By examining the unusual course of religious change in Tudor Norwich, this book significantly revises the study of both the Reformation and the history of religious toleration in England. It shows that though Norwich experienced a genuine and far-reaching reformation in the sixteenth century, even becoming a hub of Puritan activity in the Elizabethan era, it did so without the breakdown of community, habitual intolerance, and widespread persecution that has been the focus of recent scholarly studies of the period.
Drawing on extensive and largely unexploited municipal archives, the author argues that the course and outcome of the Reformation in Norwich were shaped in important ways by the city's magistrates. She demonstrates that the magistrates, who were religiously divided themselves, practiced a "de facto" religious toleration throughout the sixteenth century. Although they endorsed each change in Tudor religious policy in a formal sense, they neglected to enforce conformity and to discipline religious dissidents in their jurisdiction. Instead, they acted to defuse local religious disputes without notifying Church or central government officials. They did not extend this "de facto" toleration out of respect for the beliefs of dissenters or any idea of religious diversity. Rather, they executed a political strategy to deflect outside attention from religious affairs in the city and thus keep civic authority in their own hands.
In showing that conflict and persecution were not inescapable consequences of religious change in the sixteenth century, this book challenges the received assumption of historians about the implacability of religious conflict in Reformation England. It conclusively shows that religious coexistence was possible, and in Norwich, exercised for most of the Tudor period, over a full century before most historians have commonly traced its emergence.

This book explores the complex ways in which England's gradual transformation from a Roman Catholic to a Protestant nation presented men and women with new ways in which to fashion their own identities and to define their relationships with society.
The past generation's research into the religious history of early modern England has heightened our appreciation for the persistence of traditional beliefs in the face of concerted attacks by followers of Henry VIII and his successor Edward VI. The book argues that the present challenge for historians is to move beyond this revisionist characterization of the English Reformation as a largely unpopular and unsuccessful exercise of state power to assess its legacy of increasing religious diversification. The contributors cast a post-revisionist light on religious change by showing how the Henrician break with Rome and the Edwardian implementation of a Protestant agenda had a lasting influence on the laity's beliefs and practices, forging a legacy that Mary I's efforts to restore Catholicism could not overturn.
If, as revisionist research has stressed, late medieval Christianity provided the laity with a wide array of means with which to internalize and individualize their religious experiences, then surely the events of the reigns of Henry and Edward vastly expanded the field over which the religiosity of English men and women could range. This book addresses the unfolding consequences of this theological variegation to assess how individual spiritual beliefs, aspirations, and practices helped shape social and political action on a family, local, and national level.