This substantial volume follows the author's earlier treatment of the same subject for the years 1541–88 (1996). A further volume is promised to cover the period 1598–1606. The author's efforts to include Scotland and Ireland as well as England again prove worthwhile, even if in the present book some of the supporting reading on the convoluted Scots story seems a little dated. The book is also not particularly well proof-read. From the start it is conceded that in such a large and intricate survey of the three areas, plus the crucial areas of continental Europe, a certain amount of repetition cannot be avoided if analysis is to be clear as well as basic chronology. That presents no serious problem, though occasional repetition of direct quotation from primary sources in translation might perhaps have been removed. The author's extensive and careful research is once again impressive. His chosen method of presentation is essentially to cite primary sources from edited versions wherever possible, but with his own amendments or additions when necessary. Given the difficulty of many interpretations of a rather controversial stretch of Jesuit history, for these areas and years, put forward by even recent historians writing within the Society itself, the author combines honesty and modesty when he frankly states in some footnotes that he cannot himself find evidence to substantiate some of their conclusions. What he persuasively builds up, with appropriate repetition where necessary, is the sense of parallel crises which ominously came to interact in the 1590s. The increasing tensions over the succession to Elizabeth of course affected developments in Ireland and Scotland as well as conditions for Catholics in England itself. The Scots Jesuit Crichton eventually parted company with Robert Parsons in this context. It is also admitted that, contrary to subsequent Jesuit tradition, a last-minute difference of opinion for the same reasons between William Cardinal Allen and Parsons cannot be ruled out. The latter could not in any case detach himself from the Catholic monarch, since his whole effort in creating and sustaining continental institutions to train priests to serve in the British Isles depended predominantly on Spanish funding. Yet Parsons's constitutionally unusual role caused problems with other Jesuits anyway, whether in Spain or Flanders. Dangerously developing alongside was the crisis within the Society over the contested authority of the Jesuit father-general, Claudio Acquaviva. As Spanish policy towards France, England and Ireland evolved into the 1590s, differences between the monarchy and the papacy also emerged. None of this could help the English Catholic communities which faced increasingly well-calculated pressure from Elizabeth's councillors, since significant links with Spain were so evident. The present volume thus sets the scene for the growing disputes between Jesuits and some of both English laity and secular clergy over resources and conduct under penal conditions. The resulting disruptions will doubtless feature centrally in the further, awaited book.