Faith of Our Fathers: A History of True England

by Joseph Pearce

Overview

The Catholic Church has been a part of English history since the arrival of Christian missionaries to Roman Britain in the first century after Christ. England was evangelized in these early centuries to such an extent that, by the time the Romans withdrew in the fifth century, the Celtic population was largely Catholic.

Anglo-Saxon England, prior to the Norman Conquest, was a land of saints. From St. Bede, with his history of the early Church, to the holy king St. Edward the Confessor, Saxon England was ablaze with the light of Christ. During the reign of St. Edward, a vision of the Virgin at Walsingham placed the Mother of God on the throne as England's queen, the land being considered her dowry. Even following the Norman Conquest, the Faith continued to flourish and prosper, making its joyful presence felt in what would become known as Merrie England.

Then in the sixteenth century, this Catholic heart was ripped from the people of England, against their will and in spite of their spirited and heroic resistance, by the reign of the Tudors. This made England once again a land of saints—that is, of martyrs, with Catholic priests and laity being put to death for practicing the Faith. The martyrdoms would continue for 150 years, followed by a further 150 years of legal and political persecution.

In the nineteenth century, against all the odds, there was a great Catholic revival, heralded by the conversion of St. John Henry Newman, which would continue into the twentieth century. Much of the greatest literature of the past century has been written by literary converts to the Church, such as G. K. Chesterton, Evelyn Waugh, Graham Greene, and J. R. R. Tolkien.

This whole exciting, faith-filled story is told by Joseph Pearce within a single-volume history of "true England", the England that remained true to the faith through thick and thin, in times both "merrie" and perilous. It is a story not only worth telling but worth celebrating.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781642292039
Publisher:	Ignatius Press
Publication date:	03/01/2022
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	384
File size:	619 KB

About the Author

Joseph Pearce, a native of England, is Director of Book Publishing at the Augustine Institute and Editor of the Ignatius Critical Editions. He is the author of numerous biographies of Christian literary figures, including Shakespeare, Tolkien, Chesterton, C. S. Lewis, Hilaire Belloc, Oscar Wilde, and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn.

Table of Contents

Prologue: True and Timeless England 9

1 A Christ-Haunted Country 13

2 The England Before England 18

3 A Land of Saints 30

4 Christian Kings and the Queen of Heaven 40

5 Tyrannical Kings and Heroic Resistance 55

6 Merrie England 66

7 Our Lady's Dowry 82

8 Prelude to Tyranny 93

9 The Tudor Terror 104

10 Pillage and Pilgrimage 117

11 A Protestant Puppet 133

12 Mary Tudor 150

13 Bloody Bess 163

14 A Land of Martyrs 177

15 England on the Rack 190

16 God's Spice 200

17 God's Spies 218

18 Prelude to War 234

19 Regicide, Restoration, and Revolution 243

20 The Recusant Remnant 258

21 The Tide Turns 271

22 Rome and Romanticism 279

23 A Second Spring 291

24 Manning and Newman 302

25 Literary Converts 314

26 The Catholic Literary Revival 323

27 Beyond Modernity 336

28 The Return of the Queen 350

Epilogue: True and Timeless England Revisited 361

Index 365

What People are Saying About This

Dale Ahlquist

"Like any account of a life, Faith of Our Fathers is full of surprises. But the biggest surprise is that the Catholic Church has been the main character in the two thousand years of stories that have come from this storied island."
 

Christopher Check

President, Catholic Answers

Bishop James Wall

"Joseph Pearce's Faith of Our Fathers: A History of True England takes the reader on a faith-filled journey with inspiring stories of men and women who helped shape the cultural landscape of England. The stories of our elder brothers and sisters in the faith, those who faithfully lived out their baptismal call, inspire the reader to be a true son or daughter of the Catholic Church."

Christopher Blum

"Joseph Pearce's spirited history of the True England is a microcosm of the human story: against all the odds, God's grace breaks through the darkness of sin and folly to inspire noble deeds of intrepid fidelity in every generation."
 

Bishop James Conley

"The history of the Catholic Church in England is as rich and inspiring as the island she has called home for nearly two millennia. Joseph Pearce does a masterful job of tracing this journey of faith, from the first proclamation of the Gospel on her shores all the way to our present day. May the reading of this book inspire many through the unwavering faith and witness of England's sons and daughters in Christ."

Editorial Reviews

"Joseph Pearce provides us with an evocative mix of history, legend, and literature. Throughout this journey into the heart of Catholic England, Pearce passionately evokes the "Christ-haunted" history of England. Drawing upon English Catholic writers of the twentieth century such as Belloc, Chesterton, Tolkien, and others, he presents a picture of a Catholic England that never completely disappeared."

Paul Baxa