The devil from over the sea: remembering and forgetting Oliver Cromwell in Ireland. By Sarah Covington. Pp x, 409. Oxford: Oxford University Press. £25.

Abstract

Shaun Blanchard relates in his essay, a more combative approach to the emerging world at the end of the eighteenth century was that of Charles Walmsley, a Benedictine who served as one of the four vicars apostolic in England. Arising from his interest in the New Testament Book of Revelation, he composed a broad historical survey, suffused with a negative view of Enlightenment and Protestantism. The book became widely popular (echoes are found in the Irish agrarian disturbances of the 1820s); the author had experienced the fury of a Protestant mob who wrecked his house during the anti-Catholic Gordon riots of 1780. Drawing comprehensively on specialised archival research, these essays help illuminate the world of British and Irish men and women who lived in religious communities on the continent down to the collapse of the ancien régime in the 1790s. Given the geographical spread of the themes covered, the absence of maps is regrettable. By noting ongoing links with the Catholic community in England, and engagement with broader intellectual and cultural trends in the host countries, together with a focus on communities of women, the collection expands our understanding of the Catholic presence from England, Scotland and Ireland on the continent in the early modern era.