Among the notable strengths of Polly Ha's 2010 monograph English Presbyterianism, 1590–1640 was the work's extensive utilisation of manuscripts that had gone largely unnoticed by historians of early modern religion. With the present volume Ha and her assistant editors have made these archival labours accessible to the rest of us by publishing critical editions of three such documents held in the library of Trinity College Dublin. The manuscripts present an early seventeenth-century polemical exchange between the Independent London minister Henry Jacob (1563–1624) and a panel of English Presbyterian ‘examiners’ led by Walter Travers (1548–1635). Jacob and his ideas featured prominently in Ha's English Presbyterianism and in reading the documents presented here it is easy to see why. For in defending his departure from the national Church, Jacob presented an ecclesiology far bolder and more radical than that articulated by other English Separatists. As Ha puts it in her introductory essay, ‘Jacob not only justified his departure from the Church of England, but also the creation of an entirely new one based on a particular understanding of liberty as a status which guaranteed the absence of arbitrary interference’ (p. 3). The documents here help to substantiate that claim by offering insight into the polemical context in which Jacob's ecclesiology developed. The first manuscript, ‘The First Examination’, plunges readers into the midst of a debate that had actually been going on for some time; that which is under ‘examination’ was a previous dialogue between Jacob and moderate Puritans, an interchange now believed to be lost. This is followed by Jacob's reply and ‘Defence’ of his position, and then finally a ‘Second Examination’ of the same. All told, the Presbyterian analysis of Jacob's ecclesiology represents over three-quarters of the primary source material reproduced here. The texts themselves are well presented and thoroughly annotated. Because the editors have largely followed the editorial conventions used by Chad Van Dixhoorn and others in The minutes and papers of the Westminster Assembly (Oxford 2012), readers of those volumes will immediately feel comfortable with the present work. In addition to commenting on the condition and layout of the manuscripts themselves, the editors’ annotations define archaic terms, provide references to sources mentioned in the text, explain obscure references and, in the main, help to make the difficult source material as readable and accessible as possible. Given that Ha dates the ‘Defence’ to 1620 – four years after Jacob's last published treatises – the manuscript can help to clarify the degree to which Jacob's ecclesiology continued to evolve in response to Presbyterian pressure. Additionally the Presbyterian ‘Examinations’ themselves help to expand our understanding of moderate Puritanism, providing, for example, greater insight into the Puritan approach to patristic sources and a defence of Reformed synods and councils more thorough than anything published during the period. While this volume is unlikely to be of interest to non-specialists, scholars with an interest in the seventeenth-century development of both Presbyterianism and Congregationalism will find the manuscripts presented here to be a stimulating source for further research.