Description

The English Reformation was the event which chiefly shaped English identity well into the twentieth century. It made the English kingdom a self-consciously Protestant state dominating the British Isles, and boasting an established Church which eventually developed a peculiar religious agenda, Anglicanism. Although Henry VIII triggered a break with the Pope in his eccentric quest to rid himself of an inconveniently loyal wife, the Reformation soon slipped from his control, and in the reigns of his Tudor successors, it developed a momentum which made it one of the success stories of European Protestantism. In this book, MacCulloch discusses the developing Reformation in England through the later Tudor reigns: Edward VI, Mary I and Elizabeth I. He provides a narrative of events, then discusses the ideas which shaped the English Reformation, and surveys the ways in which the English reacted to it, how far and quickly they accepted it and assesses those who remained dissenters. This new edition is fully updated to take account of new material in the field that has appeared in the last decade.