It is hardly a controversial statement to say that Thomas McCoog has been at the forefront of pioneering work in Jesuit studies, in particular the British and Irish aspects. Moreover, his work has been part of the surge in scholarship over recent years concentrated on British and Irish Catholicism, and its fluctuating importance to national and international politics. In short, he is the ideal candidate to write this short overview of Jesuit activity in the region up to the global suppression of the Society of Jesus by Pope Clement XIV in 1773.

McCoog's Pre-suppression Jesuit Activity in the British Isles and Ireland represents an introduction to the field and an ideal starting point for those wishing to acquaint themselves with recent historiographical developments in the subject. For those familiar with McCoog's work, there will be few surprises here, as he distils some of the arguments to be found in his longer, more in-depth works. For example, when setting the scene in his opening chapter, McCoog offers his customary dual approach: not only are the Jesuits interacting with British and Irish affairs, but the Jesuits from Britain and Ireland are members of an international order that spread around the globe. Accordingly, he argues that this specific region of Jesuit activity tested the fabled notions of Jesuit adaptability to the limit. Equally, he makes the important observation that not all those men who joined the Jesuits from Britain and Ireland were destined for the missions to their homelands. Part of the global Catholic Reformation, some even ended up as far afield as India and Brazil.

Nevertheless, McCoog's primary focus is the situation on the peripheries of Europe. He views the opening years of Jesuit activity as a constant balancing act between the religious and the political. Instructed by the order's superior general in Rome not to dabble in politics, those arriving in the area found it almost impossible to disentangle the two due to the very nature of the Protestant Reformation on the islands. For example, famously in England, the Jesuits Edmund Campion and Robert Persons led the campaign to push recusancy among the Catholic population, using nonattendance at the state church, which was legally required, as a means to create a distinctive Catholic community. However, where they viewed religious reconciliation as a spiritual matter, the English state interpreted it as an act of political disloyalty, resulting in intensified persecution. McCoog suggests that the superior general, Everard Mercurian, was perhaps naïve to think any such division was even possible. In Ireland, things were slightly less murky when the Jesuit David Wolfe supported the Fitzmaurice Rebellion, which scandalized Portuguese Jesuits but was supported by Spanish members of the Society.

McCoog judges that a change took place during the early Stuart monarchy of the seventeenth century, the major issue shifting from apostasy versus political loyalty around the question of conformity, to the international, cross-confessional debates about the Oath of Allegiance. Again, McCoog here offers his broader insights, exploring the problems faced by the English Jesuits, with their unique structures and behaviors, in the face of disquiet and even outright opposition from Belgian and Spanish provinces. He also ties in the English mission's rise to provincial status with wider developments, both political, such as the mooted Spanish match between the future Charles I and the Infanta, and the religio-political, namely the arrival of the bishop of Chalcedon and attempts to bring ecclesiastical structure to the English mission. For McCoog, the arguments between the regulars, led by the Jesuits and the Benedictines, and proponents of ecclesiastical hierarchy became a continuous feature of British and Irish Catholicism until at least Catholic emancipation in 1829.

What becomes clear as the seventeenth century progresses is the prominence of the English mission over the Irish and Scottish ones. By 1620, there were only nine Jesuits in Scotland, compared to 193 active in England and Wales out of a total 350 members of the province. This led to various attempts to combine the separate national missions, all of which were successfully resisted. After the brief high point of James II's Catholic reign, when it was even planned to hand Trinity College Dublin over to the Jesuits, McCoog says that the eighteenth-century activities of the society were much more muted, as the Jesuits strove not to be left out of any potential toleration following the Glorious Revolution. For all that, they remained strongly Jacobite, even after the pope recognized the Hanoverian regime. Perhaps most tantalizingly, McCoog touches on the Maryland mission and notes that it was known for its “distinctive life-style” (87) even by the standards of the English mission.

By the time of the suppression, there were 290 Jesuits in the English province (140 in England and Wales, 23 in Maryland), 19 on the Irish mission, and just 10 in Scotland. This numerical strength and historical reputation meant that, at the time of the Suppression, English Jesuits managed to maintain a corporate identity, with a loose association at Stonyhurst College, until the society's restoration in 1814.

As McCoog himself admits, historical scholarship on the Jesuits in the sixteenth century is plentiful, but as one moves through the seventeenth century, research becomes scarcer, even more so into the eighteenth century. This is partly indicated by the focus of the chapters as this book progresses chronologically, becoming more inclined towards institutional history—admittedly given light by McCoog for the first time. Again, as McCoog himself acknowledges, this shows how much research there remains to be done and, as importantly, that the material exists to be able to do it.

Overall, this is a clear and readable book, which makes the complicated pleasingly accessible. After each section, there is a helpful, short historiographical overview. For those looking for an introduction to the topic, this book serves that role admirably. The history of Catholicism in Britain and Ireland is currently a major growth field in historical scholarship, and this work gives some pointers to possible future directions. As a final thought, the book underlines, especially for the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, just how much the history of English Catholicism is dominated by historiography of the Jesuits. The anti-Jesuit hysteria throughout the period is indicative of this: the attention given to the Jesuits far outweighs their numbers. Is there an alternative narrative for historians to write? One suspects there is.