Richard Verstegen

Verstegan was born in East London the son of a cooper; his grandfather, Theodore Roland Verstegen, was a refugee from Guelders in the Spanish Netherlands, who arrived in England around the year 1500.

To the fury of the English Court, Verstegan's books made the whole of Catholic Europe aware of the religious persecution taking place under the rule of Queen Elizabeth I.

[5] For example, Verstegan's detailed and highly influential Renaissance Latin the volume Theatrum crudelitatum Hæreticorum nostri temporis ("Theatre of the Cruelties of the Heretics of our Time") was published in Antwerp, in the Spanish Netherlands in 1587.

"[6] While in Paris in 1588, Verstegan was briefly imprisoned pending extradition to England by King Henri III at the insistence of the English Ambassador,[1] Sir Edward Stafford, who declared the book's claims of religious persecution a libel against Queen Elizabeth I,[7] but, as the recent Latin-Middle French translation of Theatrum crudelitatum Hæreticorum nostri temporis had already heavily contributed to the ideology of the Catholic League during the French Wars of Religion, Verstegan had many influential sympathisers and protectors.

At the insistence of both the Catholic League and the Papal Nuncio, the French King refused Sir Francis Walsingham's demands for Verstegan's extradition to England to stand trial for high treason and the exiled Englishman was quietly released.

St. Philip Howard's literary translation of Marko Marulić's Renaissance Latin religious poem Carmen de doctrina Domini nostri Iesu Christi pendentis in cruce ("A Dialogue Betwixt a Christian and Christ Hanging on the Crosse"), was also published in lieu of an introduction in the Antwerp edition.

[12] The verses celebrating the Battle of Kinsale and the defeat of the uprising by the Irish clans under Aodh Mór Ó Néill, Lord of Tír Eoghain, and Red Hugh O'Donnell, Lord of Tír Chonaill, and entitled England's Joy, by R. R. (1601), have mistakenly been attributed to Verstegan, as have other poems that were in reality composed, "by the notorious Richard Vennar or Vennard.

The Dutch ministers are less greedy of glory than merchants are, for these latter will rush to India to steal the profits of the Portuguese, whereas the former do not fly there to dispute with the Jesuits for the crown of martyrdom.