A Confusion of Tongues examines the complex interaction of religion, history, and law in the period before the outbreak of the wars of the Three Kingdoms. It questions interpretations of that conflict that emphasise either the purely doctrinal roots of religious tension, or the processes by which the law gained primacy over the Church, in what amounted to a secular revolution. Instead, religion took its place among a range of constitutional issues that undermined the authority of Charles I in both England and Scotland.
Charles Prior offers a careful reconstruction of a number of...