Even if there were not ten thousand reformations in sixteenth century England, one for every parish, there were most likely a score of different paths and patterns whereby communities and individuals negotiated the challenges of religious change. Arguments that the Reformation in England was fast or slow, early or late, successful or unsuccessful, top-down or bottom-up falter in the face of local particularity. The quality and vitality of the priesthood, affection for religious houses, effectiveness of church administrators, appeal of reform ideas, and zeal of lay elites all varied with local history and circumstance. The city, county, and region of Gloucester in southwest England have received extensive scholarly attention, but even here there is no consensus. Caroline Litzenberger (The English Reformation and the Laity: Gloucestershire, 1540–1580 [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997]) perceived a gradual change, slowed by an overwhelmingly conservative laity, a view in tune with other revisionist work on the persistence of traditional religion. Lowe, by contrast, in this archival study of the politics of religious change, finds a fast adoption of the Henrician and Edwardian reforms among the civic and landed elites of the city and vale of Gloucester. “It was an age resplendent with hope and possibility,” writes Lowe with enthusiasm (188), but it was also an age of deals and negotiation. Here was a Reformation “that resonated far beyond fine points of doctrine” (82).
Different sources lead to different conclusions, and so do alternative understandings of the experience of “Reformation.” Lowe focuses on the mercantile and administrative leaders of the buoyant city of Gloucester and their gentle and aristocratic neighbors in the surrounding country. We see little here of lesser people, yeomen or artisans, and almost nothing of women. Nor is there more than passing comment on the alteration of ritual, the dismantling of liturgical infrastructure, or the consequences of the assault on purgatory. This is not a reformation of faith or theology, although that shaped the background, but rather a reformation of political loyalty and amelioration of the common good.
Commonwealth and the English Reformation traces changes from the beginning of the Tudor era, when there was no Reformation in sight, to the opening decade of Queen Elizabeth's reign when, by this account, the Reformation was effectively complete. It exposes the weaknesses of Gloucester's many religious houses, especially their loss of members and wavering of mission, and shows how lay patrons and managers helped keep them afloat. The close involvement of civic and gentle leaders in monastic and ecclesiastical affairs, and their willingness to take ownership of institutions they had previously served, helps to explain the ease with which the dissolution was accomplished. Lowe introduces the reader to an array of interlinked families whose relationship with the church was personal and pragmatic. They include early Lutherans and Catholic traditionalists, though most adhered to the official religious policies of the state and adopted a moderate Protestantism. Lowe does not refer to this as a “quiet” reformation, though he allows that “the whole process in Gloucester seems to have been met more with a whimper than a bang” (62), at least until Queen Mary's reign. Their wills, for the most part, show a break from traditional piety if not full-fledged Protestantism.
Lowe's leading families had long and fruitful associations with pre-reformation religious houses, as stewards, tenants, or economic partners, and most of them benefited from the dissolution and the subsequent redistribution of monastic lands. It was not greed that drove them, nor godly conviction, so much as the opportunity to make good use of former ecclesiastical resources. Gloucester's Dominican friary was replaced by a cap factory, Greyfriars became a brewery, and the parts of St. Peter's Abbey that were not stripped by the townsmen became a new cathedral of the Church of England. Though many of the principal players were, or became, or sided with evangelicals, they seem to have responded more to social, civic, and political initiatives than to calls of devotion and piety.
The exception is John Hooper, Gloucester's energetic reforming bishop, whose unflinching Protestantism led to his martyrdom under Queen Mary. Lowe's account of the burning of Hooper, in the churchyard of St. Mary de Lode, draws primarily on The Acts and Monuments of John Foxe (London: John Day, 1563) and seems to share his perspective. Hooper arrived at Gloucester in April 1551, was arrested in September 1553, and was burned as a heretic in February 1555. Hooper brought reforming passion and theological definition to his brief episcopate and preached a gospel of the commonwealth, community needs, and good works. “I have great hope of the people. God send them good justices and faithful ministers in the church, and all will be well,” wrote Hooper, a sentiment so uplifting that Lowe quotes it twice (189, 210). The bishop was well regarded by prominent local laymen who shared his concern for the public welfare and common good. Lowe too seems to favor a communitarian ethos, in which church and state promote the material and educational needs of the people. His closing words express the hope that this history of Commonwealth and Reformation “might still articulate and inform certain contemporary longings and hopes that, in our more cynical age, might otherwise seem to have died or become irrelevant” (254–55).
The book is attractively designed and printed, with two dozen well-chosen illustrations. It is a valuable addition to a splendid series.
