Scottish Catholics had to wait for nearly 30 years after their coreligionists in England and Wales for the restoration of their own hierarchy of diocesan bishops. It was not until the late 1860s that Rome decided that something definitive must be done about the state of the Church in Scotland. Writing in the journal Recusant History in 1997, Bernard Aspinwall reflected that there had formerly existed a “small village world of quiet Catholic certainties in a hostile land”. It had been thrown into chaos as resentment between native Scottish Catholics and post-Famine Irish immigrants (including a large body of clergy) finally boiled over into open conflict.