God’s Traitors

Terror and Faith in Elizabethan England

Jessie Childs

A true story of plots, priest-holes and persecution and one family's battle to save Catholicism in Reformation England.

The Catholics of Elizabethan England did not witness a golden age. Their Mass was banned, their priests were outlawed, their faith was criminalised. In an age of assassination and Armada, those Catholics who clung to their faith were increasingly seen as the enemy within. In this superb history, award-winning author Jessie Childs explores the Catholic predicament in Elizabethan England through the eyes of one remarkable family: the Vauxes of Harrowden Hall.

God’s Traitors is a tale of dawn raids and daring escapes, stately homes and torture chambers, ciphers, secrets and lies. From clandestine chapels and side-street inns to exile communities and the corridors of power, it exposes the tensions and insecurities masked by the cult of Gloriana. Above all, it is a timely story of courage and frailty, repression and reaction and the terrible consequences when religion and politics collide.

First published:: 2014
Published by:: Vintage
Length:: Hardcover 480 pages

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About the author

Jessie Childs won the Elizabeth Longford Prize for Historical Biography with her first book Henry VIII's Last Victim: The Life and Times of Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey. She has written and reviewed for several newspapers and magazines, including the Daily Telegraph, Sunday Telegraph and Literary Review. She took a First in History from the University of Oxford and lives in London with her husband and two daughters. This is her second book.