What was the latest date that England could be returned to the Catholic Church?

This is something I've always found quite fascinating due to my research on A et D and my general love of the era. So from the first break in 1533 to the end of James II's reign in 1688 there were numerous plans, ideas, conspiracies and hopes by Catholics at in the British Isles and on the continent that England would somehow, someway be returned to the true faith. Many of these ideas were pure fantasy, like James II's idea that once the penal laws were repealed the English would convert in mass, while others, like Henrietta Maria's efforts to convert the country's elite, could have conceivablely bore fruit. My question is this: what is the realistic latest date that England could be "re-Catolicized"?
 
How drastic are the methods allowed?

Suppose that instead of Napoleon Bonaparte, there is Polonio Ponabarte - a Corsican military genius who becomes Emperor of France in the wake of revolution. The difference is that he is a truly devout Catholic, and his older brother is a high-ranking Jesuit, who is brilliant, eloquent, and equally devout. Polonio makes his brother Pope, and between them they completely rebuild the Church and Catholic Europe: imposing Jesuit levels of discipline and efficiency on the whole Church, and modernizing all the hidebound governments. Then they embark on a Crusade to eliminate all heresy and schism from Christendom - which means re-Catholicizing all Protestant countries, including England.
 
How drastic are the methods allowed?

Suppose that instead of Napoleon Bonaparte, there is Polonio Ponabarte - a Corsican military genius who becomes Emperor of France in the wake of revolution. The difference is that he is a truly devout Catholic, and his older brother is a high-ranking Jesuit, who is brilliant, eloquent, and equally devout. Polonio makes his brother Pope, and between them they completely rebuild the Church and Catholic Europe: imposing Jesuit levels of discipline and efficiency on the whole Church, and modernizing all the hidebound governments. Then they embark on a Crusade to eliminate all heresy and schism from Christendom - which means re-Catholicizing all Protestant countries, including England.

I'd say that scenario would be part of the ideas based in fantasy that I mentioned. It would go in the same category as the fear that developed during the Popish plot: that France would land in army and the Catholics would rise up to kill the good protestants in the beds. Lets stay more in the bounds of legality or reality, like an earlier monarch converting to Catholicism or granting full liberty of conscious while his consort leads the charge for conversion. Or hell have the major Protestant sects disgraced via major scandals, turning the more moderate protestants away from them.
 
During Elizabeth I's reign it is possible. She most likely inherited a predominantly Catholic kingdom, and in fact, when she did began to reform the Church of England in a Protestant direction, there was a serious shortage of qualified clergy. Many newly ordained clergy in the first half of her reign were ignorant of basic notions like the Lord's Prayer. I would imagine that many Englishmen were not overly impressed by these new men of the church. If Elizabeth had died in say, the 1570s, when the Church of England's foundations were shaky, the country could have reverted. (With James VI of Scotland being young at this time, there wouldn't have been a clear Protestant successor, either.)

But Elizabeth lived on, the incompetent clergy were gradually replaced with qualified ones, and with the help of people like Foxe (with his Book of Martyrs) she was able to develop a powerful narrative in favor of Protestantism and against Catholicism. By the time she died, most Englishmen had no memory of the country being Catholic and had been exposed to years of propaganda against that faith. (Remember that under the Act of Uniformity, all Englishmen were required to attend church weekly.) From 1603 onward I think it is difficult to revert England back. Even if something like the Gunpowder Plot succeeds and a Catholic person takes over the throne, there almost certainly is going to be a massive revolt and civil war.
 
THe gunpowder plot was to society as shocking as a terror atrocity is to us - people were horrified and due to the propaganda of James VI and his ministers it effectively set back the Catholic cause in England for centuries - anytime after that forget it. As above had Mary Tudor lived a bit longer and Elizabeth had perhaps been married to a Catholic princeling then it is possible to have England remain Roman Catholic (Elizabeth herself was closer to the Anglo Catholicism of her father's later reign than the Puritanism of many of her courtiers and ministers). A later accession by Elizabeth perhaps with an heir means a moderate gentler faith perhaps than her less pragmatic sister though it probably means protestant exiles remain abroad and slowly die out there. Another is the Protestant Elizabeth dies of her smallpox attack and her ministers split between Catherine Grey, Mary Stuart and Margaret Countess of Lennox - Lennox wins out over objections from Cecil and others - cements her lines claim by uniting her son with the Scots Queen - and she moves to return the church to as it was at Elizabeth's accession - Margaret is followed by her son and his Scots wife - Scotland's protestant's are slowly starved of resources as the Catholic nobility of Scotland retake control especially after the Queen's move south.
 
