Over the last decade, the growing interest in early modern English convents has helped to redress an historiographical imbalance and to give back their due place to so far understudied cloistered religious Englishwomen. Those studies usually focused on one single Order, or on specific nuns’ writing activities, or even on typical aspects of conventual life in exile. The communities’ interactions with their local neighbours were broached upon, but no full-length volume had thus far tackled the subject of the English convents in their European context over the entire period of their exile. James Kelly’s monograph endeavours to fill that gap, and offers a much-needed contextualisation of the English convents in their European contexts.

In the first chapter, Kelly questions the criteria that influenced a postulant’s choice of convent. Through a close study of recruitment in Essex, and in the wider geographical area covered by the Jesuit college of the Holy Apostles (which also encompassed Cambridgeshire, Norfolk and Suffolk), he demonstrates that the religious and political convictions that inclined families toward a particular convent echoed not only the conflicting spiritualities that divided the recusant communities at home but also the wider European debate about the essence of Catholic reform and, crucially, the role of the Society of Jesus. English patterns of recruitment thus reflected the international controversies of the on-going Catholic Reformation.

This sets the tone for the book as a whole. As chapter 2 discusses conventual enclosure, it demonstrates that English communities used enclosure to their own ends, for instance to negotiate with secular authorities when the privacy or the safety of the convent was jeopardised by neighbouring building works. Yet the convents’ dedication to clausura was not only pragmatic; it became recognised as the hallmark of English nuns’ commitment to the reforms ordered by the Council of Trent, inscribing English communities within the wider movement of Catholic Reformation. Chapter 3 shows how conventual architecture and material culture were aimed at developing the nuns’ spiritual lives in adherence with the Tridentine rules on behaviour and management. Material culture involved benefactors, and chapter 4 naturally turns to the study of conventual finances. This comprises a lovely passage on the role of music in some houses, both as an expression of their spiritual devotion and as a means of attracting patronage. Kelly then explores the crucial importance and the actual fragility of the convents’ main revenue through dowries, investments and networks of benefaction. In that last part, the author demonstrates that nuns relied upon European—rather than merely English—Catholic benefaction; he argues that convents are to be viewed as part of the wider movement of Catholic renewal that followed the Council of Trent. Chapter 5 then turns to the study of liturgical life, paying particular attention to the topic of relics and the concept of martyrdom. It posits that the sufferings of Catholics at home led to a heightened sensitivity to the intercession of martyrs, and England became the ‘new Rome’ in term of providing relics (p. 141). Kelly argues that the convents’ drive to procure relics was proof both of their attachment to their native soil and of their belonging to the budding martyrological enthusiasm characteristic of the European Catholic Reformation at the time. Moreover, the physical presence of relics in the convents’ churches strengthened their prestige in their neighbouring localities, as exiled members of a suffering Catholic community. This chapter highlights the bonds between the English nuns and the endeavours of male colleges; the final chapter therefore moves on logically to an exploration of the networks between the convents and the wider world of Catholic exile. It argues that English convents and colleges did not work solely towards their own survival, but should rather be considered as female and male expressions of a transnational Catholic Reformation, which was of course impacted by national interest and circumstances. In this chapter, Kelly dwells a little more than elsewhere on issues of gender; interestingly, he downplays the role of gender in disputes between convents and colleges, to foreground ‘the usual fallings out common in any relationship’ (p. 172). This raises an important point, since the relationship between the convents and their male counterparts remains little studied as yet. The chapter also raises another key issue, explored in part by Marie-Louise Coolahan: that of archipelagic identities.Footnote ¹ It reveals that despite a common history of exile and a shared zeal for Catholic renewal, there was only limited contact between English convents and Scottish or Irish clergy, and that even the nuns of the three nations did not nurture privileged bonds with each other. Kelly concludes that English Catholic identity was dual, both national and transnational, yet that in archipelagic terms, English Catholics did not hanker for a unified Britain. He argues that the convents in exile happened to be populated by women, who also happened to be English, but that neither the lens of gender nor that of nationality should obscure their main raison d’être.

This broad-ranging study testifies to its author in-depth knowledge of conventual archives, a knowledge accumulated since Kelly first worked on the AHRC-funded Who Were the Nuns? project in 2008. Its treatment of complex issues allies nuance and clarity, and those qualities contribute to making this monograph a great read. Each chapter offers a blend of precise scrutiny of detail and an effort to take English convents out of their niche and inscribe them within the historiography of both British and European movements of reform. Through its scrupulous analysis of an impressive array of the convents’ primary sources, across all orders and over nearly two centuries, the book unveils the many ways in which national circumstances and idiosyncrasies coexisted with a commitment to the wider Catholic Reformation. The convents’ belonging to a universal Catholic ideal of renewal was, Kelly argues, ‘a characteristic that trumped all others’ (p. 10).