Because he was not a medievalist John Strype does not find a place in David Douglas’s classic study of the golden age of English antiquarian scholarship, English Scholars 1660–1730. Yet in terms both of his output and of his influence on the subsequent development of the study of English church history Strype is arguably one of the most important scholars that the age produced. Even to-day, nearly 250 years after his death, the twenty-five volumes of his works in the Clarendon press reissue of the 1820s are still a standard source for the study of English church history in the sixteenth century and it is difficult to open a book dealing with any aspect of the English reformation, which does not have its quota of references to Strype. At the same time, as any one who works on the period knows, Strype’s standing as an ecclesiastical historian is ambiguous. If, on the one hand, he is widely quoted, on the other, he is frequently attacked for his mistakes and his works are notoriously full of pitfalls for the unwary. It is therefore perhaps appropriate, in a volume devoted to ‘the Sources, Materials and Methods of Ecclesiastical History’, to consider, first, what is Strype’s value to-day as a source for the study of the English reformation and, secondly, the question of his reliability as a church historian. The two questions, one should stress, are distinct, although they are not unrelated.

The English roman catholic, or recusant, community of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries has proved to be of considerable interest to historians in recent years for political, economic, and social reasons. But the community was intellectually important, too, having produced theological and devotional works which had a considerable impact upon the reading public, protestant as well as roman catholic, in England and on the continent. The recusants, however, were not content to argue their case on the basis of theology and the scriptures, but turned, as cardinal Baronius and cardinal Bellarmine were doing during these years, to the evidence of history. It was by no means the least of their achievements - though it is one which has been little noted - that they developed a distinctive view of their nation’s past and helped to launch an intensive investigation of some of the most important problems in English ecclesiastical history.

The enigma of Elizabeth’s faith and personality continues to fascinate historians. Her actions are fully recorded: the rejection of her father’s title in favour of ‘Supreme Governor’, and the passing of the act of uniformity in 1559 which almost, but not quite, restored the form of religion authorised under her brother. Elizabeth had chosen between London and Rome, but at the same time she made gestures towards Spain and Germany. Her church was staffed partly by returned exiles, partly by scholars like Matthew Parker, who had remained at their desks under Mary. The archbishop had to build up the numbers and quality of the clergy, and create a new church. Henrican Catholicism was dead beyond recall. The work of Knox in Scotland was about to diminish the standing of the crown. The exiles had tasted independence in church government, though in a still corporate view of society this was to remain an anabaptist heresy. Parker had to use these men to establish a church as close as possible to the desires of his mistress, which were never made explicit. A study of contemporary theological works is a vital guide to the nature of this church.

John foxe in his long account of ‘the grievous affliction of good men and women in the diocese of Lincoln’, based on Lincoln episcopal records for 1521, gave over a quarter of a page to the Colins family of Ginge, near West Hendred in Berkshire. At a time of wholesale detection of lollards, when episcopal officials had succeeded in getting neighbour to inform against neighbour, John Edmunds revealed what he knew about Richard Colins, Alice, his wife, and their daughter, Joan.

When one considers how intimately the ecclesiastical history of Wales has been bound up with that of England from at least the twelfth century until the disestablishment of the Welsh church in 1920, it is perhaps surprising that the subject should present as many problems as it does to those approaching it for the first time, especially to those familiar with the sources of English ecclesiastical history. It will not, of course, be possible in a paper of this length to consider fully all the problems involved, and I wish therefore to confine myself to four which seem to me to be absolutely basic. They are the shortage of primary source material; the lack of competent monographs on many topics; the language barrier which faces those unfamiliar with Welsh; and the dangers inherent in what may be called the ‘Welsh Nationalist’ approach to Welsh ecclesiastical history.

Ecclesiastical history of the nineteenth century, and of other periods where records are plentiful, can be written on three main levels. It can and has been studied at national level in broad movements and through the activities of prominent churchmen. It can and has been studied, though less often and less successfully, at diocesan level, in an analysis of visitation returns, in the activities of diocesan bishops and in the work of lesser churchmen. And it can and should more often be written from parochial sources, since it is from them that the effects of national movements can be traced and their success or failure assessed. The task may seem, on the face of it, to be daunting, but the survival of useful material has, in fact, been poor in every diocese, and the total task becomes therefore much more manageable.

There is still a remarkable book to be written about a phenomenon as yet little recognised or understood: the sudden appearance in England of a serious and scholarly interest in religious experience as a subject worthy of study in itself, at the beginning of the twentieth century. Possibly the two best-known landmarks of the movement were William James’s Gifford Lectures and dean Inge’s Christian Mysticism, which popularised mystical theology beyond the circles to which it had been for the most part confined, within the roman catholic church. Dean Inge had many harsh words for the popish mysticism associated with monasticism, and pervaded by an easy familiarity with the ‘supernatural suspensions of physical law’ of roman catholic hagiography. He passed these strictures on French and Belgian treatises and seminary textbooks, but he might have found materials as outrageous in English, in the writings of the mid-nineteenth century ultramontanes who had striven to reproduce in native dress the religious forms of Italy, France and Spain, and to recreate in England a foreign and professedly ‘supernatural’ culture which accepted mystical experience as an ordinary fact of life.

‘Victorian Britain was not only the first urbanising society,’ Michael Wolff has recently reminded us, ‘. . . it was the first “journalising” society,’ also. Recent research, resulting from professor Wolff’s victorian periodicals project, shows that there were upwards of eighteen thousand periodicals of differing title, published during the victorian period. Of course, these periodicals varied greatly both in duration and in influence, but the average ‘run’ of a victorian periodical was about twenty-eight years, and most victorians would have agreed with professor Wolff’s verdict that the magazines were one of the major new characteristics of their age. ‘We look for our monthly and weekly magazines,’ wrote one correspondent to the British Controversialist in 1862, ‘as readily as we look for our daily food.’ ‘Periodical literature,’ agreed another, ‘is essentially an outgrowth of modern times.’ They were both contributing to a debate, in a monthly periodical, on the question, ‘Does the present multiplicity of periodicals retard rather than foster intellectual progress’?

The modern ecclesiastical historian is an uncertain and hesitant creature; an acute case, it may be thought, of status deprivation. He looks with envy at his august and serene colleagues who have the history of the medieval church as their field of study. He knows that they are in process of uncovering the different layers of belief in medieval or early modern society. It is, no doubt, an illusion to suppose that an ‘age of faith’ ever existed. Nevertheless, at all levels of society, the church seems to be central to the life of the time. If we consider the reformation or counter-reformation periods, church questions seem to be in the forefront. The ‘Wars of Religion’ may not be at bottom about religion, but we cannot avoid some consideration of religious issues.