This is a study of the life of an eighteenth-century English Catholic baronet, Sir Thomas Gascoigne (1745–1810). Born in Cambrai to English parents and raised in Douai, Paris, and Turin, he had not seen England before he unexpectedly inherited his father’s estate in Yorkshire after the early death of his elder brother in 1762. He finally settled in his estates in 1765 but embarked on a (second) Grand Tour less than a decade later, which took him out of the country for another five years. After his return, he converted to the established religion, entered politics and was preoccupied with diligent estate management.

This eventful life on the intersection of so many tensions—confessional, national, social—opens up many rich insights into the vagrancies of late eighteenth-century belonging. Lock has successfully grabbed this opportunity. Inspired by Judith M. Brown’s Windows into the Past (2009), Lock has written a ‘life history’: not an inward-looking description of the life of one gentry man, but a study which ‘uses evidence from an individual life to probe broad historical themes and engender discussion based on the lived experiences of real people’ (p. 10). Through the experiences of Gascoigne, Lock has built a richly detailed account which speaks to wider questions of the ways in which Catholicism shaped lifestyles, outlooks, and interactions among Catholics and with Anglican peers.

The book’s structure follows Thomas Gascoigne’s life chronologically, but focuses on a prime theme for each chapter. Chapter 1: ‘Family, Education and Upbringing’ discusses Gascoigne’s early education among the English Benedictines in Douai and at the Academy in Turin. Relying heavily on the publications of Gascoigne’s guardian Stephen Tempest (1689–1771), this chapter focuses in particular on his liberal upbringing. His education equipped him with both the tools and the determination to undertake an active career as gentleman in England, in contrast with his ancestors, who had kept themselves at a distance from society and politics and instead focused on their internal community of Catholics. Gascoigne’s Englishness is the particular focus of Chapter 2: ‘The Grand Tourism of an English Catholic’. Gascoigne undertook two Grand Tours, the first of which was cut short after he got involved in the murder of an Italian coachman. On the second one he travelled with the Catholic Henry Swinburne (1743–1803), who would later publish accounts of their journeys together. They actively used their confession as an asset to gain access to the most illustrious courts and societies in Catholic Europe. This status would have been denied him in his home country. Moreover, this allowed them not solely to engage in conversation and cultural life with European elites but also to socialise with British elites in ways which were not open to them at home. With his compatriots, he had both a shared class and shared criticism of what they perceived as superstitions among Italian and Spanish Catholics. It is perhaps this ambiguity which lingers most after reading this chapter: Gascoigne realised his confession opened many doors, yet he also felt a distaste for many of the eccentricities of Catholicism and took pride in his Englishness which he deemed more rational. This ambiguity lays the basis for Gascoigne’s conversion discussed in Chapter 3: ‘Apostasy and Politics’. ‘Whereas on the Continent his faith was a social attribute, in England it was a significant impediment and embarrassment’ (p. 93), which led to Gascoigne’s conversion in June 1780 ‘to take advantage of the rewards brought by conformity’ (p. 93). Conformity allowed him to participate in county elections. He was expected to publicly conform but many suspected he privately continued to adhere to Catholicism, which seemed no impediment. Having analysed Gascoigne’s stance on participation in worldly affairs in the previous two chapters allows Lock to show Gascoigne’s conversion was not hypocritical. Rather than merely a superficial move to enable him to take public office, this builds on his education which encouraged many English Catholics to aspire to gentleman’s status and privileges. Both his conversion and his commitment to latitudinarianism throughout his life were not uncommon among English Catholics in the late eighteenth century, a marked difference from earlier centuries. Chapter 4: ‘Estate Management and Agricultural Innovation’ deals with Gascoigne’s active involvement in the running of his estates and his willingness to embrace and further new techniques. In contrast with many of their peers on the Continent, English Catholics were enthused about developing means towards greater efficiency, partly spurred on by the penal laws’ restrictions put on Catholics. Ironically, as Lock points out, ‘it was those very laws that sought the demise of Catholic gentry that actually fostered their economic resilience and longevity’ (p. 150). Chapter 5: ‘Entrepreneurship and the Exploitation of Mineral Resources’ develops the themes set out in the previous chapter, highlighting how Gascoigne was an active entrepreneur in mining and developing a mineral spa. It feels the least satisfying of the five chapters, partly because more could have been done to draw out the significance of the data collected here, while the points made reiterate findings of the chapter on agricultural entrepreneurship. Perhaps more might have been made of Gascoigne’s marrying of a drive to paternalism—especially his sustaining of Catholics in particular.

This is as much a history of English Catholicism as a history of the social class of gentry and how they interacted in the eighteenth century. While Lock charts the increasing trend of liberal Catholicism which facilitated Gascoigne’s political, social, and economic aspirations, he also acknowledges changes in Protestants’ outlook. Challenging narratives of anti-Catholicism as the benchmark of English Protestant identity, he shows the willingness on both sides to rationalise their choice of confession and shared class. Perhaps some more extended and explicit discussion of where his findings nuance and challenge those accounts outside of English Catholicism would have drawn out the significance for wider historiography. Yet it is hoped that scholars of both Catholicism and the eighteenth century more broadly will engage with this rich account of an Englishman set firmly within his society and thus shaping our understanding of that society.