Was John Donne a Catholic?: Conversion, Conformity, and Early Modern English Confessional Identities

Abstract

Abstract John Donne is usually treated as a convert from Roman Catholicism, and he is often said to have been brought up as a recusant Catholic. This article challenges these assumptions about Donne’s background, showing them to rely too heavily on the surviving records of his mother’s family. By considering the surviving evidence on other members of Donne’s family (his father and stepfather in particular), and by comparing Donne’s choices with those of other young men from similar families, we can understand Donne’s religious identity as one shaped by conformity rather than conversion. This does not mean that Donne ‘merely’ conformed without conscientiously choosing the teaching (and the teaching authority) of the Church of England over that of the Roman Catholic Church. It is to argue that, when an adult Donne described himself as someone who had been a member of the Church of England since his baptism, he cannot therefore be said to have converted to Protestantism. Donne decided on his religious allegiance when he was of an age to make that choice, and his decision is not recorded by anyone other than himself because it was unremarkable and legal.