Annales, or, The History of the Most Renowned and Victorious Princesse Elizabeth...

The historian William Camden (1551-1623) laboured for over seven years to record the events of Elizabeth I’s reign, year by year. The result, with its reliance on primary sources--William Cecil’s private papers; the royal archives; and Sir Robert Cotton’s library--was a model of up-to-date historical writing which remained definitive for centuries. It was also an instant success. The copy shown has been enhanced by a nineteenth-century owner with some 450 illustrations. The volume is open at the year 1581, recounting unwelcome foreign interaction with England as subversive English Jesuit priests entered the country from abroad. The pope had excommunicated Elizabeth and absolved her subjects from allegiance, a move which turned Catholics into potential traitors. Elizabeth was largely tolerant, stating famously that she had no intention of making windows into men’s souls (rephrased here as ‘who never thought men’s consciences were to be forced’), and her 45-year reign produced only some 300 Catholic martyrs: equivalent to the number of Protestant martyrs engendered during Mary’s six-year rule. Executions were for treason, not belief: Camden here describes how the Jesuit Edmund Campion admitted that he would support the pope, should the pope send forces against the Queen.