Catholicism and Community in Early Modern England: Politics, Aristocratic Patronage and Religion, C. 1550-1640

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Catholicism and Community in Early Modern England: Politics, Aristocratic Patronage and Religion, c. 1550-1640. By Michael C. Questier. [Cambridge Studies in Early Modern British History.] (New York: Cambridge University Press. 2006. Pp. xxii, 559. $80.00.)

The title of Michael Questier's important and ambitious study is an undisguised tribute to John Bossy's seminal book on The English Catholic Community (1975). Bossy's account of the first generations of post-Reformation Catholic history told a story of "seigneurialization," and of increasing political quietism, as the generally conformist attitudes of the gentry triumphed over the grander ambitions of their seminarist …