Prayer Book and People in Elizabethan and Early Stuart England
Prayer Book and People in Elizabethan and Early Stuart England
£42.00
GBPThis book explores the culture of conformity to the Church of England and its liturgy in the period after the Reformation and before the outbreak of the Civil War. It provides a necessary corrective to our view of religion in the period by a serious exploration of the laity who conformed, out of conviction, to the Book of Common Prayer. Through the use of church court records and parliamentary petitions, the views of lay people are examined - those who were neither 'puritan' nor 'Laudian', yet were committed to the reformed liturgy and episcopacy out of sincere belief, and not as a matter of political expediency.
- The first full study of lay Anglicans who adhered to the Prayer Book from conviction from the Reformation to the Civil War
- Explores lay religion and laypeople engaged in theological reflection rather than political expediency
- Makes a genuinely novel contribution to the history of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century religious belief in England
Reviews & endorsements
'All those who love the Church of England and are fascinated by its complex history will find things to enjoy in this book. It is a work of scholarship which lights up dark corners far beyond its apparent specialism.' Robert Runcie, The Daily Telegraph
'… a remarkable book … the force of [Dr Maltby's] argument is inescapable. No historian of the Reformation, of the rise of Anglicanism, or of popular religion in the localities, can afford to neglect her work.' John Guy, The Church Times
Product details
August 2000Paperback
9780521793872
332 pages
230 × 154 × 23 mm
0.535kg
6 b/w illus.
Available
Table of Contents
- Acknowledgements
- List of figures
- List of tables
- 1. Introduction: the good, the bad, and the godly? The laity and the established church
- 2. Conformity and the church courts, c. 1570–1642
- 3. The rhetoric of conformity, c. 1640–1642
- 4. Sir Thomas Aston and the campaign for the established church, c. 1640–1642
- 5. Parishioners, petitions, and the Prayer Book in the 1640s
- 6. Conclusion: laity, clergy, and conformity in post-Reformation England
- Appendix 1. Petitions for the Book of Common Prayer and episcopacy, 1640–1642
- Appendix 2. Subscribing Cheshire parishes and townships, 1641
- Appendix 3. Five subscribing Cheshire communities
- Bibliography.
