In the summer of 1639, Charles I called upon the resources of all three of his kingdoms to bring the recalcitrant Covenanters in Scotland to heel. Meanwhile, in deepest Norfolk, the antiquarian scholar Sir Henry Spelman was writing with enthusiastic insouciance to his friend, James Ussher (archbishop of Armagh) about ‘Justellus the learned Frenchman … [who] is about a great worke touching the describinge of the ancient Patriarchies in church government and comptinge (as I understande) that of our British Churches to be one of them.’

Spelman sought Ussher's ‘advice and approbacon’ in assisting Justellus. Two months later he received a very dusty reply in haughty Latin. Ussher's antiquarian enthusiasms clearly did not extend to allowing Ireland to be recognised as historically ‘subject to the Church of England’. Scotland, perhaps, said Ussher; but Ireland never.

Several historians have recently argued that the early Stuarts sought to anglicise (or in ecclesiastical terms anglicanise) all three of their kingdoms; that there was a drive towards a unity of the kingdoms through imposing a conformity to English ways. Conrad Russell, speaking for this group, has written that ‘Charles and Laud [sought] to construct a new programme of British uniformity. Since their major commitment was to those features of the English Church which were conspicuously absent in Ireland and Scotland, this programme for British uniformity inevitably turned into one for English hegemony.’