Robert Garnier in Elizabethan England: Mary Sindey Herbert's “Antonius” and Thomas Kyd's “Cornelia.” Marie-Alice Belle and Line Cottegnies, eds. MHRA Tudor and Stuart Translations 16. Cambridge: Modern Humanities Research Association, 2017. x + 324 pp. $45.
of the Jesuit authorities. As a married man with strong Protestant connections, not to mention his Irish origin, Piers’s presence in the English College was problematic, though these suspicions were assuaged when clerical friends emphasized both his conversion and English parentage. Another interesting source of comparison is the section of Tadhg Ó Cianáin’s Irishlanguage narrative that recounts the first six months of the Earl of Tyrone’s exile in Rome between 29 April and 27 November 1608. Hostile to Tyrone’s insurrection beginning in 1595, Piers clashed with some of the Earl’s Irish supporters in the eternal city when refuting their depiction of his campaign as a religious crusade. Both authors are at one, however, in emphasizing saints, relics, and indulgences, aspects of Catholic faith that were contested by the Reformers but upheld by Trent. Both Piers and Ó Cianáin give extensive coverage to the Roman Corpus Christi procession, the former using the occasion both to affirm the doctrine of the Real Presence and castigate the Reformers who denied it, whereas the latter is more interested in highlighting the honor shown by Paul V to O’Neill in choosing eight of his party to carry the canopy over the Blessed Sacrament. Both authors include a detailed account of the Marian shrine of Loreto, as well as the pilgrimage of the Seven Basilicas in Rome. Whereas Ó Cianáin carefully portrays Tyrone as a Catholic leader who deserves military aid to overthrow heretical rule in Ireland, Piers’s Catholicism abhors the very idea of rebellion against the legitimate though heretical monarch. Brian Mac Cuarta is to be warmly congratulated on preparing this edition of Henry Piers’s Discourse from the one extant manuscript, Rawlinson D. 83, Bodleian Library, Oxford. His carefully crafted introduction teases out the various components of Piers’s multifaceted identity: New English, Irish, Protestant, Catholic, Crown official of Gaelic fosterage. This volume is indeed a handsome contribution to our understanding of the complex place that was early modern Ireland.