Product Description

Interest in the English Reformation is flourishing, and recent years have seen the publication of much important work which is not readily accessible to students and their teachers. Reformation England provides a clear and critical account of recent scholarly approaches, while at the same time retaining a narrative drive.



There is a growing perception among scholars that the English (and Welsh) experienced a `Long Reformation', whose roots lie in the fifteenth century, and whose effects were still being felt well into the seventeenth. Yet general surveys of the Reformation often begin the story in 1529, and most draw to a close at some point in the sixteenth century. This book insists that to make sense of the Reformation it is necessary to adopt a less restricted view-point. The subject is not merely the changes to official doctrine and ritual initiated by Henry VIII and concluded by Elizabeth I, but a fundamental cultural transformation which arguably did more than any other process to shape the kind of society England was to become in modern times. Reformation England combines reassessment of familiar debates and topics with introductions to newer historiographical concerns: religious life before the Reformation; the early evangelical movement; aims and achievements of the Henrician, Edwardian, and Marian Reformations; meanings of `puritanism' and `catholicism' in the later sixteenth and seventeenth centuries; the nature of religious `conformity'; religious conflict and the advent of civil war. The book addresses a problem whose ramifications are still with us: why the English became divided over religion, and why, despite the efforts of a succession of governments, those divisions could not be healed. (20050402)

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #125493 in Books
• Published on: 2003-06-27
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 256 pages

Review
The chronological range is ambitious, the secondary literature covered is extraordinarily extensive and the judgements meted out are measured and sensible. The volume should become required reading for undergraduates. --Ecclesiastical History



Marshall is extremely careful to disentangle the interpretative controversies which surround the reformation period from the evidence itself, and this is perhaps the most valuable aspect of his study. --(Archive for Reformation History Vol 33 )

Review
The chronological range is ambitious, the secondary literature covered is extraordinarily extensive and the judgements meted out are measured and sensible. The volume should become required reading for undergraduates. (Ecclesiastical History )

Marshall is extremely careful to disentangle the interpretative controversies which surround the reformation period from the evidence itself, and this is perhaps the most valuable aspect of his study. (Archive for Reformation History Vol 33 )

About the Author

Professor of History, University of Warwick, UK

Customer Reviews

An incredibly useful book!
I was initially attracted to this work because of the dates - it is traditional to view 'the English Reformation' as something that happened between Henry and Elizabeth's reigns so it came as a welcome surprise to see someone locating the process before and beyond these parameters.

Once I read it I discovered it to be an excellent introduction to the key debates about the politics of religion and religious conflict in Tudor and early Stuart England. Not only was it well laid out into manageable chunks of information by period, but its discussion of the debates and the works that underly them was easy to follow and well written to boot!

All in all, this is exactly what it says on the cover - a fine introduction for students of early modern religion to the subject which they should find so useful that they will refer to it again and again. FULL MARKS!!!