Practicality has emerged as a central theme in current historiography of the English Reformation. Kenneth Fincham and Nicholas Tyacke's innovative use of physical objects, such as communion cups and altars, in their recent work Altars restored is indicative of this approach. From questioning whether a communion table could be moved frequently between services, to why the printer John Day felt confident to embark on printing so expensive a work as John Foxe's Acts and monuments, pragmatism seems a successful and promising approach to be embraced in future research.Footnote 1 This review suggests that, from distinct perspectives, such as from above and from below, an examination of the limits of the possible highlights continuity throughout the long Reformation. It surveys and analyses recent historiographical approaches to the Reformation through the themes of cultural adaptation, the consequences of utilizing particular sources, and the problem of assessing reform. Focusing on pragmatism, it reveals continuity not only in the expected historiographical strands of local and social history but also in the history of intellectual elites, through its consideration of the limits of theological debates, grammatical constructs, and humanist modes of argument. Yet it continues to recognize the friction and polemic present in early modern theological texts. In this way, this essay seeks to demonstrate pragmatism's unifying effect on ostensibly opposing strands within scholarship. It also suggests that this approach may bring historians closer to their subjects since they share many of the same practical problems, such as the difficulties of measuring reform. This is keenly illustrated in the challenges faced by those in authority in the 1650s who sought to mould the English into a godly nation. The Reformation continues to ignite debate among historians, but the prevailing winds in scholarship appear to the newcomer to be those of co-operation and a search for common ground, rather than the confrontation and conflict that characterized this field in the latter part of the twentieth century. Perhaps it is simply more practical.
Earlier approaches in Reformation historiography (which arguably started in the period itself) attempted to record the march to modernity and the inevitable triumph of Protestantism, either by charting the course of high-end politics and legislation, or the more Foxeian method of tracing the martyrs of ‘true religion’ and the path of the ‘rapid Reformation from below’.Footnote 2 On the one hand, it was assumed that once England became legally a Protestant land, the orders from the centre were followed in the localities and the English could be considered as reformed. Benevolent authorities educated any stragglers in their flocks into Protestantism through an increase in literacy, preaching, and catechisms. On the other hand, ‘rapid Reformation from below’ interpretations described how the Reformation was a welcome step along the path to enlightenment seized upon by the vast majority. The English people were keen to leave behind a corrupt and greedy Catholic church and suffered greatly when forced to return to it under ‘bloody’ Mary. Yet with ‘good Queen Bess’ the English people fully embraced their Protestant faith and reaped its rewards in a golden age.
Thus the first serious challenge that this style of Reformation interpretation posed to the status quo was one of direction: did the Reformation occur from above or from below? There were severe limitations to viewing the Reformation from above. A legally reformed England was not necessarily a nation of Protestants.Footnote 3 The adoption of a broader chronology underlines the point, for an obedient nation bowing to the religious views of their monarch would not fight a civil war against their king fuelled by religious controversy. Close studies of particular localities demonstrated the tension between legal prescriptions and local obedience, begrudging compliance and wholehearted Protestant enthusiasm.Footnote 4
Moreover, close examination of current Reformation historiography highlights disagreements as to what the term ‘Reformation’ actually means and when the phenomenon ended in practical terms. If we consider the end of the Reformation as the point at which the first generation of English individuals conceived of themselves as living in a Protestant world, with little or no knowledge of the united late medieval church in England, we find a relatively short Reformation.Footnote 5 Alternatively, the Reformation can be seen as the process of working out the Protestant desire for reform of the established church, a much longer ongoing development, and one that was constantly threatened on all sides. This second approach is generally more prominent in recent historiography.Footnote 6 Given that contemporaries continued to speak of further reform (either positively or negatively) far beyond that first generation; and that the practical necessity of reforming the established church as a ‘one size fits all’ religion only effectively ended with the Toleration Act of 1689 (and even that is disputed), the long Reformation seems to be the more appropriate approach.Footnote 7
Christopher Haigh's 1982 intervention in this journal played a seminal role in heralding Reformation continuity, and is largely the starting point for the historiography considered in this article.Footnote 8 Haigh's model of clustering interpretations into groups according to whether the impulse for religious change came from above or below, or whether change was fast or slow (and various combinations of these matrices) found wide acceptance. More significantly, while taking a local approach, his outlook marked a break in Reformation historiography and challenged scholars to reassess their approaches. Consequently, Haigh's piece simultaneously endorsed A. G. Dickens's pioneering localist approach and utterly rejected Dickens's firmly established interpretation of the English Reformation.Footnote 9 Towards the end of the twentieth century, Reformation historiography moved away from its assumption that Protestant laws inevitably created a Protestant people. More recently, the top-down versus bottom-up model for Reformation change has been ‘exposed as inadequate’.Footnote 10 A series of complex two-way negotiations, collaborations, and episodes of resistance between authorities and subjects throughout the early modern period now stands in its place.
