In sum, a more dispassionate reading of Branch’s secondary sources would turn up much more common ground than she allows, as well as a good deal that has long been accepted in modern scholarship. Save for the distinct and persistent implication that “Christian” ideals are somehow wholly distinct from what were considered secular and civic virtues, it is neither particularly controversial nor novel to conclude, for example, that “the livery compa- nies were fundamentally secular organizations that were governed in line with civic concerns, but that drew upon shared Christian ideals. … The rhetoric and binding power of Christian principles remained of significance in governing the companies” (42–43). Along with its rich discussions of individuals and institutions, the greater value of Branch’s study may well lie in the ways it motivates one to clarify concepts, “Christian” and “seculariza- tion” especially, and perhaps to make finer distinctions in their use. Robert Tittler Concordia University, Montreal robert.tittler@concordia.ca SUSAN DORAN and P AULINA KEWES, eds. Doubtful and Dangerous: The Question of Succession in Late Elizabethan England. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2016. Pp. 352. $22.48 (paperback). doi: 10.1017/jbr.2017.191 Edited by Susan Doran and Paulina Kewes, Doubtful and Dangerous: The Question of Succession in Late Elizabethan England is an expansive and important collection of essays offering a reex- amination of the Elizabethan succession controversy that ultimately resulted in James VI/I’s accession to the throne, with particular attention to the years between the execution of James’s mother Mary Stuart in 1587 and Elizabeth’s death in 1603. As a whole, the volume argues against the misapprehension that James was broadly, if unofficially, presumed to be Eliz- abeth’s likely successor in the later years of her reign and proves that anxiety about her unknown heir remained ubiquitous, with James’s accession in doubt almost until it happened. The book’s contributors aim to complicate the religiopolitics of the succession, to extend its import beyond the borders of England to offer interdisciplinary perspectives that treat a wide range of texts and archival materials, and to stress continuity across periods of study. Indeed, this collection will also be of great interest to scholars of the seventeenth and long eigh- teenth centuries, given its impressive care to show how the controversies raised by the succes- sion reach into Britain’s future, from the Civil War through the emergence of party politics. In two introductory chapters that constitute part one (“Contexts and Approaches”), Susan Doran and Paulina Kewes present the rationale and goals of the collection and a helpful review contextualizing the succession question in the earlier years of Elizabeth’s reign. The essays in part two, “Religion and Politics,” reconsider the succession as a struggle not just between Prot- estants and Catholics but also within those groups: Kewes reveals the expediency with which Puritans, Jesuits, and others changed their tack concerning their preferred successor and with which they borrowed their opponents’ rationales when the winds of circumstance shifted. Peter Lake and Michael Questier show how an uneasy alliance between Elizabeth’s regime and conservative Catholics against the Jesuits shifted the succession in James’s direction. Patrick Collinson offers another angle on that story in his analysis of how Anglican bishop Richard Bancroft attacked first the Puritans and then the Jesuits, spurred by his fear that both radical groups threatened monarchical sovereignty. The essays in part three, “ The Court,” move inward to the roles of Elizabeth’s inner circle: Alexandra Gajda offers a Book Reviews ▪ 151 at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/jbr.2017.191 Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 181.214.125.36, on 16 Apr 2019 at 16:58:54, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available