1921 REVIEWS OF BOOKS 455 discrimination on the ground of learning or ability or munificence between English and Irish. A few more compilations of this kind, if they were edited with as much skill and patience as Mr. Little has devoted to Father Fitzmaurice's work, would provide a firm foundation for the history of Irish society, and of the religious and literary life of Ireland during the later middle ages. Above all, work of this kind, by revealing the variety of the materials for Irish history and showing how English and Irish scholars can co-operate, helps to restore the sense of continuity to Irish studies, and to bring Irish scholarship again into line with European learning. F. M. Powicke. The Puritans in Ireland, 1647-1661. By the Rev. St. John D. Seymour, B.D. (Oxford : Clarendon Press, 1921.) It is a genuine pleasure to read the informing account Mr. Seymour has written of the religious aspect of the rule of the puritans in Ireland. Many partisan pamphlets on Irish history have been lately written. In them scraps of evidence have been chewed and re-chewed by writer after writer, and have long ago ceased to be nutritious. The materials for the explora- tion of the past are abundant, if a competent scholar takes the slightest trouble to find them. Such a scholar is Mr. Seymour. He has been the first to publish the results of his researches among the fifty-six volumes of the Commonwealth Books preserved in the Public Record Office, Dublin. Of course he has covered the other materials bearing on the critical period he has selected for his learned investigation. The outcome is a book which constitutes a real addition to the sum of our historical knowledge. The author has little to say about the background of his work. He assumes that his readers are, like himself, conversant with the dominant tone of the church of Ireland which enabled her to fit in so easily with the regime which began in 1647. For the sake of the readers who do not know, it is worth while pointing out that the Elizabethan foundation, the university of Dublin, at once wore an Evangelical aspect. Its early provosts were either Evangelicals or in sympathy with that school. The second provost, Travers, was the notorious opponent of Hooker. Puritans in the church of England in general and in Cambridge in particular sought and found an asylum within the walls of Trinity College, Dublin. In this way the ground was prepared for the sway of the puritans for the brief period of fourteen years. The way was also prepared in another fashion. During the rebellion of 1641 not far short of ten thousand protestants had perished. As the clergy fled before Tyrconnel, so they fled before the threats and the executions of the rebels of 1641. The inevitable result was that few of the episcopal clergy and of their congregations were left, so that the new ministers had for their congregations the Cromwellian soldiery. These are considerations which the author thrusts to one side, and we are sorry that he does so. He knows them so well himself that he believes his readers are equally well informed. On the other hand, the author probably felt that it was more valuable to print his considerable amount of new information, and perhaps he was right. The intelligent student can dot the i's and cross the t's of the facts Mr. Seymour sets before us.
