The Elizabethan regime captured 471 Catholic priests and executed 116 because both sides believed the benefits of their confrontation outweighed the costs, with each side viewing its casualties as either necessary security measures or martyrdom.

123:24respective strategy because both sides I think feel that the benefits they secure from what they're doing outweighs the costs. >> So for Wingham's men, they are stopping the procilitization of potential Catholics. It's destroying a foreignfunded campaign of subversion. >> Yeah. >> For the Catholic priests, their deaths enshrines them as martyrs and gives them what Protestants had been given under Mary Tuda. So to this day, Edward Campion and a lot of the Catholic

124:03priests who were executed under Elizabeth, you know, they're they're saints. They kind of give their names to >> rooms in Catholic schools and things like that. But the consequence for the climate in Elizabeth and England is undoubtedly to generate a sense of paranoia as you always do when there's a kind of espionage war going on. >> And because this is um a a specifically Christian espionage war, it gives people

124:32on both sides, Catholics and Protestants, a sense that they're living in the shadow of a kind of great cosmic drama. >> But a drama that's not just playing out in the shadows, Tom. So, it's not just a story about spies and um back rooms and priestholes and double agents, is it? It's also a story of swashbuckling sea dogs. It is right. >> And uh that's what we'll be turning to