THE BEGINNINGS OF ENGLISH PROTESTANTISM
Edited by Peter Marshall & Alec Ryrie
Cambridge University Press. 242 pages. £14.95
ISBN 0 521 00324 5
Available in both hardback and paperback, this book is a collection of essays by nine British and American historians. It focuses attention on the critical early years of English Protestantism, trying to grapple with what Ryrie thinks is the 'intractable question' of how a Roman Catholic nation in the 1520s became a more or less Protestant nation by the 1580s.
The contributors are convinced that recent studies of the English Reformation have tended to be dominated by studies of the reigns of Elizabeth (1558-1603) and the Stuarts who followed her. The essays attempt to shift the emphasis on to those who became Protestants in the early and middle decades of the 16th century.
