Mary Morrissey intends further research on sermons preached at Paul’s Cross in London, but in this book she focuses on the “minority of sermons that concern political and religious controversies” (xii). She confines her period to the eighty-four years between the mid-Tudor Reformation and the Civil Wars. She embraces the notion of “interdisciplinary” research, providing “historical answers to historical questions” while analyzing texts “hitherto neglected” by other literary scholars (xiii). Her scholarly approach encompasses the history and operations of Paul’s Cross: what it looked like, who chose the preachers, and even to where auditors and preachers alike retired in the rain. Historians and literary scholars will find the study illuminating about a familiar location in London history and culture that has not undergone much recent analysis.

Morrissey first addresses the history of the Paul’s Cross series. She describes the pulpit’s proximity to the book trade and its appearance and seating. Civic and national government leaders attended sermons, with London’s lord mayor and aldermen being the most regular attendees. Uncovering the social makeup of the audience as a whole is difficult, but a sermon convened a “notable gathering” (23). Elizabethan and Jacobean crowds, Morrissey argues, were larger and more diverse than those under Charles I, particularly during the “implementation of the ‘Elizabethan settlement’” (24). The preachers addressing these audiences in the early years of Elizabeth’s reign were motivated by “evangelical zeal” rather than remuneration (30). Regular pay and perks became more common after later endowments by bishops as well as prominent citizens. Benefactors in the pre-Reformation period would have been identified in the beadroll; Morrissey plausibly suggests sermons created an acceptable, post-Reformation alternative for commemoration. In the mid-1630s, or at least by 1641, the pulpit came down, even as preaching continued inside the cathedral.

The second chapter examines how sermons were delivered and moved into press. Preachers delivered sermons from notes rather than a text, using preaching handbooks for choosing a biblical text for expounding and “applying,” following John Donne’s description (55). The difficulty of hearing sermons in open air and bad weather, Morrissey postulates, encouraged publication. Publication could occur posthumously, using an auditor’s notes, although preachers sometimes wrote out sermons after delivery or to provide a courtesy to those assigned to “rehearse” the original. Paul’s Cross sermons, even unauthorized versions, were popular for printers. The printed text might expand on the sermon but would remain true to the original structure and what was “essential.” Thus the printed form was taken as a “record” of the spoken (48–49). Preachers contrasted the “lively voice” and the “dead letter” but used different media to reach both the reading and the hearing audiences.

Chapters 3 and 4 function as a pair, on controlling sermons and controlling the pulpit. In chapter 4, Morrissey shows how Paul’s Cross could be used versus heterodoxy, particularly with book burnings and infrequent executions, and employed in “performance” of orthodoxy. Penance, conversion, and recantation, particularly in the historical context of the Jesuit mission in England, prevailed in this orthodox message. Morrissey argues that episcopal and governmental attempts to control the subject matter of sermons and the pulpit resulted in less attention to the Paul’s Cross series and smaller audiences. Fewer sermons from Paul’s Cross were printed in the 1620s and later. Morrissey concludes that the lack of outcry at the pulling down of the pulpit, indeed uncertainty about its exact date of destruction, shows how the pulpit’s influences had been reduced by the 1630s. Puritan lectureships in London parishes became instead the real hotbed of controversy and activity, not Paul’s Cross.

In discussing the monarchs’ relationship to the sermon series, Morrissey contrasts Elizabeth and the two Stuart monarchs. Elizabeth was more interested in the spectacle created around the pulpit than the sermon itself, in contrast to James, who concerned himself with his literary image and had more interest in sermons themselves. Preaching under the two rulers, however, similarly made providential interpretations of national political events, whether in Accession Day sermons or the Gunpowder sermons of James’s reign. By contrast, under Charles I, sermons on political anniversaries declined. Morrissey notes the “Laudians’ failure to make good use of Paul’s Cross” and the lack of success with “more overtly propagandistic” preaching (159). Political and religious themes were not artfully and effectively joined; this observation suggests an opportunity for commentary on inadequacies and missteps of the reign. Morrissey says that the series once “crucial” to the Reformation had declined by Charles’s time; preaching moved indoors and was directed most of all to London’s government rather than to a wider community (228).

In her last two chapters, Morrissey addresses anti-Catholic and antipuritan preaching at Paul’s Cross. She stresses that we cannot discern the auditors’ beliefs, only what the preachers thought. She argues that preachers’ ad hominem did not signal intellectual weakness but instead undermined opponents’ reliability without engaging in theological debates. Antipopery became a way to exhort auditors to godliness and prevent heterodoxy; anti-Islamic preaching, also voiced from Paul’s Cross, could be employed in like fashion. Preachers used confutational sermons to confront Catholicism but were more likely to use doctrinal sermons against puritanism. Arguments against puritans hinged on their potential for sedition and schism.

One consequence of Morrissey’s need to limit the scope of her study is to divide what is defined as “political” from other subdisciplines, particularly what might fall under social or cultural history. This may have the unfortunate effect of reinforcing the sense of Paul’s Cross being a national pulpit but especially a political tool. More fundamentally, the distinction may be an artificial one. These concerns aside, Morrissey takes the familiar and reveals what has been missing in our knowledge of Paul’s Cross. In addition, she makes an important, interdisciplinary contribution to the understanding of sermon culture, an area of renewed scholarly interest that is crucial to early modern studies.