The last few years have witnessed a growing interest in the study of the Reformation period within the three kingdoms of Britain, revolutionizing the way in which scholars think about the relationships between England, Scotland and Ireland. Nevertheless, it is a fact that the story of the British Reformation is still dominated by studies of England, an imbalance that this book will help to right. By adopting an international perspective, the essays in this volume look at the motives, methods and impact of enforcing the Protestant Reformation in Ireland and Scotland. The juxtaposition of these two countries illuminates the similarities and differences of their social and political situations while qualifying many of the conclusions of recent historical work in each country. As well as Investigating what 'reformation' meant in the early modern period, and examining its literal, rhetorical, doctrinal, moral and political implications, the volume also explores what enforcing these various reformations could involve. Taken as a whole, this volume offers a fascinating insight into how the political authorities in Scotland and Ireland attempted, with varying degrees of success, to impose Protestantism on their countries. By comparing the two situations, and placing them in the wider international picture, our understanding of European confessionalization is further enhanced.

Highlights the contested nature of higher education in the British Atlantic world between the Reformation and the Enlightenment Universities in the early modern period were powerful institutions in the formation of societies, utilised as both tools to legitimise and perpetuate the power of states and archetypes upon which to model an idealised society that might maintain social order. In an era of upheaval and civil war, rival authorities clashed in the universities, where the conflicts and complexities of early modern state formation were regularly laid bare. The encroachment of the Stuart monarchy beyond England into Scottish and Irish academe stimulated broader resistance from Scottish and Irish authorities, while prompting the founding of institutions of higher learning among expatriate communities beyond the British Isles, especially in New England. In these spaces, universities were viewed as institutional bulwarks against external intrusions that promoted localised, competing visions of the godly church and state amid the conflicts and complexities of early modern state formation. This book provides new insight into the contested nature of higher education in the British Atlantic world between the Reformation and the Enlightenment and corrects outmoded notions about the universities' purported insularity and intellectual poverty. Rather, the image that emerges of these universities is one of genuine academies of strategic importance, employed to serve the agendas of ruling powers in Scotland, Ireland, and New England. Trinity College, Dublin, Harvard College, and the Scottish universities existed on the frontiers of a deteriorating composite monarchy with a centralizing impulse, becoming battle grounds of the mid-seventeenth-century's intellectual, political, and religious conflicts. SALVATORE CIPRIANO is Associate Director of Career Coaching and Education, Stanford University. He holds a Ph.D. in Early Modern European History from Fordham University.

In 1598, Jesuit missions in Ireland, Scotland, and England were either suspended, undermanned, or under attack. With the Elizabethan government’s collusion, secular clerics hostile to Robert Persons and his tactics campaigned in Rome for the Society’s removal from the administration of continental English seminaries and from the mission itself. Continental Jesuits alarmed by the English mission’s idiosyncratic status within the Society, sought to restrict the mission’s privileges and curb its independence. Meanwhile the succession of Queen Elizabeth I, the subject that dared not speak its name, had become a more pressing concern. One candidate, King James VI of Scotland, courted Catholic support with promises of conversion. His peaceful accession in 1603 raised expectations, but as the royal promises went unfulfilled, anger replaced hope.