The English Reformation: Religion and Cultural Adaption

Recent debate over the English Reformation has turned around how Catholic the nation was before the Reformation. Most scholars now believe that there was little popular support for the change in religion imposed by Henry VIII. And yet, by the end of Elizabeth′s reign England was clearly Protestant. It had abandoned much of its late Medieval culture and replaced it with a new formulation. The book explores how the English, over three generations, adapted to the religious changes and, in the process, radically reconstructed their culture. Using personal histories, the author explores how individuals and the institutions in which they lived and worked, such as families, universities, towns, guilds, and Inns of Court, refashioned themselves in the face of the rapid social, ideological, political and economic changes brought about by the Reformation. Tracing these responses across three generations, the author emphasizes the way generational interaction and self interest interrelated to adapt to new circumstances, creating, by the late sixteenth century, a multi–theological culture that exalted nationalism and valued the individual conscience.

List of Illustrations. Abbreviations. Acknowledgements. 1. Post Reformation Culture. 2. Choosing Reformations. 3. Families and Reformations. 4. Dissolutions and Opportunities. 5. Redefining Communities. 6. Reinventing Public Virtue. 7. Learning Private Virtue. 8. The Post – Reformation World View. Notes. Select Bibliography. Index.

Norman Jones is Professor and Chair of History at Utah State University. His previous publications include Faith by Statute: Parliament and the Settlement of Religion, 1559 (1982), God and the Moneylenders (Blackwell Publishers, 1989), The Birth of the Elizabethan Age: England in the 1560s (Blackwell Publishers, 1992) and The Parliaments of Elizabethan English (Blackwell Publishers, 1993).

"This is an excellent book; original in conception, penetrating in analysis, broad in its range of reference, and vivid in the telling." Susan Brigden, Lincoln College, Oxford "[This book contains] a great deal to fascinated and stimulate debate." Times Literary Supplement " Jones provides the reader with portraits of the Reformation′s impact on people across the social and political spectrum. This is social history at its best. It is detailed without being cluttered and engaging without being gossipy. Highly recommended for general readers, upper–division undergraduates, graduate students, researchers and faculty." D.M. Whitford, Claflin University, in Choice, Nov. 2002 " Norman Jones is a formidable scholar of political history. The last chapter on private virtue stands out as a thoughtful and intricate examination of the difficulties Elizabethans experienced in appealing to conscience as the arbiter of virtue and truth while remaining loyal members of a state run church... Jones writes very well [and] the book is a reliable guide to the process of reformation" Ben Lowe, Florida Atlantic University " Jones′ concluding remarks capture the profound significance for the later English and British history of the Protestant culture that was born under the flexible religious policies that prevailed in Elizabeth I′s long reign. In its focus on conscience this culture contained within the itself both the source of future conflict and a model for its resolution. It would be most welcome now to extend these deep and important insights about the culture of England′s elite into the lives of the lower and middling sort." Renaissance Quarterly