Strictly speaking this volume is not a Festschrift. Rather it comprises a further exploration of the theme famously enunciated by John Morrill in 1983, that ‘the English civil war’ was ‘the last of the wars of religion’ as opposed to being ‘the first European revolution’. Morrill's original target was the secularising tendency as he saw it of both Whig and Marxist historians. Since then, however, a new challenger has appeared on the scene in the person of Quentin Skinner, with his emphasis on the neo-Roman idea of liberty as a key to understanding the conflicts of the mid-seventeenth century. There are fourteen contributors to the present book including Morrill himself. All have interesting things to say, although some are clearly less happy than others with the concept of a ‘war of religion’. Obviously much depends here on the distinction between ‘religion’ and ‘politics’, and where the line is drawn. Two outstanding chapters in this respect are those by Sarah Mortimer and John Coffey. Mortimer demonstrates that Puritan writers used natural law, understood as God-given, to justify political resistance, instancing William Bridge, John Goodwin, Stephen Marshall and Herbert Palmer. According to Bridge the ‘voice of nature is the voice of God’. Against those ‘who sought to reduce the land to slavery and popish subservience’ there existed a right of self-defence. Indeed ‘men had a religious and civil duty to preserve themselves and their society, and their souls and their fortunes would suffer if they did not’. Royalists, by contrast, rejected this religiously derived argument, claiming that ‘resistance simply could not be defended from the natural law’. On this basis, however, many of those fighting on the side of Parliament saw themselves as engaged in a ‘holy war’. As Mortimer also intimates this combination of ‘Christian ethics and natural law’ has a high ancestry, being employed by English Protestants such as John Ponet in opposition to Mary Tudor during the 1550s. Mortimer's chapter is complemented by that of Coffey who explores the Exodus theme of ‘deliverance’ or ‘liberation’ from ‘political and ecclesiastical servitude’. In this scenario Caroline England was the equivalent of Egypt under Pharaoh and the Parliamentarians were modern Israelites. ‘We need to reckon with both the zeal for true religion and the passion for liberation’, writes Coffey, in the face of the twin enemies of idolatry and slavery. The net effect of the contributions of Coffey and Mortimer is to reconcile the seemingly contradictory claims of Skinner and Morrill.

Not all the contributors feel comfortable with the idea of a ‘war of religion’. From this point of view the most subversive offering is that by Alan Cromartie. Elsewhere he has argued for a ‘constitutionalist’ interpretation of the English civil war, stressing the rising influence of the common lawyers. His chapter contends that Archbishop Laud was a fairly run-of-the-mill member of the ecclesiastical hierarchy and certainly no real innovator, despite contemporary and subsequent claims to the contrary. A la Cromartie we are dealing here with a classic example of mistaken identity. If true this blows a rather large hole in the original Morrill thesis, which stressed the depth of the religious reaction to Laudianism come 1640. Cromartie bases his case on an analysis of the surviving annotations made by Laud to an edition of the Disputationes (1596–9) of Cardinal Bellarmine, which have been in print since the 1850s. It is generally agreed that these annotations indicate that at that time, probably about 1610, Laud was of a ‘Reformed’ or ‘Calvinist’ persuasion in doctrine. But unfortunately Cromartie fails to address the case that Laud thereafter changed his mind, like his mentor Lancelot Andrewes had done some years earlier. Otherwise it is very difficult to explain the highly critical remarks which Laud endorsed in 1625 à propos the Lambeth Articles (1595) and the canons of the Synod of Dort (1619), both of which espoused a position on the theology of grace that Cromartie claims that he still held. Moreover, while imprisoned in the Tower of London during the early 1640s, Laud made no move to clear up the alleged misunderstanding; instead he launched into a fierce attack on Calvinist teaching about predestination and perseverance. Nor does Cromartie have anything to say on the subject of Laudian altar policy and its implications of idolatry in the eyes of many. Thus Morrill would appear to emerge unscathed from this particular attempt at demolition.

Of the other contributors, Ronald Asch examines the recrudescence of ‘sacred kingship’ in France and England at this period, and Robert von Friedeburg puts ‘popish plots’ in a continental context. Charles Prior, one of the two editors, investigates the religio-political implications of the 1640 canons. Michael Braddick takes a fresh look at the early 1640s, finding much to commend in Morrill's original formulation while shifting the emphasis towards ‘polemic and mobilisation’. Sears McGee delves into the rich manuscript remains of Sir Simonds D'Ewes and in the course of so doing graphically illustrates the galvanic effect of Laudianism on a relatively moderate representative of the ‘godly’. Glenn Burgess, the other of the two editors, in addition to his helpful introduction, investigates ‘wars of religion’ as a pejorative construct by Royalists. Rachel Foxley and Blair Worden between them tackle aspects of the thinking of Oliver Cromwell on the nature of civil and religious liberty, and the ‘cause’ for which he had fought in the 1640s and continued to defend in the 1650s; they draw attention to his growing willingness to invoke both religious and civil goals. Jeffrey Collins rounds the volume off chronologically by treating anti-Catholicism in a post-Restoration context and urging the importance of continuing to recognise the religious dimension of political thought. Lastly John Morrill provides an afterword in which he expresses understandable regret at the absence of a ‘British’ dimension; in reply the editors would no doubt plead lack of space. According to their chosen specifications the latter have produced a fine volume and one which very significantly advances the subject. But will Quentin Skinner, one wonders, be stimulated into responding?