Synopses & Reviews
"This is a stunningly good book. It deserves to be the first port of call for any students wishing to understand this rich, widely studied and complex period of British history. Ryrie's book is the best survey of English politics and the English Reformation in at least a generation and should go on to command the field for many years to come."
Professor Andrew Pettegree, University of St Andrews
"Clear-sighted, judicious, based on the most up-to-date scholarship and written with clarity and dry wit, this is the ideal introduction to an age which (impressions gained from television notwithstanding) remains profoundly alien to modern students."
Professor Diarmaid MacCulloch, University of Oxford
The sixteenth century was an age of Reformation. There was religious reformation, as Protestantism came to England, Scotland and even Ireland, bringing liberation, chaos and bloodshed in its wake. And there was political reformation, as the Tudor and Stewart (later Stuart) monarchs made their authority felt within and beyond their kingdoms more than any of their predecessors. Together, these two reformations produced not only a new religion, but a new politics absolutist yet pluralist, populist yet law-bound and a new society controlled, fractured, yet more widely engaged and empowered than ever before.
In this book, Alec Ryrie provides an authoritative overview of these momentous events, showing how religion, politics and social change were always intimately interlinked, from the murderous politics of the Tudor court to the building and fragmentation of new religious and social identities in the parishes. Drawing on the most recent research, he explains why events took the course they did and why that course was so often an unexpected and an unlikely one.
Alec Ryrieis Reader in Church History at Durham University. His other books include The Sorcerers Tale (2008), The Origins of the Scottish Reformation (2006), and The Gospel and Henry VIII (2003).
Review
"Written with real verve and originality and manages to make well-worn subjects appear fresh and suprising."
Lucy Wooding, Times Higher Education
Synopsis
Starting with the religious inheritance of the 15th century, this book examines the religious policies pursued by both English and Scottish governments and looks at the strengths and weaknesses of the British churches at the turn of the century and new developments during the coming decades.
Moving on to the period 1520-1570, there follows a description of the causes, course and impact of the Reformations in both England and Scotland, in comparison with one another and in international context.
The final section examines how the Protestant churches were bedded down in Elizabethan England and Jacobean Scotland, with particular attention paid to the interaction btween the new religion and popular culture.
Synopsis
A new introduction to Tudor Britain that fully integrates the religious and political aspects of the narrative, and covers the period from the perspectives of England, Scotland and Wales.
- A clear, lively and accessible narrative of one of the most widely studied periods of British history, combining a synthesus of recent scholarship informed by fresh research
- Deals with events in England, Scotland and Wales, placed within the European context where relevant
- Fully integrates the religious and political aspects of the era, which are too often treated in isolation in other books on the subject
About the Author
Alec Ryrie is Lecturer in Modern History at the University of Birmingham.
Table of Contents
Series Editors Preface
Preface
Acknowledgements
Chronology
Maps
1 The World of the Parish
Living in early modern Britain
A lost world
Plague and its aftermath
Diversions and hopes
The Church as an institution
The structure
The clergy
Beyond the parish
Parish Christianity
Inside the parish church
The Mass and its meaning
The living and the dead
Satisfaction and dissent
Heresy
Anticlericalism
2 Politics and Religion in Two Kingdoms, 14851513
Governing Britain
Kingship, lordship and elective monarchy
Structures of government
Church and state
The usurpers tale: Henry VII and the restoration of stability
Challenge and survival: the pretenders
Money and control
Kingship and legitimacy
The lord of the world: James IVs Scotland and the theatre of kingship
3 The Renaissance
Out of Italy
The weight of history in the Middle Ages
The Italian Renaissance and what came of it
The Renaissance in Britain
Scotland
England
Renaissance and Reformation
Books and printing
4 Renaissance to Reformation
Henry VIII and the glamour of kingship, 150927
The performer king
The Cardinals king
The Lutheran heresy
A problem of theology
The arrival of heresy in England
Scotland: religion and politics under James V, 151342
5. Supreme Head: Henry VIIIs Reformation, 152747
The break with Rome
Conscience and dispensation: two trials, 152729
A new approach: 152932
From Divorce to Reformation
The Henrician Reformation
Books and articles: the doctrinal Reformation
King Hezekiah: the Henrician Reformation in practice
Reactions and responses
Religious conservatives: active resistance, passive resistance
Evangelicals: from loyalty to frustration
The wider population: confusion and conformity
6. The English Revolution: Edward VI, 154753
Carnival: Protector Somersets Reformation
From Henry VIII to Protector Somerset
The gospellers unleashed, 154749
Official Reformation: the first phase
154950: the hinge of the Edwardian regime
The end of Seymours Protectorate
Religious opposition and its failure
Lent: the Duke of Northumberlands Reformation
Consolidation and division: the official Reformation
The future of the Edwardian Reformation
Elective monarchy revisited: the Jane Grey debacle
7. Two Restorations: Mary and Elizabeth, 155370
Mary
Religion, marriage and their consequences
Rebuilding the Church
The Protestant problem
The end of the regime and the transfer of power
Implementing the Reformation
8. Reformation on the Battlefield: Scotland, 154273
Regency, 154258
The crisis of 1543
The Rough Wooing
French Scotland, 155059
The Scottish Revolution, 155861
An unexpected war
An unexpected peace
A tragedy of errors: Mary and the Scots, 156173
Playing the queen, 156167
Kings men and queens men, 156773
9. Gaping Gulfs: Elizabethan England and the Politics of Fear
Marriage and the succession: the long crisis
From elective monarchy to monarchical republic
The marriage problem
By halves and by petty invasions: war and rumours of war
Catholicism, popery and the enemy within
Protestant Scotland: from kirk session to presbytery
A disciplined Church
Bishops and presbyteries
Puritans and conformists in England
The long struggle against the Settlement
The resurgence of conformity
Building Puritanism in the parishes
Popular religion in Elizabethan England: a group portrait
11. Reformation and Empire
Securing peripheries, 14851560
The end of independent lordships: Ireland and Wales, 14851534
The Henrician settlements
Reformation in the uplands
The Celtic Reformations 15601603: success and failure
Wales and the Scottish Highlands: the path to Protestantism
Ireland in the balance
Ireland, England and Essex: the crisis of the 1590s
Epilogue: Electing a Monarch, 1603
Selected Bibliography
Index