This article is based on the Archbishops’ Transcripts of the Induction and Ordination Records in Lambeth Palace Library and the Visitation Records in Canterbury Cathedral Library. In Archbishop Parker's Return of the Parishes and Households of the diocese of Canterbury in 1563 there is a list of parishes which I have used as a basis for the statistical analysis. In some details I have had to differ from it. Parker's total of churches and chapels in the diocese was 276; mine is 240. For example, the church of St Mary-in-the-Castle at Canterbury is useless for our purpose: it was falling into ruin and there is no Visitation Record about it, since the parish had been joined with St Mildred's. The same is true of St Nicholas, Harbledown; of Warden, Churchley and others ‘being decayed’ or not served; of chapels-of-ease, such as Staple, Egerton and Huckinge; of chapels which were really private; and of churches such as Maidstone, Detling, Loose and others which, being peculiars, were exempt from the Archdeacon's Visitation. For the purpose of this survey, I shall use the parishes listed in the 1563 Return which also have the relevant details in the Visitations from 1552 to October 1562. Of these there are 240.

‘Ireland was the only country where the Counter-Reformation succeeded against the will of the head of state.’ Why was this? Obviously, the English Government's neglect of education and the Catholic clergy's awareness of its importance was one reason. Obviously, too, the Counter-Reformation got under way in Ireland before the Reformation made a religious impact. Again, the quality of the reformed clergy sent to Ireland was poor and they made little effort to learn Gaelic or to translate the scriptures into the national language until very late in the century. But perhaps most important of all is the fact that in Gaelic Ireland the Reformation was inextricably linked with the expropriation of lands and the abolition of traditional rights and customs. Hence, defence of one's land and of one's religion became so intertwined as to be almost inseparable; and this, I suspect, rather than any appreciation of theological distinctions, was decisive. A number of the clergy of the Counter-Reformation, most of them educated in the Irish colleges on the Continent, were at pains not only to underline the ‘heresies’ in the new teaching and to instruct the people in the spirit of Tridentine Catholicism, but also to link the struggle against the ‘gall’, the English conqueror, with the European religious struggle.

The popular acceptance (among Protestants) of Titus Oates's allegations of a Popish Plot owed much to the apparent confirmation provided first by the murder of Sir Edmund Berry Godfrey and second by the discovery of Edward Coleman's letters. Godfrey's murder has challenged the ingenuity of both historians and the writers of detective fiction, but Coleman's letters have received far less attention. Yet their historical importance was considerable. Apart from apparently confirming Oates's story, they seemed to implicate James, Duke of York, in projects designed to bring in Catholicism and absolutism with the aid of Louis XIV and the Pope. They thus gave support and impetus to the movement to exclude James from the throne. One reason why most historians have made little sense of the letters is that they are often obscure and allusive and were not printed in a logical order. A second reason is that most historians have considered the letters only in relation to the Plot. This is true of Professor Kenyon, for example, who has produced much the best analysis so far. But the letters almost all date from 1674–76 and can be understood fully only in the context of the events of those years. In this article I shall use the letters and other evidence to try to give an account of Coleman's activities from the start of his correspondence in 1674 until his execution in 1678. In the process, I shall try to assess James's involvement in Coleman's intrigues.

Shortly after his accession, James II introduced in England a scheme, already begun in Ireland, of dispensing Catholic army officers from the Test Act of 1673. This encroachment of the penal laws was controversial and James, therefore, turned to the courts for a legal opinion on his use of the royal prerogative. In Godden v. Hales (1686) the judges upheld the king’s right to dispense with the law in particular cases. Despite this decision, however, public and Service opinion remained hostile to the idea of placing Catholics in the armed forces. James took action against a clergyman, Samuel Johnson, who published a pamphlet addressed to all soldiers and sailors telling them not to associate with ‘idolatrous and bloody Papists who fight for the Mass book and to burn the Bible’.

Charles Butler was born on 14 August 1750. His father, James, and his uncles Charles and Alban, the hagiographer, were by then the last male representatives of an old Catholic Northamptonshire family, connected with Plowdens and Jerninghams in closer kinship than with any others.