Tony Claydon's Europe and the Making of England opens with the amusing story of Whig politicians who in 1705 scuppered William Bromley's candidacy for the Speaker of the House by republishing Bromley's 1692 Remarks in the grande tour. By adding a table of contents that cleverly condensed Bromley's observations, the Whigs portrayed the Tory member of Parliament as an inane nincompoop and, more damningly, as popishly inclined. Claydon uses this story to argue that—contrary to those who suggest that after 1660 the English retreated into xenophobic insularity—the English were in fact continually curious about and engaged with the continent. But the title of the work and the main argument is somewhat misleading, for Claydon does not contend that the English were fascinated with every aspect of continental society. As his opening suggests, Claydon more narrowly maintains that the English continued to see themselves as part of a supranational religious group, and it was through the lens of religion that they perceived their relationship with the continent. As much of the book argues, however, there was a constant debate as to which supranational entity England belonged. Some saw the English Church as part of a Protestant internationale, while others, often those more inclined toward Laudian beliefs, tended toward a wider allegiance to all Christendom. Claydon further claims that unless we realize the importance of such debates, we are missing a crucial dimension of religious controversy, domestic politics, and foreign policy in the hundred years after the restoration.

Claydon's first two chapters, “Space” and “Time,” establish that when the English described the continent they thought about religion, and that thinking about religion inevitably drew them to consider the continent. “Space” focuses on travel guidebooks, many of which emphasize Catholic institutions’ domination of the landscape of Italy and France. These same books also strove to map and define territory according to confessional allegiance. “Time,” on the other hand, looks at histories of the English Church to demonstrate that authors used history to defend their view of current religious policy. But two interrelated questions plagued authors: how did the English Reformation fit into a broader Christian framework, and where was the Church before Luther? In answering these questions historians were drawn to consider events on the continent. Gilbert Burnet, for instance, claimed that the English church, as established, had the full approval of notable sixteenth-century reformers, which allowed him to posit that nonconformists were out of line—although concern with a broader Protestant unity dissuaded him from urging any penalty for nonconformity. High church historians, on the other hand, saw foreign reformers as pernicious meddlers who sowed dissent—but, realizing that England could not be the only country with a true church, found room to praise the Lutheran establishment. Answering the second question drew historians not only to consider the continent but also to set up an intellectual framework that would crucially influence foreign policy and domestic politics. Although historians offered a variety of explanations for the plaguing question of the existence of the true church in the Middle Ages, two main theories dominated. Some followed the lead of John Foxe, who claimed that the true church had always been an invisible church of true believers who were persecuted by the papal establishment. This belief encouraged the English to see themselves as part of a Protestant alliance. But the high church historians tended to see the medieval church as filled with errors of superstition and papal authority, but nevertheless the true church, a belief that encouraged the notion of being part of a larger supranational Christian group.

In his third chapter Claydon argues that propagandists—in order to encourage the popular support necessary to wage war—painted England's current foes as enemies to the true religion. Of course, since the nature of the true religion was contested, propagandists could, and did, pick and choose whether to paint the enemy as an opponent of Protestantism specifically or Christianity in general. For instance, the clearly Protestant Dutch were declaimed as nominally Protestant but were essentially un-Christian (in a moral sense), since they exhibited avarice, cruelty, and treachery. Louis XIV was to some degree portrayed as an enemy to Protestantism, but, since England was allied with Catholic nations, propagandists also showed him as an enemy of Christianity. By emphasizing his cruelty and perfidy as well as his unspoken alliance with the Ottomans, pamphleteers calumnized the Sun King as the “Grand Turk.” Such propaganda presupposes a general sense that the English were responsible for their Christian and/or Protestant brethren. In his fourth chapter Claydon, in fact, portrays the political conflict between the Tories and the Whigs as consisting in part over the question of how best to secure their religious compatriots.

This short summary does not do justice to the thorough, subtle, and complex nature of Claydon's argument. He is judicious, carefully issuing caveats that he is only telling part of the story and that the English were concerned about factors such as economic and domestic liberty as well as protecting their religious brethren. Claydon does not, however, prominently issue another necessary caveat, that his analysis rests primarily upon evidence from an intellectual elite, most of whom were actively trying to shape public opinion. Claydon does ascertain the popularity of guidebooks and also demonstrates how concerns about Christians and/or Protestants abroad played a major role in some Parliamentary declarations. But for the most part, his sources are pamphlets and polemics, and his concerns lie more with their authors than their readers. That said, his analysis of these authors is deft. For instance, from the 1689 convocation's laborious wrangling over how to address William III, Claydon gleans that while the upper house (bereft of nonjuring bishops) wanted to portray William as the defender of the international Protestant movement, the lower house actively resisted such efforts.

Claydon's work clearly demonstrates that these differing allegiances played a role in shaping the debate between Whigs and Tories and hawks and doves, and in doing so he adds an important dimension to our understanding of politics and religion. But his most interesting conclusion might be that it was not the differing allegiances but rather the shared idea of responsibility of protecting foreign Christians that fostered the mid-eighteenth century's vaunted political stability.