this is a really interesting suggestion. However, have to say, have been reading Player's Boy and the chapter with Anthony Merrick (which I'm guessing probably represents AF's favoured perpective on the recusancy issue). And he says firmly that he doesn't want to overthrow Elizabeth, and believes they should all wait patiently until Elizabeth decides to restore Catholicism. So not really very subversive at all...more "having your cake and eating it" in my view. (And also dodging the issue that the Pope had excommunicated Elizabeth I and thus had basically condoned attempts by English Catholics to get rid of her.)

Can't help feeling that although Patrick Merricks grandly writes off the Tudors as ghastly, AF, writing about the period, probably recognised their attributes as rulers, and is reluctant to take a hard-line stand against them...Furthermore Will in Rebels tells Nicholas clearly that his first duty, however unpleasant, is to the state, and I'm sure the reader is meant to go along with this (it is pretty much at the conclusion of the book, and Will is such a wise and sympathetic character). So that too seems to go against the idea that AF is embracing subversiveness in this period - she seems to me to be embracing the status quo.