Thus, localism characterized late twentieth-century scholarship of post-Reformation England. The arrival of the local record office enriched our understanding of the complexities of early modern English life.Footnote 11 The resulting studies enabled new approaches to two key early modern subjects: the Reformation and the civil war. In general, scholars now broadly accept that towns in the south-east, as centres of national and international trade (and by extension literacy), were most likely to accept and promote further Protestant reform, albeit sometimes at the insistence of leading townsmen. By contrast, small rural communities were more inclined to conservative sentiments. In essence, the greater the distance from the capital and major trade routes, the longer it took for Protestant ideas to permeate an area. The interpretation of a rapid Reformation from above is dead; the long, slow painful struggle of eventual English acceptance of Protestantism (albeit with key turning points) is accepted by the vast majority of scholars. Overwhelmingly, scholarship emphasizes the English cultural preference for continuity.Footnote 12
Localism also refocused the debate. Leaving the court and the capital, it encouraged consideration of people at all levels of society and stimulated discussion about the relationship between the centre and the provinces. Scholars now accept that the separate motivations of ‘the learned’ and ‘the wealthy’, ‘the poor’ and ‘the illiterate’ played their part in choosing religious and political persuasions. The dissolution of a local monastic foundation was an investment opportunity for the wealthy, but seemingly the end of free health care, schooling, and charitable assistance for the poor.Footnote 13 Every individual lost some of the protection for their souls that had comforted their grandparents.Footnote 14
Scrutiny of the course and impact of the English Reformation in relation to different social groups is broadening our understanding of it. The views of the most learned in society, briefly neglected by English scholars, have re-emerged into the main debate, though following Bernard Reardon's work on Reformation thought, counter-Reformation thought remains largely the preserve of modern theologians rather than early modern historians.Footnote 15 Lucy Wooding's work highlighted the error of ignoring literate yet unexceptional Catholics; but the thoughts of illiterate Catholics, or those with only basic literacy, still remain beyond our reach.Footnote 16 This is equally true of the illiterate conformist majority. There are inherent difficulties in extrapolating from the cultural adaptation of well-educated, and often highly influential, individuals, families, and communities, to that of society in general, but we struggle to avoid them given the nature of the sources.
However, overemphasis on the themes of continuity, co-operation and general (if sometimes begrudging) compliance of the English people almost entirely removes religious change and controversy from the sixteenth century. Yet it is almost impossible to write religion out of the civil war, even if scholars are not entirely convinced that it was England's ‘wars of religion’.Footnote 17 Therefore the field called for scholars to put the controversy back into our understanding of early modern religious change and with EEBO bringing early modern printed tracts to our desks, it was destined to succeed.Footnote 18 Whereas studies of the localities had revealed people who, despite religious differences, had to co-operate to ensure the smooth running of local government and peaceful living, intense study of printed tracts revealed individuals who were keen to attack their opponents at every opportunity using any means possible. The inherent danger in this newer source base was to take the dualistic language of religious polemic, such as Arminianism versus Calvinism, at face value. Our task remains to balance these extremes.
Within recent historiography, minorities have made their mark as key constituents in the Reformation narrative. No longer consigned to victimhood, Catholics are now seen as active and innovative. ‘Actual Catholics’ have been separated from ‘the “popular” groundswell of opinion’, largely thanks to Michael Questier.Footnote 19 Nevertheless, scholarship remains imbalanced. The louder voices of conformist puritans, though obviously central to the Reformation debate, almost drown out any others.Footnote 20 Yet, however sceptical one might be about estimates as to the precise number of Catholics at any given point in this period, they were certainly a force to be reckoned with and perceived by many Protestants as threatening.Footnote 21 Numbers are not necessarily a key issue in broadening our understanding of the scale of Reformation debates and must be used with great care. The membership of the most radical Protestant sects of Anabaptists, Ranters, and Fifth Monarchists was tiny but still influential in the new model army and the republic. Despite their accepted influence, both Catholics and the most radical Protestant sects remain peripheral to the main Reformation debate and Catholics in particular seem vulnerable to historiographical fashion.Footnote 22
The legal status of Catholics created practical problems that resulted in religious and cultural adaptations. Lisa McClain's work on the adaptation of the use of rosary beads among English Catholics is indicative of the way practicality shaped the nature of English Catholicism itself. Certain material religious objects like rosaries gained greater soteriological prominence in English Catholicism due to the limited access to ‘traditional avenues to grace’ for many individuals. English Catholic authors pushed ‘orthodox Roman doctrine to its limits to provide realistic opportunities for English Catholics to worship and find comfort’ and many sacramental items had their usage and meaning redefined as the environment in which the items were used changed. It was emphasized that so long as individual English Catholics did what they could, ‘God still conferred the saving benefits of the Mass without a priest present or Mass having been said’ before them.Footnote 23 The limitations of what was practical for post-Reformation English Catholics changed the nature of their religious experience and the tone of their authors, but crucially not the possibility of their salvation.
I
The question of cultural adaptation has influenced recent examinations of the Reformation experience in daily life. The significance of cultural adaptation as an ongoing process within early modern society is demonstrated in more general terms in Norman Jones's study of local communities, families, institutions, and individuals. His recent work sets out to discover ‘how a nation of habitual Catholics turned into Protestants’, modifying the focus on habitual religion and highlighting the importance of generational turnover.Footnote 24 Bringing the pious back into the early Reformation story, it emphasizes the stark choices some individuals had to make, while still observing that the majority chose convenient obedience.Footnote 25 This view complements both aspects of recent Reformation historiography with its focus on continuity as well as emphasis on controversy. Not all individuals were required to make those stark choices: some were simply acquiescent to the prevailing government, and a majority probably followed the local leaders of their community if they provided a reasonably united front. However, we are reminded that difficult choices did face many and that the impact of their decisions was felt far beyond the individual concerned – by their extended family, their local community, and, when combined with the choices of countless others, by early modern English society as a whole.
