Mary's Tudor's Church invented the Counter-Reformation. That is the main thesis of Eamon Duffy's compellingly readable account of what used to be called ‘the Marian reaction’. Reginald Pole was the visionary director of a programme of restoration, renewal and fresh initiatives, whole-heartedly supported by the queen, and implemented by a substantial cohort of outstanding teachers, preachers, writers and administrators. Pole insisted on a clean break with the Henrician schism and all that it represented. He brought a strong new emphasis on loyalty to the papacy. Marian churchmen vigorously exploited both the pulpit and the press. They produced homilies notable for their warm and positive tone and clarity of exposition, and (together with lay authors) propaganda that tellingly exploited Protestant divisions and evangelical reform's subversive and destructive consequences. The Church encouraged frequent communion and renewed reverence for the sacrament of the altar. Reliable theologians were promoted to the episcopal bench. The universities and cathedral chapters were planted with strong and effective supporters. England's example, and particularly Pole's scheme of diocesan seminaries, influenced the final sessions of the Council of Trent. Marian renewal drew on, and powerfully contributed to, continental developments. It inspired and encouraged resistance to Elizabeth's reformation. Several of these points have been made before, but not so cogently or with such a wealth of supporting detail. Duffy also gives a thought-provoking account of the campaign against Protestantism. Its ferocity was not unique: similar numbers were executed in the Netherlands during the 1560s. Many of the investigating clergy went to extraordinary lengths to secure abjurations. They did not want to make martyrs: the recantations of such prominent Edwardian figures as Northumberland and Cheke were far more devastating blows to Protestant morale than bonfires of stalwart evangelicals. The ready participation of lay justices and commissioners in the campaign was crucial. They undertook many arrests, though in handling the accused they were often less patient or sensitive than the clergy. Preachers at executions drove home the lessons to be learned from the heretics' fate. Convinced Protestants were a minority, and burnings frightened most of them into outward conformity. There was some sympathy for the victims among the spectators of burnings, but its extent has been exaggerated. The campaign against heresy never ran out of steam, though by 1558 there were fewer obdurate heretics to burn. However, Duffy's analysis barely engages with the fact that the Marian proceedings left some regions of earlier Lollard or Protestant strength almost untouched. It alludes only in passing to the ‘Nicodemism’ widely practised by Edwardian Protestants under Mary, and to the reluctance of some Marian investigators to prosecute people of substance. For a variety of reasons the men who would form the determined core of the Elizabethan establishment survived unscathed. As Duffy sadly admits, the courageous and impressive unanimity of the Marian higher clergy in 1559 ‘did precisely nothing to deflect the new regime’. That regime turned Mary's persecution into a priceless propaganda asset. Throughout a series of changes in religious policy without parallel elsewhere in Europe, a large majority of the English people accepted the principle ‘cuius regio, eius religio’.