Catholics in a Puritan Atlantic: The Liminality of Empire’s Edge

Abstract

England's triumph over its Catholic rivals for dominance in the Atlantic has its merits, but it has also served to overshadow the important fact that a very significant number of Catholics played a critical role in the expansion of the British Atlantic in the seventeenth century. Yet the role and, more importantly, the experience of these Catholics has, until very recently, remained an understudied component of the colonial and transAtlantic story. Although Aubrey Gwynn and others focussed on the role of the Irish, as a largely Catholic, component in the early modern English Atlantic, other historians have failed to highlight the importance of their religious persuasion. 3 Alternatively, studies focusing on Catholics centred on Maryland and the strongly Catholic nature of that colony's development, almost without reference to any Catholic presence beyond the Chesapeake. 4 It is only in the last few years that 3 Aubrey Gwynn, 'Early Irish Emigration to the West Indies (1612-1643)', Studies: