This well-researched and convincingly argued book is important not only for the light that it sheds upon Oliver Cromwell's policies towards Scotland during the Interregnum but also for its vivid reconstruction of the rich and varied nature of Scottish religious life in those years. Spurlock's account does not set out to replace older works like Frances Dow's Cromwellian Scotland (1979), but it does extend and nuance them by opening up a hitherto neglected dimension of Scottish experience in the 1650s. Spurlock emphasises that Cromwell did not simply seek religious toleration as an end in itself, but rather that he wanted to promote unity among all Christians. This policy evoked a wide variety of reactions in Scotland, ranging from those Scottish sectaries and Independents who strongly sympathised with it, to the Presbyterians who generally feared that it would unleash a wave of errors, heresies and blasphemies. Spurlock succeeds in delineating the different shades on the spectrum between these two extremes more subtly and precisely than any previous scholar. He shows, in particular, how the English military presence in Scotland helped to affirm those Scottish Independents and sectaries who were most sympathetic towards Cromwellian policy. Sometimes this process can even be traced to the impact of particular individuals, such as the English chaplain Nicholas Lockyer in the north-east of Scotland in 1652. The result was that ‘by 1654 a plethora of options were available to Scots malcontented with the Presbyterian Kirk’, and Spurlock argues that ‘a fluid religious marketplace developed in which denominational drifting was both common and protected’ (p. 156). It is interesting that this marketplace included both Baptists and Quakers; Spurlock shows how English influence encouraged such sectarian activity. English Quakers were active in Scotland from 1654 onwards, and at least fifteen – including George Fox – visited Scotland in 1657. The result was that Scottish Quakerism survived into the Restoration period and down to the present day: Spurlock persuasively argues that this was one of the most important legacies of the Interregnum for Scotland. By contrast, the Baptists were more heavily dependent on the English army to sustain them, and never entirely lived down their association with continental Anabaptists, with the result that they became much more marginal after 1660. By the later 1650s Presbyterianism was also making something of a comeback, but English intervention ensured that it was an emasculated Presbyterianism, very different from the triumphalist version of the 1640s: the General Assembly was abolished, and synods and presbyteries were disenfranchised. As a result, the distinction between Presbyterians and Independents, so stark in the 1640s, gradually began to blur during the course of the 1650s. This prompts one to wonder whether Cromwell's attempts to foster peaceful coexistence among different religious groups were actually beginning to have more success than they are often credited with, and indeed than he himself recognised. Spurlock's book thus ties in with the more up-beat assessments of the Cromwellian Protectorate that a number of scholars are offering at the present time; he has made a significant and learned contribution to this on-going debate.