The book integrates analysis of religious change during the sixteenth century in the four countries (three kingdoms) of the British Isles. Interaction between these realms is essential to understanding the history of religious reform within each territory. The pre-Reformation Catholic Church is discussed, as is popular religious belief and behaviour. The Reformation is considered as a political change, involving the choices of monarchs and their political elites. In England and Scotland, these elites drove forward reform and ensured its success. They were also urged on by a clerical minority i ... More

The book integrates analysis of religious change during the sixteenth century in the four countries (three kingdoms) of the British Isles. Interaction between these realms is essential to understanding the history of religious reform within each territory. The pre-Reformation Catholic Church is discussed, as is popular religious belief and behaviour. The Reformation is considered as a political change, involving the choices of monarchs and their political elites. In England and Scotland, these elites drove forward reform and ensured its success. They were also urged on by a clerical minority ideologically committed to doctrinal change and to evangelization. In Ireland, no such indigenous commitment to reform existed, and no political identity with reform was constructed. The text also examines the religious responses of ordinary clergy and laymen to reform from above. It acknowledges the reluctance to change that is a constant refrain of revisionist historical writing, but investigates more closely the process by which Englishmen and Scots were slowly translated from Catholics before the altar to some form of Protestants around the pulpit.