God's Secret Agents: Queen Elizabeth's Forbidden Priests and the Hatching of the Gunpowder Plot by Alice Hogge

God's Secret Agents: Queen Elizabeth's Forbidden Priests and the Hatching of the Gunpowder Plot by Alice Hogge. This is a history of the various attempts of the Catholic church to support British Catholics in the 16th and 17th centuries. Often the events sound more like a spy novel with informants, torture and executions than a history. The book is very well done and manages to show why both sides behaved as they did. The further complication of the Spanish Armada is analyzed. Perhaps most interesting was the conflicts within the Catholic community between the Jesuits and the other members of the church. The book concludes with the gunpowder plot. I was expecting quite a bit more detail on the plot it seems rather tacked on. The book contains endnotes and a bibliography.

Recommended!

Is available through Abebooks.