Description
Book SynopsisThis major new study is an exploration of the Elizabethan Puritan movement through the eyes of its most determined and relentless opponent, Richard Bancroft, later Archbishop of Canterbury. It analyses his obsession with the perceived threat to the stability of the church and state presented by the advocates of radical presbyterian reform. The book forensically examines Bancroft's polemical tracts and archive of documents and letters, casting important new light on religious politics and culture. Focussing on the ways in which anti-Puritanism interacted with Puritanism, it also illuminates the process by which religious identities were forged in the early modern era. The final book of Patrick Collinson, the pre-eminent historian of sixteenth-century England, this is the culmination of a lifetime of seminal work on the English Reformation and its ramifications.
Trade Review'A work of formidable scholarship which explores the Puritan movement through the eyes of its most relentless opponent. Historians of the North will be particularly interested in Bancroft's dealings with successive archbishops of York.' Northern History
'This volume is part of the Cambridge Studies in Early Modern British History and is produced to a high standard with an index and footnotes. With Collinson's other writings, it is an essential tool for those interested in the puritanism of late Elizabethan England.' Congregational History Society Magazine
'Collinson portrays perceptively what Bancroft did in defending the Church of England.' Alen Boyer, The Seventeenth Century
Table of ContentsPreface Alexandra Walsham and John Morrill; 1. Introduction; 2. Beginnings; 3. Battle commences; 4. The 1580s: Whitgift, Hatton and the High Commission; 5. Martin Marprelate; 6. What Bancroft found, and didn't find, in the godly ministers' studies; 7. Out of the frying pan, into the fire and out again; 8. Prayer, fasting, and the world of spirits: the other face; 9. Possession, dispossession, fraud and polemics; 10. Richard Bancroft, Robert Cecil and the Jesuits: the Bishop and his Catholic friends; 11. Archbishop of Canterbury.
