God’s Traitors: Terror and Faith in Elizabethan England

God’s Traitors: Terror and Faith in Elizabethan England

God’s Traitors: Terror and Faith in Elizabethan England

By Jessie Childs (2015)
Buy this book
Buy this book

A woman awakes in a prison cell.

She has been on the run but the authorities have tracked her down and taken her to the Tower of London - where she is interrogated about the Gunpowder Plot.

The woman is Anne Vaux - one of the ardent, brave and exasperating members of the aristocratic Vauxes of Harrowden Hall.

Through the eyes of this remarkable family, award-winning author Jessie Childs explores the Catholic predicament in Elizabethan England - an age in which their faith was criminalised and almost two hundred Catholics were executed.

From dawn raids to daring escapes, stately homes to torture chambers, God's Traitors exposes the tensions masked by the cult of Gloriana - and is a timely reminder of the terrible consequences when religion and politics collide.

Fact of the Day

Henry II famously beat a Cistercian abbot in a drinking (‘toasting’) contest.

Quote of the Day

"A business that makes nothing but money is a poor kind of business. "
~ Henry Ford

On This Day

1579 Thomas Gresham, merchant, financier, and founder of the Royal Exchange, died suddenly, apparently of apoplexy. He bequeathed his estate, after the death of his wife, to the Corporation of London and the Mercers' Company to set up a college to provide free lectures to the public; Gresham College thus became London's first institution of higher education.
1916 The hospital ship Britannic, sister-ship of Titanic, hit a mine and sank, killing 30.
1918 Ten days after the Armistice, the German navy surrendered to the British in the Firth of Forth. 
1920 The assassinations of British intelligence officers ordered by Michael Collins in the Irish War of Independence led to thirty-one dead (from both sides) in what became known as 'Bloody Sunday'.
1974 21 people were killed and 182 injured when bombs exploded in two Birmingham pubs. The IRA was probably responsible, but the real culprits have never been found. The Birmingham Six, originally convicted of the bombings, were released because of dodgy police practices.
1981 The proceedings of the House of Commons were televised live for the first time.