Early Modern English Catholicism: Identity, Memory and Counter-Reformation. James E. Kelly and Susan Royal, eds. Catholic Christendom, 1300–1700. Leiden: Brill, 2017. xiv + 260 pp. $150.
searcher on these subjects, and it shows. His command of the Henrician sources is especially valuable in discussions of the early days of the reforms. For instance, his “Pathways to Conversion” shows how Protestantism attracted individuals “for a convert’s radical rejection of the old and familiar could not come out of nowhere . . . it must somehow be grounded in earlier attitudes and experiences” (137). Old and new forms of religious dissent were meshing in the late 1520s. If you want a book introducing the historiography, this is not it. But if you want a book that tells the story in a powerful, effective way, held together with an excellent thesis and illustrative anecdotes, this will serve you well. I foresee that this will become a standard text for those who teach the English Reformation.