[3] Diocesan Clergy Roman Catholic Laity Franciscan Friars Minor (Recollects) Society of Jesus (Jesuits) Order of Preachers (Dominicans) In England, these martyrs, together with those beatified between 1886 and 1929, are commemorated by a feast day on 4 May.

Thus William Allen, with many of the exiles of Douai and Louvain, and Robert Persons, with many of the Jesuits, saw in the rule of Elizabeth a greater danger to the highest interests of England than had previously been threatened in cases where history had justified the deposition of kings.

Many contended that it had been issued by an incompetent authority; others that it could not bind the natives till it should be carried into actual execution by some foreign power; all agreed that it was in their regard an imprudent and cruel expedient, which rendered them liable to the suspicion of disloyalty, and afforded their enemies a presence to brand them with the name of traitors.The next pope, Gregory XIII, on 14 April 1580 issued a declaration that although Elizabeth and her abettors remained subject to the excommunication, it was not to be binding on Catholics to their detriment.

The majority of English Roman Catholics then did not give the royal government grounds for suspecting their loyalty, but they persisted in the practice of their religion, which was made possible only by the coming of the seminary priests.

Elizabeth's government, for its own purposes, refused to make any distinction between Catholics who had been engaged in open opposition to the Queen and those who were forced by conscience to ignore the provisions of this statute of 1571.

This view was put forward officially in a pamphlet by William Cecil, Lord Burghley: The Execution of Justice in England for maintenance of public and Christian peace, against certain stirrers of sedition and adherents to the traitors and enemies of the realm without any persecution of them for questions of religion, as is falsely reported, and published by the fautors and fosterers of their treasons.In it, Burghley gave no credit to Catholic priests risking their lives for any religious purpose, but opined "the seminary fugitives come secretly into the realm to induce the people to obey the Pope's bull."

Act 1584, it became high treason for any seminary priest, or any Jesuit, simply to come to England; and felony for any person to harbour or relieve them.