Puritanism has, rightly, been seen as a primarily English phenomenon. But puritan ideas can also be studied in very different contexts, as they spread throughout the English-speaking religious world. This article seeks to “decentre” puritanism by examining it from the perspective of the other two national churches in Britain and Ireland – those…[Read more]

In 1870, disestablishment suddenly turned the Church of Ireland from a state church into a democracy, governed by its “parliament,” the General Synod. The empowerment of the laity left it with a distinctive, indeed unique, feature among the churches of the Anglican communion—a set of disciplinary canons designed to exclude high-church ritua…[Read more]

This book traces the process by which a Protestant Church was created in Ireland from the end of the sixteenth to the middle of the seventeenth century. It looks at how clergy were educated and recruited, how they approached the task of ministering to the Irish people, how a diocesan and parish structure was created, and finally examines the…[Read more]

This article examines the differing high and low-church approaches to the early-modern Irish reformation, looking in particular at the approaches of two historians, the Presbyterian James Seaton Reid, and the high-church Trinity Professor, Charles Elrington.

The Church of Ireland, was in many ways a clone of the Church of England. The Irish reformation legislation which established the Church of Ireland was largely a copy of Henry VIII’s acts establishing the Church of England. And many English politicians and clergy thought of the Church of Ireland as wholly dependent on the Church of England. But…[Read more]