Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of figures
- List of tables
- Acknowledgements
- Notes on the text
- List of abbreviations
- Introduction
- Part I The regime and the reformers
- Part II The faces of reform
- 3 The exiles
- 4 Pulpit and printshop
- 5 The universities
- 6 The court
- 7 The evangelical underground
- Conclusion
- Appendixes
- Bibliography
- Index
Conclusion
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 July 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of figures
- List of tables
- Acknowledgements
- Notes on the text
- List of abbreviations
- Introduction
- Part I The regime and the reformers
- Part II The faces of reform
- 3 The exiles
- 4 Pulpit and printshop
- 5 The universities
- 6 The court
- 7 The evangelical underground
- Conclusion
- Appendixes
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
In the reign of Edward VI, the Church of England found itself being governed by an evangelical clique with a startlingly aggressive agenda. From the beginning of the new reign, this clique pursued a vision of Reformation which went well beyond anything that had been attempted under Thomas Cromwell in the 1530s. It did so under the influence of the Reformed theologians of Switzerland and southern Germany. The purists of the Reformed camp may have felt that Cranmer and his allies were permitting too many relics of papistry to remain, but it was clear that they had left the Lutherans behind them. In six and a half years, England's religious life was torn down and rebuilt. In the process, the reformers created what was to become the English Protestant tradition. It was a tradition with a radical edge, informed by the restlessness of Reformed theology; a tradition that was to colonise the New World and fight the Civil War. That tradition, however, was itself built on the evangelicalism that was inherited from the last years of Henry VIII.
This book has examined the fortunes of evangelicals during those years, politically and in their varied social settings. Thomas Cromwell's Reformation left behind it an evangelical movement which had a considerable presence in some of the most influential circles of English society and government, and which also tended towards both political and doctrinal moderation.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Gospel and Henry VIIIEvangelicals in the Early English Reformation, pp. 248 - 258Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2003