This book does not attempt to analyse the English Way of being Catholic, but to present certain characters, certain ideas, from which the reader may make his own analysis and paint his own picture. The various writers have chosen characters who in their opinion are very English and very Catholic. There have been two sharp breaks in the national life—the first was at the Norman Conquest; the second was at the Reformation, when the national and religious life ceased to flow in the same full stream. But something remained unchanged right through.
