The Society of Jesus in Ireland, Scotland, and England, 1541-1588: "Our Way of Proceeding?"

This is a complex and very interesting study. It surveys Jesuit activity in the British Isles in the sixteenth century, from an initial Jesuit mission to Ireland in 1541 (the Order was founded in 1540) to the defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588. McCoog sets out to evaluate that activity in terms of the original Jesuit spirit and purpose. Ignatius's expression "our way of proceeding" sums up the latter, and its use as a subtitle with a question mark appended indicates the thrust of the study as well as its critical character. McCoog places his account of this activity and his evaluation in an exceedingly broad political-religious context. Elizabethan England is its pivotal center, but developments in Ireland and Scotland are brought into the picture as well as ramifications throughout western Europe during this troubled time. Such a multifaceted backdrop is indeed extensive and its terse description not always easy reading, but the author deems it essential in view of his intention to avoid hagiography and to present a more unbiased and balanced account of the early English Jesuits. Trevor-Roper's complaints about Jesuit historiography in this regard, he tells us, were taken to heart.

The study reveals once again how closely related, in fact interlocked, religious and political affairs were in the sixteenth century, a phenomenon manifested in several ways. Royal supremacy in Tudor England, for example, came to embrace the church as well as the secular order. This had major religious-political repercussions, and McCoog examines them in some detail as they extend into Elizabeth's reign. The loyalty of Catholics continued to be suspect - Catholicism was equated with treason - and repression and persecution were intensified especially after Plus V's excommunication of the Queen in 1570. By the same token such persecution served to generate and justify foreign intrigue and rebellion. The brutal execution of Edmund Campion in 1581 is a landmark here. With Robert Parsons he had been part of the first Jesuit mission to England in 1580 and his trial and hideous death mark a shift in Jesuit attitudes. "Our way of proceeding" undergoes what we might call a radicalization as it becomes more politically involved. Robert Parsons who had escaped to the Continent in 1581 played a leading role in this transition. McCoog focuses on this in particular. His judgment is that Parsons as a result "casts the darkest shadow over the history of the English Jesuits. His plunge into the political world of the Counter-Reformation," he continues "helped create the popular myth of a Jesuit" (221).

McCoog's book may be said to complement Antonia Fraser's recent Faith and Treason: The Story of the Gun Powder Plot. His emphasis, of course, is on the Jesuits at an earlier time, but he tells us a great deal about the situation in England in general prior to and leading to the famous conspiracy of 1605. Like Antonia Fraser, he also points up the fact, implicitly at least, that severe repression can lead to unlawful and violent reaction especially when there are no other alternatives. It is a historical lesson we may well bear in mind.

Thomas McCoog is an American Jesuit who is presently archivist of the British Jesuit Province. He has also worked extensively in the Roman archives of the Order; this present work is a product of that research and of his long acquaintance with the history of the Society of Jesus in England. He has given us an informed, balanced, and thoughtful study.

JOHN C. OLIN Fordham University, emeritus