The English Reformation: Religion and Cultural Adaptation by Norman JonesReview by: Peter MarshallThe Sixteenth Century Journal, Vol. 34, No. 2, Marriage in Early Modern Europe (Summer,2003), pp. 479-480Published by: The Sixteenth Century JournalStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20061428 .

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Book Reviews 479

The English Reformation: Religion and Cultural Adaptation. Norman Jones.

Oxford: Blackwell, 2002. 253 pp. $29.95. ISBN 0631210431.

Reviewed by: Peter Marshall, University ofWarwick

In this imaginative and engaging study, Norman Jones squarely addresses the paradox of how English religious culture could be enthusiastically Catholic at the beginning of the

sixteenth century, and thoroughly Protestant at its close. The predominant theme is one of

pragmatic adaptation rather than dramatic conversion, of people making choices about how

to behave, as much as what to believe. It is not, of course, a new revelation that the pace of

the English Reformation was frequently gradualist, and that generational change was a cru

cial instrument of its assimilation and acceptance. But Jones breaks new ground here, both

in identifying factors which moulded the outlook of individuals born at particular stages of

the process, and in tracking the patterns of reformation and accommodation in the ongoing

experience of institutions: the family, the city livery companies, the inns of court, Oxbridge

colleges. In each of these, Jones argues, it took three generations for the effects of the Ref

ormation to become firmly embedded, for the old customs to be at first adapted, then aban

doned, and finally forgotten* Thus the requiem masses of company benefactors became

commemorative feats, and "obits" were turned into "bequests." Catholic lawyers like

Edmund Plowden and William Roper were gradually eased out of positions of leadership in

the inns, but were allowed quietly to continue their practices. Families divided along con

fessional lines learned to negotiate "private treaties of internal toleration that allowed the

bonds of love and duty to paper over the chasms of ideology" (33). The transitions were sel

dom completely smooth, and sometimes painful and divisive. At Merton College, Oxford,

for example, the fellowship became sharply fractured in the early Elizabethan period before

an eventual Protestant takeover. Nonetheless, the common challenge faced by institutions

was to "negotiate the growing ideological differences between members while achieving their organizational ends" (58), and in this, Jones suggests, they were remarkably successful.

In most cases, the maintenance and management of property was at the heart of institutional

adaptation:"we have to understand property law to understand the Reformation" (61).The

legal protection of ecclesiastical property rights made the Reformation possible (increasing

lay control over the church and giving key sectors of the laity a vested interest in the contin

uance of the supremacy), but it also slowed and eased the changes, making it very difficult,

for example, to remove conforming conservatives from their positions. There was, Jones

argues, an unforeseen but momentous consequence of the compromises individuals and

institutions made over the course of the sixteenth century: the separation of personal piety from communal duty. The emergence of de facto religious pluralism in a society which

insisted only on political conformity led to a heightened emphasis on the individual con

science as the forum in which God operated. This allowed society to function without uni

formity of belief (it also permitted greater flexibility in economic matters, especially the

toleration of usury). The catch was that conscience might trump authority if the latter made

unreasonable demands upon the former, the mistake of the early Stuart monarchy. All of this is highly persuasive, though caveats can be registered on some specific points.

For example, Jones contrasts the early years of the Reformation when "there was no formal

conversion for there were no denominations" with a later Elizabethan model where conver

sion "was about intellectual commitment to a system of argument found to be more persuasive than other systems" (150-51). But the conversion experiences of "the godly" hardly conform

to this typology, and neither, as Michael Questier has shown, do those on the Catholic side,

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480 Sixteenth Century Journal XXXIV/2 (2003)

which equally privileged an effectual motion of grace, and took place within as much as across

confessional boundaries. The book's recurrent references to "Anglican" and "Anglicanism" can strike a slightly anachronistic note, and there is in places a tendency to take at face value

highly charged denunciations (from both puritans and recusants) of the "nullifidianism" of the

people. Some conforming traditionalists might have "embodied a cool skepticism that may

have thought Paris was worth a mass" (189), but recent work on church papistry has depicted a complex phenomenon whose practitioners could be part of the Catholic mainstream. It is

unfortunate that the Nottinghamshire lay reader, John Minet, is cited as an example of a con

temporary "atheist"; David Cressy's reconstruction of the case has demonstrated that his real

offense was preaching a traditionalist sermon lifted from Mirk's Festial.

In observing that "the English appear astonishingly tolerant in their response to reli

gious conflict" (139), Jones perhaps underestimates the potency and potential of antipopery.

Certainly, Elizabethan Protestants and Catholics lived alongside each other, interacting com

mercially and, to a degree, socially. But so did Croats and Serbs in 1980s Yugoslavia. There

was (discounting the 1569 rising) no religious civil war in Elizabeth's reign, an achievement

attributed to the fact that early Elizabethans in leadership positions were agreed that order

and good business were more important than to "squabble about religion" (106). But this

perspective tends to elide the extent to which a highly contingent factor, the idiosyncrasy of

Elizabeth herself, was responsible for the religious landscape. The first generation of bishops were deeply exasperated by the queen's glacial attitude to reform, as were later parliamentar

ians by her reluctance to make noncommunicating a statutory offense, or to bring Mary

Queen of Scots to the block. Had Elizabeth not managed to outlive all plausible Catholic

rivals, could civil war have been avoided?

There are a couple of minor errors to note: John Lambert was burned in 1538 not 1539,

and a 1539 tract drafted by the Privy Council clerk Thomas Derby is here attributed to the

earl of Derby (98, 95). Such quibbles aside, this is a book that all interested in the cultural

effect of the English Reformation will simply have to read. It is full of humanity and good

sense, and peppered with arresting insight.

Europe in Crisis, 1598-1648. 2d ed. Geoffrey Parker. Oxford: Blackwell, 2001. 326 pp.

$29.95. ISBN 0631220283.

Reviewed by: Stefano D'Amico, Texas Tech University

Europe in Crisis, 1598-1648 by Geoffrey Parker was originally published in 1979 as part

of the Fontana History of Europe series, edited by J. H. Plumb. Its publication followed

another of Parker's works, edited with L. M. Smith, The General Crisis of the Seventeenth Cen

tury (1978). The General Crisis contributed significantly to the historiographical debate on the

crisis of the seventeenth century initiated by the essays of Eric Hobsbawm and Trevor Roper

in the late 1950s.The essays in the volume confirmed the thesis that the seventeenth century,

especially the central decades, was characterized by demographic and economic decline, and

even more by social and political unrest. This interpretation, coupled with an analysis that

rendered revolts and warfare central to this period, clearly provided Parker with the frame

work for Europe in Crisis, 1598?1648.

Parker's examination of the entire continent of Europe excludes the British isles, whose

history, according to the original conventions of the Fontana series, is only marginally con

sidered.The study of western Europe begins in the year 1598 with the death of Philip II, the

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