Interest in Mary Tudor's reign is having one of its periodic revivals. The last one, in the late 1970s and early to mid-1980s, had a largely (though not exclusively) political orientation. The current one, to which this volume is a praiseworthy contribution, is largely religious in focus. The essays cover many institutional and cultural aspects of the Marian church, as well as Mary's personal religion and the role of Cardinal Reginald Pole. Although the accessibility to nonspecialist readers varies greatly, all of the essays are marked by fine scholarship.

An introductory essay on Mary's personal religion by David Loades is one of the book's highlights and could easily be assigned even to undergraduates. Loades sees Mary as essentially humanist in her approach to religion, noting that she did not go on pilgrimages or restore shrines, showed no particular interest in purgatory and intercessory prayer, and kept the English Bible. Her devotion to the Mass, evident in Edward's reign and the basis of the persecutions that have blemished her historical reputation, was the outstanding feature of her personal piety.

The volume's first full section focuses on institutions: the episcopacy, the universities, Westminster Abbey, and the church courts. Mary's bishops are shown by David Loades to have been decent men and diligent administrators, but the majority were academic theologians, lacking in the pastoral experience that might have helped win support for the restored church. Claire Cross argues that both Mary and Pole took seriously the importance of the universities as training grounds for preachers and moved quickly to transform them. However, if the personnel could be changed as a result of aggressive attention, the training of new preachers was still going to take time—more than the regime had. Failure was not for lack of trying. C. S. Knighton reports on the membership, finances, and administration of Westminster Abbey. The most intriguing point in this essay is that although there were at least one thousand surviving former Benedictines who could have joined the community, membership in the restored Abbey never exceeded around fifty monks at any one time, and about half of those were new to monasticism. Ralph Houlbrooke examines the work of the Norwich church courts in restoring Catholicism, with a particular focus on what happened to the Edwardian clergy. Norwich is perhaps a strange choice to use in this volume because, as Houlbrooke acknowledges, very little happened in the church courts. The chapters in this section do make contributions to our knowledge of the strengths and weaknesses of the Marian church, but they do not make easy reading. All four of them devote many paragraphs to serial biography in some form, and the names and minor details can overwhelm the analysis. It is, however, easy to skim them for the main points.

The second section is ostensibly about Cardinal Pole, although John Edwards's essay is actually about Bartolomé Carranza, and Pole is barely mentioned. The authors of the other two essays, Thomas Mayer and Eamon Duffy, politely but thoroughly undermine the work of Rex Pogson, which has been the accepted version for over two decades, and their two essays must now be the starting point for all students seeking to understand Pole's contributions. Duffy's piece on Pole's 1557 St. Andrew's Day sermon is a minor masterpiece, asserting convincingly that Pole was in fact enthusiastic in his support for preaching and the “evidence” that he was not is Pogson's mistranslation and misinterpretation of a 1558 letter from Pole to Carranza. Mayer demonstrates the effectiveness of Pole's administration through an effective study of the records of the appeals process he offered.

Four final essays appear together under the fuzzy title of “The Culture.” Of these, Lucy Wooding's on the restoration of the Mass and William Wizeman's on Thomas Watson's sermons stand out, and work very nicely together. Wooding argues that speaking of the Mass as “restored” is somewhat misleading, since Marian preaching and writing about it took up some new emphases. In particular, authors defended the Real Presence with Biblical and Patristic (rather than Scholastic) sources and emphasized the spiritual (rather than physical) benefits of the sacrament. Wizeman disagrees with Wooding's reading of Watson on many issues, such as the importance of the pope, good works, and purgatory. Gary Gibbs's essay on Henry Machyn's manuscript is an extremely useful textual study. Gibbs does not say much directly about the Marian church, but he does help us to understand how this major source ought to be used. And what would a collection of essays be without something from Patrick Collinson? In a final chapter, on the Marian persecutions in Kent (of which there were a disproportionate number), Collinson explains both how John Foxe received and tweaked his evidence and that the Marian martyrs included large numbers of men and women so heterodox that the Protestants would have killed them too.

As noted in my comments above about Wooding's and Wizeman's essays, a notable feature of this volume is the contradictions between contributors. In some cases, that can be defended as healthy scholarly debate, and the editors are to be commended for not projecting a false impression of consensus. But there seems little justification for the editors allowing, for example, Edwards to make an argument using the very evidence that Duffy effectively discredited concerning Pole and preaching. A slightly heavier editorial hand would also have been welcome in paring down the numbing biographical details that lessen readability in some essays. While the price will probably make this volume a denizen of only a few research libraries, all scholars interested in the field should make an effort to track down the nearest copy. There is much worth reading here, and some very important new interpretations to be embraced.