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BOOK REVIEWS463 parameters it is a thorough and lucid study, showing both the continuities and discontinuities with late medieval theology, and the extent to which positive thinking was obstructed by polemical priorities. It does not, however, make clear the extent to which these writers evaded controversial issues where their conservative instincts were at odds with their humanist training.'Purgatory,* for instance, does not even appear in the index, and vernacular scriptures are "but slenderly handled," as they themselves might have said. What is done is well done, and a useful contribution to understanding, but there is scope for more than one work of this kind. One of the most interesting points arises almost incidentally toward the end, when Dr. Macek points out that the true heirs of these mid-Tudor traditionalists were less the Catholic recusants of the next, and subsequent, generations, than the High Anglicans of the Laudian church and the Tractarian movement. Gardiner , Bonner,Tunstal, Smith, and their fellows were only ultramontane to a limited extent and when forced by circumstances. The intense papalism of Reginald Pole was alien to them, and they paid little attention to such progress as the Council ofTrent had made by 1558. In most respects they were less an opposition than the purveyors of an alternative Anglican vision. David Loades Oxford Dangerous Talk and Strange Behavior.Women and Popular Resistance to the Reforms ofHenry VJII. By Sharon L. Jansen. (NewYork: St. Martin's Press. 1996. Pp. viĆ¼, 232. $39.95.) This is a series of case studies of women involved in opposition to Henry VIII's proceedings in the 1530's.The particularly thorough investigations ordered by the government in these years makes such an investigation unusually possible. Margaret Cheyne, alias Lady Bulmer, was the only woman to be executed for direct involvement in the Pilgrimage of Grace. Elizabeth Barton, the "Nun of Kent," already well known as a visionary, was hanged in 1534 for prophetic warnings against Henry's marriage to Anne Boleyn. A Norfolk woman, Elizabeth Wood, was executed for lamenting the failure of the 1537 "Walsingham Conspiracy," and for wishing for a popular rising "with clubs and clouted shone." Mabel Brigge undertook a three-day fast, allegedly to bring about the death of the king. Professor Jansen also mentions in passing several other cases. Particularly poignant is the story of nine Cumberland women who cut down and buried the bodies of their husbands, left hanging on the gallows for several weeks;Thomas Cromwell was particularly insistent that the men he assumed to be behind this should be punished. Jansen concludes that women of all social groups were ready to express views on religion, politics, and social issues. Nevertheless, they were less likely 464BOOK REVIEWS to be reported, and, when reported, to pay the ultimate penalty. Jansen speculates on why these four were selected for execution. The women's circumstances were very various, and it is difficult to come to a conclusion, except in the case of Elizabeth Barton, whose fame and high contacts made her an obvious victim. Margaret Cheyne may have been an illegitimate daughter of the duke of Buckingham, executed in 1521, and her marriage to Sir John Buhner, whom she was accused ofurging into rebellion,was commonly impugned. ElizabethWood was the wife of a husbandman; curiously, there seems to have been no investigation of her husband's opinions. Mabel Brigge, a widow, was executed ;her married associate Isabel Bucke escaped the death penalty.lt is clearly impossible to recover the particular circumstances which made for condemnation in each case. Professor Jansen has worked carefully through the evidence. She does not press it beyond what it will bear, nor does she make exaggerated claims. It is good to have these cases of awkward, careless, or high-principled women brought to the fore.Women did not take up arms. But their attitudes, if not their actions, seem as various as those of the men, and not very noticeably "gendered." C. S. L. Davies Wadham College, Oxford Luther's Heirs Define His Legacy:Studies on Lutheran Confessionalization. By Robert KoIb. [Variorum Collected Studies Series, CS539] (Brookfield,Vermont :Variorum,Ashgate Publishing Company. 1996.Pp.xii, 322. $89.95.) There is no...

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