THe gunpowder plot was to society as shocking as a terror atrocity is to us - people were horrified and due to the propaganda of James VI and his ministers it effectively set back the Catholic cause in England for centuries - anytime after that forget it. As above had Mary Tudor lived a bit longer and Elizabeth had perhaps been married to a Catholic princeling then it is possible to have England remain Roman Catholic (Elizabeth herself was closer to the Anglo Catholicism of her father's later reign than the Puritanism of many of her courtiers and ministers). A later accession by Elizabeth perhaps with an heir means a moderate gentler faith perhaps than her less pragmatic sister though it probably means protestant exiles remain abroad and slowly die out there. Another is the Protestant Elizabeth dies of her smallpox attack and her ministers split between Catherine Grey, Mary Stuart and Margaret Countess of Lennox - Lennox wins out over objections from Cecil and others - cements her lines claim by uniting her son with the Scots Queen - and she moves to return the church to as it was at Elizabeth's accession - Margaret is followed by her son and his Scots wife - Scotland's protestant's are slowly starved of resources as the Catholic nobility of Scotland retake control especially after the Queen's move south.

So in your opinion anything after the Gunpowder plot is highly unlikely? What do you think about a POD in the 1630s? At that time there was a Catholic revival among the elite thanks to the efforts by Henrietta Maria and her priests, so it could be a basis for an eventual return if a civil war is avoided/ the Crown wins. I know that Charles I wasn't entirely opposed to the idea of a reconciliation between the Anglican Church and Rome so it would be possible, if difficult. I'll try to find my book that mentions this so I can expand this better.
 
So in your opinion anything after the Gunpowder plot is highly unlikely? What do you think about a POD in the 1630s? At that time there was a Catholic revival among the elite thanks to the efforts by Henrietta Maria and her priests, so it could be a basis for an eventual return if a civil war is avoided/ the Crown wins. I know that Charles I wasn't entirely opposed to the idea of a reconciliation between the Anglican Church and Rome so it would be possible, if difficult. I'll try to find my book that mentions this so I can expand this better.

I think it's too late by then. At that point the realistic question is whether the Church of England will be High or Low Church Protestant.

In the 16th century, rulers frequently changed the religion of their country, but in the 17th that became much rarer. Now you start seeing rulers being required to follow their country's established church or risk losing their thrones. Christina of Sweden changed her religion and had to abdicate; likewise, James II was driven out of England. Note what happened to Charles I in Scotland when he tried to introduce an Anglican prayer book.
 
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Out of curiosity, is there a good estimate of just what percentage of England was Catholic in the 17th century? I've read that there was a religious census of some kind in 1603 but can't seem to find any details. One source says a few as 40,000 while another goes as high as 300,000 or 400,000. So does anyone have a source or more that can answer this conundrum?
 
It is difficult because in England and Wales - you were automatically an Anglican - and the recusant figures are dodgy - because they include anyone who failed to attend an Anglican service (which would include non-conformist protestants as well as Roman Catholics etc) - Can't remember the last census details but even by 1900 or so Catholics amounted to less than 5% of the population of England and Wales - and that followed high numbers of Irish immigration into the British mainland.

I have seen a figure for the 1760s suggesting less than 1% of the population were Roman Catholics - of course many prominent families remained Catholic and paid the price in terms of restrictions from office etc - the Catholic gentry and aristocracy could of course afford the fines unlike the general population - they also tended to be concentrated in parts of the country such as northern England which can distort the image of a strong Catholic base surviving Elizabeth and James I.

Even Henrietta Maria wasn't in a position to push England back to Rome by every account Charles I himself remained devoutly Anglican in religion and urged his sons to remain Anglican despite their mother's view. It also doesn't help English Catholics that by the late 17th Century their religion became even more associated with the absolutist states of France and Spain at odds with growing ideas of Parliamentary supremacy etc.
 
Out of curiosity, is there a good estimate of just what percentage of England was Catholic in the 17th century? I've read that there was a religious census of some kind in 1603 but can't seem to find any details. One source says a few as 40,000 while another goes as high as 300,000 or 400,000. So does anyone have a source or more that can answer this conundrum?

