Between the 1540s and the 1560s, the English clergyman and bestselling devotional writer Thomas Becon composed or translated at least fifty-seven works. By the standards of Tudor England, this was a remarkable literary output. Moreover, as Becon noted in the preface to the 1564 folio edition of his Worckes, his numerous publications did not discuss abstract theology ‘farre remoued from the common sense and capacitie of the people’, but rather matters that ‘might edifye the brethren’. These texts included dialogues, prayer books, catechisms, verse tracts, collections of homilies and pious meditations. They sought to transform and inform the piety of a wide cross-section of Tudor society from maids and mothers to merchants and magistrates. They therefore furnish invaluable material for historians seeking to understand the profound religious, political and social changes that reshaped early modern England during the sixteenth century.

However, as Brian L. Hanson rightly notes, scholarship ‘has generally not been generous to Becon’ (p. 14), preferring to mine his works for quotations rather than to consider them in their proper contexts. In light of this paucity of analysis, amounting to one poor modern biography and a handful of articles and book chapters, Reformation of the commonweal seeks to place Becon in his ‘historical and theological context and to assess his writings in light of that context’ and, in so doing, to illuminate how English reformers ‘viewed themselves in relation to the commonwealth’ (pp. 13–14). These are laudable goals and Hanson should be congratulated on his apt articulation of the ‘situation-dependent’ nature of evangelical commonwealth discourse (pp. 13, 20).

Unfortunately, this work is marred by historical errors and omissions which compromise its praiseworthy aims. Becon was born in 1512, not ‘in either 1512 or 1513’ (p. 14). He was born in Brettenham, not Thetford (pp. 14, 83–4, cf. p. 26). He was probably a member of Pembroke College, rather than St John's College in Cambridge (pp. 14, 28). Moreover, he was certainly not the vicar of St Eanswythe in Brenzett in Kent (pp. 14, 34, 194), as a local tradition claims, since Archbishop Cranmer's register reports the incumbents of this parish in considerable detail. Likewise, he was likely not the rector of Buckland in Herefordshire (pp. 15, 206) as this incumbent remained in this position until well after Becon's death. Furthermore, Becon published at least fifty-seven original works and translations, rather than ‘around thirty-five’ (pp. 11, 247–50). While this discrepancy is partially explained by the fact that Hanson's total does not count the additional treatises included in the third volume of Becon's Worckes as separate texts, it also results from the omission of many publications overtly produced by Becon, such as his Gnomotheca Solomonis, Anthologia Lactantii Firmiani, Xenophontis Gnomologiae and Coenae Sacrosanctae Domini Nostri Iesv Christi (one of which is curiously referenced at p. 15), as well as several anonymous and pseudonymous tracts which can now be ascribed to him, including An heauenly acte and The resurreccion of the masse (see J. Reimer, ‘The lost works of Thomas Becon’, The Library xxi [2020], 477–97).

These mistakes and absences not only distort Becon's biography and significance, but also lead to problematic interpretations. For example, Hanson maintains that Becon's Gouernaunce of vertue was published ‘sometime between mid-1547 and the latter part of 1548’, instead of in 1544 or 1545, as claimed by Alec Ryrie, as it ‘seems unlikely that Becon would have published anything that bore his name within one or two years of his recantation’ (p. 84). However, Becon explicitly stated in a later preface to this work that he originally released it anonymously during ‘the bloudye and boysterous burning time, when the reading of the holye Bible … was forbidden the poore lay people’; an unequivocal reference to its printing in the wake of the promulgation of the Act for the Advancement of True Religion in 1543. Similarly, the first edition of his pamphlet An heauenly acte was almost certainly published in 1546. Both overt and covert evidence, therefore, undercuts Hanson's presentation of Becon's sojourn in the Midlands as ‘qualitatively different from his time of hiding in Kent’ (p. 65) and his interpretation of this exile as a period of ‘deliberate silence’ marked by ‘a complete absence of writing’ (p. 84). Likewise, Hanson contends that Becon's Elizabethan collection of sermons reveals a volte-face on auricular confession (pp. 182–3) and showcases his use of ‘rebel language in his sermons’ (pp. 210, 212). Nevertheless, since John Strype, writing at the beginning of the eighteenth century, scholars have argued that this collection was a translation; a conclusion which fits well with Becon's translations of works by Urbanus Rhegius (pp. 85, 248), Caspar Huberinus, François Lambert and Marcantonio Flaminio. Though Becon definitely wrote the preface and domesticated key passages, such as the reference to ‘our Lady of Ipswiche’ (p. 33), the question of whether or not this text is a translation must be addressed in order to demonstrate that it truly shows a shift in his theology – especially given the evidence of his continued interest in the practice of confession in the Reliques of Rome (sig. Q4r) – and provides the singular Elizabethan proof of his ‘seditious’ language (p. 212).

This does not mean that this book is without redeeming qualities. Hanson is right to assert that Becon was ‘Lutheran to the core’ (pp. 21, 47). Moreover, his textual analysis of Becon's New pollecye of war (pp. 94–9) and his considerations of Tudor poverty and poor relief (pp. 111–22) are excellent. As a result, Reformation of the commonwealth provides an illuminating perspective on the social politics of Tudor evangelicals which might profitably be read alongside recent works like Ryan M. Reeves's Early evangelicals and Tudor obedience and Karl Gunther's Reformation unbound. Unfortunately, it does not furnish a reliable source for understanding Becon's life and writing and his significance for interpreting Tudor religion and society.