page_title: William Allen (cardinal)
section_title: Political activism
hierarchical_section_title: William Allen (cardinal) / Political activism
context_page_description: William Allen, also known as Guilielmus Alanus or Gulielmus Alanus, was an English Cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church. He was an ordained priest, but was never a bishop. His main role was setting up colleges to train English missionary priests with the mission of returning secretly to England to keep Roman Catholicism alive there. Allen assisted in the planning of the Spanish Armada's attempted invasion of England in 1588. It failed badly, but if it had succeeded he would probably have been made Archbishop of Canterbury and Lord Chancellor. The Douai-Rheims Bible, a complete translation into English from the Latin, was printed under Allen's orders. His activities were part of the Counter Reformation, but they led to an intense response in England and in Ireland. He advised and recommended Pope Pius V to pronounce Elizabeth I deposed. After the Pope declared her excommunicated and deposed, Elizabeth intensified the persecution of her Roman Catholic religious opponents. William Cecil said to Elizabeth "The Papist humors by your Queen Majesty's lenity grow too rank."
context_section_description: In 1577 Allen began a correspondence with the Jesuit priest Robert Parsons. Allen was again summoned to Rome in 1579, and was charged with suppressing an insurrection within the English College, caused by contrasts between students from Wales and the rest of the students from England. It was during this visit that he was appointed as one of the Commissioners charged with submitting proposals for the revision of the Latin Vulgate Bible. Brought into personal contact with Parsons, Allen was captivated by his personality and charisma, and Parsons became a trusted friend. Under Allen's orders, the English College at Rome was placed under the control of the Society of Jesus, as part of a plan to send Jesuit missionaries to England by 1580. Under Allen's instructions, the first Jesuits to be sent, Parsons and Edmund Campion, were to work closely in England with other Roman Catholic priests. The mission met with little success, as Campion was put to death only after a year's work, and Parsons again had to flee to mainland Europe.
  Allen himself saw his work as "scholastical attempts" to end the English schism from Rome. His efforts to secure this were completely unsuccessful, and arguably made matters worse for supporters of the Church of Rome in England, Wales, and Ireland. Pope Pius V, in his papal bull Regnans in Excelsis (1570), sentenced Elizabeth to both excommunication and  "deposition" from the throne, and, upon the pain of excommunication, "released and forbade" her subjects from their allegiance to the Queen.
  Returning to Rheims, Allen allowed himself to be drawn into the political intrigues of Parsons for the furtherance of Philip's interests in England and Ireland. Parsons had already resolved to remove Allen from the seminary at Rheims, and to that end, as far back as 6 April 1581, had recommended Allen to Philip II of Spain, with a view to the King's securing Allen's appointment as a cardinal. On 18 September 1581, Pope Gregory XIII named Allen "Prefect of the English Mission".
  Allen and Parsons went to Rome again in 1585, and there Allen remained for the rest of his life. In 1587, whilst he was the subject of the intrigue by Philip's agents, he wrote, helped by Parsons, a book in defence of Sir William Stanley, an English officer who had surrendered the town of Deventer in Overijssel, part of the territory of the modern Kingdom of the Netherlands, to King Philip's armies. Allen wrote that all Englishmen were obliged, under the pain of eternal damnation, to follow that example, as Elizabeth was "no lawful queen" in the eyes of God.
  Allen helped in the planning of the attempted Spanish invasion of England, and would probably have been made Archbishop of Canterbury and Lord Chancellor if it had been successful. Allen was the head of the Roman Catholic Church in England under the Pope, and in this position, just after the death of Mary, Queen of Scots, he wrote to Philip II on 19 March 1587 to encourage him to undertake an invasion of England, stating that the Roman Catholics in England (and in Ireland) were clamouring for the King of Spain to come and punish "this woman, hated by God and man". He was made a Cardinal by Pope Sixtus V on 7 August 1587.
caption: King Philip II of Spain recommended Allen to become a Cardinal with the Pope in 1587.
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