Explores the role of plot talk, conspiracy theory, and libellous secret history during the Elizabethan regime, analysing the back and forth between Catholic critics and William Cecil and his circle, and the effect this had on the political, cultural, intellectual, and religious history of the time, both in England, and in a wider European context. Lake makes a very focused argument, drilling a fine-gauge hole through a complicated era ... the book succeeds in doing what it sets out to do. It puts Catholic writers squarely within the "politics of pitch-making" about the English polity in Elizabeth's reign. It teaches the importance of listening to both sides of these debates, since all the protagonists were disputing about the same political entity, fighting political wars for religious ends and vice versa. It knocks the monarchical republic on the head, reducing it to "Burghley's commonwealth," temporarily useful to one faction. It does a fine job of parsing very dense texts like Bilson's True Difference. No one is better at this than Lake, and this is vintage Lake.