Jones's description of the period from the break with Rome to the Elizabethan settlement as one of ‘a series of earthquakes’ that hit and reverberated across English culture is a convincing metaphor. It encapsulates the attack and destruction, not only of the apparatus of late medieval piety, but also of ‘intellectual certainty, habits of obedience, [and] the very definitions of virtue and truth’.Footnote 26 Yet at the same time we find cultural adaptation in family folklore, such as the editing of the Wentworth family's story about the conception of Sir William in 1561. Previously related as a miracle of St Anne, the saint had to be removed from the tale for the family's now Protestant ears.Footnote 27 Similarly, institutions such as livery companies, though stripped of their ‘superstitious’ functions, adapted and concentrated on the acceptable elements of their traditional roles.Footnote 28 Adaptation and appropriation are thus central to the English experience of the Reformation.
The great strength of the Elizabethan via media was its minimal requirement of outward conformity, which enabled local communities to devise their own accommodations and set the pace of reform to some extent for themselves.Footnote 29 By extension therefore, the Stuart pressure for uniformity and far tighter religious regulation were a cause for civil war.Footnote 30 In most cases, the culture reconstructed by those who lived through the sixteenth century's religious changes and who adapted older forms of religious practice in their local communities was ‘vastly different because of those adaptations’.Footnote 31
Therefore, the debate is one of degrees of difference. In adapting older practices, one can see far more continuity than change. The adjustment of families to members with differing, even opposing, religious views can be seen as a further adaptation of practices already current in some medieval families. Families such as Margery Kempe's must have had to negotiate many of the same problems as their Elizabethan counterparts.Footnote 32 What made the Reformation's impact so great was the sheer number of habitually conformist people forced to choose, perhaps even to think about, their religious convictions for the first time. Jones's portrayal of a variety of responses, the strengthening of faith in some, the scepticism and increasing religious confusion of others, is convincing. In an analysis of the Hastings family, we find that ‘mutual support, power and property’ were far more important than religious persuasions and enabled the kinship network to flourish. This essential flexibility over the issue of faith was a lesson passed down and adapted through the generations from those first confronted with ‘religious barriers’.Footnote 33
Similarly, the children of the 1550s and 1560s, such as Grace Sharington, demonstrated cultural adaptation at an individual level. They were a generation who largely created their own personal theology and made it work for them.Footnote 34 However, it must be stressed that while some did create their own theology, a significant number experienced extensive religious anxiety and uncertainty when left to their own thoughts, needing spiritual guidance and reassurance, such as that offered by the clergyman Richard Greenham.Footnote 35 Yet in Grace's case, her personal theology entailed a firm belief that her childhood Catholic friends could achieve salvation if they lived according to God's laws. Linda Pollock refers to Grace's religious outlook as ‘applied rather than theoretical Calvinism’ and this theology may well have permeated society throughout the early modern period.Footnote 36 It is certainly something preachers such as William Perkins frequently lamented, referring to it as ‘rustic pelagianism’, though we must be mindful of a puritan preacher's tendency to exaggerate the godlessness of the people.Footnote 37
II
In labelling many members of the laity ‘rustic pelagians’, Perkins applied his own method of measuring reformed religiosity to them and found them wanting. This desire to measure reform in order to chart the developments of the Reformation consumes modern historians as much as it did contemporaries. The historiography of the Reformation highlights the different methodologies utilized in our attempts to answer the question of when (if ever) England became reformed.
The clash of rapid Reformation from above or from below (dominated by Elton versus Dickens) essentially reflected the environment in which historians gathered their sources. Did they visit the public or the local record office first? The interpretations of historians emerging from extensive research of the state papers were at odds with those emerging from extended periods in local archives. The view from the localities highlighted continuity, the view from the top, change. Similarly, later scholars enamoured by the delights of EEBO saw religion as ruthless and controversial, a view that challenged their colleagues who were immersed in local parish records and generally reported continuity, compromise, and collaboration. The variety of sources exploited naturally reflected different methodologies as historians engaged with the question ‘how do we measure the Reformation?’
The seemingly huge gulf between the resulting historiographical interpretations of the Reformation is largely an illusion. By utilizing different methodologies and sources, these historians were asking different investigative questions in their attempts to gauge the extent of reform. ‘When by law must an Englishman prove himself to be a Protestant by attending a Protestant Sunday service?’ is a rather different question to ‘when did that Englishman believe in the Protestant doctrines of the Church of England?’ In other words, many apparently conflicting interpretations were ultimately disagreements over whether we should measure the Reformation in terms of the level of Protestant practice or Protestant belief.
