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By Robert Hugh Benson

“As you have rejected, so will you be rejected.… You have cast away Authority, and authority shall forsake you. Behold your house is left unto you desolate.”

Elizabeth I, the “Cold Queen,” rules England with an iron hand. Before her, Queen Mary I had forcefully re-established the Catholic religion, reversing the Protestant revolutions of her father and brother. Under Elizabeth, the order is once again upended: the Protestant ways are declared supreme in the land and the Catholic faith is forbidden. Bringing this age of great faith and tragic apostasy to life, By What Authority? follows Anthony and Isabel Norris on their paths home, to the Roman Catholic faith of their fathers. With their father, Anthony and Isabel reside at Dower House, the home of Sir Nicholas Maxwell, a recusant Catholic with two sons: one a prodigal, the other (secretly) a Catholic priest. For those who call Dower House home, and indeed all of England, Christ’s words in the Gospel have been fulfilled: the Faith has brought not peace, but a sword. Yet that Faith also brings salvation—and by its authority, these men and women will live and suffer unto death.

First published in 1904, By What Authority? completes Benson’s trilogy of the English Reformation, following The King’s Achievement and The Queen’s Tragedy. Completed on the eve of Benson’s entrance into the Catholic Church, it contains—in the words of his biographer, C. C. Martindale, S.J.—“all his usual brilliance, and more than his usual tenderness.” 

Robert Hugh Benson (1871–1914), son of the Anglican Archbishop of Canterbury,  was a convert to the Roman Catholic faith. Ordained a priest in 1904, he was a dynamic preacher and author, writing numerous novels, short stories, plays, and spiritual texts. A number of his works are now available from Cluny, including Lord of the World, The Light Invisible, and Come Rack, Come Rope.

Paperback: 484pp.

ISBN: 978-1685955045