This edited volume is part of a larger wave of scholarly interest in the survival of Catholicism in Protestant kingdoms. The editors seek to correct the overemphasis on Jesuits and highlight the essential role played by other religious orders after the Reformation in the continuation of British and Irish Catholicism. This volume focuses primarily in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

This monograph collectively argues that British and Irish Catholicism did not live in isolation from mainland Europe. It emphasizes the highly mobile nature of conventuals and monastics, most living outside their homeland. This Catholic diaspora both impacted mainland Catholic thought and transmitted Catholic Reformation ideas to their homelands. British and Irish Catholics are, thereby, demonstrated to be actively and centrally engaged in the debates and changes within Catholicism.

Several themes emerge: the formation and retention of national and religious identity in exile, the often-complex relationship for Catholics with their Protestant homelands, and the involvement of the religious orders in larger contemporary intellectual, political, and cultural movements, particularly the Enlightenment. Despite the title, the book predominantly focuses on Ireland and England rather than the rest of the British Isles. Only one chapter by Thomas McInally deals with Scottish monastics in Germany. Similarly, Irish nuns fail to merit a chapter. Future volumes in this series, hopefully, will explore these fields more.

The volume includes excellent chapters on English nuns in exile. Like their male counterparts, the convent walls were highly permeable as the nuns struggled to maintain both their English and Catholic identities and survive as religious communities. The role of the Stuarts in providing essential and reciprocated support is particularly highlighted. Altogether this fine work of scholarship establishes the importance of British and Irish Catholics in religious orders other than the Society of Jesus to the development of international Catholicism.