This morning I delivered a talk to the Ely and District branch of the University of the Third Age (U3A) on the Catholic prisoners in the Bishop’s Palace at Ely. This followed on from a previous U3A talk on the history of the Bishop’s Palace, in which I noted that a separate talk would be required to explain the story of the Catholic prisoners. Since then my article on the subject has appeared in Recusant History/British Catholic History, so I was able to give a great deal more detail on the most famous of the prisoners: Sir Thomas Tresham, Edward Throckmorton, George Cotton and William Catesby.

The full text of my talk is available to read here.