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'Gold tried in the Fire'.

The Tractarian Movement, led by John Henry Newman, John Keble and Edward Bouverie Pusey, in its articulation of a radical vision of High Churchmanship in the era of reform, shook and stirred the spiritual and ecclesiastical life of the Church of England during the l830s and l840s and its influence continued during the rise of mid and late Victorian Anglo-Catholicism and ritualism.

This is a significant and provocative book about the early Quakers and their use of print in England from late 1652 to the end of 1656. It begins with an argument: 'Quakers were highly engaged with contemporary political and religious affairs, and were committed in very practical ways to the establishment of Christ's kingdom on earth' (p. 1).

Bishops, in theory the central figures in the Anglo-Saxon Church, have received polarized, and sometimes unbalanced, treatment from its historians.

This study by Callum Brown, Professor of Religious and Cultural History at the University of Dundee, forms part of a larger series of general survey volumes entitled ‘Religion, Politics and Society in Britain’ under the general editorship of Keith Robbins.

Throughout my reading of Professor Parry’s new book I was distracted by a low, angry, buzzing noise. On reflection, I realized it was the sound of Hugh Trevor-Roper spinning in his grave. The scale of the chasm between the two authors can scarcely be exaggerated.

A few years ago, I pestered friendly Lollard scholars with a question which tended to flummox them slightly: how did English bishops know how to prosecute heretics? The broadest outlines of a reply had been sketched, in an article from 1936 by H. G. Richardson and another by Margaret Aston in 1993. In addition, Anne Hudson and J. A. F.

The 1715 rebellion has never really sparkled in the heroic iconography of the Jacobite cause. Within the old received narrative of doomed chivalry and defeated virtue, it inhabits a melancholic role, untouched by the colour and charisma of Charles Edward Stuart and the ’45, or the epic afterglow of Viscount Dundee’s earlier stand at Killecrankie.

For the first fifteen years after the end of the Second World War, the Nazi persecution and mass murder of the Jews of Europe was rarely the subject of public debate or historical analysis. Only after the Eichmann trial did the term ‘Holocaust’ gain widespread acceptance.

Wright’s volume is very much to be welcomed moving as it does beyond the traditional debates concerning the relationship between General (Arminian) and Particular (Calvinist) congregations, and the argument as to whether Baptist origins are to be found in continental Anabaptism or more domestically in Puritan Separatism.