Throughout the recorded history of Britain, belief in earthbound spirits presiding over nature, the home and human destiny has been a feature of successive cultures. From the localised deities of Britannia to the Anglo-Saxons' elves and the fairies of late medieval England, Britain's godlings have populated a shadowy, secretive realm of ritual and belief running parallel to authorised religion. Twilight of the Godlings delves deep into the elusive history of these supernatural beings, tracing their evolution from the pre-Roman Iron Age to the end of the Middle Ages. Arguing that accreted cultural assumptions must be cast aside in order to understand the godlings – including the cherished idea that these folkloric creatures are the decayed remnants of pagan gods and goddesses – this bold, revisionist book traces Britain's 'small gods' to a popular religiosity influenced by classical learning. It offers an exciting new way of grasping the island's most mysterious mythical inhabitants.

Suffolk has been home to monastic communities since St Felix and St Fursey founded the first monasteries in the seventh century, and today the county is home to both awe-inspiring monastic ruins and living communities of men and women devoted to prayer. This first complete survey of the monastic history of Suffolk traces the development of monasticism in the kingdom of East Anglia, its recovery after Viking destruction, and the flourishing of an extraordinary variety of communities in medieval Suffolk, ranging from the immensely powerful Abbey of Bury St Edmunds to tiny friaries and nunneries. The book examines the impact of the dissolution of the monasteries and the survival of the monastic dream, against all odds, in post-Reformation Suffolk. Finally, the book surveys the revival of religious communities in modern Suffolk to the present day, and provides a comprehensive gazeteer of all past and present monasteries in the county.

Belief in magic was, until relatively recent times, widespread in Britain; yet the impact of such belief on determinative political events has frequently been overlooked. In his wide-ranging new book, Francis Young explores the role of occult traditions in the history of the island of Great Britain: Merlin's realm. He argues that while the great magus and artificer invented by Geoffrey of Monmouth was a powerful model for a succession of actual royal magical advisers (including Roger Bacon and John Dee), monarchs nevertheless often lived in fear of hostile sorcery while at other times they even attempted magic themselves. Successive governments were simultaneously fascinated by astrology and alchemy, yet also deeply wary of the possibility of treasonous spellcraft. Whether deployed in warfare, rebellion or propaganda, occult traditions were of central importance to British history and, as the author reveals, these dark arts of magic and politics remain entangled to this day.

Newly revised and updated, the second edition of English Catholicism 1558-1642 explores the position of Catholics in early modern English society, their political significance, and the internal politics of the Catholic community. The Elizabethan religious settlement of 1559 ostensibly outlawed Catholicism in England, while subsequent events such as the papal excommunication of Elizabeth I, the Spanish Armada, and the Gunpowder Plot led to draconian penalties and persecution. The problem of Catholicism preoccupied every English government between Elizabeth I and Charles I, even if the numbers of Catholics remained small. Nevertheless, a Catholic community not only survived in early modern England but also exerted a surprising degree of influence. Amid intense persecution, expressions of Catholicism ranged from those who refused outright to attend the parish church (recusants) to 'church papists' who remained Catholics at heart. English Catholicism 1558-1642 shows that, against all odds, Catholics remained an influential and historically significant minority of religious dissenters in early modern England. Co-authored with Francis Young, this volume has been updated to include recent developments in the historiography of English Catholicism. It is a useful introduction for all undergraduate students interested in the English Reformation and early modern English history.

What buried secret lies beneath the stones of one of England's greatest former churches and shrines, the Benedictine Abbey of Bury St Edmunds? The search for the final resting place of King Edmund has led to this site, beneath which Francis Young argues the lost king's remains are waiting to be found. Edmund: In Search of England's Lost King explores the history of the martyred monarch of East Anglia and England's first patron saint, showing how he became a pivotal figure around whom Saxons, Danes and Normans all rallied. Young also examines Edmund's legacy in the centuries since his death at the hands of marauding Vikings in the 9th century. In doing so, this fascinating book points to the imminent rediscovery of the ruler who created England.

