The Beginnings of English Protestantism

A collection of challenging essays examining the early Protestants in the English Reformation.

Peter Marshall (Edited by), Alec Ryrie (Edited by)

9780521003247, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 30 May 2002

256 pages, 6 b/w illus.
22.8 x 15.2 x 1.7 cm, 0.414 kg

'… stimulating set of essays … we have here a volume that will be of immense value to historians …' Journal of Ecclesiastical History

Studies of the English Reformation have tended either to emphasise the vitality of traditional religious culture, or to shift the focus to the reigns of Elizabeth and the early Stuarts. As a result the men and women who once seemed central to the story, those who became Protestants in the early and middle decades of the sixteenth century, have tended to be marginalised. These essays draw attention to those critical early years, and to the importance of the evangelical movement in the making of England's religious revolution. By considering themes such as conversion and martyrdom, gender and authority, printing and propaganda, and the long shadow of medieval religious culture, the authors show early English Protestantism to have been a complex and many-headed movement. Rather than assuming the onward march of Protestantism, the essays reveal the unpredictable and deeply-contested process by which an English Protestant identity came to be formed.

List of illustrations
Notes on contributors
List of abbreviations
Introduction: Protestantisms and their beginnings Peter Marshall and Alec Ryrie
1. Evangelical conversion in the reign of Henry VIII Peter Marshall
2. The friars in the English Reformation Richard Rex
3. Clement Armstrong and the godly commonwealth: radical religion in early Tudor England Ethan H. Shagan
4. Counting sheep, counting shepherds: the problem of allegiance in the English Reformation Alec Ryrie
5. Sanctified by the believing spouse: women, men and the marital yoke in the early Reformation Susan Wabuda
6. Dissenters from a dissenting Church: the challenge of the Freewillers, 1550–1558 Thomas Freeman
7. Printing and the Reformation: the English exception Andrew Pettegree
8. John Day: master printer of the English Reformation John N. King
9. Night schools, conventicles and churches: continuities and discontinuities in early Protestant ecclesiology Patrick Collinson
Index.

Subject Areas: History of religion [HRAX], Social & cultural history [HBTB], Early modern history: c 1450/1500 to c 1700 [HBLH], British & Irish history [HBJD1]