Given that sola fide was a key concept by which Protestantism defined itself against its Catholic predecessor, it was natural for both contemporaries and historians to attempt to use faith as a measuring stick for Reformation success. However, both encountered the near impossibility of seeing into men's souls. Even the most determined members of the godly when given their opportunity to rule in the 1650s recognized the difficulties of assessing belief in another. They prioritized behavioural reform such as punishing swearing, drinking, and Sabbath profanation. Even the major-general Edward Whalley commented that he hoped for ‘a very good outward reformation’ in November 1655, presumably believing that a godly society would encourage true faith.Footnote 38 Godly magistrates were forced to consider men's actions as a better indicator than verbal professions of faith. This is not to say that these magistrates did not value oaths and religious confessions, but that they realized that the insincere found it far easier to make false statements than to explain false deeds.
Similarly, historians found it far easier to establish the actions of their subjects than their inward beliefs. The problems of extrapolating the faith of individuals or local communities from wills, churchwarden accounts, or even spiritual diaries have been eloquently discussed.Footnote 39 They are particularly evident when trying to ‘count heads’ of religious inclinations, for ‘the haphazard nature of almost all sixteenth-century documentation, and the elusive nature of religious belief in any era, makes any application of statistical methods to such questions distinctly limited’.Footnote 40 The historian, like the godly magistrate, is bound by the limits of what is doable. Historians have spent many hours trying to count Protestants and Catholics in the early modern period; it is an impossible task.Footnote 41
However, in many cases it is possible to discover what an individual did on a particular occasion; for example witnesses may have confirmed whether or not the local minister used the Book of Common Prayer on a particular day. Whether the local minister believed the Book of Common Prayer was ‘a popish rag’ is more difficult to discern; even witnesses to his use of the book might hear different implications in his tone of voice depending on their own view of its validity. For both contemporaries and historians, reasons of practicality ensured that action prevailed over faith as the measure to determine the extent of reform. In an ironic return to the late medieval Catholic outlook, contemporaries and historians placed religious practice before belief when measuring reform. It was and is simply more practical.
Thus, practicality occupies the minds of historians as much as it did the representatives of early modern government and is a central concern of recent and forthcoming scholarship.Footnote 42 Frequently, it requires historians to place themselves in the position of their subjects. At its most fundamental level, practicality as a historical approach involves consideration of the conditions of possibility, the limits of the thinkable and doable. This is a highly unifying lens through which to view the seemingly disparate avenues of recent and forthcoming historical research. For the issue of practicality concerns historians investigating the physical difficulties in moving particular communion tables just as much as it does those examining the constraints of grammatical constructs.
Practicality also makes continuity, rather than change, the more feasible basis from which to build interpretations of the Reformation. The nature of the process of Reformation change was inevitably slow burning due to the practical constraints involved. At every level of society, and at every turning point of the Reformation, we find a series of messy negotiations that do not fit a model of rapid and dramatic change. The practical limits of what was possible for contemporaries were naturally far slower to change, if indeed possible at all. Generational turnover and the eventual fading of particular ideas, individuals, and memories from the collective conscience of a local community were often necessary before the ‘new’ religion became truly accepted as the status quo and the limits of possibility could be extended further. For example, a Protestant child born in the 1620s may not be able to conceive of their local church under the authority of the pope in Rome. It is unlikely that they would have spoken to anyone with first hand experience of the pre-Reformation English church.
While contemporaries of Roger Martyn (a resident of Long Melford in Suffolk who died in 1615, depressed about the state of his parish church) would have shared his experiences of repeated religious changes and perhaps his feelings on the matter, their great, great grandchildren would not.Footnote 43 Rather they might grow up to conceive of a church not simply free from any association with Rome, but free of any association with the crown or a national church. For the average parishioner, the limits of the thinkable for the issue of authority over the English church extended only very slowly, perhaps over three or four generations. At any given point, they would see more continuity than change. The impact of any particular turning point of the Reformation would be diluted gradually as generations with experience of it died.
Due to the slow nature of the erosion of collective memory of what had been, and the messy two-way negotiations of the turning points of the Reformation itself, there was always a greater level of continuity than change in the mind of the average parishioner. Indeed, continuity was the measuring rod of change. Roger Martyn could identify the changes wrought on his parish church by the Reformation because he could remember what had been there in the 1530s. He compared this memory to what he could now see in the early seventeenth century. By seeing the continuities (presumably the fundamental structure of the building and its outward appearance had not changed) the stark changes he had lived through were visible to him. However, this was still his parish church where families came together weekly for worship as they had done and would do for generations to come. The function and significance of the church had changed very little; it remained central to life in the local community and ritually marked the movement of individuals from one life stage to the next.
Ultimately continuity, rather than controversy and change, is the most convincing foundation upon which to build interpretations of early modern Reformation history. For without the structure of continuity, there is no context for change. When deeply polemical religious statements were made, they were made with particular purposes in mind. They were made because they challenged what had always been, but they only make sense if the author knew that many of their contemporaries valued what had always been. People fought for the symbols of orthodoxy because they realized the value of continuity and recognized the attachment of the average English person to the established norms of religious worship. Control of traditional symbols was an obvious means of increasing influence. Once secured, their meaning could be gradually expanded in scope. This is particularly evident in the rich source base of the printed polemics of intellectual elites.
