Catholic Exiles and the English State After the Gunpowder Plot

This paper discusses the immediate aftermath of the Gunpowder Plot, examining the overlooked legacies of this event in relation to its influence on emerging categories of extraterritorial state sovereignty, international law, and stateless persons. The English state used the Gunpowder Plot as a pretext for justifying an unprecedented legal and political innovation: that the state could circumvent the law of nations and unilaterally assert its sovereignty beyond its national borders. English officials attempted to extradite a group of English Catholic exiles in connection with the Plot and induce European states to cooperate in forcibly repatriating these subjects. This episode was only one component in a broader effort to confine political agency to sovereign state bodies, a process in which the English state vied to suppress the various rogue economies that flourished beyond the reach of state authorities, from piracy and mercenary service to the circulation of Catholic dissidents and their texts.