God’s Secret Agents: Queen Elizabeth's Forbidden Priests and the Hatching of the Gunpowder Plot. Alice Hogge

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† Goldwell’s correspondence with the Pope took several months, by which time plague had broken out in Reims and he had grown desperate. One of his letters, dated 13 July 1580, began, ‘Beatissimo Padre,—If I could have crossed over into England before my coming was known there, as I hoped to do, I think that my going thither would have been a comfort to the Catholics, and a satisfaction to your Holiness; wherein now I fear the contrary, for there are so many spies in this kingdom, and my long tarrying here had made my going to England so bruited there, that now I doubt it will be difficult for me to enter that kingdom without some danger.’ In the end he dismissed himself without permission and returned to Rome to a chilly reception.

* William Cecil, desperate to avoid provoking Spain further, had done his best to scupper Drake’s adventure. He is even said to have placed one of his own agents among the crew to incite a mutiny. The agent was discovered and hanged from the yardarm.

† The old King of Portugal died in January 1580 without a direct heir and as the son of the dead King’s eldest sister, Philip was quick to press home his claim to the title.

* The story of Pound’s transformation from wealthy courtier to religious prisoner is remarkable (though quite possibly apocryphal). He is said to have performed a complicated pas seul before the Queen, who was so impressed she called on him to repeat the move. Pound did so, but this time he fell. To the ringing laughter of the Queen and her court he retired, with the words ‘Sic transit gloria mundi’, and from then on he devoted himself to religion.

* An informer’s report, dated 26 December 1580, describes Gilbert as ‘bending somewhat in the knees, fair-complexioned, reasonably well-coloured, little hair on his face, and short if he have any, thick somewhat of speech, and about twenty-four years of age’. By this stage Gilbert was a wanted man.

* Walsingham was Elizabeth’s new Principal Secretary of State since Sir William Cecil’s appointment as Lord Treasurer in 1573. Cecil was also created Baron Burghley, in recognition of his service to Elizabeth.

* Henry Norris was a favourite of Elizabeth’s—his father had been executed on a manufactured charge of adultery with Elizabeth’s mother, Anne Boleyn (thus sealing Anne’s downfall), and the family had forfeited their lands. At her succession Elizabeth restored those lands and later ennobled Norris. Thomas Paget was a staunch Catholic who endured frequent terms of imprisonment for his faith.

* On 16 March 1583 William Allen observed: ‘Great complaints are made to the Queen’s councillors about the university of Oxford, because of the number who from time to time leave their colleges and are supposed to pass over to us.’

* Both Hartley and Pitts were eventually caught by the authorities. They were banished from England in 1585. Hartley returned soon afterwards and was recaptured. He was executed at Shoreditch in London on 5 October 1588, one of the many Catholics executed in the aftermath of the Armada.

* During restoration works at Lyford in 1959 an Agnus Dei blessed by Pope Gregory XIII and papers dated 1579 were found in a wooden box nailed to a joist under the attic floorboards.

† John Payne was Cuthbert Mayne’s travelling companion to England in 1576. He was eventually captured and executed at Chelmsford, Essex on 4 April 1582.

* No doubt many of the Council believed in Campion, Persons and Allen’s guilt but both Ford and Collington had been in England a number of years before the Jesuits’ arrival, while poor Filby had only bad timing to thank for his presence at Lyford.

† Quick to jump onto the bandwagon, Munday published an account of Campion’s capture within a couple of days of the Jesuit’s imprisonment. Eliot later complained that the book was ‘as contrary to truth as an egg is contrary to the likeness of an oyster’.