III
The degree to which the laity were involved in theological disputes, then as now, varied hugely. Some of the most successful recent approaches to the problem of trying to ‘get inside’ the mind of early modern individuals have utilized the key source of printed polemical religious tracts but set them in a wider cultural and theological context. This reveals a spectrum of belief rather than theological dichotomies.
Anthony Milton's Catholic and reformed is indicative of this approach and perhaps even its foundation. Its examination of ‘how divines identified the nature of their church’ explores the intricacies of post-Reformation English theology within its historical context. This approach rejects the dualistic Arminian versus Calvinist model exemplified in earlier studies by recognizing polemical tracts as pieces of persuasive writing. Polarized opinions were a function of theological debate rather than a reflection of early modern religious divisions. Milton has similarly dispelled ‘the hazy mist of a creative diversity’, which was perceived as the spirit of ‘Anglican’ moderation by those following ‘an agnostic approach’. Instead, he emphasizes the existence of a broad spectrum of firmly held religious views.Footnote 44 This model of a spectrum of belief is frequently applied to religious persuasions generally, though it seems underutilized in areas such as the neglected topic of Catholic day-to-day religious practices. The symbiotic relationship between religious belief and practice is one promising avenue of future scholarship.Footnote 45
Milton largely rejects the need to understand how much the early modern laity knew about the intricacies of theological disputations as irrelevant:
The more the polemical nature of theological discourse is grasped, the more its relationship with more popular and political perceptions of religion becomes clear … all [arenas of opinion] shared a common manipulation of the symbols of orthodoxy and heterodoxy … the fact that the layman was not versed in the arts of controversial theology hardly matters if we are discussing the impact and dynamic of religious conflict.Footnote 46
However, elements of his approach could also bear fruit in this area. Surely the impact and dynamic of particular religious conflicts would have been different if the layman had fully understood their theological significance and historical precedents? It seems likely that the ‘arts of controversial theology’ instilled in divinity schools affected the perception of religion by individuals. The recent railing-in of the altar in his parish church may well have prompted a different reaction from a layman had he possessed such knowledge.Footnote 47 Had he known the full implications of a staunchly Calvinist soteriology for a national church as well as for his own family he might have reacted differently when the time came to choose sides in the civil war.Footnote 48 One interesting avenue for future study might include the ‘context’ of the lay individual, particularly those living outside of the capital. Their background, tastes, perspectives, and particularly their education (in the widest sense of the accumulation of knowledge and skills) need to be considered in order to assess how informed ‘popular and political perceptions of religion’ may have been.Footnote 49
The parents and grandparents of those whose civil war was saturated with religion have all been described as theologians, at least if they lived in London.Footnote 50 This is rather overstating the case, but given the lively trade in print in the capital we can be convinced that many literate Londoners at least knew the general background and key points of discourse in theological controversies of the period. The laymen at Paul's Cross in 1601 ‘knew to cheer for “Bezer” and boo for “Bellamye”’ during John Dove's exposition even if they did not understand the finer points of his argument.Footnote 51 How many of those gathered were literate and informed, illiterate but informed, literate but highly specialized in their reading, or illiterate and simply following the crowd we cannot know.Footnote 52 Nonetheless, we can be convinced that where print was easily accessible, independent religious education of (and by) individuals occurred, however simplistic the result might be. Furthermore, the basics of this education became part of the fabric of early modern culture and expanded the limits of religious possibility as new opportunities became available.
Therefore, by the early Stuart period those, whether clerical or lay, who argued against Calvin realized that they would probably be attacked with accusations of popery or Arminianism. Conversely, this highlights the practical advantages of control over the agreed symbols of orthodoxy. Milton describes the deep awareness in the House of Commons of the need to sign-post the parameters of true and false doctrine, of how their Protestant identity ought to be demonstrated correctly and of those issues that might threaten it. For Milton, it is this ‘common style of discourse, an agreed use of the symbols of orthodoxy and an agreement over the manner in which compromises with confessional imperatives were to be mediated’ that made up the ‘Calvinist consensus’ rather than a ‘single, undifferentiated system of thought’.Footnote 53 If we accept the idea of a Calvinist consensus, then this view is difficult to fault.
For others, the central question is how doctrine worked within culture. Perhaps this is most clearly seen in the examination of tensions, such as those implicit in the doctrine of predestination. The lengths to which the state, the church, and individual preachers went in order to avoid pronouncing on that most divisive doctrine are well documented, and yet predestinarian thinking was far-reaching and pervaded faith, charitable works, and repentance, exerting ‘a power when unspoken as well as when spoken’.Footnote 54 The finding that predestinarianism was the elephant in the early modern room suggests that the doctrine permeated more of society than the theological disputations of learned divines. Questions surrounding their soul's salvation affected the vast majority, yet equally for most predestination posed such serious practical problems that it was best left alone.
