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From the beginning of the seventeenth century, Englishmen professed as Benedictine monks in mainland Europe began returning to their homeland. Until that point, the Catholic mission to England had been run by secular clergy and Jesuits, relationships between the two clerical parties growing increasingly troubled over how the Catholic Reformation should be implemented in England. The arrival of the Benedictines saw the offering of a “third way” to England's proscribed Catholics. Yet with the various missions dependent on lay Catholic resources and support both in England and in mainland Europe, it was necessary for the Benedictines to justify their presence in this often fraught environment. As such, they forcefully laid claim to contemporary English Benedictine martyrs against rival claims by other clerical groups. These battles for validation reached a new level of intensity following James I's serving of the Oath of Allegiance. This article explores how competing groups of English missionary clergy sought to justify their presence in England. Taking the case of two conflicting images of the executed George Gervase, it argues that the contest for martyrs sheds new light on the ways in which martyrdom was exploited by different groups; it also contributes to debates about the Oath of Allegiance, which was threatening to derail the wider Catholic Reformation across mainland Europe. By placing these clashes over English religious identity in both domestic and international contexts, the article makes evident that events on the peripheries of mainland Europe affected discussions at its center.

Several recent studies dealing with the English church during the Norman period add immeasurably to our understanding of the era, but nonetheless represent a lost opportunity to recreate the actual ecclesiastical milieu, an English church unsevered from its Norman counterpart. Institutional differences surely existed between the two churches, yet much is lost in treating them separately. Indeed, few historians would attempt to study the great eleventh and twelfth-century cathedrals and abbey churches in England detached from those in Normandy. It is therefore the purpose of this paper to examine the customs, ideas, and especially the individuals which the two churches shared.A concerted effort to reexamine political institutions as they once functioned, rather than as a necessary condition for the states which they later became, has already begun. In 1976 John Le Patourel produced an impressive synthesis,The Norman Empire, and asserted that following the Norman Conquest, England and Normandy formed one dominion. It was united by a ruler who was at the same time King of the English and Duke of the Normans, and by a baronial class which had extensive holdings on both sides of the Channel. This supposedly came to an end in 1144 when Geoffrey of Anjou conquered Normandy. A recent review of theThe Norman Empire, which like most reviews speaks of its sterling qualities, nevertheless points out that the sections dealing with the church are, “not given much space … (and) are probably the most derivative in the book.”