Church and People: England 1450–1660

In the medieval system the Pope and Bishops ruled the Church, the Monarch and Lords ruled the State. However, in England from the fourteenth century with the rise of Lollardy, this division was increasingly challenged by the laity′s insistence on their right to choose not only between different systems of Church governments but also between different forms of religious belief. Church and People traces the laity′s struggle to achieve supremacy in the English Church and shows how the political and social developments between 1450 and 1660 were decisively influenced by this conflict, as Monarch, Church and Parliament sought to use lay disaffection to further their own political ends. This edition contains a new bibliographical essay.

Acknowledgements. 1. Prologue: Lay Questioning of the Medieval Church. 2. Lollard Revival and Conservative Reform. 3. The Henrician Reformation: Protestantism, Anti–Clericalism and the Royal Supremacy. 4. Protestant Advance and Popular Reaction. 5. Catholic Restoration and Protestant Resistance. 6. The Elizabethan Church: Settlement and Separation. 7. Protestant Consolidation. 8. The Laudian Ascendancy. 9. Implementing Lay Supremacy, 1640–1660. 10. Epilogue: The Achievement of Lay Power in the Church. Bibliographical Appendix: Change and Continuity. Abbreviations. Notes. Bibliography. Index.

Claire Cross is currently Professor of History at the University of York, where she has taught since 1965. A Cambridge graduate, she was county archivist of Cambridgeshire from 1958 to 1961, and Research Fellow at Reading University between 1962 and 1965. Her other books include The Puritan Earl: The Life of the Third Earl of Huntingdon (1967) and The Royal Supremacy in the Elizabethan Church (1969) and she has edited The Letters of Sir Francis Hastings (1969), York Clergy Wills 1520–1600 (1984 and 1989), with N. Vickers, Monks, Friars and Nuns in Sixteenth Century Yorkshire (1995) and a collection of essays, Patronage and Recruitment in the Tudor and Early Stuart Church (1996).

"Scholarly, lucid, illuminating, objective and extremely readable . . . an outstanding contribution." ( Church Times ) "Good historical writing is a rare commodity, and it is a pleasure to meet it in Claire Cross′s new book." ( The Tablet )