Popular Politics and the English Reformation (review) (original) (raw)
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Journal of British Studies
and eighteenth century newspapers, seems so suggest. Second, the coroners were highly effective. For one thing, they were highly skilled at assembling evidence-a matter on which Lockwood concentrates because he is keen to refute the view that cases could not be accurately determined before the appearance of modern forensic skills. For another, juries were selected with great skill, joining those with local knowledge with others from the large area so as to ensure a measure of impartiality. Crucially, Lockwood demonstrates in chapter 4, "One Concept of Justice," that all of this led to an increase in central state power. Jury members were anyway attached to the central state, and any sign of communal standards triumphing led coroners to overrule their juries. Further, coroners played important roles as bearers of evidence in other courts, thereby ensuring the further penetration of the tentacles of the state. All of this paints a picture of a high level of surveillance of the local population by a state linked and working through the natural party of order in country and city. Third, coroners were themselves subjected to continual surveillance on the part of the central state, largely through Star Chamber and King's Bench, with a large role being played by the Royal Almoner. Such surveillance had an obvious cause: the possibility of the crown gaining forfeits in the case of certain crimes. If in the main part of the book Lockwood offers a slightly static picture of this powerful trinity-personnel, the ability to detect, and oversight from the center-at work between about 1530 and 1640, in the last chapters he is more concerned with variation. For a little more than a century after the conflict between king and parliament central control weakened, not least due to the abolition of Star Chamber. But Lockwood is able to show that the work of coroners was by then so deeply implicated in social life that it continued more or less unabated. The monopoly of violence had been achieved and he sees no weakening of state power. This case is made especially powerfully in a sociologically very sophisticated chapter in which he reviews the frequently make claim that there was a crisis of violence, driven by economic need, in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth century, followed by a decline in violence thereafter. The rise in violence was probably the result of better reporting of crime, that is, an artifact of statistics, and it is very unlikely that homicides in particular were related to economic need; equally, the decline may well be best explained by the period in which coroners did their work in the relative absence of central control. A final substantive chapter looks at the legislation of 1752, going on to calculate its effects. Pay for all cases considered (not just as previously only for homicides) and for travel encouraged coroner activism; oversight remained, but it was more often in the hands of justices of the peace. One of Max Weber's claims concerned the difference between law in England and on the continent, and one would love to have this investigated properly by historians. Lockwood makes a start in his conclusion, suggesting that there may well have been no difference-in so doing allying himself with the view of Smith and David Hume. Still, more comparative research here is needed-and it is made possible by having the English building block analyzed so impressively.
Atenea 23.2 [ISSN 0885-6079]; Junta Administrativa, 2003
This paper scrutinises an early polemical tract Simon Fish’s A Supplication of Beggars (c.1528/ 29) to ascertain the ways in which political and religious arguments were being remodelled along pragmatic and executable lines to propose a new power equation, namely, absolutist monarchy. The shift involves a realignment of religious, regional and political allegiances along territorial lines and the emergence of the modern nation state. Religious vindication takes a backseat as Fish promises actual worldly benefits to lure Henry VIII to overthrow papal rule. The secular and materialist ambience of this ‘religious’ tract marks a significant departure from the stylistic, narrative and rhetorical strategies of medieval tracts of similar import, which tended to locate their arguments within a predominantly theological framework. Fish comprehends the shifting priorities of a transitional age and moulds the opportune convergence of three separate interests into a single, mutually convenient focus - lay anti-clericalism; the heretics’ attempt to overthrow a repressive Church and Henry VIII’s growing impatience with the delay in his divorce. Although ostensibly directed at the sovereign, Fish’s harangue has a dual audience in mind - the king and the people. Popular consent is manipulated in favour of a new hierarchic order that is apparently more homogenised. He plays upon the implicit notion of ‘commonwealth’ a notion crucial to Henry’s post-Reformation propaganda to elicit mass support for the establishment of a new status quo. The ruler and the ruled constitute a democratic forum for joint action against the ‘wrongful’ usurpers of their ‘common wealth’. Burgeoning nationalistic rhetoric creates a space where Henry’s economic and religio-political aspirations merge with the image of a patriotic monarch fighting for ‘English’ honour and independence. More anti-clerical than heretical, Fish provides a tangible enemy (and a fortune ready for the taking) to facilitate reform. But by pointing to the ‘enemy within’, Fish splits the nationalist discourse down the middle, positing ‘true’ Englishmen against their renegade counterparts whose allegiance transgresses regional borders. He thus anticipates the ideological parameters of the absolutist nation state, its hegemonic control over people’s social, political and religious commitments, and its fractured rhetoric of inclusiveness well before the advent of the Henrician Reformation. Fish’s polemical enterprise is an embryonic testimony to the massive re-organisation of human relations and power structures occurring at the time. The formerly ‘included’ and ‘empowered’ clergy are peripheralised as the threatening Other and attention is diverted from the emerging acquisitive forces precipitating inequality. More important, it offers the beleaguered populace the spurious satisfaction of belonging to a well-ordered polity and an equally false sense of empowerment at the expense of the hitherto powerful. However, the idea of social inversion implicit in the call for dismantling clerical hegemony could and did induce the lower orders to demand a transference of power beneficial to themselves, as the 1536 and 1549 rebellions testify. Also, Fish’s expertise in playing upon the king’s psyche denotes the growing confidence of the ‘citizen’ participating in national destiny and hints at a disturbingly unorthodox master-subject relationship.
