Robin Clifton has explored the ‘nature, extent and causes of the Protestant fear of Catholics’, and Dr Wiener has traced how ‘hatred of Catholics, once the private obsession of religious extremists, developed into a part of the national ideology’. But what was the attitude in Monmouthshire, which in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was culturally and ethnically a part of Wales? Attempts have been made to compare Catholicism in eighteenth-century Monmouthshire with that in other parts of the Western Vicariate, and to suggest a parallel with Lancashire. There may be some valid comparisons but for a variety of reasons Monmouthshire sits uneasily with any close identification with the English scene.