Abstract
Describes the approach which English Catholic historians took toward the Roman Catholic Church, its adherents in England, and global history from the 16th to the 20th centuries. The position of the Roman Catholic Church and of Catholics in England was different from that of the Roman Catholic Church and of Catholics in any other country, as England had its own established Anglican church, which was the center of much of English national and personal life. For a long time Roman Catholics were considered as agents, or potential agents, of foreign Catholic powers. The works of English Benedictine monk and historian David Knowles (1896-1974), especially his book 'The Monastic Order in England' (1940), clearly illustrate the situation of a Catholic in a non-Catholic land.