"England's Long Reformation" brings together a distinguished team of scholars, who seek to advance beyond current debates concerning the English Reformation. It puts the religious changes of the 16th century in longer perspective than has been traditional and counters the recent emphasis on the popularity of pre-Reformation Catholicism. Instead the case is argued for an underlying trajectory of evangelical activity from the 1520s. The contributors also examine some of the hybrid religious forms which developed and the propagation of the more uncompromising messages of Puritanism and Counter-Reformed Catholicism. Taking their cue fom continental historians, the authors demonstrate the insights which can be derived by taking a long view of the Reformation in England. The processes of Protestantization and indeed Christianization were involved, with each new generation needing to be won over or at least re-educated. The interaction of religion and society - particularly as regards the so-called "reformation of manners" - is another central theme. Ranging from Tudor Norwich to Hanoverian Bristol, the work collectively breaks down some of the artificial barriers created by periodization

England's Long Reformation" brings together a distinguished team of scholars, who seek to advance beyond current debates concerning the English Reformation. It puts the religious changes of the 16th century in longer perspective than has been traditional and counters the recent emphasis on the popularity of pre-Reformation Catholicism. Instead the case is argued for an underlying trajectory of evangelical activity from the 1520s. The contributors also examine some of the hybrid religious forms which developed and the propagation of the more uncompromising messages of Puritanism and Counter-Reformed Catholicism.; Taking their cue fom continental historians, the authors demonstrate the insights which can be derived by taking a long view of the Reformation in England. The processes of Protestantization and indeed Christianization were involved, with each new generation needing to be won over or at least re- educated. The interaction of religion and society - particularly as regards the so-called "reformation of manners" - is another central theme. Ranging from Tudor Norwich to Hanoverian Bristol, the work collectively breaks down some of the artificial barriers created by periodization and encourages a new way of looking at the English Reformation. This volume should prove valuable reading for those interested in the making of a Protestant nation.

Focusing on the crisis of transition marked by the English Revolution (1640-60), this collection of essays also places it in the context of a long seventeenth century. Leading experts in the field explore this theme with special reference to developments in politics, religion and society, at both national and local levels. The volume breaks decisively with recent historiography, in emphasising both the long-term nature and revolutionary implications of the seventeenth-century events in question. Features of the crisis include the growing challenge to the confessional state from within the ranks of Protestantism itself and the enlargement of the public sphere of politics, fuelled increasingly by the role of print, along with the painful emergence of a new style parliamentary monarchy and associated fiscal-military apparatus. The explosive role of religion especially is highlighted, in chapters ranging from the popularity politics engaged in under Elizabeth I to the escalating party strife of Charles II's reign and beyond. At the same time the epicentre of the revolution is firmly located in the two tumultuous decades of civil war and interregnum. The volume will be essential reading for both students and teachers working on this period. -- .

During the sixteenth century, England underwent a religious revolution. This book examines the reverberations of this Protestant Reformation, which continued to be felt until at least the end of the seventeenth century. Brings together twelve essays by Nicholas Tyacke about English Protestantism, which range from the Reformation itself, and the new market-place of ideas opened up, to the establishment of freedom of worship for Protestant nonconformists in 1689. For this collection the author has written a substantial introduction, and updated the essays by incorporating new research. -- .

The first general study of different attitudes to conformity and the political and cultural significance of the resulting consensus on what came to be regarded as orthodox. The different ways in which people expressed `conformity' or `nonconformity' to the 1559 settlement of religion in the English church have generally been treated separately by historians: Catholic recusancy and occasional conformity; Protestant ministerial subscription to the canons and articles of the Church of England; the innovations made by avant-garde conformist clerics to the early Stuart Church; and conformist support for the prayer book in the 1640s. This is the first book to look across the board at what was politically important about conformity, aiming to assess how different attitudes to conformity affected what was regarded as orthodox or true religion in the English Church: that is, the political and cultural significance of the ways in which one could obey or disobey the law governing the Church. The introduction places the articles in the context of the recent historiography of the late Tudor and early Stuart Church. PETER LAKE is Professor of History, Princeton University; MICHAEL QUESTIER is Senior Research Fellow, St Mary's Strawberry Hill. Contributors: ALEXANDRA WALSHAM, MICHAEL QUESTIER, PAULINE CROFT, KENNETH FINCHAM, THOMAS FREEMAN, PETER LAKE, ANDREW FOSTER, NICHOLAS TYACKE, DAVID COMO, JUDITH MALTBY.

Altars are powerful symbols, fraught with meaning, but during the early modern period they became a religious battleground. Attacked by reformers in the mid-sixteenth century because of their allegedly idolatrous associations with the Catholic sacrifice of the mass, a hundred years later they served to divide Protestants due to their re-introduction by Archbishop Laud and his associates as part of a counter-reforming program. Moreover, having subsequently been removed by the victorious puritans, they gradually came back after the restoration of the monarchy in 1660. This book explores these developments, over a 150 year period, and recaptures the experience of the ordinary parishioner in this crucial period of religious change. Far from being the passive recipients of changes imposed from above, the laity are revealed as actively engaged from the early days of the Reformation, as zealous iconoclasts or their Catholic opponents -- a division later translated into competing protestant views.
Altars Restored integrates the worlds of theological debate, church politics and government, and parish practice and belief, which are often studied in isolation from one another. It draws from hitherto largely untapped sources, notably the surviving artefactual evidence comprising communion tables and rails, fonts, images in stained glass, paintings and plates, and examines the riches of local parish records -- especially churchwardens' accounts. The result is a richly textured study of religious change at both local and national level.