'… an impressive study … The book provides a fascinating window into the collective experience of nearly four thousand English nuns in the period of the Catholic Reformation … [it] provides an important answer to anyone wondering what happened to the long tradition of English monasticism, and especially of convents, after the Dissolution.' Genelle Gertz, Renaissance Quarterly
Introduction; 1. Recruitment: familial and clerical patronage; 2. Embracing enclosure; 3. Material religious culture; 4. Financing the conventual movement; 5. Liturgical life: relics and martyrdom; 6. Networked: the convents and the world of Catholic exile; Conclusion.