Elizabethan Catholic Intelligencers, Spain and the Armada of 1597

Abstract

Recent research on late Reformation English/British Catholics’ engagement in contemporary politics, has, for the most part, focused on regicidal schemes or on Catholic polemical writings. Espionage activities by Catholics in England, however, have been often overlooked. The hundreds of documents endorsed ‘avisos de Inglaterra’ (reports from England), located in el archivo general de Simancas, are intelligence dossiers about England. These reports were sent to Spain (between 1590–1608) by Hugh Owen, a Welsh Catholic exile, using information gathered by his informants in England. This article seeks to introduce the ‘avisos’ as a genre of sources by exploring the intelligence they contained and placing them within their broader context of Elizabethan/ Jacobean Catholicism and Anglo-Spanish relations. In using this largely untapped source of Anglo-Spanish history, this article reaches broader conclusions about how Catholics in England interacted with the Spanish authorities, and tried to influence the Anglo-Spanish war to their advantage.