Early Modern Catholic Women and Mobility

This entry considers the impact of religion on the mobility of Catholic English women in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The legislation passed to make England a Protestant country by Henry VIII, Edward VI, and Elizabeth I altered the lives of those English families who refused to attend a Protestant church and wished to remain Catholic. They found different ways of coping with restrictions on practicing their faith. Many broke laws by deciding to send their children abroad to be educated or to allow daughters to enter the religious life and join convents in exile. Surviving sources provide evidence of many journeys undertaken by Catholics and other religious dissidents determined to follow their own versions of the Christian faith.