This book takes as a case study the upbringing and experiences of an important though little studied eighteenth-century Catholic baronet Sir Thomas Philip Stephen Gascoigne, 8th Bart (1745–1810) of Parlington Hall, near Aberford in the West Riding of Yorkshire. He is worthy of study as his life touches upon a number of important issues relating to religion and identity in the eighteenth century, and by following his choices and experiences we will enhance our understanding of the English Catholic community, their interaction with their Anglican contemporaries, and how being a Catholic affected lifestyles and outlooks in the mid-to-late eighteenth century. Although born a Catholic and despite receiving a full Catholic education on the Continent, complete with Grand Tour, in 1780 Gascoigne abjured his faith to become an Anglican and Member of Parliament. A central aim of this book is to explore how and why he came to reconcile these two positions and identify how far currents in his thinking were shared by his coreligionists in Britain. To do this the book uses Gascoigne's life to explore the influence of the Enlightenment on English Catholics; the English Catholic experience of the Grand Tour; the Catholic apostate in English politics; and the influences of a Catholic background on estate management in eighteenth-century England.

Despite the measured tones of Richard Hooker's Treatise on the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity (1594–1662) that some have seen as the constitution of the Anglican Church, the particular form of Protestantism that was emerging as Anglicanism was seen by contemporaries to be based largely on the exclusion of Catholics and nonconformists from the possibility of religious parity, political power and government office. Just as its distinctive note was the exclusion of Catholics and nonconformists its doctrinal singularities clustered around the Oath of Supremacy and eventually the Protestant succession. These secular ends made compromise with Anglicanism a possibility that was by the late eighteenth century tacitly embraced by both Anglicans and Catholics and which may be seen in the life and career of Sir Thomas Gascoigne.