Description
Book SynopsisBy examining the unusual course of religious change in Tudor Norwich, this book significantly revises the study of both the Reformation and the history of religious toleration in England. It shows that though Norwich experienced a genuine and far-reaching reformation in the sixteenth century, even becoming a hub of Puritan activity in the Elizabethan era, it did so without the breakdown of community, habitual intolerance, and widespread persecution that has been the focus of recent scholarly studies of the period.
Drawing on extensive and largely unexploited municipal archives, the author argues that the course and outcome of the Reformation in Norwich were shaped in important ways by the city''s magistrates. She demonstrates that the magistrates, who were religiously divided themselves, practiced a de facto religious toleration throughout the sixteenth century. Although they endorsed each change in Tudor religious policy in a formal sense, they neglected to enforce con
Trade Review
“The scholarship is first rate, the analysis thoughtful and penetrating, and the writing clear and crisp. McClendon nicely places her story about whether the English reformation gained its major impetus from ‘below’ or ‘above.’. . . It is a book which will be one of the models in its field of early modern urban history.”—J. sears McGee, University of California, Santa Barbara
Table of Contents
Introduction: religion, politics and the possibility of toleration in the English reformation 1. Feuds and factions: discord and disruption in pre-reformation Norwich 2. Handing heresies: the emergence of toleration in Henrician Norwich 3. Symbolism without saints: the reinvention of civic ritual 4. Protestantism without purity: confessional division, crisis and toleration in Edwardian Norwich 5. The quiet restoration: Norwich and the return of Catholicism under Queen Mary 6. Fervor and forbearance: Norwich under the Elizabethan settlement Conclusion: belief and belonging - civic identity in reformation Norwich Appendixes.