Account of an important Catholic family in early modern East Anglia, demonstrating their influence upon their wider community. For almost 250 years the Gages of Hengrave Hall, near Bury St Edmunds, were the leading Roman Catholic family in Suffolk, and the sponsors and protectors of most Catholic missionary endeavours in the western half of the county. This book traces their rise from an offshoot of a Sussex recusant family, to the extinction of the senior line in 1767, when the Gages became the Rookwood Gages. Drawing for the first time on the extensive records of the Gage familyin Cambridge University Library, the book considers the Gages as part of the wider Catholic community of Bury St Edmunds and west Suffolk, and includes transcriptions of selected family letters as well as the surviving eighteenth-century Benedictine and Jesuit mission registers for Bury St Edmunds. Although the Gages were the wealthiest and most influential Catholics in the region, the gradual separation and independent growth of the urban Catholic community in Bury St Edmunds challenges the idea that eighteenth-century Catholicism in the south of England was moribund and "seigneurial". The author argues that in the end, the Gages' achievement was to create a Catholic community that could eventually survive without their patronage. Francis Young gained his doctorate from the University of Cambridge.

Newly revised and updated, the second edition of English Catholicism 1558-1642 explores the position of Catholics in early modern English society, their political significance, and the internal politics of the Catholic community. The Elizabethan religious settlement of 1559 ostensibly outlawed Catholicism in England, while subsequent events such as the papal excommunication of Elizabeth I, the Spanish Armada, and the Gunpowder Plot led to draconian penalties and persecution. The problem of Catholicism preoccupied every English government between Elizabeth I and Charles I, even if the numbers of Catholics remained small. Nevertheless, a Catholic community not only survived in early modern England but also exerted a surprising degree of influence. Amid intense persecution, expressions of Catholicism ranged from those who refused outright to attend the parish church (recusants) to 'church papists' who remained Catholics at heart. English Catholicism 1558-1642 shows that, against all odds, Catholics remained an influential and historically significant minority of religious dissenters in early modern England. Co-authored with Francis Young, this volume has been updated to include recent developments in the historiography of English Catholicism. It is a useful introduction for all undergraduate students interested in the English Reformation and early modern English history.

A selection of documents left by the Suffolk Catholic family, the Rookwoods, brings them vividly to life. The Rookwoods of Coldham Hall in the parish of Stanningfield, Suffolk, were Roman Catholic recusants whose notoriety rests on Ambrose Rookwood's involvement in the Gunpowder Plot. In 1606 the owner of Coldham was hanged, drawn andquartered for treason for supplying the plotters with horses. A century later another Ambrose Rookwood suffered the same fate for conspiring to assassinate William III. Tainted by treason, the Rookwood family nevertheless managedto hold on to their estates in Suffolk and Essex, in spite of their Royalist sympathies in the Civil War, the recklessness of individual family members, and later adherence to the Jacobite cause - and even to thrive. As a result,the family left behind a lasting legacy in the form of the Catholic mission founded by Elizabeth Rookwood and her son in Bury St Edmunds. The documents in this volume tell a remarkable story of resilience, survival and reinvention. They also testify to the Rookwoods' profound Catholic faith, their patronage of the Jesuits, and their cultural and literary interests. An extensive introduction sets the Rookwoods in their historical and local context. Francis Young is the author of, among other titles, The Gages of Hengrave and Suffolk Catholicism, 1640-1767 (2015). He is Head of Sixth Form at a public school in East Anglia.

Between 1233 and 1263 Franciscan friars engaged in a fierce confrontation with one of the most powerful abbeys in western Christendom, St Edmunds Abbey. Bringing together the documents that describe the sometimes violent and destructive conflict, which was litigated in both the royal court and the papal curia, this volume traces the history of the Franciscan presence at Bury St Edmunds both before and after the friars established a permanent home at Babwell Fen outside the town's North Gate in 1265. The controversy created by the arrival of mendicant friars was one of the major religious events of thirteenth-century Europe; the events in Bury are the best evidenced in England, and among the most richly documented mendicant-monastic conflicts in Europe. The volume includes documents produced by the monks of St Edmunds, the royal chancery, the papal curia and the friars themselves, chronicling a mendicant community that continued to challenge and disrupt the authority of the Abbey over Bury St Edmunds.

