Shakespeare Puritan and Recusant Author:Thomas Carter Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER IV Active Persecution Of Puritans And John Shakespeare's Increasing Difficulties It was significant that Alderman John Shakespeare was anxiously en... more »deavouring to safeguard his outlying possessions in the later months of the year 1579, for, as mentioned in the last chapter, this was a time of keen excitement in England because of the acute state of feeling aroused in the Puritan party by reason of the Queen's projected marriage with the brother of the monarch who was responsible for the massacre of the Huguenots in France on St. Bartholomew's black day. The Duke of Anjou had paid a visit to Elizabeth at Greenwich, and had been received with such significant marks of favour that the Queen's supposed Papist leanings had filled her Protestant subjects with deep apprehensions. The politicaloutlook no doubt made Elizabeth inclined to play a deep game against her opponents, and statecraft necessitated an apparent alliance with France, but her subjects had not the statesman's knowledge of the case, and were consequently filled with dread. Hume says: " Spain was formidable, Scotland was uncertain, Ireland was prepared for rebellion, and seminary priests were everywhere disseminating treason and disaffection throughout the Queen's dominions." An alliance with France might possibly have commended itself to many politicians, but the murmurs of dissatisfaction against having "a Protestant body under a Popish head" culminated in a stirring pamphlet entitled " The Gaping Gulph in which England will be swallowed up by the French marriage," wherein the feelings of the extremer section of the Puritans found expression. Curiously enough, Warwickshire was closely interested in the author of the pamphlet, John Stubbe, the famous Puritan lawyer; who was brother-in-law to Thomas Cartwright,...« less