The Plain Man's Pathways to Heaven: Kinds of Christianity in Post-Reformation England, 1570-1640 (review)

If the past is a foreign country, then perhaps no part is more unfamiliar than the private beliefs of the illiterate. Dr Haigh is nevertheless seeking to tease out what lay behind their deeds and words from the limited evidence provided by the surviving records of the offences for which people were brought before the lowest English church courts. To do this he has adapted – or adopted – the approaches Arthur Dent assigns to the participants in his popular dialogue The Plain Man's Pathways to Heaven. Haigh describes this as a novel usage, overlooking Thomas More's skilful use of the dialogue form. As a rhetorical ploy, it goes back at least to Plato and its limitations as a pedagogical tool lie in the limitations of the author's ability to frame the arguments in favour of beliefs that are not his own. Dent's characters are wooden – despite contemporary praise from the godly and Haigh's own assertion that the author had much experience of parish life – but they provide a framework within which the behaviour of parishioners across the south of England can be examined. Haigh claims that what Dent's characters had to say was not invented and that the characters, that is the ignorant and illiterate who were ripe for conversion, 'could be found in every village' (p. 12).

Presumably, the average parishioner was inured to the persuasive onslaughts of the godly who considered themselves superior and were certain that they knew best. Whether the run-of-the-mill parishioners were truly willing to discuss religious matters, as Haigh believes, 'because they cared about religion' (p. 5) may be more doubtful. It is true that court records, by their nature, are negative but this is not a mould that can supply a positive, particularly when, as David Cressy has shown for churching, clerical attitudes to marginal rituals were variable. To the poor, avoiding religious observances and religious teaching was difficult, avoiding fines was probably more important, and cheating the system a good game. Listening to sermons, Haigh argues, gradually uplifted the consciences of many men and women. Catechising also slowly ensured that people could recite their catechism, although one may wonder whether they necessarily also understood or believed it. Rote learning was not, Haigh acknowledges, all that the godly wanted but they may have had to be satisfied with it. What the people wanted in the way of festivities and rites was not necessarily acceptable to the clergy.

Haigh is focused on parishioners, not on clergy, and so does not correlate any parochial squabbling with the position of those clergy who were being pursued for their personal leanings. Instead, his godly pastors are mostly assumed to be moderates conforming to Anglican theological tenets. Haigh does not discuss those amongst the laity who might have sought to implement that strand of Reformation theology that gave the laity an important role in the church. He identifies tensions between clergy and laity but they are largely hidden behind traditional terms of abuse 'both of … individuals and of the clerical caste to which they belonged' (p. 54). The landscape and the social structure, within which these disputes were played out, are not defined. Clergy exist: how they were appointed and what their relationship with those who had presented them to their livings, the owners of the manors and the local bigwigs, is not determined. He is not concerned with the differences that might exist between large and small parishes, agricultural and pastoral areas, chalk and cheese, field and forest. Whereas some may seek to appreciate the infinite subtle variety amongst the parishes of England, Haigh is looking for a common denominator. Ironically, it is the exceptions in the examples that he provides, particularly for the effectiveness of penance and excommunication, that stick in the mind...