Whither God Brings Us: Cambridge and the Reformation Martyrs by David Llewellyn Jenkins (review)

From as early as the sixteenth-century Acts and Monuments of John Foxe, both Cambridge and martyrdom have loomed large in narratives of the English Reformation. The novelty of this volume is to bring these two foci together in brief biographical sketches of the Cambridge men who died in the evangelical cause under Henry VIII and Mary I. The twenty-two lives and deaths surveyed include not only well-known figures such as Hugh Latimer and Thomas Cranmer, but also the more obscure, such as Laurence Saunders and John Hullier.

While potentially useful as a popular reference or devotional work, the volume—which also includes appendices on sacramental controversies and an early English doctrinal treatise—is diminished by the absence of a unifying thesis or narrative. Although a sustained, coherent narrative may not be expected in a collection of individual biographical studies, readers will still wonder why these are not at least arranged chronologically. More problematic, though, is the question of thesis. While acknowledging its great dependence on the Acts and Monuments, for example, the present volume lacks Foxe's consistent emphasis on the nature and implications of Christian martyrdom. Similarly, despite the focus on Cambridge, the specific import of that university town for England's Reformation is never clarified or emphasized as it has been in works by those such as Gordon Rupp or Richard Rex. In short, despite the work being informative and edifying, the reader is left wondering about the broader historical or theological significance—if any—of those Protestant martyrdoms associated in some way with Cambridge.

At the risk of becoming unduly critical of a work that does not advertise itself as an academic monograph, two further shortcomings deserve mention. The first is simply, but frustratingly, the matter of consistent editorial irregularities. To note one example, a work referenced with some frequency beginning at page 20 is cited only by the author's last name until three chapters later, where title, publisher, and date are provided for the first time on page 91. This would be less of a problem if the work in question were found in the concluding bibliography, but it is not.

Finally, there is something refreshing about Jenkins' admission that "this is no impartial study" (5). But his confidence in Foxe's Acts and Monuments—the "foundation of the book"—as a "wholly reliable text" (6), does permit an occasionally unwarranted partiality. At least twice, for example, he describes Thomas More, chief antagonist of the Henrician evangelicals, as a "torturer" (71, 150). To be sure, More was hardly the benevolent champion of religious liberty so often portrayed today; he happily sent Protestants to the pyre, and openly admitted to having a child flogged for speaking against the Sacrament. But as even the late G.R. Elton—no fan of More—acknowledged, "the more scurrilous stories of his personal ill-treatment of accused heretics have been properly buried" (Studies in Tudor and Stuart Politics and Government, vol. 1, 1974, 158).

As we are increasingly aware of the church's persecution around the globe, Jenkins helpfully reminds us that attempts to suppress the gospel did not begin with the totalitarian regimes of the modern world. His work is even, in its way and like all martyrologies, inspiring. But it is not the book it might have been with the guidance of a firm editorial hand.