ABSTRACT
Post-Reformation, Essex as a county has, amongst acquiring other more modern stereotypes, been better known for its Protestant credentials rather than for being a hotbed of extreme Catholic action. Yet it was a county divided along religious extremes: as well as Puritans, it was home to several major backers of the Jesuit mission to England, often characterized as the hard-line, no compromise wing of the English Catholic Mission. This chapter examines how this Jesuit support expressed itself in terms of convent recruitment. It argues that one family's patronage of the Jesuits dominated convent recruitment in the area to such an extent that their demise as a political force coincided with the collapse of convent recruitment from the county. Moreover, the 'competing spiritualities' that created fissures within the English Catholic community were live issues outside of the country and in the continental convents.
