London Parish Clergy and the Protestant Reformation, 1547–1559

1986 ◽  
Vol 18 (3) ◽  
pp. 375-393 ◽  
Author(s):  
Barrett L. Beer
Keyword(s):  
Religious Orientation ◽  
Church Of England ◽  
Protestant Reformation ◽  
Religious Change ◽  
Henry Viii ◽  
English Reformation ◽  
Working People ◽  
The Government ◽  
Parish Clergy ◽  
City Of London

Although significant changes took place in the Church of England between 1547 and 1553, the Protestant Reformation under Edward VI has received less attention from historians than the Reformation under Henry VIII or Elizabeth I. The publication of A. G. Dickens'The English Reformationin 1964 marked the beginning of a redirection of reformation studies which included a deeper appreciation of the importance of the Edwardian Reformation. Dickens saw the English Reformation as part of a larger European religious crisis and focused attention on Lutheran, Calvinistic, and other continental influences that contributed to the development of protestantism under Henry VIII and Edward VI. Emphasizing the successes of Edwardian reformers, Dickens wrote, “Such evidence as we can adduce suggests that Protestantism continued steadily to expand amongst the upper and middle classes, while … able preachers could still make many converts among the working people of the towns.” In recent years, however, regional studies have revealed the obstacles to Protestant reform and the survival of Roman Catholicism.This essay looks at the Edwardian Reformation from the center of England, the city of London, and examines religious change at the parochial level. It is based on sixty-three clergy who were appointed to a total of sixty-six London benefices between 1547 and 1553 and traces their careers through the reign of Mary to the Elizabethan settlement of 1559. The essay studies the process of parochial reform by examining the exercise of patronage and attempting to determine the quality and religious orientation of beneficed clergy. It also seeks to identify the successes and failures of the government of Edward VI as it sought to promote Protestant reforms throughout the country.

Calvin's Influence on the Theology of the English Reformation

Ecclesiology ◽  
2010 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
pp. 315-341
Author(s):  
Martin Davie
Keyword(s):  
Church Of England ◽  
John Calvin ◽  
Elizabeth I ◽  
Henry Viii ◽  
English Reformation ◽  
The Church ◽  
Westminster Assembly

AbstractThis paper traces the influence of John Calvin on the English Reformation from the time of the breach with Rome under Henry VIII until the great ejection of dissenting puritan clergy from the ministry of the Church of England in 1662. It argues that Calvin's teaching only began to have an impact on the English Reformation during the reign of Elizabeth I and that although his theology had a widespread impact on both individuals and groups within the Church of England it never shaped the Church's official doctrine, liturgy or pattern of ministry, although it seemed likely that this would be the case at the time of the Westminster Assembly in the 1640s. It also raises the question of whether Calvin sought episcopacy from the Church of England in the reign of Edward VI.

The Reformation in Anglicanism

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alec Ryrie
Keyword(s):  
National Identity ◽  
Church Of England ◽  
The State ◽  
Central Position ◽  
Henry Viii ◽  
English Reformation ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
English National Identity ◽  
Prayer Books ◽  
The Church

The outline of the English Reformation under Henry VIII and the later Tudors is no longer heavily contested. While politically led and slow to take root, it eventually took shape as a decisively Reformed Protestant, even Calvinist, Reformation with a stress on the doctrine of predestination, even though Cranmer retained some traditional trappings in his Prayer Books. Terms such as ‘Anglican’ and ‘via media’ ought not to be applied to the Church of England before 1662. However, that church’s subjugation to the state and the central position it acquired in English national identity helped to sow the seeds of later Anglican distinctiveness. The Reformation’s legacy for modern Anglicans is divisive, and it is used dishonestly, as a weapon, by all sides. This is in part because the true extent of its popularity in its own time remains open to dispute.

A Moveable Feast: Saint George's Day Celebrations and Religious Change in Early Modern England

1999 ◽  
Vol 38 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-27 ◽  
Author(s):  
Muriel C. McClendon
Keyword(s):  
Catholic Church ◽  
Protestant Reformation ◽  
Religious Change ◽  
English Reformation ◽  
English History ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
Religious Doctrine ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
Broad Outline ◽  
The Catholic Church

Recent writing on the English Reformation has been dominated by the so-called revisionists. While not all revisionist historians have advanced an identical interpretation of the Reformation, the broad outline of their argument is neatly summarized in the opening lines of J. J. Scarisbrick's The Reformation and the English People: “On the whole, English men and women did not want the Reformation and most of them were slow to accept it when it came.” While earlier writers argued that the Reformation period represented a sharp break in English history with a definitive rejection of Catholicism, revisionists have asserted that there was considerable continuity in the religious life of sixteenth-century men and women. The Catholic Church was strong and vital and commanded considerable loyalty among the laity, and changes to religious doctrine and practice generated considerable hostility. The demise of the Catholic Church in England was not assured, and the success of the Protestant Reformation was the result of a long straggle fought from above that was won only during the middle years of Elizabeth's reign.The revisionist interpretation has commanded wide attention and support. It currently stands, in many respects, as the new orthodoxy of English Reformation historiography. Most historians now concur on the profound attachment of many men and women to the doctrine and worship of the Catholic Church and their reluctance to abandon them. Nevertheless, a number of questions about the revisionists' interpretation of the Reformation and English religiosity remain.

