Twenty-Five Years of Recusant History

Fifteen years ago the present writers published a survey entitled ‘Ten Years of Recusant History’ (January issue, 1961). That article briefly described how this journal had evolved during its first ten years from a publication designed to supplement existing biographical works into ‘a periodical that would lay the foundations of a general history of Catholicism in these islands since the Reformation’.This is a statement of aims which, from the vantage point of a quarter of a century’s experience, we see no reason to alter. While much excellent material, derived mainly from local records of all sorts, now appears in the flourishing crop of county recusant periodicals which have sprung up in our wake, the pages of Recusant History continue to offer extended space for the publication of long articles, or even series of articles, treating specific topics in full depth. We still believe that definitive studies of this sort, with full apparatus of sources and references, must form the necessary groundwork for any reliable general histories to be written in the future.Such topics as we surveyed in 1961, for example biographies, family histories, recusant bibliography, and those wider questions concerning the status and fortunes of the whole Catholic body, have continued to be well represented in our pages during the ensuing fifteen years. But there has been growth as well as continuity. Looking back over the whole corpus of material published between 1961 and the end of 1975, we observe with pleasure that the previously under-cultivated period from 1700 onwards has received an amount of scholarly attention which fifteen years ago we did not dare to expect. Indeed, it has now been generally accepted that the boundaries of recusant history as a subject stretch onwards in time beyond those centuries when recusancy was a crime on the statute book. By a similar process the connotation of the word ‘recusant’ has been widened. It is perhaps not too much to claim that, by the expanded range of its subject matter, this journal has gone far towards validating the use of the word ‘recusancy’ as a general term covering post-Reformation English Catholicism even in its widest ramifications. It remains our aim to continue to explore and document its history and culture in all their rich variety.