The work of Godfrey Anstruther, who died in 1988, laid essential foundation stones for modern studies of post-Reformation English Catholicism. His four-volume ‘dictionary’ of The seminary priests, 1558–1850 (1968–77) remains a magisterial anatomy of the English secular clergy: a crucial resource for insights into the mission and its place within recusant society. Scholars will welcome the publication of Anstruther's manuscript on the life of his fellow Dominican, Cardinal Philip Howard; surprisingly, one of only two full-length biographies of a figure integral to our understanding of Catholicism in later seventeenth-century England. Howard's quiet ministration was central to the surge in Catholic political ambitions that followed the 1660 Restoration, and the hopes that coalesced around the household of Queen Catherine of Braganza. As grand almoner to the queen, he became an active participant in contestation over the internal ordering of a mission. Simultaneously, he was drawn into the question of how to present a case for Catholic liberties before the Protestant public domain. In 1675 his appointment to the cardinalate fronted an attempt to increase English agency within the international Church, when European rivalries and alliances drew the court of Charles ii deeper into the realm of intramural Catholic diplomacy. Yet, by the later 1670s, Howard sat in tension with the political direction of the court, and its drift towards association with Louis xiv – offensive to the cardinal's temperament at once by dint of his militancy, and his ‘Gallican’ challenges to papal authority. Anstruther's biography draws together all of these worlds: built upon formidable command of manuscript material drawn out of dispersed holdings in England, Rome, Florence and Brussels (Howard's own papers were destroyed at his own instruction). Immaculately presented in the hands of its editor, Gerard Skinner, it anticipates many current preoccupations in the study of English Catholicism – the role played by English Catholics as participants in European theological and political controversies, and the influence of London chapels and embassies as points of connection between recusancy and the greater international Church.

Howard's career as an ecclesiastical and (more reluctantly) political leader of English Catholicism ended in tumultuous disappointment. The 1688 Revolution shattered hopes for the advancement of Catholics at home, and dramatised the breach between the Stuarts and the court of Rome, where papal animus towards James ii's Francophile inclinations created distinct ambivalence towards the Jacobite cause. Yet, as Anstruther concludes, the exertion of Howard's influence in England and Rome left subtler legacies. The cardinal's lobbying was central, in particular, to the introduction of vicars apostolic into the domestic mission: laying down a structure that helped to protect Catholic worship against pressures unleashed after the Revolution. Anstruther's acute understanding of the interaction between recusancy, English politics and international diplomacy renders this biography a vital addition not merely to the study of the cardinal himself, but to the context that underpinned his life. Its recovery provides a richly-rewarding tribute to the author's much-valued scholarly career.