Regnans in Excelsis and the Execution of Catholic Priests under Elizabeth I

25 February 1570, firm dateFirm date

In 1570 Pope Pius V declares Elizabeth I deposed. Parliament makes reconciliation with Rome treason, and priests such as the Jesuit Edmund Campion are executed: as traitors, says the government; for their religion, say Catholic writers.

On 25 February 1570 Pius V issued at Rome the bull Regnans in excelsis. It declared Elizabeth I a heretic, pronounced her deprived of her “pretended title” to the crown and commanded her subjects not to obey her (Pius V, Regnans in excelsis sections 3–5 and the closing date). William Camden, whose history was printed forty-five years later, says that John Felton set the bull up on the gates of the bishop of London’s palace and was hanged for it, and that most of the more moderate Catholics secretly disliked the bull (Camden, Annales 1570, sections 13 and 15). In 1571 Parliament made it high treason to use a bull from Rome or to be reconciled to Rome by one (Act against Bulls from Rome, 1571, in Prothero, pp. 60–62); that law and those that followed it are told under the Elizabethan settlement.

In June 1580 the Jesuit Edmund Campion landed at Dover (Allen, Briefe Historie p. 8). In a paper for the Privy Council he wrote that he was a priest sent to preach the gospel and minister the sacraments, “strictly forbidden” to deal with matters of state, and he asked to be heard before the Council, the universities and the lawyers (Campion, Challenge to the Privy Council articles 1–5). The government later printed a document taken, it said, from an accomplice after Campion’s death: on 14 April 1580 the pope had granted Campion and Robert Persons an explanation that the bull always bound the queen and the heretics but did not bind Catholics as things stood, only when it could be publicly executed (Cecil, Execution of Justice pp. 19–20).

By the account of the Catholic writer William Allen, Campion was taken on 17 July 1581 (Allen, Briefe Historie p. 10), lodged in the Tower in London and racked (Allen, Briefe Historie pp. 12–13). In November he and others were indicted for having plotted abroad the queen’s death and an invasion, and a jury found them guilty (Allen, Briefe Historie pp. 16–19). On 1 December he was drawn to Tyburn with two other priests (Allen, Briefe Historie p. 1). There, Allen reports, he denied the treasons charged, but “if you esteeme my religion treason” he must grant it; asked his opinion of the bull, he gave no answer; and he prayed for Elizabeth, “your queene and my queene” (Allen, Briefe Historie pp. 2–5).

The government’s defence, The Execution of Justice in England, was penned, its 1675 editor says, by direction of Lord Treasurer Burghley (Cecil, Execution of Justice preface of the 1675 reprint). It says that the seminary priests and Jesuits came to persuade the people to obey the bull and were condemned as traitors under the treason law of Edward III, “not being dealt withal upon questions of Religion” (Cecil, Execution of Justice pp. 5–7). By the Catholics’ own catalogue, it adds, not above sixty had been executed in twenty-five years, against almost four hundred who died under Mary I of England (Cecil, Execution of Justice p. 22). Allen answered that many had died “for mere matter of religion” under new statutes that made cases of conscience treason (Allen, Defence of English Catholics chapter 1, vol. 1, pp. 10–11), and that Campion and those arraigned with him under the old statute were not guilty (Allen, Defence of English Catholics chapter 2, vol. 1, pp. 29–30).

In 1970 Pope Paul VI canonised forty martyrs of England and Wales, Campion among them. They had been, he said, faithful subjects of the royal power, which they recognised as legitimate in all that belongs to the civil and political order, and their loyalty to it came into conflict with their fidelity to God (Paul VI, homily of 25 October 1970 heading and the sections ‘Lealtà e fedeltà’ and ‘Possano tutti ottenere la salvezza’).

How this is dated

Firm date. Fixed by contemporary documentation and not seriously disputed.

The bull closes with its date. As Camden prints it, that is the fifth day before the Kalends of March (25 February) in the year of the Incarnation 1569, the fifth of the pontificate (Camden, Annales 1570, sections 13 and 15); the modern translation cited prints 25 February 1570 (Pius V, Regnans in excelsis sections 3–5 and the closing date). A year of the Incarnation began on 25 March, as the old-style year in England did, on which Camden’s editor remarks (Camden, Annales editor’s introduction, section 18), so a February of 1569 in that reckoning is February 1570 in the modern one. Camden, under 1570, says that the pope had given the sentence “the last yeare” and now had it posted in London (Camden, Annales 1570, sections 13 and 15). The days given for Campion’s arrest, trial and death are William Allen’s (Allen, Briefe Historie p. 10) (Allen, Briefe Historie pp. 16–19) (Allen, Briefe Historie p. 1). The government’s tract is dated 17 December 1583 on the title page of the reprint used here (Cecil, Execution of Justice title page of the 1675 reprint), and Allen’s reply is dated 1584 on the title of the edition cited (Allen, Defence of English Catholics half-title of vol. 1).