This source mentions that there was a census but its methodology was flawed. It doesn't provide specifics.
In the seventeenth century, there were two general religious censuses of England and Wales, in 1603 and 1676, the extant documents for which have recently become available in scholarly editions.1 The former enquiry sought a return of communicants, recusants and non-communicants, the latter of conformists, papists and nonconformists. Both surveys suffered from an imprecise and inconsistent application of these categories, from non-response and from a degree of underestimation.

This source provides details for 1676, while casting some doubt on their validity:

The religious census ordered by Danby and Shelton in 1676 calculated that of the adult population over the age of sixteen, 2,477,254 were conformists, 108,676 were nonconformists and 13,656 were papists, and that nonconformists were much stronger in the south and eastern parts of England than in the north and west. Since Danby's purpose was to minimalize the number of dissenters in order to convince Charles of the futility of relying on their support, it is not unduly critical to question the accuracy of the census. Clearly, it underestimated the strength of nonconformity, especially since a lot of nonconformists probably conformed simply for the sake of the census.
 
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Considering that the 1760 census gave the Catholic population around 80,000 (which would be impressive considering that means the Catholic Population went up around 400%!) that's complete BS. So realistically we have little eye on just what percentage of the population remained Catholic, aside from the prominent peers and gentry? That bights but makes sense considering few commoners are going to admit to an illegal religion. So there could be quite a few Catholics in England during the first half of the century that just kept their heads down? Or am I way off?

OK adding on to the original question: lets say that Charles I is convinced of the truth of the Catholic religion while in Madrid in 1623 and converts. He marries the Spanish Infanta and pledges to restore Britain to the fold. So could a Catholic King devoted to restoring the Catholic religion in the 1620s bring Britain back into the fold? And before its dismissed out of hand, remember that in the same era the lands of the Habsburg Monarchy had a Protestant majority, with many thinking Catholicism was on its last legs. Yet by the end of the Thirty years' war Catholicism had been restored as the dominant religion, a situation never overturned. So at least in theory it would be possible to convert the majority of a country in this era, though it took a war to do so in Austria. Thus, in theory at least, it should be potentially repeatable in England. Thoughts? Could it work and if a war broke out could the Stuarts win?
 
I'm not all that knowledgeable about the religious demography of the Habsburg lands in this era, but the Thirty Years' War certainly was a time of massive population loss and displacement in the empire, so it may be a case sui generis, not very replicable elsewhere.

There would certainly be war in England if Charles attempted to restore Catholicism in the 1620s. I'm not sure if his chances of victory would be any better than they were in the 1640s OTL.
 
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I'm not all that knowledgeable about the religious demography of the Habsburg lands in this era, but the Thirty Years' War certainly was a time of massive population loss and displacement in the empire, so it may be a case sui generis, not very replicable elsewhere.

There would certainly be war in England if Charles attempted to restore Catholicism in the 1620s. I'm not sure if his chances of victory would be any better than they were in the 1640s OTL.

Not necessarily. First off, we lack a good estimate of just how many Catholics were in England at this time, so there's no real idea of what a Catholic King's starting base would be. Second, I think some of the Habsburgs tactics (replacing Protestant Priests with Catholics, closing Protestant schools, ennobling and employing only Catholics, ex ex) could be replicated in England. Third, it might be possible to reconcile some or most of the High Church Anglicans to an autonomous form of Catholicism, thus strengthening the King's hand.

As for civil war, here England can call on Spanish troops, as well as fully raise an Irish army. The Royalists won't necessarily win but they have a better hand than they did in the OTL war. I'm not saying a re-catholicization would be realistic or easy (would take decades and cause much civil strife), but it might be possible.
 
OK adding on to the original question: lets say that Charles I is convinced of the truth of the Catholic religion while in Madrid in 1623 and converts. He marries the Spanish Infanta and pledges to restore Britain to the fold. So could a Catholic King devoted to restoring the Catholic religion in the 1620s bring Britain back into the fold?

Openly pledging to bring Britain back to Catholicism would probably fail. His best bet would probably be to repeal the Penal Laws, and/or give preference to Catholics when choosing his ministers -- not too much preference, because excluding every Protestant nobleman from high office would likely lead to a rebellion, but enough for ambitious men to convert in the hopes of improving their chances of promotion. The more people do so, the stronger the position of Catholicism would become, until eventually the country becomes majority Catholic again.
 
