‘The Partial Customs of these Frozen Parts’: Religious Riot and Reconciliation in the North of England

Abstract

Listen

Translate article

John Bossy’s recent book, Peace in the Post-Reformation, should, I think, finally lay to rest Thomas Hardy’s notion that ‘War makes rattling good history; but peace is poor reading.’ In it he suggests that the ‘moral tradition’ was a feature of traditional religion, transformed by the religious and social changes taking place between about 1500 and 1700, and eroded by a current of civility. Furthermore, Bossy argues that in England even the godly sought the moral tradition and attempted to make peace with their neighbours. In this article, I will trace peace-making between the godly and their Catholic neighbours in the North of England in the early seventeenth century. In doing so, I will suggest some alternatives to Bossy’s argument: that the language of civility was exploited by the godly to make peace on their terms; that it was changing in this period; and that it appropriated rather than ran directly against the moral tradition.