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Book Reviews 225 slavery westward lay the ruin of one man's ideal and a nation's integrity. These are two powerful, exceedingly well-written, and engrossing works in which the whole is far more than the sum of their parts.

‘Our Patriarch’: Bishop Bonaventure Giffard, 1642–1734. An Introductory Sketch

“…231 Short's philanthropic endeavours were linked with a group of tradesmen in the strongly Catholic Holborn area-one of a number of such initiatives in Giffard's London which also included the Benevolent Society of St. Patrick, dating from 1704, concerned with the Irish poor, and the Aged Poor Society founded four years later for the relief of elderly and infirm Catholics, while other works of mercy were undertaken by priests, specially selected and financed, and by lay Catholics, among them those praised by Giffard in 1717 for efforts among prisoners which had led to many conversions, as did other almsgiving, both clerical and lay. 232 Of Giffard himself the superior of St. Gregory's, Paris later wrote that 'his great credit and charity will never be equalled by any successor' 233 and the bishop himself disclosed that he was accustomed to give away two-thirds of his own patrimony and of any money given to him 234 while Dodd, writing within a few years of his death, extolled both his incessant and discreet philanthropy and his striking ability, even in the most adverse circumstances, to attract offerings for charitable purposes. 235 Giffard also solicited contributions from his friends towards a building project dear to his own heart and with which his family was closely identified, the provision of a Mass-house in his native Wolverhampton, an objective which attracted repeated donations from him as well as posthumous provision for an additional priest to serve that mission.…”