Kirjahaku

What did ordinary people believe in post-Reformation England, and what did they do about it? This book looks at religious belief and practice through the eyes of five sorts of people: godly Protestant ministers, zealous Protestant laypeople, the ignorant, those who complained about the burdens of religion, and the Catholics. Based on 600 court and visitation books from three national and twelve local archives, it cites what people had to say about themselves, their religion, and the religions of others. How did people behave in church? What did they think of church rituals? What did they do on Sundays? What did they think of people of other faiths? How did they get along together, and what sort of issues produced tensions between them? What did parishioners think of their priests and what did the clergy think of their people? Was everyone seriously religious, or did some people mock or doubt religion? If these questions have been tackled before, it has usually been by way of claims about what the common people believed in books written by members of the educated ranks about their contemporaries. In contrast, by going directly to other sources of evidence such court records and parish complaints, this book illuminates what ordinary people actually said and did. Written by one of our leading historians of early modern England, it is a lively and readable account of popular religion in England under Elizabeth I and the early Stuarts, dealing with the results of the Reformation, reactions to official policy, and the background to the Civil Wars of the mid-17th century.

Historians have long known that Lancashire remained more solidly Catholic after the Reformation than any other part of England, but the peculiarity of the area has never been explained. This book argues that for geographical, social and economic, as well as religious reasons, orthodox Catholicism in the county was at its high-point immediately before the Reformation, so that the history of religious change in Lancashire in the sixteenth century is not the conventional one of Protestant triumph and Catholic failure. The Henrician Reformation was met by resistance and rebellion, while the Edwardian reforms were inadequately enforced and made little impact, though a handful of radical preachers made a few gains in one corner of the county. The Marian regime was able to revitalize the old religion, and the Elizabethan Settlement encountered widespread opposition. Catholic practices could not be excluded from the established Church, and Catholic recusancy developed earlier and on a wider scale than in any other area of England.

The reign of Elizabeth I was one of the most important periods of expansion and growth in British history - the "Golden Age". This celebrated and influential study reconsiders how Elizabeth achieved this, and the ways in which she exercised her power. It analyses the nature of her power through an examination of her relations with Parliament, the Council of Ministers, the Church, the nobility, military and the English people themselves.

The reign of Elizabeth I was one of the most important periods of expansion and growth in British history, the so-called 'Golden Age'. This celebrated and influential study of Elizabeth reconsiders how she achieved this and the ways in which she exercised her power.