The editors of this volume in the Cambridge Companions to Religion series, John Coffey and Paul Lim, are to be congratulated on assembling such a distinguished team of contributors. The names of the twenty authors involved read like a veritable Who's Who in Puritan studies and the coverage – chronological, geographical and thematic – is impressive. The volume is divided into four parts: ‘English Puritanism’, ‘Beyond England’, ‘Major themes’ and ‘Puritanism and posterity’. There is also a very helpful introduction by the editors. The two chapters in the concluding section (part iv), by Coffey (‘Puritan legacies’) and Lake (‘The historiography of Puritanism’), are especially to be recommended, between them covering a great deal of very interesting ground and full of helpful insights.

But what was ‘Puritanism’? The editors begin by defining it as ‘a distinctive and particularly intense variety of early modern Reformed Protestantism’, going on to qualify this with the statement that Puritanism was ‘never monolithic or purely oppositional’. Moreover they note that ‘the chapters in this collection offer different perspectives and approaches to the problem of definition’. Over the years considerable scepticism has been expressed as to whether Puritanism can be distinguished from Calvinistic Protestantism. Indeed the historian Christopher Haigh, not a contributor to the present volume, has effectively abandoned the distinction in his The plain man's pathways to heaven (2007). Among the authors represented here Patrick Collinson is perhaps one of the most sceptical, despite his masterly first book being entitled The Elizabethan Puritan movement (1967). (Lake's chapter discusses, inter alia, how Collinson's thinking has subsequently developed.) Collinson has previously described Puritanism as ‘one half of a stressful relationship’, the stress levels varying according to time and circumstance, along with emphasising the polemical nature of the term. Allowing for such reservations, all the contributors agree on the utility of the concept and in the first section (part i) Collinson opens with a fine chapter on ‘Antipuritanism’, followed by four others on the collective fortunes of English Puritanism from the mid-sixteenth to the early eighteenth century. John Craig, Tom Webster, John Morrill and John Spurr, provide a series of characteristically able accounts based on the most recent research. To the extent that the question of ‘politics’ is addressed it is in these chapters rather than in the later thematic ones (part ii). Strikingly, however, the name of the historian J. E. Neale only crops up at the end of the volume in Lake's historiographical chapter. At the same time very few lay Puritans feature and one looks in vain for the names of Puritan MPs such as Peter Wentworth and Nicholas Fuller, while John Pym just scrapes a mention in the introduction. Nevertheless, to be fair to editors and contributors alike, this in many ways reflects the way that the history of the period has up until now been written, different groups of historians in the main working respectively on religion and politics – with so-called ‘secular’ matters deemed the almost exclusive province of the latter. That said it would, for example, have been worth saying more on the theme of regicide and investigating what was meant by ‘the good old cause of God’.

The second part of the volume ranges geographically west across the Atlantic (Francis Bremer and David Hall) and traverses continental Europe as far east as Hungary (Anthony Milton), in addition to encompassing the British Isles (Crawford Gribben and Margo Todd). All these contributors have fresh and illuminating things to say. Probably least familiar to most readers will be some of the fascinating material assembled by Milton. Meanwhile Bremer, Hall and Todd examine the situation in New England and Scotland, where for much of the time Puritans were on top, as they were in the British Isles more generally during the mid-seventeenth century, each case to some extent illustrating the proposition that Puritanism was not necessarily ‘oppositional’. For British readers the American material will prove especially valuable, while Todd along with Gribben, on Ireland and Wales, serve as a counterweight to any Anglocentric bias.

Whereas parts i and ii have five contributors each, part iii (the thematic section) numbers eight and arguably could have been expanded even further. Particularly welcome is the chapter by Jeffrey Jue on ‘millenarianism in Old and New England’, as is the intriguing exposition provided by David Como à propos ‘radical Puritanism’ – the latter interpreting his brief to include politics. Divinity, practical and polemical, is skilfully handled in turn by Charles Hambrick-Stowe and Dewey Wallace. On the other hand Paul Lim mars an otherwise good discussion of historiographical and ecclesiological disputes at the time, featuring among others Peter Heylyn and Richard Baxter, by confusing Aerius (sic) the fourth-century ‘presbyterian’ with his contemporary Arius the anti-Trinitarian heretic (p. 225). Finally Alexandra Walsham, Ann Hughes and N. H. Keeble between them tackle ‘popular culture’, ‘gender’ and ‘literature’, all three exhibiting a commendable expertise. Keeble also provides the fullest discussion in the volume of John Milton although the political writings are notably absent from his account, a function no doubt of the somewhat unfortunate division of labour noted above. Such regrets do not, however, detract from the fact that this volume is a fine addition to the series and a cause for celebration.