Edition of theological debates and discussions, giving an intriguing and unusual insight into the English catholic community in the seventeenth century. How did English Catholics come to terms with living in an alien state? Could they, for example, practise equivocation to avoid arrest, possible imprisonment and execution? Could they use force against their captors? What contact could they maintain with Protestants in order to survive and carry on a normal life? In such a context it is not surprising that a training in casuistry, the science of resolving difficult cases of conscience, was an important aspect of the education of English Catholic missionary priests. A number of the manuals used in that training have survived, largely in manuscript versions only. This volume, a companion to Dr Holmes' selection from Elizabethan materials (Elizabethan Casuistry, 1981), contains discussions and debates dating from the reign of Charles I. Their author was Thomas Southwell, a professor at the English Jesuit College in Li
