HARALD BRAUN is Lecturer in International History at the London School of Economics. His research interests are early modern Spanish intellectual and religious history as well as the history of European political thought. He is currently completing his research monograph 'Juan de Mariana SJ (1535-1621) and Early Modern Spanish Political thought (Ashgate, forthcoming)'.EDWARD VALLANCE taught at the universities of Sheffield and Manchester and is now Lecturer in Early Modern British History at the University of Liverpool. He has published articles in leading historical journals and is currently completing his research monograph, Revolutionary England and the National Covenant (Boydell and Brewer, forthcoming).

• Acknowledgements Notes on the Contributors Introduction Scrupulosity and Conscience: Probabilism in Early Modern Scholastic Ethics; M.Stone Was William Perkin's 'Whole Treatise of Cases of Consciences' Casuistry?: Hermeneutics and British Practical Divinity; J.Keenan Ordeal of Conscience: Casuistry, Conformity and Confessional Identity in Post-Reformation England; A.Walsham 'Fuggir la libertà della coscienza': Conscience and the Inquisition in Sixteenth-Century Italy; N.Davidson Conscience, Counsel and Theocracy at the Spanish Hapsburg Court; H.Braun The Decline of Conscience as a Political Guide: William Higden's 'View of the English Constitution' (1709); E.Vallance The Disquieted Mind in Casuistry and Natural Philosophy: Robert Boyle and Thomas Barlow; M.Hunter Rules of Conscience and the Case of Galileo; R.Schüßler Gender, Conscience and Casuistry: Women and Conflicting Obligations in Early Modern England; B.Capp 'Secret and Immodest Curiosities'?: Sex, Marriage and Conscience in Early Modern England; D.Turner 'The Strongest Bond of Conscience': Oaths and the Limits of Tolerance in Early Modern England; J.Spurr Conscience, Law and Things Indifferent: Arguments on Toleration from the Vestiarian Controversy to Hobbes and Locke; J.Somerville Index Bibliography