Reformation England 1480-1642 (Arnold Publication) (Modern Wars) - Softcover

Peter Marshall

4.14

37 ratings by Goodreads

9780340706244: Reformation England 1480-1642 (Arnold Publication) (Modern Wars)

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0340706244 ISBN 13: 9780340706244

Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic, 2003

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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.

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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 2004-07-01)

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 2005-04-02)

About the Author:

Professor of History, University of Warwick, UK

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