elizabeth's excommunication in 1570 by Pius V giving Catholics the "right" to get rid of her, Philip II's 1588 massive Armada and other efforts to overthrow her, assassinations and civil wars in Europe, various plots in England, and Elizabeth's own great insecurity over her throne, considering all that came before her with her tyrant father and her terrifying half-sister Mary, and then that rather demented but charming contemporary claimant to the throne, Mary, Queen of Scots, always involved in plots.

The story of Nicholas Owen, craftsmen and builder of many ingeniously-conceived "priest hides" in English Catholic great homes, is a wonderful one. I was pleased that the author gave a substantial discussion of his admirable and heroic efforts.

The terrible irony of those times was that so many good people on both sides - Catholic and non-Catholic - were swept away in a great tide of terrible events brought on by a smaller number of fanatics and paranoids. Ms. Hogge gives us a very vivid sense of this. She also gives us a good sense of the terrible extremism - just as bad as the worst Catholic plotters - of the emerging extreme Protestants, the various Puritan groups who were as ugly and murderous as the bloodiest Popes.

The story continues after Elizabeth - she died in 1603 - with the first of the Stuart kings, James I , a king who started with much promise and delivered little in religious and other matters, and on to the Gunpowder Plot of 1605, whose dark corners and ambiguities Ms Hogge outlines. Ms. Hogge takes us to the end for some of the key characters of the era, but of course the end of her book was not the end of religious strife. It is a tale of executions, torture, and exile.

I loved the way Ms. Hogge gave us an afterward relating the hunt for Catholics in England then to the situation of Muslims today in Western countries.

This is altogether an admirable and excellent book, and I recommend it highly.