Journal of Jesuit Studies
Andy Warhol allegedly predicted that in the future everyone would be worldfamous for fifteen minutes. He made no comment, however, about life after the parking meter had expired. The master of ceremonies at papal coronations thrice reminded the pope: "Pater Sancte, sic transit gloria mundi!" (Worldly glory passes away, Holy Father). The proud boast of Ozymandias "Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!" sounds hollow as time and winds eroded his legacy. Fame rises and falls. Some refuse to admit that their time has passed and insist that their glory persists. They paraphrase Norma Desmond in "Sunset Boulevard": they are "big, it's the pictures that got small." Others reinvent themselves, resort to "Dancing with the Stars," or reality tv-anything that will keep them in the proverbial public eye. Still others can do nothing as their lives collapse under the weight of charges of harassment and predation. Fortunately, the reputations discussed in the first book are not as transient; the subject of the second, after years as a fringe player, has received star billing. The editors of Reformation Reputations convened the 2017-18 program of the postgraduate seminar at the Institute of Historical Research (University of London) on "The Religious History of Britain 1500-1800." As the academic world celebrated the five-hundredth anniversary of Martin Luther's 95 Theses, the editors encouraged speakers at the seminar to focus on persons influential in England's reformation: "What, in other words, could be said about the lives, and especially the afterlives , of selected figures" (viii). Not all wishes are
2010
The information on this form will be published. To minimize any risk of inaccuracy, please type your text. Please supply two copies of this abstract page. Full name (surname first): Gill, Sylvia May School/Department: School of History and Cultures/Modern History Full title of thesis/dissertation: Managing Change in The English Reformation: The 1548 Dissolution of the Chantries and Clergy of the Midland County Surveys Degree: Doctor of Philosophy Date of submission: March 2010 Date of award of degree (leave blank): Abstract (not to exceed 200 words-any continuation sheets must contain the author's full name and full title of the thesis/dissertation): The English Reformation was undeniably a period of change; this thesis seeks to consider how that change was managed by those who were responsible for its realisation and by individuals it affected directly, principally during the reign of Edward VI. It also considers how the methodology adopted contributes to the historiography of the period and where else it might be applied. Central to this study is the 1548 Dissolution of the Chantries, the related activities of the Court of Augmentations and the careers of clerics from five Midland counties for whom this meant lost employment. In addition to the quantitative analysis of original documentation from the Court, counties and dioceses, the modern understanding of change management for organisations and individuals has been drawn upon to extrapolate and consider further the Reformation experience. The conclusions show how clerical lives and careers were or were not continued, while emphasising that continuation requires an enabling psychological management of change which must not be overlooked. The evidence for the state demonstrates that its realisation of its immediate aims contained enough of formal change management requirements for success, up to a point, while adding to the longer-term formation of the state in ways unimagined. For my Mother, Claire and Max Where to start with acknowledgements? Firstly, I would like to thank my supervisor Professor Alec Ryrie for his help and advice which has been invaluable, and his patience which has been admirable; he has done his best with me, I take responsibility for all else. Secondly, I would like to thank Professor Robert Swanson who introduced me to the Chantry Surveys when I was working for my MA; to him must go the 'blame' for both my MA dissertation and this thesis but it is an introduction I am pleased to have had. I must also thank Dr Peter Cunich of the University of Hong Kong who, early in my research, provided valuable guidance on material in the National Archives. Like many researchers past and present, I have had help and assistance from archive staff in a number of locations and would like to thank those at the National Archives in Kew and the local record offices of Gloucester, Hereford, Lichfield, Warwick and Worcester and Hereford Cathedral Archives. In addition, thanks go to staff in the University of Birmingham's Main Library, in Special Collections and The Shakespeare Institute for their help and guidance. Administration staff in the College of Arts and Law also deserve acknowledgement and I would like particularly to thank Sue Bowen, Heather Cullen and Julie Tonks. This period of study has been my third at the University of Birmingham and, as ever with an undertaking such as this, it is the people you meet along the way who enrich the whole experience. I am grateful for the support I have received from my colleagues in the School of History and Cultures Postgraduate Forum and have enjoyed and profited from the discussions we have had and the experience of hosting our three one-day conferences.
The Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 2004
The Oxford classical dictionary is an exceptionally rich one-volume, multi-author encyclopaedia which covers all aspects of Graeco-Roman antiquity and much else besides, providing (economical) bibliographies at the end of almost every article. The editors who undertook and completed the Herculean task of producing a third edition fully deserve the thanks and praise widely accorded to them, for the result of their labours is indeed a triumph. Its 6,250 entries by 364 scholars regale the reader with authoritative information on subjects as diverse as Attila and Aristotle, Babylon and Boethius, capitalism and chastity, or even Zeus and Zoroaster. As its preface declares, the third edition (1996, revised, i.e. with minor changes, 2003) deliberately differs from the previous ones of 1949 and 1970 in several respects, all of which can be praised without reserve. It has been rendered more accessible through the translation of the ancient languages, and more user-friendly by widespread cross-referencing. It has gained in quality through the editors' determination to 'secure the best experts on the topics covered, wherever in the world they happened to be '. It also includes some 700 new entries. These attest to the third edition's determination to be interdisciplinary (for example ' economic theory, Greek '), and reflect a new solicitousness in offering readers survey articles containing useful cross-references (for example ' technology '). More specifically, inadequacies in coverage have been set to rights for women, Judaism and the Near East. The third edition includes a substantial number of new entries of interest to ecclesiastical historians. For Christian authors and literature we note : apologists, Christian ; Paul, St ; Acts of the Apostles ; apocalyptic literature ; Boethius' musical writings ; epic, biblical ; Epistle to Diognitus; Latin, medieval, literary ; Chronicon Paschale ; Seven Wonders of the Ancient World ; Ambrosiaster ; Theophilus (2) of Antioch ; Paulinus (2) of Pella ; Maximianus ; Tatian ; Methodius ; Didascalia apostolorum. For early Christian beliefs and practices : pilgrimage, Christian ; cemeteries ; chastity ; asceticism ; churches ; statues, cult of (includes 'Judaeo-Christian ' section). For 'heresies ' : Naaseenes; Arianism. Students of the early Church will also welcome new entries on many related themes. Thus, the rising interest in the relationship between Christian and pagan healing (see, for example, Hector Avalos, Health care and the rise of Christianity, 1999) is well served by entries on the following subjects: body ; gynaecology ; hysteria ;
In this chapter, I want to offer an account of Church and State between 1550 and 1750 that does not point inexorably towards the separation of Church and Dissent. Instead, I want to stress that the story of Dissent can only be told in conjunction with the story of the Church of England. Until late in the seventeenth century, most Dissenters remained thoroughly invested in the state Church, and deeply committed to the ideals of the magisterial Reformation. While the sects did sever links with the Established Church, the parting of the ways between the Church and a broader Dissent was a slow and painful business, one that was contingent rather than inevitable. What we call Puritanism was imbricated with Anglicanism. To set these abstractions at war with each other is to distort the story of post-Reformation England. Much of early Protestant Dissent was not dissent from the Church of England, but dissent within it and on its behalf. The religious settlement continued to be hotly debated long after 1559, and there were numerous attempts to remake the English Church – by Puritans and Laudians, Presbyterians and Independents, Latitudinarians and High Churchmen. Only after much struggle and various contingencies did Church and Dissent become rival ecclesiastical blocs