Priest hunter

A priest hunter was a person who, acting on behalf of British forces, spied on or captured Catholic priests during Penal Times.

Large areas of Ireland remained in the control of resisting Irish clans who found Roman Catholic priests to be useful conduits for clandestinely obtaining supplies, information, and gold from outside, thereby maintaining their independence from central, and especially Protestant, authorities.

As the Catholic bishops during the reign of Queen Mary were dead, imprisoned or in exile, and those priests they had ordained were dying out or converting to Protestantism, William Allen conceived the idea for a seminary for English Catholic priests at Douai, where several of the chief posts were held by professors who had fled Oxford upon the reimposition of Protestantism in England. The English College at Douai was founded as a Catholic seminary in 1569. Similar colleges also came about at Douai for Scottish and Irish Catholic clergy, and also Benedictine, Franciscan and Jesuit houses. Other English seminaries for the training of priests from and for England and Wales included ones in Rome (1579), Valladolid (1589), Seville (1592) and Lisbon (1628).

Elizabeth I reinstated the Protestant bible and English Mass, yet for a number of years she refrained from persecuting Catholics. After the Rising of the North of 1569 and the papal bull Regnans in Excelsis (1570), plus the threat of invasion by Catholic France or Spain assisted by English Catholics led the Crown to adopt ever increasing repressive measures.

An act of 1571 (13 Eliz. c. 2) not only forbade the publishing of any documents from the Pope, but also the importation and distribution of crosses, beads, pictures, and tokens called "Agnus Dei" (a Lamb of God sealed upon a piece of wax from the Paschal candle blessed by the Pope). From the 1570s missionary priests from continental seminaries came to England secretly. In the autumn of 1577, Queen Elizabeth's Principal Secretary, Francis Walsingham canvassed the Anglican bishops for a list of recusants in their dioceses and how much each was worth.Cuthbert Mayne (1544–1577) was the first English Roman Catholic "seminary priest" to be executed under the laws of Elizabeth I.

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