What did ordinary people believe in post-Reformation England, and what did they do about it? This book looks at religious belief and practice through the eyes of five sorts of people: godly Protestant ministers, zealous Protestant laypeople, the ignorant, those who complained about the burdens of religion, and the Catholics.
Based on 600 court and visitation books from three national and twelve local archives, it cites what people had to say about themselves, their religion, and the religions of others. How did people behave in church? What did they think of church rituals? What did they do on Sundays? What did they think of people of other faiths? How did they get along together, and what sort of issues produced tensions between them? What did parishioners think of their priests and what did the clergy think of their people? Was everyone seriously religious, or did some people mock or doubt religion?
If these questions have been tackled before, it has usually been by way of claims about what the common people believed in books written by members of the educated ranks about their contemporaries. In contrast, by going directly to other sources of evidence such court records and parish complaints, this book illuminates what ordinary people actually said and did. Written by one of our leading historians of early modern England, it is a lively and readable account of popular religion in England under Elizabeth I and the early Stuarts, dealing with the results of the Reformation, reactions to official policy, and the background to the Civil Wars of the mid-17th century.

The reign of Elizabeth I was one of the most important periods of expansion and growth in British history - the "Golden Age". This celebrated and influential study reconsiders how Elizabeth achieved this, and the ways in which she exercised her power. It analyses the nature of her power through an examination of her relations with Parliament, the Council of Ministers, the Church, the nobility, military and the English people themselves.

The reign of Elizabeth I was one of the most important periods of expansion and growth in British history, the so-called 'Golden Age'. This celebrated and influential study of Elizabeth reconsiders how she achieved this and the ways in which she exercised her power.

This is the latest edition of the long time best-seller now with thirty illustrations added and available in a trade hardcover edition.

As Elizabeth I, second edition, demonstrates, in the Tudor age it was hard enough to be a king: it was doubly hard to be a queen. Throughout her long reign, Elizabeth's target was survival, and she survived! The reign of Elizabeth I was one of the most important periods of expansion and growth in British history, the so called 'Golden Age'. This celebrated and influential study of Elizabeth reconsiders how she achieved this and the ways in which she exercised her power. Elizabeth I second edition, looks at her role in government and the nation and examines Elizabeth in terms of her power rather than her policies, explores her relations with the statesmen of her time and shows how she interacted with the key institutions of sixteenth-century political life. Published in the very popular Profiles in Power series, this is not a biography, though inevitably it contains much biographical material, it instead analyzes the major features, achievements and failures of Elizabeth's career.

Examines why the reign of Elizabeth I was one of the most important periods of expansion and growth in British history.

Elizabeth I second edition, looks at her role in government and the nation and examines Elizabeth in terms of her power rather than her policies, explores her relations with the statesmen of her time and shows how she interacted with the key institutions of sixteenth-century political life.

Published in the very popular Profiles in Power Series, this is not a biography, though inevitably it contains much biographical material, it instead analyzes the major features, achievements and failures of Elizabeth's career.

Historians have long known that Lancashire remained more solidly Catholic after the Reformation than any other part of England, but the peculiarity of the area has never been explained. This book argues that for geographical, social and economic, as well as religious reasons, orthodox Catholicism in the county was at its high-point immediately before the Reformation, so that the history of religious change in Lancashire in the sixteenth century is not the conventional one of Protestant triumph and Catholic failure. The Henrician Reformation was met by resistance and rebellion, while the Edwardian reforms were inadequately enforced and made little impact, though a handful of radical preachers made a few gains in one corner of the county. The Marian regime was able to revitalize the old religion, and the Elizabethan Settlement encountered widespread opposition. Catholic practices could not be excluded from the established Church, and Catholic recusancy developed earlier and on a wider scale than in any other area of England.

English Reformations takes a refreshing new approach to the study of the Reformation in England. Christopher Haigh's lively and readable study disproves any facile assumption that the triumph of Protestantism was inevitable, and goes beyond the surface of official political policy to explore the religious views and practices of ordinary English people. With the benefit of hindsight, other historians have traced the course of the Reformation as a series of events inescapably culminating in the creation of the English Protestant establishment. Dr Haigh sets out to recreate the sixteenth century as a time of excitement and insecurity, with each new policy or ruler causing the reversal of earlier religious changes. This is a scholarly and stimulating book, which challenges traditional ideas about the Reformation and offers a powerful and convincing alternative analysis.

Twenty years ago, historians thought they understood the Reformation in England. Professor A. G. Dickens's elegant The English Reformation was then new, and highly influential: it seemed to show how national policy and developing reformist allegiance interacted to produce an acceptable and successful Protestant Reformation. But, since then, the evidence of the statute book, of Protestant propagandists and of heresy trials has come to seem less convincing, Neglected documents, especially the records of diocesan administration and parish life, have been explored, new questions have been asked - and many of the answers have been surprising. Some of the old certainties have been demolished, and many of the assumptions of the old interpretation of the Reformation have been undermined, in a wide-ranging process of revision. But the fruits of the new 'revisionism' are still buried in technical academic journals, difficult for students and teachers to find and to use. There is no up-to-date textbook, no comprehensive new survey, to challenge the orthodoxies enshrined in older works. This volume seeks to fulfill two crucial needs for students of Tudor England. First, it brings together some of the most readable of the recent innovative essays and articles into a single book. Second, it seeks to show how a new 'revisionist' interpretation of the English Reformation can be constructed, and examines its strengths and weaknesses. In short, it is an alternative to a new textbook survey - until someone has time (and courage) to write one. The new Introduction sets out the framework for a new understanding of the Reformation, and shows how already published work can be fitted into it. The nine essays (one printed here for the first time) provide detailed studies of particular problems in Reformation history, and general surveys of the progress of religious change. The new Conclusion tries to plug some of the remaining gaps, and suggests how the Reformation came to divide the English nation. It is a deliberately controversial collection, to be used alongside existing textbooks and to promote rethinking and debate.