The role of English humanists in the Reformation up to 1559

Abstract

This chapter examines the work of England's leading humanists: Richard Morison, John Cheke, Roger Ascham, John Ponet, Thomas Smith, John Bale, Robert Barnes, Thomas Becon, Thomas Cranmer, William Tyndale, Nicholas Ridley, John Foxe, John Parkhurst, Nicholas Udall, John Jewel, William Thomas, William Turner, Thomas Wilson, Richard Taverner, Walter Haddon and Thomas Challoner under a few collective headings. In the English historiographical tradition, humanism has tended to be seen as a high road to Reformation. Humanists undeniably played a large part in the English Reformation by the simple process of presenting the teachings of European evangelicals to an English audience. English humanists advanced evangelical teachings through their own original compositions. The one field of endeavour in which the Catholic humanists failed to match their evangelical or Protestant counterparts was that of lay politics. Catholic humanist statesmen were mostly churchmen by calling: Gardiner, Pole, Tunstall and Thirlby.