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The beginnings of English Protestantism

Catholic to Protestant in 60 years

THE BEGINNINGS OF ENGLISH PROTESTANTISM
Edited by Peter Marshall & Alec Ryrie
Cambridge University Press
242 pages. £14.95
ISBN 0 521 00324 5

Available in both hardback and paperback, this book is a collection of essays by nine British and American historians. It focuses attention on the critical early years of English Protestantism, trying to grapple with what Ryrie thinks is the 'intractable question' of how a Roman Catholic nation in the 1520s became a more or less Protestant nation by the 1580s.

The contributors are convinced that recent studies of the English Reformation have tended to be dominated by studies of the reigns of Elizabeth (1558-1603) and the Stuarts who followed her. The essays attempt to shift the emphasis on to those who became Protestants in the early and middle decades of the 16th century.

As a result we are presented with studies on the following themes:

1. Evangelical conversion in the reign of Henry V111
2. The Friars in the English Reformation
3. Clement Armstrong and radical religion
4. The problem of allegiance in the English Reformation
5. Women, men and the marital yoke in the early Reformation
6. The challenge of the Freewillers 1550-1558
7. Printing and the Reformation: the English exception
8. John Day: master printer of the English Reformation
9. Night schools, conventicles and churches: continuities and discontinuities in early Protestant ecclesiology.

The essays do not combine to present a history of early English Protestantism, as the disparate titles listed above indicate. The reader is tacitly assumed to have a first-class grasp of the basic story, both secular and religious, of the period concerned.

Though the authors would not be prepared to admit it, they all continually struggle with issues that demand spiritual perception. One example among many is that it is a 'problem' to understand how the English Reformation came to be, in Diarmaid MacCulloch's phrase, 'a howling success'. A distinctively Christian writer would refer to the work of the Holy Spirit. If the reader is prepared to accept a secular 'understanding' of various spiritual issues, and read on, he will come away much better informed about some rarely-aired themes. The chapter about the friars reveals the remarkable success which accompanied the preaching of Latimer among them. Chapter 6 on the 'Freewillers' is an eye-opener, and the section about printing and John Day's influence is nothing less than fascinating.

As might be expected, this is a scholarly book which makes demands on the reader. It has 'revisionist' pretensions in some areas, but all in all it makes informative study.

D.J. Stephens, Liverpool