The Reformation of the Ministry in Elizabethan Sussex

1983 ◽  
Vol 34 (3) ◽  
pp. 345-366 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeremy Goring
Keyword(s):  
Local History ◽  
Religious Change ◽  
English Reformation ◽  
Slow Process ◽  
Moral Standards ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
Long Time ◽  
History Of ◽  
Parish Clergy

In recent years there has been a growing interest in the local history of the English Reformation — that long, slow process of religious change which in many parts of the country did not really begin until after Elizabeth's accession and was still not complete at her death. The process was slow because of the paucity of parish clergy able and willing to preach the Word, catechise the young, upbraid the ungodly and so plant Protestantism firmly in the land. It took a long time to raise the intellectual and moral standards of the Church's personnel – to carry out a thorough ‘reformation of the ministry’.

Continental Students and the Protestant Reformation in England in the Sixteenth Century

1979 ◽  
Vol 2 ◽  
pp. 35-57 ◽  
Author(s):  
Claire Cross
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Major Change ◽  
Protestant Reformation ◽  
Elizabeth I ◽  
Henry Viii ◽  
English Reformation ◽  
Swiss German ◽  
New Information ◽  
The University

Recent studies have demonstrated the insularity of Oxford and, by inference, Cambridge in the later middle ages; far from the two universities being regarded as centres of international scholarship the presence there of students from the continent seems to have been something of a rarity. In the sixteenth century a series of only loosely connected events, Henry VIII’s break with the papacy, and, somewhat later, the explicitly protestant government of Edward VI which happened to coincide with the victory of the imperial forces in Germany brought about a major change in the university world: continental protestant theologians now looked at England with new eyes, seeing it not only, as is well known, as a haven for persecuted protestant leaders, but also as a suitable centre of education for their young men. The first English exiles who went abroad for the sake of their religion in the reign of Henry VIII reinforced by the far greater number who fled from the Marian persecution made no secret of their belief in the vast superiority for the advancement of protestantism of the continental schools, especially those of Strassburg, Zurich and Geneva, but a group of contemporary Swiss, German, and French students adopted a rather different attitude. To them the English universities offered opportunities they did not have at home. One or two aspired to even higher realms and nourished ambitions of influencing thecourseof the religious settlement in England. A fresh account of their experiences in England from the later years of Henry VIII to the death of Elizabeth I may reveal new information on a rather less familiar aspect of the relationship between the great continental reformers and the English reformation.

Religious Change in the Mid-Tudor Period

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
John N. King
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Roman Catholic ◽  
The State ◽  
Elizabeth I ◽  
Religious Change ◽  
Henry Viii ◽  
Holy Communion ◽  
The Government ◽  
Political Turmoil ◽  
Common Prayer

Mid-sixteenth-century England witnessed unprecedented religio-political turmoil. Following the death of Henry VIII in 1547, the government of Edward VI fostered a controversial programme of Protestant reform by instituting public worship in the vernacular based upon Bible readings, officially authorized sermons, and rejection of transubstantiation and replacement of the Mass with celebration of Holy Communion in the form of a communal meal in accordance with the second Book of Common Prayer (1552). The government relaxed restraints on Protestant propaganda at the same time that it blocked publication of Roman Catholic books. Following King Edward’s death in 1553, Mary I reversed changes in the state religion introduced under her late father and brother. Book publication underwent contraction as the government encouraged renewed publication of Roman Catholic books. Following the accession of Elizabeth I in 1558, her government restored Protestant doctrine and worship in line with the 1552 prayer book.

The Church of England and the Churches of Europe

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tony Claydon
Keyword(s):  
Church Of England ◽  
Roman Catholic ◽  
Protestant Reformation ◽  
The Church

In the period 1662–1829 the Church of England saw itself simultaneously as a national Church for England, as a branch of the European Protestant Reformation, and as a part of a community of Churches across the continent. These identities caused tensions by suggesting different answers to the question of who were true Christians abroad. Anglicans might feel affinities both with Roman Catholic establishments and with the Protestant populations who challenged them. These tensions were managed in part by ambiguity and a determination not to press one identity too hard at the expense of others. This allowed the Church to maintain strong links with a wide variety of the faithful overseas. But tensions were also managed by an increasing spirit of accommodation. Both the Toleration Act of 1689 and the eventual emancipation of Dissenters and Catholics were aided by the struggles of the Church to contain its own internal diversity.

