This study of popular responses to the English Reformation analyzes how ordinary people received, interpreted, debated, and responded to religious change. It differs from other studies by arguing that the subject cannot be understood simply by asking theological questions about people's beliefs, but must be understood by asking political questions about how they negotiated with state power. Therefore, it concerns political as well as religious history, since it asserts that, even at the popular level, political and theological processes were inseparable in the sixteenth century.

This book brings together leading historians of Catholicism and other notable historians of early modern English society in order to pull Catholicism back into the mainstream of English historiography, and to ask readers to suspend their assumptions and prejudices about the nature of Catholic history. Its primary assertion is that many of the fundamental issues of English history cannot be adequately understood without taking into account a Catholic perspective, while many of the fundamental issues of Catholic history cannot be understood in isolation from the rest of English society....

Why was it that whenever the Tudor-Stuart regime most loudly trumpeted its moderation, the regime was at its most vicious? With the answer to this fundamental question at its heart, The Rule of Moderation comprehensively rewrites the history of early modern England, showing that many of its key developments the via media of Anglicanism, the rise of the 'middle sort', the idea of political liberty, the development of empire, the rise of religious toleration were defined and defended as instances of coercive and aggressive moderation, producing the 'middle way' through the forcible restraint of...

Religion in Tudor England offers readers the prose and the poetry, the theology and the spirituality, the prayers and the polemics, of one of the most important epochs in the making of modern Christianity. Beginning with King Henry VII, the Tudors' reign included the break with Rome and the rise of English Protestantism, a series of religiously inspired revolts, the burnings of nearly three hundred Protestants for heresy under Queen Mary, the executions of scores of Catholics for treason under Queen Elizabeth, and the emergence of the Puritan challenge to the Church of England. Moreover, the...