... and the dramatic reduction in Marian priests, Catholicism in England was clearly in need of support, and historians such as Doran have argued that it is difficult to see how Catholicism could have existed after 1574 without the help of the foreign priests to administer the sacraments. This argument is supported by the fact that Catholicism died out in areas such as Cornwall and Northeast Wales, which had been Catholic strongholds in the 1560s, where the missionary priests had failed to reach by the 1580s. Some historians, such as Bossy, argue that it was only the arrival of the missionary priests who 'saved English Catholicism from extinction'. The argument that English Catholicism would have died out altogether without the help of the missionary priests as the congregations needed spiritual guidance from a Catholic point of view is, however, essentially flawed, as the missionary priests did not preach in areas such ...

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