G. D.
London: F. Coldock, 1588
[D.-L.L.] (VI) Cc [D] SR
This book concerns Anglo-Spanish relations with respect to the Netherlands. In January 1587 the Catholic soldier Sir William Stanley (1548-1630) governor of Deventer in the Netherlands after the English had wrested it from Spain the previous October, surrendered the town to the Spanish. The Catholic Cardinal William Allen (1532-1594), exiled in Douai, defended Stanley for acting with an ‘informed conscious’, stating that any Catholic should do the same: Cardinal Allen, who wanted to overthrow and assassinate Elizabeth I and who believed that two-thirds of all Englishmen remained Catholic at heart, had been involved in a number of plans for Spanish or French invasions of England in the 1570s and early 1580s, and had also corresponded regularly with Mary, Queen of Scots. The patriotically English book shown is attributed to Gilbert Gifford (1560-1590), a double agent. In it he portrays Allen as the anti-type of the true Englishman. Gifford urges: ‘let us sticke together, fight together, die together, like men, like Englishmen, like true-harted Englishmen’, as ‘whole countyes, cities, and townes, and namely the honourable citie of London, have done most duetifully, lovingly, and honorably’, sure of divine support and eternal life.