This was the kind of bleak religious climate in which John Donne—the great Metaphysical poet and clergyman, whose career straddled the reigns of Elizabeth I, James I, and Charles I—was forced to make the most difficult decision of his life. Between 1535 and 1593, at least 11 members of Donne’s family died for being Catholic—including Sir Thomas More, author of Utopia and great-uncle of Donne’s mother, Elizabeth Heywood. Donne had to ask himself: Should he be a martyr or an apostate? Embrace the faith of his family and risk a lifetime of persecution and, possibly, violent death, or join the Protestants and gamble on an eternity in Hell?
