Rousseau was playing cards with Earl Marischal, so Boswell reports, when news arrived that the younger of the Stuart princes had become a Cardinal: the Earl “threw down his cards. He said, ‘Now all our hopes are lost. Oh, to think that I have sacrificed myself for that beastly family! The father is not worth six sous, which is two thousand times as much as the elder son is worth; and now the one in whom we had a little confidence turns priest!’” Such disillusionment on the part of a veteran Jacobite, two years after the debacle of the ‘45, suggests that the romance of the cause was fast expiring in circles all too well acquainted with the main protagonists.

Gabriel Glickman's erudite study would be an effective antidote to any lingering infection of romantic Jacobitism. Here is no detailed account of plots and counterplots, insurrections and invasions – the stuff of what Glickman calls “the caricature of reckless vainglory presented by Scott's Hugh Redgauntlet”. Instead, we are presented with a carefully nuanced, painstakingly detailed account of the complexities of Jacobite adjustment to the intractable problem confronting those seeking a restoration of that luckless dynasty – how they were to recommend a Catholic monarchy to a Protestant nation where opponents could easily raise the alarm over aggressive Jacobite strategies in both the military and ideological fields; how they were to make the Gracious Declaration of 1693 convincing to a nation many of whom, like Dr Johnson's Whig friend, Taylor, felt “an abhorrence against the Stuart family”.

‘Revisionist’ studies of British Catholic history have long left behind the ‘Second Spring’ school of Catholic historiography. Glickman very neatly describes it as “a virtual mirror image of the old Whig historical method”. However, historians have failed, in his opinion, to get down to research into rich primary sources. The most cursory attention to his footnotes will demonstrate that this researcher must indeed have led “at times … a peripatetic lifestyle”. The reproduction of the portrait of Stephen Tempest (1689–1771) indicates that recusant mansions have opened their galleries as well as their archives to the author. It is highly significant that the partly open book upon which Tempest's right hand rests is Pope's Essay on Man. The iconography points forward to the ‘Cisalpine’ movement of later in the century. Not least among the collateral benefits of this book is a reminder both of the brilliance of the poem, and that it is a recusant text.

The Chevalier Ramsay (1686–1743) is in so many ways the central, fascinating figure – Catholic convert, freemason, prolific and influential Jacobite – author in fields of political theory, royal pedagogy, spirituality. He typifies the fortunes of those seeking a secure role in the Catholic diaspora. His appointment as tutor to the young prince Charles Edward was short-lived – papal disapproval deprived him of the office. He lamented his isolation in Paris as the French government pursued its goal of rigorous suppression of the so-called ‘Jansenists’. He was a disciple of Fénélon whose oblique critique of absolutism was embodied in Télémaque – the model for Ramsay's Cyrus. He was at the mercy, as indeed were the Stuart princes, of the currents of European power politics. Ramsay was no eccentric, marginal philosophe – both Old and young Pretender admired and were influenced by him.

The Camel estuary in Cornwall, when the tide is out, reveals a huge expanse of sand which the receding sea perpetually shapes and reconfigures. Similarly, every tidal movement of power politics in Europe shaped and reconfigured the aspirations and fortunes of the Catholic community. Thus they moved from aggressive enforcement of the Stuart claims to an acceptance of the reality of the Protestant character of the nation, from chronic dependency upon the French Crown to support for the Austro-Hanoverian alliance. However swiftly or effectively the main body of Jacobite opinion moved, its role was inevitably reactive – British Catholics were at the mercy of tides in European affairs. Popes could not be depended upon, for they vacillated in response to these powerful currents. So undependable did Rome appear that there was an attempt by recusants to circumvent papal authority and create what Glickman calls “a subterranean Church in the three kingdoms” by vesting senior appointments in the Old Pretender's hands.

‘Jansenism’ like ‘Modernism’ was largely a political construct – it never actually existed but served as a ‘catch-all’ category to enforce discipline and ‘orthodoxy’. ‘Quietism’, which landed Archbishop Fénélon and Madame de Guyon in such trouble, served similar ends. The staff of Colleges and members of religious Houses of the British Catholic diaspora were accused of such tendencies. Leading recusant thinkers reacted against baroque pieties, ultramontane and absolutist pressures – accordingly they were drawn to the distinguished writers associated with Port-Royal and were attracted to quietist ‘religion of the heart’ which afforded solace for their conspicuous lack of empowerment. Some asserted their right to challenge papal authority in episcopal appointment and to deny infallibility. When Robert Manning wrote: “Pretensions to infallibility … neither are now, nor ever were Terms of Communion”, this was no heresy, though such a declaration ran full tilt against the dominant Jesuit ‘orthodoxy’ in Paris and Rome.

Glickman brilliantly demonstrates that it is nonsense to suppose that British Catholics during this period were socially withdrawn, preoccupied with plotting, conspiring and re-arming. That there were conspirators among them is undeniable and they, as such men do, often played into the hands of their enemies. Many recusants were socialising with their Protestant neighbours, exercising ingenuity in trade, publishing and debating within and beyond the bounds of the nation to an extent probably never before appreciated. After Glickman's unveiling of this larger picture, how could one ever again hear ‘Rule Britannia’ roared out at a ‘Last Night’ without recalling that it was first performed by a Catholic composer at Cliveden for Prince Frederick – it emphatically includes Catholics in the patriotic story of the nation. Had Frederick lived, he might have provided a royal figurehead to whom Jacobite sentiment could have rallied as the once ‘bonnie prince’ sank in esteem and alcoholic decline. Here is a body of evidence which compels radical revaluation of Catholic history of this period. How enlightening to be shown how a significant trend in recusant thought is expressed in the lines: