Marshall, Peter (2012) The naming of Protestant England. Past & Present, Vol.214 (No.1). pp. 87-128. doi:10.1093/pastj/gtr030

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Abstract

The writer Daniel Defoe, surveying two centuries during which his country had
travelled 'from the Romish Religion to Reform'd, from Reform'd back again to
Romish, and then to Reform'd again', could note with satisfaction that 'the Name of
Protestant is now the common Title of an Englishman'. How, and how quickly,
England became Protestant, and English people became Protestants, in the course of
the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries is a longstanding and contentious
historical question. In the late 1970s, Britain's leading Tudor historian, G. R. Elton,
could confidently assert that by the end of the reign of Edward VI 'England was
almost certainly nearer to being a Protestant country than to anything else'. But it
was already becoming clear that what Patrick Collinson has christened 'the birthpangs
of Protestant England' were a more protracted and painful process. Revisionist
scholarship of the 1980s and 90s stressed the slow and uncertain pace of reform, and
the difficulty in securing conversions, with Christopher Haigh proposing, in an
intriguing formulation, that even by the middle of Elizabeth's reign, the Reformation
had succeeded in creating 'a Protestant nation, but not a nation of Protestants'. More
recently, attention has shifted from measuring patterns of conversion to investigating
political accommodations and negotiations on the part of rulers and ruled. Other studies of a broadly 'post-revisionist' character draw attention to transitions and continuities in religious culture across the putative Reformation divide. The 'Protestantism' of the English Church and its people is assumed, but the degree to which common understandings of it were shared by clergy and laity, and across social classes, remains deeply problematic.

Item Type:	Journal Article
Subjects:	B Philosophy. Psychology. Religion > BX Christian Denominations
Divisions:	Faculty of Arts > History
Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH):	Great Britain -- Church history -- 16th century, Great Britain -- Church history -- 17th century, Protestantism -- Great Britain -- History -- 16th century, Protestantism -- Great Britain -- History -- 17th century
Journal or Publication Title:	Past & Present
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
ISSN:	0031-2746
Official Date:	2012
Dates:	Date Event 2012 Published
Volume:	Vol.214
Number:	No.1
Page Range:	pp. 87-128
DOI:	10.1093/pastj/gtr030
Status:	Peer Reviewed
Publication Status:	Published
Access rights to Published version:	Restricted or Subscription Access

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