All Hail to the Archpriest

Between 1598 and 1602, prominent members of England’s Catholic community came to vicious disagreement over the appointment of George Blackwell as ‘Archpriest’ of England. The conflict that ensued, known as the ‘Archpriest Controversy’, is the subject of Peter Lake and Michael Questier’s latest effort to write post-Reformation history with the ‘Catholics left in’ (p. 276). Through careful consideration of the myriad sources produced by the rival factions within the controversy—on the one hand, the Jesuits, in favour of Blackwell, and on the other, ‘appellants’, who identified as loyalists to the Crown—Lake and Questier convincingly make the case that the ‘Archpriest Controversy’ represents ‘one of the most significant of the outbreaks of public discussion and pitch-making that constituted the post-Reformation public sphere in England’ (p. 178). Lake and Questier are able to read through printed materials, private manuscripts and letters brimming with personal invective and ad hominem attacks in order to

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