Just Finished Reading: A Brief History of the English Reformation by Derek Wilson (FP: 2012)

Clearly my History teacher in school lied to me. We had been told that the reason England, an originally Catholic country (of course all countries where essentially Catholic back then, or as they liked to call them – Christian), became a Protestant one was because of Henry VIII who basically wanted a divorce from his first wife and the Pope refused him. Seeing no other way to get his own way he, in a fit of pique and with a sneer of cynicism, decided to create his own Church and install himself as the head of it thus giving himself the power and authority to divorce his wife.

From reading this detailed and fascinating book just about everything I thought I knew was wrong! Although Henry VIII did indeed end up running the CofE that wasn’t, apparently, his original intention. Apparently even the conclusion of being a Protestant country wasn’t something that anyone started out with actually aiming at – except maybe a few, a very few, hard-line fanatics that no one really trusted to run anything never mind a national church. Not surprisingly the move from Catholicism to Protestantism was chocked full of complexities, advances and reversals, confusion, cowardice, passion, blood and death. It did not progress smoothly – to say the least – and did not move at the same pace in all parts of the country. As always with cultural seismic shifts of this nature the main events took place in cities like London and most often at the heights of the social structure where it moved out into the provinces and trickled down to street level. The big driver was the arrival of print and, in the early decades of that revolution, the arrival of cheap pamphlets which could be distributed to the masses.

I did find it interesting that England had its own home-grown Protestant movement prior to the introduction of European and specially German Protestantism – the Lollards. I’d heard of them before (mostly in passing) but it would seem that they might have ignited the Protestant Revolution if Luther and others had failed to do so. Needless to say, when works in Latin, French and German begin being imported onto these shores as well as foreign printed Bibles it wasn’t long before all Hell broke loose. Without the requirement of the Bible in particular having to be interpreted by the Catholic clergy but available for people to read in the comfort of their own homes then questions where bound to be asked – and few clergy where educated enough to answer them. This was, as you might imagine, explosive stuff. Guess what…..? Explosions happened all over Europe and in England in particular helped along by a mix of radical enquiry, equally radical interpretation and both governmental and clerical mismanagement. Change was coming, that much was certain and expected by most of the people involved but no one quite expected things to move so fast or so far. Fatally, literally in some cases, there where occasional and brutal attempts to put the genie back in the bottle. When Henry VIII died and was succeeded by his daughter Mary (known to Protestant historians as ‘Bloody’ Mary) who was a confirmed Catholic a concerted effort to return the nation to the ‘true’ religion followed with predictable consequences. On her death she was succeeded by her sister Elizabeth who was a confirmed Protestant and everything changed back. I’m guessing that it was a time where smart people acted like chameleons just to stay alive. Not exactly a good time to be too fervent in your religious views in any event. After Elizabeth things calmed down and the Reformation bedded down to the extent that it could have never been uprooted without a massive, protracted and blood-soaked campaign. Thankfully that never happened and thankfully we never found out how far the Spanish would have gone to turn back the clock if their Armada had made it to our shores. As I said, complex, indeed very complex. Luckily for anyone interested in this honestly fascinating period of our history we have books and authors such as this. Far more than simply ecclesiastical history this is political and cultural history at its best. As gripping as a good novel and filled with fascinating characters made all the more so because they really existed this was a history book I found hard to put down. Highly recommended.