In this compilation of essays, a volume in the St. Andrews Studies in Reformation History series, called Religious Identities in Henry VIII's England, Peter Marshall has taken the opportunity to revisit and reprise his own work. For the princely, yet potentially pauperizing price of $114.95, eleven essays are offered, eight of which have been previously published within the last decade in easily accessible books and journals. The newer material consists of an introduction entitled “Identifying Religion in Henry VIII's England,” one chapter on “The Shooting of Robert Packington,” and another on the “Catholic Exiles.” I did find disconcerting Marshall's decision to use this expensive canvas to present, as chapters of his book, essays and articles that have already appeared in print. I would have thought that Marshall is far too young for a retrospective and too well established to need this particular publication as an entry on his crowded curriculum vitae.

That said, Marshall's approach to the organization of the text does give some structure to the individual articles. After the introduction, he has divided the chapters into three sections. Part 1 presents four essays on “evangelicalism,” elements common to the ideological identity of reformers. The second cluster of three essays examines “official” Henrician reform, the product of the alliance that united Henry's desire for a divorce with Thomas Cromwell and Thomas Cranmer's factional goal of religious change and produced the royal supremacy. The three essays that comprise the final portion of the volume offer discussions of various Catholic reactions to the religious and political changes taking place during Henry's reign. One of these responses, in the chapter on the Catholic exile, Marshall's strongest chapter, adds a useful appendix, with a list of 127 Henrician Catholic exiles for readers to consider against the later roll call of Marian exiles. The alternative of leaving England rather than dying for one's faith apparently crossed confessional boundaries when circumstances demanded and resources permitted, and the influence of exile communities on domestic religious positions played an important role in the history of Reformation politics.

Historiographically, Marshall straddles both revisionist and postrevisionist positions, a difficult stretch at best. He accepts the revisionist work of the last twenty years that has effectively demonstrated the strength and vitality of traditional religious culture, but he contends that the value of the successful reinterpretation has come with the expense of passing over developing patterns of religious change during Henry's reign. In fact, Marshall has jumped into a crowded pool filled with English Reformation scholars clinging determinedly to their own agendas. Carving some space for himself with this book has been a challenging enterprise, and if his technique is not always convincing, at least it is clear.

Marshall is moderate in his notional claims for this book. He says that he is not attempting to present a comprehensive history of the Henrician Reformation. Nor is he claiming to offer “an account of the full range of religious positions adopted by Henry's subjects” (vi). Rather, he hopes to furnish a series of images, incidents from religious life that will “help to make sense of the process of religious identity-formation underway in England during the second half of the reign of Henry VIII (c. 1525–47)” (vi). He is looking for an emergent shape that recognizes and welcomes the ambiguities and paradoxes of the early Reformation. Marshall believes that the last twenty years of Henry's reign witnessed the creative rethinking of religious positions based on the political revolution inherent in the royal supremacy. He hopes in this volume to put the two positions into an effective balance. Some may regard Marshall's shifting conceptual focus as an annoying refusal to take a stand. Others might allow that Marshall is attempting to describe a very fluid scene that resists being pinned down for the convenience of observers who, above all, prefer consistency in their history.

In any event, my main grumble with the content of Marshall's work is my quixotic dissatisfaction with the heavy reliance on the use of the word “evangelical” to describe those who had criticized the established church for its papal trappings but who could not yet be called Protestants. This group included but was not limited to a host of people who had been influenced by Luther and the call to a doctrine of justification by faith based on the efficacy of the preaching and teaching of the Word. “Evangelical” as it has been used for the last twenty years first surfaced, I think, in Maria Dowling's 1986 book, Humanism in the Age of Henry VIII (London, 1986). She correctly denied the utility of calling the king's subjects either Catholics or Protestants and adopted what she characterized as David Starkey's informal suggestion to her to call them “conservatives” and “evangelicals.” The only entries in the Oxford English Dictionary (Compact Edition) connect “evangelical” in two instances with William Tyndale, who coupled it in turn with “Protestant,” bringing us full circle to an already rejected position. It was not a term in general use until much later, and as current practice, its adoption ignores a long history in America of the highly politicized association of “evangelical” with fundamentalist Christians. Americans are bound to be troubled by the use of this term, since evangelicals, invading our public and private lives for far too long, have plagued us relentlessly. For us, an evangelical is a right-wing fundamentalist with little real understanding of sacred writings but a long agenda of “thou shalt nots.”

One also might be less than pleased with Marshall's writing style or, more substantially, with his select bibliography. Walter Richardson deserves a mention for his biography of Stephen Vaughan, a Cromwellian agent referenced on several occasions by Marshall. David Starkey and Eric Ives began the debate on faction and reform but are not mentioned in this regard. Finally, even though Marshall does present throughout competent analytical discussions of people and issues, this particular volume will be hard-pressed either to justify its price tag or to find an audience willing to pay that price.