The Reconstruction of the Church of Ireland. Bishop Bramhall and the Laudian Reforms, 1633–1641 (review)

The attempted Laudian reform of the Irish Church in the 1630s was breathtaking in its scope and audacity. The authorities aimed at a major revival of the Church’s legal and material fabric. There was a new set of canons and a new confession of faith, a new court of high commission, a viceregal visitation, and a massive attempted overhaul of church finances and ecclesiastical jurisdiction. As English historians continue to argue over the degree of novelty of Laudianism, Ireland offers intriguing evidence of what Laud liked to do when given the opportunity. Now, at last, these reforms have found their historian. John McCafferty’s industriously researched and judiciously argued monograph offers a powerful, wide-ranging, and compelling account of the Laudian reforms that is unlikely to be superseded. He is meticulous and imaginative in his use of surviving sources that are often either fragmentary or technically demanding. He combines this with a very thorough reading of the voluminous correspondence of the lord deputy, Thomas Wentworth; Archbishop William Laud; and, most of all, the agent who stood at the heart of the reform program, John Bramhall, bishop of Derry. All this helps McCafferty to create a fascinating and illuminating study of policy formulation and implementation that shows a thorough understanding both of the sometimes complex motivation of the policymakers and of the messy reality of their policies on the ground.

McCafferty is alert to the limitations of what was achieved. There were inevitable challenges from the Church of Ireland clergy, landowners, and the Old English interest, which helped in the early 1640s to scupper the reforms altogether, but which even in the shorter term forced compromises and practical limitations on the ground. But he rightly emphasizes the extraordinary scope and ambition of the reform program and the sheer drive, energy, and creativity of those involved. While Laud and Wentworth give the vital back-up, it is Bramhall who stands at the heart of these policies, and the book is particularly strong in recapturing Bramhall’s persistence and (at times) hard-headed pragmatism. Although McCafferty is acutely aware throughout of and sensitive to the specifically Irish context of the ecclesiastical program and its fortunes, his book is not just important in its own right as a study of Irish policies. He also has fascinating insights into the broader questions of what Laud and his allies were capable of thinking and doing, and makes a convincing case for his presentation of the Irish reforms as a variant of the concurrent reconstruction of the Church of England (and his argument that it was this that constituted its chief drawback). McCafferty’s sympathetic (although never uncritical) study of Bramhall’s reforms also offers a timely antidote to more familiar stories of Laudian aggression against Roman Catholics and Presbyterians. Indeed, McCafferty is bracingly skeptical of traditional Presbyterian histories and allows little space for the distinctive indigenous Protestantism emphasized by scholars such as Alan Ford (although perhaps at times this reflects a little too much of Bramhall’s thought-world). Generally, however, this is a balanced and judicious account, which is delivered with some panache. There are many pithy turns of phrase, particularly in a prologue on the Irish reformation that is studded with witty apercus. The only missed opportunity in this splendid book is its failure to detail Bramhall’s attempted restoration of the Church of Ireland in the early 1660s, for which Bramhall’s correspondence in the Hastings papers is a remarkably rich source. Such a study could have enabled a whole series of illuminating comparisons and contrasts with the program of the 1630s. Perhaps, however, this is to ask for another book or at least a large supplement to the present one. But it is a task for which McCafferty has shown himself to be the ideal historian.