Anti-Catholicism in Eighteenth-Century England, c. 1714-80: A Political and Social Study.

It is a mistake to dismiss xenophobia, racism, antisemitism and the like as purely and simply irrational. Paranoid and divorced from reality such belief systems assuredly are. But historians are, increasingly, recognizing their constituent importance to the study of cultural as well as political history. Anti-Catholicism in Eighteenth-Century England samples a large body of secondary material by historians of English Catholicism. It combines this with a commendable program of original archival research focused squarely on the nature of anti-popery and how it functioned in eighteenth-century society. The study is organized chronologically, beginning in Chapters One and Two with a thorough account of the ways in which sixteenth- and seventeenth-century anti-popish propaganda passed into early eighteenth-century popular and elite culture. The first section of the book also gives a useful account of whig governments' and Anglican sermonizers' attempts to bolster the unpopular Hanoverian regime by making a bete-noir out of what they alleged to be its only alternative, "Catholic Absolutism."

The discussion of the Fifteen and its aftermath (Chapter Three) makes efficient use of secondary sources, especially of some hitherto unpublished Ph.D. dissertations (duly acknowledged). It both reconfirms the highly Catholic character of the rebellion and highlights the failure of the rebels to win sustained support either from Catholics or Protestants. Haydon is especially good at reading the way popular spectacle - such as pope-burning processionals - illuminate the cultural milieu of anti-popery. Chapter Four covers the relatively less researched period (at least from the perspective of anti-Catholicism) from 1717 to the Jacobite Rebellion of 1745, and makes intelligent use of local studies and other evidence to reveal relations between "ordinary" Catholics and Protestants. Chapter Five, on the other hand, alerts us more directly (and perhaps a bit belatedly) to one of Haydon's larger historiographical aims. Haydon takes pains to contrast what he sees as increasing tolerance toward Catholics among most elites after 1745 to the continued robustness of anti-popery among their inferiors, and he goes to some length to fit this supposed divergence into the familiar model of the growing separation of high and low culture in the early modern period. Undoubtedly this approach has its merits, but while Haydon clearly establishes that anti-popery was quite widespread, he may exaggerate its universality among native-born plebeians. An overemphasis on the high culture/low culture split can lead to a tendency to see the menu peuple as culturally monolithic, and Haydon occasionally seems to get caught in this particular snare. Thus Haydon views the growing crescendo of complaints about crypto-Catholics, and people who were "soft" on popery, as responses to and evidence of just this divergence between elites and lesser folk. But it is surely just as likely that at least some non-elites were themselves developing rather laissez-faire attitudes toward other people's spiritual beliefs - as well as converting to Catholicism in surprising numbers. Haydon does an excellent job of outlining the ambivalence of politicians toward Catholics and Catholicism, but he does not always give us as nuanced or as varied a picture as he might of divisions of opinion among non-elites.

Wisely Haydon focuses upon England to the exclusion of other parts of the British Isles. But it is a pity that he pays so little attention to people who were both foreign and Catholic in eighteenth-century England, notably the growing numbers of Irish immigrants. He thereby misses an opportunity to examine the differences between beliefs about poor Catholics and beliefs about rich and aristocratic ones, and to look at the intersection of xenophobia and religious prejudice. But Haydon is loathe to bring questions of class or social status or nationality into the equation, and indeed appears at times to be arguing that "differences" other than religion have little or no place in historical analysis. Thus, in the final chapter on the Gordon Riots, Haydon challenges Rude's claim that the Gordon Riots were as much about material conditions as they were about religion, and, indeed, does a good job of showing us where Rude went beyond the evidence. But instead of seizing the opportunity to make a more complicated argument than Rude had done, Haydon in the end retreats to a more simplistic one, arguing that there was nothing to the Gordon riots but anti-Catholic prejudice. With all the interesting work, Marxist and otherwise, that has been done in the last twenty years on crowds, riots and popular mentalities we are entitled to expect more.

One may also fault Haydon for making too few efforts to link anti-Catholicism to other varieties of xenophobia. The study makes virtually no mention of the large body of theory on racism and other forms of social prejudice that has formed such a central topic of post-colonial studies and critical race theory in the last dozen or so years. This is not an entirely unjustifiable position to take: Haydon and this reviewer would probably agree that we are at a moment when theory has outrun empirical research. On the other hand, Haydon's lack of interest in the theorists, many of whom are deeply rooted in the North and South American historical experience, might leave his readers this mistaken impression that England's particular brand of xenophobia and religious prejudice was a good deal more unique than it actually was. And this is compounded by the absence of any comparison to other European countries. One particularly misses any sustained discussion of the robust tradition of anti-Catholicism in the Netherlands. Still, Haydon provides a valuable account of a hitherto neglected aspect of eighteenth-century thought, and he amply succeeds in showing us how centrally important attacks on popery are for any understanding of the political and social history of the period.

Margaret Hunt Amherst College