Reformation, Politics and Polemics: The Growth of Protestantism in East Anglian Market Towns, 1500-1610 (review)

Was the English Reformation a popular movement eagerly embraced by a devout people tired of ecclesiastical corruption, or was it an unwelcome change forced on a loyal Catholic population for political purposes? Dichotomies so stark hardly deserve an answer, but that in brief is the debate that has raged through English Reformation studies for the past few decades. For many centuries it seemed that England's natural Protestantism was the implicit and widely accepted Fortieth Article of Faith that followed on those thirty-nine doctrinal details that few paid much attention to. Yet twenty years ago, J.J. Scarisbrick, Eamon Duffy, and Christopher Haigh began publishing studies that documented the robust health of the English Catholic church before Henry VIII's 'great matter' and the continuing loyalty to it long after his death.

When in doubt about the grand narrative, go local. Recent studies of the English Reformation have focused on particular communities or social groups in an effort to determine more clearly who believed what and when, in the hope that out of these local stories a new grand narrative might emerge. In Reformation, Politics and Polemics John Craig explores the religious views and practices of 'ordinary' or 'common' people by examining different dimensions of religious and political conflict in four East Anglian market towns (Mildenhall, Bury St Edmunds, Thetford, Hadleigh). In this case, 'common' people are merchants, artisans, and small landholders. They are frequently and, Craig believes, mistakenly described as 'popular Pelagians' - that is, fundamentally ignorant of and indifferent to theology, but having an ethic based on the golden rule. They were loyal to Catholicism only in so far as they understood and could manipulate the spiritual calculus that underlay its rituals, and to Anglicanism only in order to keep out of trouble with church and state authorities.

Craig aims to demonstrate that many common people were aware of theological fine points, that they took principled positions in contemporary debates, and that these religious divisions were carried over into local political disputes. He eschews the anthropological approach usually used to tease out these people's beliefs in preference for more traditional close readings of parish account books, council minutes, trial records, and correspondence. In Mildenhall, he focuses on the under-explored office of the churchwarden, whom he sees as an intermediary between local and ecclesiastical authorities. The churchwarden's accounts of income and expense on church fabric and activity tell much about the day-to-day adoption of or resistance to new religious forms by the common people, who elected this official from among their own number. In Bury St Edmunds, Craig explores the politics of reformation more closely, and particularly the fight between a conservative oligarchy that controlled significant properties and income through a local confraternity and a town council that became a route to power for a broader group of middling Protestant merchants and artisans. These factions divided on preaching, education, and control of ecclesiastical wealth, and in the end the informal power of the oligarchs was overcome by the formal power of the middling group, who went on to put a more definitely Protestant stamp on the town. In Thetford, Craig considers the matter of finely drawn religious labels and their use in political disputes. Finally, in Hadleigh, he reviews the activities of a series of preachers in order to test the validity of John Fox's description of the town as a 'university of the learned.'

Craig digs deeply into archival sources, and cites widely from scholarly literature. The individual chapters offer solid and illuminating studies of the process of Reformation in towns and among people of lower rank. Craig makes a good case for considering market towns separately, and for taking seriously the theological self-consciousness of merchants and artisans. Yet these are essentially four separate studies rather than four approaches to a single theme. They vary in length, subject matter, and focus, and the interpretive framework...