Karl Bottigheimer succeeds in consigning my study of the ‘English
Reformation in Wales and Ireland’ to a genre of outmoded
nationalist historiography by means of a distortingly reductionist
account of it. In the first place, despite its title and large sections of the
analysis, he assures the reader that its concern is simply the Reformation
in Ireland. In fact it seeks to address a problem presented by the
Reformation as a phase of what is variously called the ‘new British
history’ or the ‘history of the Atlantic archipelago’, namely the
contrasting outcome of the attempt to extend the state-sponsored reform
of religion to the English crown's two Celtic borderland dominions, to
Wales, where it succeeded, and to Ireland where it failed. Prima facie that
outcome seems puzzling since it faced similar obstacles in both places, a
deeply traditionalist society, remote from the intellectual currents that
helped prepare the ground for the religious changes in England, and
beyond the reach of effective government from the centre. Two questions
arise therefore. How were these obstacles overcome in Wales, and since
they proved surmountable there why not so in the case of Ireland?
Second, Bottigheimer makes my explanation for the Irish outcome
seem naively idealistic by representing it as attributing the failure totally
to the pastoral zeal with which the Franciscan Observants campaigned
against the change, and to the devotion of the Irish to ‘faith and
fatherland’.