This book brings together leading historians of Catholicism and other notable historians of early modern English society in order to pull Catholicism back into the mainstream of English historiography, and to ask readers to suspend their assumptions and prejudices about the nature of Catholic history. Its primary assertion is that many of the fundamental issues of English history cannot be adequately understood without taking into account a Catholic perspective, while many of the fundamental issues of Catholic history cannot be understood in isolation from the rest of English society.

This is not a work of Catholic history, nor a history of English Catholics, at least as those terms are usually understood, but it is a work of significant importance to our understanding of early modern English society.