This Present Reformation in England

Abstract

Abstract The chapter covers the chaotic reign of Charles I. The first section continues the story of British ecclesiastical convergence after the death of James VI and I, noting how liturgical changes and new bodies of canon law sought to inhibit the likelihood that something like the Scottish Reformation might reoccur in any of the British kingdoms. Before turning to civil war and its aftermath, the chapter then considers how Caroline authors discussed England’s “first reformation,” concluding that the phrase indicates less historiographical consensus than is generally assumed. The remaining sections look at how apocalyptic fears and militant realities formed the backdrop for the dawn of historiography on the English Reformation. With “reformation” a veritable battle cry among English religious dissenters, the first histories of the English Reformation painted a portrait of sixteenth-century religious history diametrically opposite the bloodshed of the 1640s and oppression of the 1650s. “Our English Reformation,” a polemical label directed against the militant “reformation” of the civil wars and its Scottish inspiration, gave rise to sustained historical analyses by authors such as Thomas Fuller and Peter Heylyn.