Spain and the Early Stuarts, 1585-1655 by Albert J. Loomie (review)

110BOOK REVIEWS must attend to what the clergy were declaiming Ln the pulpits in church and chapel across the country. There was not only an element of social and even legal compulsion driving people to church but also the magnet of genuine curiosity since in the days before broadcasting the only opportunity for most people to hear and in a sense witness eloquence and elocution was in reUgious assemblies on Sundays.The spiritual and the secular mingled in a way which was perhaps more reaUstic than efforts in our own day to cut them off. Religion was not always just for Sunday, and its contents were by no means exclusively concerned with the words of Holy Writ. Many were the volumes of sermons published in time past. D'Haussy has performed a most valuable service for historians in offering us not merely notes and summaries ofwhat was said but very large excerpts from the original so that we can savor the full flavor and, as it were be present, sometimes after centuries, at the outpourings not only ofemotions but also of genuine convictions with a good mixture of facts. A criticism of this exceUent book, which begins with an introduction on "Preaching and preachers m Britain" (pp. 21-49), could be that it has no adequate index. On the other hand, the "Extracts from sermons" (pp. 53-207) Ust aU the seventy-seven sermon extracts by name and description of contents so that the omission is not so grave as at first appears.There are also a useful appendix of brief biographies of authors and a select bibUography including coUections of sermons.The period covered runs from the Reformation to the present time, and while it is largely and reasonably taken up with EstabUshment sermons, it includes Jewish, Dissenting, and Roman CathoUc.Whatever the situation now,in time past preaching could be a skUled profession. Someone wrote in 1835, "U you chose to attend the chapel of the asylum for female orphans you were assured to hear good sermons for 'no gentleman is appointed to a vacant lectureship at this place . . . who has not undergone a trial of skiU; that is, the candidates preach prize sermons, and he who excels most is elected'" (p. 23) and this was for preaching to mere orphans, not to the Chapel Royal! Francis Edwards, SJ. London Spain and the Early Stuarts, 1585-1655. By Albert J. Loomie. [The Variorum CoUected Studies Series C522.] (Brookfield, Vermont: Variorum, Aldgate PubUshing Company. 1996. Pp. x, 290. $84.95.) Father Loomie, of Fordham University, completed his dissertation in 1957 at the University of London under Professor Joel Hurstfield on a subject that became his first book, The Spanish Elizabethans:The English Exiles at the Court ofPhilip II (Fordham University Press, 1963). Like Professors Patrick Collinson andAlan Everitt,who also finished at London in 1957,Loomie's postgraduate research laid the basis for a lifetime of scholarship that has made him unquestionably the pre-eminent authority on Anglo-Spanish relations during the BOOK REVIEWS111 Counter-Reformation. I reviewed several ofhis books and read his steady stream ofarticles with admiration and benefit.We have here a coUection of eighteen articles by him that have been reprinted from twelve journals (three from the Catholic Historical Review, 1964, 1967, 1973) where they originaUy appeared between 1963 and 1989They constitute but a fraction of his pubUcations, confirm his close familiarity with archives in Simancas, Madrid, Vienna, Brussels, Paris, Rome, London, and Oxford, and should be considered representative of his painstaking research. One hopes that his importance as a scholar and teacher wUl be recognized formaUy one day m a Festschrift. It is dtfficult to characterize so many articles Ui brief, even U coUectively they involve a basic theme—the policies of three Spanish monarchs toward England (and minimally respecting Scotland and Ireland) regarding religion, commerce, and diplomacy. I can do no better than paraphrase Loomie's own summation. Articles I and II explore the consequences of PhUip II's embargo on EngUsh goods from 1586 upon EngUsh merchants, mariners, and travelers in southern Spain which ended in 1603 with James Fs accession. The aborted Armada of 1597 is considered in articles III, IV...