Dislocation and Record-Keeping: The Counter Archives of the Catholic Diaspora

When early eighteenth-century English Catholics looked back on the first wave of exiles in the sixteenth century, they remarked specifically on the importance of writing and record-keeping. Though they were otherwise vicious opponents in their attempts to discredit the other’s Catholic party, both the Jesuit Thomas Hunter and the secular priest Charles Dodd agreed that the sixteenth-century expatriate Robert Persons continued to participate in the mission through writing. Hunter celebrated the reputation of his predecessor in the Society of Jesus, stating that: