The Oxford History of British and Irish Catholicism, Volume I Endings and New Beginnings, 1530-1640

The first volume of The Oxford History of British & Irish Catholicism explores the period 1530-1640, from Henry VIII's break with Rome to the outbreak of the civil wars in Britain and Ireland. It analyses the efforts to create Catholic communities after the officially implemented change in religion, as well as the start of initiatives that would set the course of British and Irish Catholicism, including the beginning of the missionary enterprise and the formation of a network of exile religious institutions such as colleges and convents.

This work explores every aspect of life for Catholics in both islands as they came to grips with the constant changes in religious policies that characterised this 110-year period. Accordingly, there are chapters on music, on literature in the vernaculars, on violence and martyrdom, and on the specifics of the female experience. Anxiety and the challenges of living in religiously mixed societies gave rise to new forms of creativity in religious life which made the Catholic experience much more than either plain continuity or endless endurance. Antipopery, or the extent to which Catholics became a symbolic antitype for Protestants, became in many respects a kind of philosophy about which political life in England, Scotland, and colonised Ireland began to revolve. At the same time the legal frameworks across both Britain and Ireland which sought to restrict, fine, or exclude Catholics from public life are given close attention throughout, as they were the daily exigencies which shaped identity just as much as devotions, liturgy, and directives emanating from the Catholic Reformation then ongoing in continental Europe.

James E. Kelly, Sweeting Associate Professor in the History of Catholicism, Durham University,John McCafferty, Professor of History, University College Dublin

James E. Kelly is Sweeting Associate Professor in the History of Catholicism at Durham University, where he leads the History of Catholicism research strand within the university's Centre for Catholic Studies. He was Principal Investigator of the AHRC-funded project, 'Monks in Motion', and was a member of the AHRC-funded 'Who Were the Nuns?' project, acting as Project Manager of its follow-on initiative. He has written widely on the history of Catholicism and his publications include English Convents in Catholic Europe, c.1600-1800 (2020). He is founding co-editor of Durham University IMEMS Press' 'Catholicisms, c.1450-c.1800' book series.


Educated in University College Dublin and at the University of Cambridge, John McCafferty is a historian of both Catholicism and Protestantism in early modern Ireland and Britain. He is Chair of the Irish Manuscripts Commission since 2017 and has worked over several decades in collaboration with the Franciscans (OFM) and others on the preservation of religious archives. He is an honorary Professor of the History of Catholicism in the Theology Department at Durham University.

1. The Break with Rome and the Early Reformation, Peter Marshall
2. Marian Counter-Reformation, John Edwards
3. Elizabethan England, Wales, and Ireland, Katy Gibbons
4. Catholicism in Scotland to 1603, R. Scott Spurlock
5. The Early Stuarts, Tadhg Ó hAnnracháin
6. Mission or Church, 1570-1640?, Thomas M. McCoog, SJ
7. Catholicism and Separatism, Conformity and the State, Michael Questier
8. Martyrdom, Clodagh Tait
9. Material Culture, Alexandra Walsham
10. Catholics and their Protestant Neighbours, William Sheils
11. Exile Movement: Male Institutions, 1568-1640, Thomas O'Connor
12. English and Irish Women Religious at Home and Abroad, c.1530-c.1640, Caroline Bowden and Bronagh McShane
13. Music, Andrew Cichy
14. Catholic Written Cultures, Susannah Brietz Monta and Salvador Ryan
15. Printed Translations and Catholic Reformation, Jaime Goodrich
16. Popery and Anti-Popery in Britain and Ireland, Peter Lake and Michael Questier / Alan Ford