scholarly journals Populism, Twitter, and COVID-19: Narrative, Fantasies, and Desires

2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (8) ◽  
pp. 294
Author(s):  
Laura Cervi ◽  
Fernando García ◽  
Carles Marín Lladó
Keyword(s):  
Text Analysis ◽  
Political Discourse ◽  
Social Reality ◽  
Ability To Work ◽  
The Core ◽  
Global Pandemic ◽  
The People ◽  
Working People ◽  
The Government ◽  
Do So

During a global pandemic, the great impact of populist discourse on the construction of social reality is undeniable. This study analyzes the fantasmatic dimension of political discourse from Donald Trump’s and Jair Bolsonaro’s Twitter accounts between 1 March and 31 May. To do so, it applies a Clause-Based Semantic Text Analysis (CBSTA) methodology that categorizes speech in Subject-Verb-Object (SVO) triplets. The study findings show that in spite of the Coronavirus pandemic, the main beatific and horrific subjects remain the core populist signifiers: the people and the elite. While Bolsonaro’s narrative was predominantly beatific, centered on the government, Trump’s was mostly horrific, centered on the elite. Trump signified the pandemic as a subject and an enemy to be defeated, whereas Bolsonaro portrayed it as a circumstance. Finally, both leaders defined the people as working people, therefore their concerns about the pandemic were focused on the people’s ability to work.

Parliament, Privy Council, and Local Politics in Elizabethan England: The Yarmouth-Lowestoft Fishing Dispute

1990 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 39-64 ◽  
Author(s):  
David M. Dean
Keyword(s):  
Central Government ◽  
Local Politics ◽  
Local Communities ◽  
Henry Viii ◽  
Central Authority ◽  
Privy Council ◽  
Clearing House ◽  
Royal Court ◽  
Major Exception ◽  
The Government

In his celebrated presidential addresses to the Royal Historical Society between 1974 and 1976 Sir Geoffrey Elton explored three “points of contact” between central authority and local communities: Parliament, the royal council, and the royal court. Parliament, he argued, was “the premier point of contact,” which “fulfilled its functions as a stabilizing mechanism because it was usable and used to satisfy legitimate and potentially powerful aspirations.” Elsewhere Elton, and other parliamentary historians such as Michael Graves, Norman Jones, and Jennifer Loach, have stressed parliament's role as a clearing house for the legislative desires of the governing class. The author of this article has recently drawn attention to the pressures which private legislation placed on the parliamentary agenda and the attempts by the government to control it. All of this supports Elton's contention that parliament, from the perspective of central government, was indeed a vital means of ensuring stability and channelling grievances.However, few studies have viewed parliament from the perspective of the local communities and governing elites who sought parliamentary solutions to their problems or even parliamentary resolutions to their disputes with others. The major exception to this has been London. Helen Miller's seminal study of London and parliament in the reign of Henry VIII and Edwin Green's on the Vintners lobby, have been recently complemented by Ian Archer's on the London lobbies in Elizabeth's reign, Claude Blair's on the Armourers lobby, and my own study of the struggle between the Curriers and Cordwainers. These not only reveal the broader context of such disputes, but emphasize that parliament was only one of many arenas available to participants. This important point has also been stressed by Robert Tittler in his study of parliament as a “point of contact” for English towns.

Devotion, Discontent, and the Henrician Reformation: The Evidence of the Robin Hood Stories

2002 ◽  
Vol 41 (1) ◽  
pp. 6-22 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sean Field
Keyword(s):  
Social Institution ◽  
Religious Change ◽  
Henry Viii ◽  
Robin Hood ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
Local Parish ◽  
Fresh Perspective ◽  
The Face ◽  
Late Fifteenth ◽  
The Masses

The relationship between popular religious attitudes and the English Reformation has long been the subject of a fierce historical debate. The older “Whig-Protestant” view, championed most notably by A. G. Dickens, draws on evidence for clerical corruption and the spread of Lollardy to show that large numbers of English people were dissatisfied with the state of Catholicism, eager for religious change, and on the whole receptive to Protestant ideas. According to this version of events, Henry VIII and the Reformation Parliament rode a wave of popular discontent in breaking from Rome and dissolving the monasteries. If there was a split between the king and the masses, it came only later when Henry's conservative religious beliefs caused him to attempt to retain much of the substance of Catholicism in the face of popular clamor for more thoroughgoing reform. On the other hand, the “revisionist” camp, which includes such well-known names as J. J. Scarisbrick, Christopher Haigh, and Eamon Duffy, prefers to cite evidence from wills, local parish records, liturgical books, and devotional texts to show that “the Church was a lively and relevant social institution, and the Reformation was not the product of a long-term decay of medieval religion.” In this view, Henry VIII and his advisors pushed through a personally advantageous but widely disliked and resisted Reformation.An examination of the religious content of the tales men and women told about Robin Hood in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries offers a fresh perspective on this long-running dispute.

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