We must be cautious not to go too far. The ability to avoid the subject of predestination or to be impressively unclear about it, which was very prominent among clergymen and preachers, demonstrates the power of early modern individuals to harness the power of language to their advantage. It takes considerable knowledge of a subject to make one aware of how little one knows about it, or how naïve today's view may seem tomorrow. This level of scholarship at least seems to have been achieved by the many early modern clerics who counselled caution over discussion of the subject.Footnote 55 However, widespread though the ‘unspoken’ power of predestinarianism may have been, it did not saturate every aspect of early modern society from the viewpoint of contemporaries.Footnote 56 Even among many later and more radical Calvinists, there was more to Calvinism than predestination and plenty of religious discussion to be had that did not involve it, whether spoken or unspoken.Footnote 57
IV
The use and manipulation of text is a key area of inquiry within current scholarship and a field where the literary scholar and the early modern religious historian in particular may produce fruitful interdisciplinary work. Following Anthony Milton's research, which in many ways views the church from the inside, particularly from the perspectives of its divines, Brian Cummings's recent, somewhat controversial, piece views the debates from the outside most successfully through an innovative focus on grammar.Footnote 58 Cummings's mastery of biblical languages, particularly his grasp of the difficulties of Hebrew (and ability to express these with clarity), encourages the reader to reconsider their own approach to texts.Footnote 59 Above all, surely this validates his approach of bringing grammar back from the ‘hinterland’ to be recognized as the carefully applied glue that held all early modern text together. For some, it defined their very way of thinking and framed its potential and its limitations.
In perhaps the strongest part of his recent work, Cummings shows the centrality of grammar to discussions of free will and grace, through an analysis of Erasmus's and Luther's dispute over Ecclesiasticus 15.15.Footnote 60 For Erasmus, si volueris (if thou wilt) only had meaning on the premise that free will existed. Yet while Erasmus derived this theological insight from the ‘seemingly incontrovertible speech acts of the Bible’, Luther equally used si volueris to refute him, basing his attack on Latin grammar. The subjunctive mood proved nothing, for ‘a conditional asserts nothing indicatively’. Similarly, Luther chided theologians (and we assume he was thinking of Erasmus in particular), as having less knowledge than schoolboys because they misconstrued imperatives in the bible. Luther stated that they had falsely assumed biblical imperatives to have implied the indicative, whereas he claimed they signified nothing ‘but what ought to be done’. Therefore, for Luther, Erasmus's quotations of biblical imperatives such as ‘choose what is good and walk in it’ proved nothing.Footnote 61 Regardless of whose interpretation and approach to such texts we find most convincing, both Erasmus and Luther clung to grammar to make ‘the intractable truth of grace tractable’. Yet while each claimed grammar to be transparent, on closer inspection they found it more ‘opaque’.Footnote 62 Such close exegesis, which nonetheless failed to effect theological agreement, pressed at the limits of possibility of the meaning of biblical language. The certainty of biblical truth was being tested, but by the unwilling.
The quality of Erasmus's work ensured it continued to be used and recognized as outstanding scholarship throughout the early modern period, though it required significant reworking for a post-Reformation audience. This has most recently been explored in Gregory Dodds's Exploiting Erasmus, in which he highlights the continuation of an Erasmian outlook throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Part of its success lay in the state's desire to maintain order. The Injunctions of Edward VI and Elizabeth, which required the Paraphrases to be placed in every parish, ensured an Erasmian legacy. While the Injunctions were naturally motivated in part by a desire to educate the people (especially the clergy), the Paraphrases also conveniently enforced the idea of supremacy of order over potentially divisive reform.
Erasmus emphasized peace and unity as a rhetoric of conformity within the church, and avoided division over predestination or condemnation of free will through stating that they were divine mysteries. These assertions ensured the continuation and assimilation of his work far into and beyond the Elizabethan period.Footnote 63 However, Erasmianism had practical constraints and the civil war and interregnum interrupted this unifying rhetoric. Milton's understanding of a Calvinist consensus of discourse from which the Laudians broke away helps to explain this. For in the process, the Laudians somewhat monopolized the Erasmian legacy when the puritans backed away from moderation in the 1630s.Footnote 64 Though cloaked in the rhetoric of peace and love, Erasmian thought was also highly aggressive against those perceived as a threat to unity.Footnote 65 This meant any group prioritizing doctrine over unity came under attack, but in particular it targeted the puritan mindset. Therefore, as some moved even further, such as Laud's zealous attitude to liturgy and movement towards sacramentalism, Erasmian rhetoric lost its ability to unify and create a via media. By the advent of the civil war, it was yet another means of driving a cultural wedge between differing religious priorities.Footnote 66 For all its power, the Erasmian outlook seems to have been unsuccessful as a glue to hold the turbulent period of 1640s England together.
V
Consensus over the state's duty to provide part of the means to salvation was felt by the English people as well as by the English church throughout this period, though the practical limits of the state's responsibility came to be tested in the 1640s and 1650s. Keith Thomas does not focus on ‘any sustained discussion of religion’ in his recent work The ends of life, yet is convinced that, for most, salvation was their ‘ultimate objective’, though its influence may have been intermittent. The Protestant church's aim remained to save the souls of its members and prepare them for the world to come.Footnote 67 The key purpose of the church did not change with the Reformation.
