N.D. versus O.E.: anonymity's moral ambiguity in Elizabethan Catholic controversy

In the late sixties and early seventies, four particular events increased tensions between the English Catholics and the Elizabethan church and government: Mary, the Catholic queen of Scotland, sought refuge in England and became the focus of several plots and intrigues; William Allen organized the college at Douay in 1568; a rebellion in the north threatened state security in 1569; and Pope Pius V excommunicated Queen Elizabeth in 1570.(30) These events provoked both increased efforts at Catholic publication, encouraged by William Allen in particular, and increased efforts to suppress these texts. Several royal proclamations at the end of the decade and the Treason Act of 1571 made the publication and possession of Catholic polemical books more dangerous.(31) Tensions were renewed again in the early 1580s when Rome began sending Jesuit priests into England to encourage recusancy, to win back church-going Catholics, and to print secretly and disperse Catholic literature. Penal laws directed against Catholics became stricter during this period, and the executions of several notable Catholic priests marked this decade as a particularly harsh one for those engaged in Catholic activities.(32) When the Jesuit Edmund Campion was executed as a traitor in 1581, the event generated a heated controversy about the political intentions of the Mission priests and the government's persecution of Catholics. Thomas Alfield took an active but anonymous role ill this controversy, publishing the True Reporte of the Death and Martyrdom of M. Campion in 1582, which countered the government-supported pamphlets, some of which were anonymous, depicting Campion as a political traitor rather than a religious martyr. Alfield's authorial stance in the True Reporte offers readers another picture of anonymity's flexibility. In a letter to the reader, the "editor" claims that while perusing accounts of Campion's death he simply stumbled upon this particularly impressive version penned by a Catholic priest who was present at the execution. In an atmosphere of increasing hostility to Catholics, intricately layered authorial stances such as Alfield's became efficacious tools for an author seeking to divert attention away from a text's individual producers. Ambiguity could not help Alfield when he was caught a few years later, however, smuggling and distributing William Allen's True Sincere and Modest Defence. His 1585 execution was one of several sentences passed during this period against Catholics who broke laws forbidding the transmission of Catholic literature.(33)

By the last decade of Elizabeth's reign, anonymity had become a familiar characteristic of polemical literature. Although surprisingly few of the arguments used to justify or condemn name suppression changed significantly, one finds authors continuing to mold anonymity into new shapes to address the demands of the ever-changing political environment. The exiled Jesuit Robert Parsons was particularly adept at manipulating anonymity's functions. He was one of the most prolific Catholic writers and one of the most frequent and playful employers of anonymity. Parsons is credited with ten different pseudonyms and sets of initials, and he published close to two dozen books anonymously or pseudonymously. Perhaps because of his intense activity, critics labeled Parsons a particularly treacherous and conspiratorial Catholic, a bane to both English Protestants and those Catholics quietly hoping for toleration in England. Although Parsons appears to have advocated a non-resistance policy late in Elizabeth's reign, his adversaries continued to associate him with the more seditious texts of the early Jesuit Mission. The Watchword controversy at the turn of the century highlights Parsons's work as he defends himself against accusations of sedition' against Elizabeth.