God's Secret Agents: Queen Elizabeth's Forbidden Priests And The Hatching Of The Gunpower Plot

This book illuminates a struggle for freedom of conscience and how Elizabeth's government spun this into treachery. This was an age when patriotism ran riot and when private faith was subordinated to the public good. New primary source material challenges the accepted version of the Gunpowder Plot and is sure to create controversy.

One evening in 1588, just weeks after the defeat of the Spanish Armada, two young men landed in secret on a beach in Norfolk, England. They were Jesuit priests, Englishmen, and their aim was to achieve by force of argument what the Armada had failed to do by force of arms: return England to the Catholic Church.

Eighteen years later their mission would be shattered by the actions of the Gunpowder Plotters -- a small group of terrorists who famously tried to destroy the Houses of Parliament -- for the Jesuits were accused of having designed "that most horrid and hellish conspiracy."

Alice Hogge follows "God's secret agents" from their schooling on the Continent, through their perilous return journeys and lonely lives in hiding, to, ultimately, the gallows. She offers a remarkable true account of faith, duty, intolerance, and martyrdom -- the unforgettable story of men who would die for a cause undone by men who would kill for it.