Though perhaps for most individuals, salvation by faith alone brought comfort, particularly when mixed with rustic pelagianism, for a minority the Calvinist doctrine of predestination, once established in the English church, caused severe spiritual anxiety. Richard Napier, an astrological doctor, received over ninety patients who had doubts about their own salvation and needed comfort in their anxiety. Few in early modern society seem to have had Thomas Merbury's confidence: ‘I feel inwardly in myself and my conscience that … I am predestinated to eternal life.’ On the other hand, Thomas believes that intense fear of hellfire was only ever a minority sentiment, which was sometimes even absent from puritans and dissenters.Footnote 68 It seems highly improbable that thoughts about their salvation consumed the majority of individuals going about their daily tasks.
From the perspective of the laity at least, there was great continuity in early modern English religion, with it remaining in many ways unchanged from that upheld by the pre-Reformation church. While the church in England legally became the Church of England, in essence the Reformation(s) of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were simply yet further ecclesiasticae reformatione following the well-trodden path of attempted reform.
The laity found practical solutions to enable religious continuity in changing circumstances both inside and outside of the local parish church. Livery companies for example ‘simply converted one form of memorial expense into another’.Footnote 69 Jones, among others, seems to imply that these alterations meant the secularization of these institutions. He claims that from around 1584 the Grocers ‘no longer saw it necessary to associate corporate worship with communal identity’. The evidence Jones cites is the changes to election day celebrations and the altering of St Antonin's day to a ‘commemoration day’.Footnote 70 Yet these ‘copycat traditions’, as Jones terms the ‘substituted analogous Protestant ceremonies’, had not ‘largely ended’ the former practices as he claims, nor had the desire for union of members in worship been utterly replaced by secular concerns and their respective dinners.Footnote 71 In 1640, the Grocers still celebrated St Antonin's day in May and the religious aspect to the celebrations once again took precedence over the secular dinner, which was cancelled.Footnote 72
London companies and other institutions certainly adapted to the religious changes of the Reformation but it was not a gradual and seamless secularization process after 1559.Footnote 73 Indeed, communal worship returned to being an integral part of a company's collective identity, which would continue to adapt and react to the social, political, and religious issues of the early modern period. Just as their long deceased company benefactors had taken comfort in communal mass during intense periods of strife, so the Grocers, on the brink of and during the civil war, came together for prayers and communal worship.Footnote 74
Nevertheless, the need to maintain order and hierarchy underlined the social importance of religion. It kept effective order over the common people; and even if some of the wealthy attended church only out of custom or to maintain appearances, it nonetheless reinforced their superior position in society: ‘For where was there obedience where religion did not teach it?’Footnote 75 The state's duty to uphold and, if necessary, to impose true religion can be demonstrated by the view of the ‘reformation of manners’ from the top. Recent work in this area has highlighted that this was not the new ‘Protestant phenomenon’ we once supposed, but had deep medieval roots, and that the state's concern over the reformation of manners was largely motivated by a practical desire for order and hence for the maintenance of its authority, and for economic prosperity.Footnote 76 Steve Hindle notes four distinctive points of the sixteenth-century ‘reformation of manners’: its intensity; the range of personal conduct regulated; the severity of punishments, with a greater focus on physical discomfort and humiliation rather than solely financial penalties; and its statutory backing. We may or may not agree with the degree to which each of these was distinctive from earlier attempts at moral reform, but Hindle's statement that this state initiative must be seen as ‘part of a larger project of good governance’ is incontrovertible.Footnote 77
The desire of the state to maintain its authority had another motivation, a soterial duty to its subjects. Hindle outlines the contemporary view that ‘if the prince was a divine figure on earth … “his lawes should have a taste and resemblance of God's laws also”’.Footnote 78 Similarly, Ingram notes that the sixteenth-century ‘reformation of manners’ drew upon traditional ideals of monarchy.Footnote 79 Just as a father had a duty of care to his children, so therefore the state, and especially the monarch, had in a sense a duty of care to the English people. This duty did not simply involve ensuring that order was maintained and the law preserved, but also furthering the spiritual well-being of the nation. Christopher Harper-Bill, amongst others, demonstrated the responsibility of the pre-Reformation bishop for the religious welfare of souls under his care.Footnote 80 At the break with Rome, this responsibility passed to the king and his bishops and was a cornerstone of the Church of England.Footnote 81
Despite a staunchly Calvinist peak in soteriology in the later Elizabethan period, across the divisions within the church of England there remained a consensus that, by accepting a benefice, a minister received a cure of souls – that understanding continued far into the following century and beyond.Footnote 82 Though tested to the extreme in the 1640s and 1650s, the concept of a national church as the vehicle of salvation remained. With the Restoration, the responsibility for ensuring the possibility of salvation for the English laity passed to the revived Church of England. An English soul might wander off the path to salvation, but there were clear instructions as to what was required and responsibility for those directions lay with the national church rather than the individual.
