The king, the book and the painting: the emergence of anti-Catholicism, as depicted in Beware the Cat by William Baldwin, published 1570 and King Edward VI and the Pope by unknown artist, circa 1575, Jacqueline Callcut

Edward VI’s dying thoughts were of the looming threat to his kingdom of ‘papistrye’. Others at the same time shared this concern: William Baldwin’s Beware the Cat alludes to the threat of Catholicism obliquely in terms of a potential political significance, whereas the painting King Edward VI and the Pope painted during Elizabeth’s reign, takes anti-Catholic rhetoric further, by emphasising the threat from a clearly defined and individual political figure – the Pope. This shift reflects Elizabethan concerns of the time and the need, through reference to Edward, to legitimise Elizabeth’s own position as the head of the Church of England.