Prayer Book and People in Elizabethan and Early Stuart England
Prayer Book and People in Elizabethan and Early Stuart England
$57.00
USDThis 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
"This book is an original, provocative, and persuasive analysis of the character of the Church of England in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries." Sewanee Theological Review
"This is an ambitious and intelligent study, which raises important questions about the `bedding-down' of the English Reformation, and the formation of confessional identities between the accession of Elizabeth and the outbreak of civil war." Peter Marshall, 16th Century Journal
"This book is an original, provocative, and persuasive analysis of the character of the Church of England in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. In reading her book, Episcopalians will rediscover some of the reasons that The Book of Common Prayer in its many editions and revisions has been and continues to be so important to the life of the Episcopal Church and to the Anglican Communion." Sewanee Theological Review
"Maltby's exploration of the evidence for 'prayer book Protestants' between 1560 and 1640 is an important and welcome discussion." Catholic Historical Review
Product details
September 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.