VI
The early modern English were a nation of pragmatists skilled at adaption and appropriation. Examining the process and success of state attempts to implement religious change, such as the mid-seventeenth-century county ejection committees, highlights the practical difficulties involved in changing the religion of the English. It also further reinforces the strength of cultural adaptation in local communities and individuals.Footnote 83 The ejection committees were arguably the most serious attempt to create a godly national church. Those in power held inadequate and scandalous ministers accountable for the religious sluggishness of the English people, and their resistance to being moulded into a godly nation.Footnote 84
The attack on ministers demonstrates that those in government realized the immense power of the approximately nine thousand local clergymen within their parishes. It was logical to reform the ministry in order to reform the nation, but this is one example where the limits of the thinkable far exceeded the limits of the doable. The ejection of clergy unsympathetic to the government's aims proved incredibly difficult. There was ‘very little appetite in the population for extensive ejections’ even among godly ministers and members of the ejection commissions themselves.Footnote 85 Between 1640 and 1660 around two thousand clergy were ejected, and some of these, such as John Thornborough of West Lavington and then of Hilperton, were ejected more than once.Footnote 86 The local community and patronage, kin and friendship networks throughout the country proved stronger than central government. Such networks in many cases either prevented ejections or found alternative posts for the displaced.
The English were not transformed into a model godly society in the 1650s. Largely they continued to attend their local parish church on Sundays and it appears that there were no great alterations in their behaviour. Ann Hughes rightly highlighted that ‘we can never know how many [ministers] “should” have been discovered’, and ultimately neither could their contemporaries. Equally, we cannot know how many of the English needed reforming by godly standards and nor could the godly in authority. In principle, outward conformity could not be sufficient for a godly government seeking to re-educate its people. For only inward reform of the consciences of the nation (all by definition immeasurable by man) could truly achieve a godly nation. Yet Hughes's observation of the national church in the 1650s as an ‘overall failure in principle, balanced by real opportunities in practice’ seems applicable to the 1650s more generally.Footnote 87 Practically, at ground level the church of the 1650s worked reasonably well, but it could not achieve its unrealistic hopes for a godly nation. It could not know of its success even if it had attained it, since inward reform could not truly be tested by any but God.
Therefore, the authorities continued with their various investigations and attempts to flush out clergymen unacceptable to the parliamentarians (most famously via the committee for plundered ministers) due to their ungodly doctrine, poor pastoral care, Laudianism, or royalist sympathies.Footnote 88 However, for the most part, there was little activity in the localities until the advent of the major-generals, and, even then, there is little correlation between the active involvement of the major-generals and the number of clergymen ejected.Footnote 89 Durston postulated that most wholly unacceptable clergymen may have been ejected in the 1640s and the majority of those who were left were prepared at least to conform outwardly to the then government's ‘liturgical and moral precepts’.Footnote 90 Yet most persuasive, given the evidence of men returning to clerical posts only to be ejected again, is his emphasis of just how difficult it was to pursue this policy on the ground.Footnote 91 Furthermore, there was a constant tension between the principle of ensuring only ministers sincerely committed to godly reform remained and the practical problem of assessing that commitment, which must rely on outward behaviour rather than inward belief. Historians face the same dilemma as Valentine Walton did when he tried to determine the ministerial proficiency of Francis Wilfred in 1651. As part of his investigation Walton considered whether Wilford had observed the national fast and thanksgiving days since 1649. He questioned whether Wilford had the opportunity to observe them by inquiring whether those responsible had delivered the orders for the occasions with reasonable notice.Footnote 92 If, given the opportunity to observe such occasions, a minister failed to do so, his behaviour could be taken by contemporaries and historians to indicate a lack of sincere commitment to godly beliefs.
It seems that, by the 1650s, the English were simply far too accustomed to passing religious trends in government. For most, their personal theology was decided. Though it might be influenced, such influences would be on the individual's own terms. While Elizabeth had insisted upon outward conformity, rather than wishing to see into men's souls, the Stuarts had no such choice. The English Reformation was founded upon law and one cannot legislate against the fickle heart of man, only his outward behaviour. Thus, the attempts of the godly in the interregnum governments to reform the English inwardly were destined to fail. There is some evidence that outward conformity to a Reformation of manners was so far from satisfactory for Cromwell himself that he saw state-imposed religious practice as offensive, though not necessarily ineffective.Footnote 93 Yet pragmatism ensured that outwardly visible (and thus measureable) religious practice triumphed over religious belief in the methodologies of both contemporaries and modern historians keen to assess the extent of reform among the English.
Throughout, this review has sought to demonstrate what unites rather than divides recent Reformation historiography. Scholarship remains largely committed to a sense of continuity pervading the English Reformation, underpinned by a powerful sense of the limits of the possible. Practicality imposed by physical constraints, whether over moving a communion table, paying upfront for the cost of printing, or the impossibility of measuring inward reform of consciences, naturally pervaded early modern English life and continues to test the innovativeness of historians. While religious continuity is more traditionally demonstrated by historians working on local or social history, such as the cultural adaptations of institutions such as companies, it has been shown to be far wider reaching. Indeed, recent scholarship, focused on the history of intellectual elites, whose polemical texts were designed to cause friction, has highlighted frameworks of continuity. For these texts operated within rhetorical parameters using polemic for effect and carefully avoiding certain thorny topics. The medieval theological disputes that continued to dominate the debates of early modern intellectuals, as well as cultural assumptions (such as the concept of a minister holding a cure of souls), equally contributed to this sense of theological continuity. Innovative research on grammar and humanist modes of argument has demonstrated that they too remained constrained within their theoretical limits, sometimes even creating boundaries upon what was thinkable. Such practical limitations made a strong sense of continuity throughout the long Reformation inevitable and pragmatism seems a promising approach likely to be embraced in future research.
