Ireland in the Age of Imperialism and Revolution 1760–1801. By R. B. McDowell. Pp. 740. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1979. £28.

Abstract

whether the doctrine of sovereignty really has ceded ground to the extent suggested. And il it really is an English rather than a Scottish doctrine, it has certainly been held by many Scots with a quite destructive tenacity. Furthermore, Professor Lyall says nothing of the possible effects of this doctrine within the Church, causing General Assemblies to regard Presbyteries as mere creatures of their own. The House of Lprds decision of 1904, in which the small body of continuing Free Churchmen won the whole property of the Free Church before the majority joined in forming the United Free Church, is one which Professor Lyall suggests 'was both right and legally correct'. This view will horrify most Scots, but his conclusion is solidly based on Scottish precedents in law and cannot be lightly dismissed. And on the extent to which civil courts will now intervene in church affairs, he quotes the 1940 case of five nuns who refused to leave their convent, it being then held that the courts may act when the ecclesiastical authorities have moved outside their own jurisdiction or have behaved with such gross irregularity 'as shall amount to the entire breaking up of the contract'. The book is more readable than the subject might lead one to expect; and the use ol one set ol footnotes with numbers running throughout is helpful. Yet if this book is mainly intended* for Scottish readers, it ought not be neglected in what is playfully called 'the established church in South Britain'. The Church of Scotland may have suffered from monolithic theories of the state to a greater degree than the Church of England, but neither went unscathed, and it is the Church of England which still has furthest to go in extricating itself from the parliamentary embrace.