In spite of an upsurge in interest in the social history of the Catholic community and an ever-growing body of literature on early modern 'superstition' and popular religion, the English Catholic community's response to the invisible world of the preternatural and supernatural has remained largely neglected. Addressing this oversight, this book explores Catholic responses to the supernatural world, setting the English Catholic community in the contexts of the wider Counter-Reformation and the confessional culture of early modern England. In so doing, it fulfils the need for a study of how English Catholics related to manifestations of the devil (witchcraft and possession) and the dead (ghosts) in the context of Catholic attitudes to the supernatural world as a whole (including debates on miracles). The study further provides a comprehensive examination of the ways in which English Catholics deployed exorcism, the church's ultimate response to the devil. Whilst some aspects of the Catholic response have been touched on in the course of broader studies, few scholars have gone beyond the evidence contained within anti-Catholic polemical literature to examine in detail what Catholics themselves said and thought. Given that Catholics were consistently portrayed as 'superstitious' in Protestant literature, the historian must attend to Catholic voices on the supernatural in order to avoid a disastrously unbalanced view of Catholic attitudes. This book provides the first analysis of the Catholic response to the supernatural and witchcraft and how it related to a characteristic Counter-Reformation preoccupation, the phenomenon of exorcism.

In spite of the centrality of the threefold orders of bishop, priest and deacon to Anglicanism, deacons have been virtually invisible in the contemporary Church of England. 'Inferior Office?' is the first complete history of this neglected portion of the clergy, tracing the church's changing theology of the diaconate from the Ordinal of 1550 to the present day. Francis Young skilfully overturns the widely held belief that before the twentieth century, the diaconate was merely a brief and nominal period of probation for priests, revealing how it became an integral part of the Elizabethan defence of conformity and exploring the diverse range of ministries assumed by lifelong deacons in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Lifelong deacons often belonged to a marginalised 'lower class' of the clergy that has since been forgotten, an oversight of considerable importance to the wider social history of the clergy that is corrected in this volume. 'Inferior Office?' tells the story of persistent calls for the revival of a distinctive diaconate within the Victorian Church of England and situates the institution of deaconesses and later revival of the distinctive diaconate for women, as well as subsequent developments, within their wider historical context. Set against this backdrop, Young presents a balanced case both for and against the further development of a distinctive diaconate today, offering much to further discussion and debate amongst clergy of the Church of England and all those with an interest in the rich tapestry of its history.

This book traces the development of exorcism in Catholic Christianity from the fourth century to the present day, and seeks to explain why exorcism is still so much in demand. This is the first work in English to trace the development of the liturgy, practice and authorisation of exorcisms in Latin Christianity. The rite of exorcism, and the claim by Roman Catholic priests to be able to drive demons from the possessed, remains an enduring source of popular fascination, but the origins and history of this controversial rite have been little explored. Arguing that belief in the need for exorcism typically re-emerges at periods of crisis for the church, Francis Young explores the shifting boundaries between authorised exorcisms and unauthorised magic throughout Christian history, from Augustine of Hippo to Pope Francis. This book offers the historical background to - and suggests reasons for - the current resurgence of exorcism in the global Catholic Church.

Witchcraft is rarely mentioned in official documents of the contemporary Roman Catholic church, but ideas about the dangers of witchcraft and other forms of occultism underpin the recent revival of interest in exorcism in the church. This Element examines hierarchical and clerical understandings of witchcraft within the contemporary Roman Catholic church. The Element considers the difficulties faced by clergy in parts of the developing world, where belief in witchcraft is so dominant it has the potential to undermine the church's doctrine and authority. The Element also considers the revival of interest in witchcraft and cursing among Catholic demonologists and exorcists in the developed world. The Element explores whether it is possible for a global church to adopt any kind of coherent approach to a phenomenon appraised so differently across different cultures that the church's responses to witchcraft in one context are likely to seem irrelevant in another.