An interesting look at the women who fought for their faith in an age of increasing religious division and an age where conformity to the religious will of the state was expected.

I received a free copy of The Women Who Saved Catholic England, by Martyn R. Beardsley, from the publisher and Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. Anne Vaux her sister Eleanor, were part of The Catholic Resistance, and helped Catholic priests, when priests were persecuted for being Catholic. This was a horrific time in our history, though people are still being killed and discriminated against for their religion. The woman in the book are true heros of their time, including 11 year old Frances, and Margaret of York. I really enjoyed this book.

At the end of this book there is a really great summary of how England changed its stance towards Catholics and the Catholic religion in general during the later Stuart monarchs- and why. It gives the reader a good feel for how times and people changed and helps set the scene for after the book. I really wish the author had taken a few pages and done something similar to set the stage at the beginning of the book, so that the reader had a better understanding of a few things. For example, everyone pretty much knows that after Henry VIII England went back and forth between Protestant and Catholic under his children. What did that mean for the everyday people? This book is about saving Catholic priests, but it is hazy on a lot of the details of the lives of the priests (and secret Catholics) in between raids. Although if you want some specifics about time they spent getting tortured and some horrible deaths, there are quite detailed accounts here.

The book follows a number of specific women like the Vaux sisters who sheltered priests and seem to have supported a Catholic community. Authorities often seem to have known this kind of thing was happening and raids were more politically motivated than anything else. Beardsley describes those who had to hide in the ingeniously created "priest's holes", often for days on end, to escape search parties and at the end gives a very helpful list of the main houses mentioned in the book and whether they still stand and can be visited by the public today. I'm definitely hoping to see a few of these one day!

Overall, this is a book more for those who already know a certain amount about Catholics under Elizabeth I and James I. Not a book I'd recommend for those just starting to read about the subject, it assumes a certain amount of knowledge already by the reader. I was often left wishing I knew more about the subject so that I could have gotten more out of this book than I did.

I received an ARC of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review