As for civil war, here England can call on Spanish troops, as well as fully raise an Irish army. The Royalists won't necessarily win but they have a better hand than they did in the OTL war. I'm not saying a re-catholicization would be realistic or easy (would take decades and cause much civil strife), but it might be possible.

My understanding is that IOTL, English Catholics did mostly rally to Charles's side, in addition to High Church Anglicans. If you have an openly Catholic Charles, the latter are probably not going to. So what he gains in a potential Spanish intervention (keep in mind that the Spanish are also fighting the Dutch and in the Empire, so they can't send their best troops), he loses in domestic support - and just the fact of using foreign troops in an English conflict is going to alienate him from a lot of his subjects, if he wasn't already.

I agree that it's not quite ASB at this point (by the time of the Restoration it probably is) - but it is tough. By 1625, Protestantism has been in the ascendancy for almost every Englishman's lifetime, and a Catholic Charles doesn't have the kind of institutional and military support that the Habsburgs did in their realms. To Englishmen, he is foreign-born (Scotland), son of the rather unpopular James I, and he's just gone through with a very unpopular marriage to the Spanish infanta. It's a delicate thing for him to try to then change the country's religious institutions.

Openly pledging to bring Britain back to Catholicism would probably fail. His best bet would probably be to repeal the Penal Laws, and/or give preference to Catholics when choosing his ministers -- not too much preference, because excluding every Protestant nobleman from high office would likely lead to a rebellion, but enough for ambitious men to convert in the hopes of improving their chances of promotion. The more people do so, the stronger the position of Catholicism would become, until eventually the country becomes majority Catholic again.

Can he realistically repeal the Penal Laws without suffering politically? This is only two decades after the Gunpowder Plot.
 
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Can he realistically repeal the Penal Laws without suffering politically? This is only two decades after the Gunpowder Plot.

It would be difficult, although I'm not sure if it would be impossible. IOTL James II failed, but he didn't have much political savvy and ended up implementing his policy in a particularly heavy-handed way. Then again, Charles I wasn't much better in this regard.

Interestingly enough, during Oliver Cromwell's protectorate there was talk of getting a concordat with the Pope, whereby in return for England not executing people for being Catholic the Pope would recognise the protectorate as the legitimate government of England and forbid English Catholics from plotting against it. Obviously this came to nothing IOTL, but it might be an avenue worth exploring, especially since it would enable the government to portray it as a victory -- "Look, see, thanks to us the threat of a Papist fifth column murdering us in our sleep is ended, what a great government we are." If people got used to Catholicism being legal and Catholics not being a bunch of foreign plotters trying to bring England under the domination of France and/or Spain, *James II would probably have a much easier time getting the Penal Laws revoked.
 
The worst way to restore Catholicism is to do it backed by Spanish (or French) force. National identity was emerging in England and associating Catholicism with foreign subservience will ruin the religion's image truly.
 
I think its worth pointing out that to have a Catholic Charles I you would need a very different Charles I. Whatever the man's enemies claimed, he was not a closet Catholic nor would he consider a marriage to the Spanish Infanta, say, as a prelude to conversion. The man was High Church, but thoroughly wedded to Anglicanism. Remember, in private he repeatedly upbraided Henrietta for her scheming and one of the things he made his children promise [Henry and Elizabeth who were with him before his execution] was not to convert. Because he knew remaining Protestant was the only way they were going to potentially get the throne back.

Even if you did somehow wangle a Catholic Charles, I agree with @funnyhat - a major rebellion or civil war would be the result. Post-Elizabeth [and James, who everyone forgets is really important in defining ideas of Englishness in the period] Protestantism was seen as inherently English. Furthermore, you might not actually see all Catholics side with a Catholic Charles in such a conflict. They didn't all turn out to support the Gunpowder Plot, for example, despite Catesby telling everyone in the locale that they'd succeeded in killing the King.

Realistically, I think any return to Catholicism that doesn't involve prolonged and bloody war needs to happen pre-Armada. That was the event that associated Catholicism, for the first time, with significant foreign powers that sought to invade and harm England. After that, it was easier and easier to label it as something alien and un-English.
 
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