Catholics in Britain and Ireland, 1558-1829 by Michael A. Mullett (review)

336book reviews pretend to be a complete history of the Reformation in Norwich. Such a history would have to give fuller accounts of the implementation of reUgious change in the city's many parishes, of the changing attitudes of the broad middling groups of citizens, of the ways in which the church courts meshed with the city courts, of the part played by the clergy, and of the contribution made by the exiles from the Netherlands who settled there in the 1560's. But aU future historians of sixteenth-century Norwich wUl have to take account of Professor McClendon 's original, stimulating, and perceptive study. Ralph Hoijlbrooke University ofReading Catholics in Britain and Ireland, 1558-1829- By Michael A. MuUett. [Social History in Perspective.] (New York: St. Martin's Press. 1998. Pp. xn, 236. $55.00.) The period of time from Queen Elizabeth's accession to the throne of England to the Third Reform Bill has drawn the attention of several modern authors anxious to prove that Roman Catholicism underwent a sea change during 250 years of persecution. Continuity with the medieval past, according to Professors John Bossy and Hugh Aveling, was simply lost. Tridentine models of worship and governance swept away previous English medieval practices. Professor MuUett's admirable survey of the period does not dispute this conclusion directly,but renders it almost unimportant. The author treats the Roman Catholic Church within the larger framework of the whole of Britain and Ireland and does so from the point of view of survival. The difference in 1829 is not that the Roman Church had become a "separating community," but rather that it had become a social heresy. No longer did it prevail in EngUsh society as it did in 1530, or as it did in Southern Europe or Spanish-speaking America (so heavUy influenced by Trent), but rather it had survived in a remarkable way, amazingly intact. WhUe Trent required majority communal membership within identifiable political units, and broad support from and co-operation with the poUtical authorities, this did not happen in Britain or Ireland. And the author's conclusion is that CathoUcism "was little the worse for it" (p. 198). Professor MuUett's deceptively slim volume is a chronicle of British and Irish CathoUcism's resUience in the midst of official persecution. In no other European countries affected by the Reformation did it survive so well. He is not afraid to agree with standard observations: that the English and Welsh Catholic gentry (largely not Tridentine in sympathy by the late 1700's) played a large role in the continuance of Catholicism, that Gaelic Scotland provided some CathoUc durabUity and that Irish nationalism was obviously crucial. But he also provides supplementary insights into the phenomenon of Catholic survival, especiaUy when it comes to Ireland. Papal interest in Ireland and England, he maintains, was markedly greater than it was in Scotland. Not only did Pope Paul III support political resistance movements, such as that of the Fitzgerald resistance and BOOK REVIEWS337 Manus O'DonneU in 1537, but as early as 1535, the same pope appointed bishops to rival those appointed by Henry VTII. In primatial Armagh, the pope's appointee , Robert Wauchope, even managed to depose the king's appointment. Jesuit missionaries and reform-minded appointees also ensured the spread of Tridentine Catholicism. But Ireland persisted in its Catholicism for other reasons . It was poor, and the gentry more difficult to intimidate with fines. It was simply farther away from England, which made resistance more possible—as could also be seen in the stronger showing of Catholicism in the remote Highlands and Islands and in northern Wales. And finally the culture of Ireland, so much more tenacious than that ofWales and Scotland, found itself in increasing association with the Church of Rome. What is so surprising about MuUett's book is the extent of CathoUc activity in the face of centuries of persecution: chapels being built, educational institutions appearing, confraternities maintaining their charitable causes. The eradication of indigenous cultures and languages, so important in the spread of the British Reformation, proved counter-productive in Ireland, where EngUsh harassment spurred revivals of Roman Catholic activity. The stubborn appearance of regulars as...