Summary: In this seminar we pick up a theme we last directly considered at the end of Term 1, the development of a reforming movement in English society as a whole (and whether we are now justified in calling it Protestant rather than evangelical). A particular focus will be the methodological problems of assessing the extent of Protestant advance, and the utility of different types of sources, in particular wills, for measuring changes in popular belief.

Seminar and essay questions:

a) How deeply entrenched in English society was Protestantism by 1553?

b) How useful are wills as a source for understanding religious belief?

 

C Haigh, English Reformations, ch 11

E Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars, ch 15 (a)

DM Palliser, ‘Popular reactions to the Reformation during the years of uncertainty’, in

F Heal and R O’Day eds Church and Society in England; also in C Haigh ed, The English Reformation Revised (a)

S Brigden, London and the Reformation, ch 10 (a)

J. D. Alsop, ‘Religious Preambles in Early Modern English Wills as Formulae’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 40 (1989) (b)

C Litzenberger, ‘Local Responses to Changes in Religious Policy Based on the Evidence from Gloucestershire Wills’, Continuity and Change, (1993). Another version in E. Carlson (ed), Religion and the English People (1998) (b)

------------, The English Reformation and the laity: Gloucestershire 1540-1580 (1997), ch 4

J Craig and C Litzenberger, C., ‘Wills as religious propaganda: the testament of William Tracy’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History (1993) (b)

C Cross, C., ‘Wills as evidence of popular piety in the Reformation period: Leeds and

Hull’, in D. Loades (ed), The End of Strife (1984)

Alec Ryrie, ‘Counting Sheep, counting shepherds: the problem of allegiance in the English Reformation’, in Peter Marshall and Alec Ryrie (eds), The Beginnings of English Protestantism (2002) (a, b)

AG Dickens, ‘The Early Expansion of Protestantism in England 1520-1558’, Archiv fur Reformationsgeschichte (1987) and in Dickens, Late Monasticism and the

Reformation. Also in Marshall (ed) Impact of the English Reformation (a)

----------, The English Reformation,2nd ed - ch 13 gives abbreviated version of above

article.