Abstract
Perceptions of the nature and extent of lay involvement within the church have varied considerably. Historians used to speak of the Reformation as ‘the triumph of the laity’ over an all too dominant priesthood. Scholars such as Scarisbrick reject this view, presenting instead a Reformation which suppressed and reduced lay initiative, leaving a clerical elite whose members no longer represented the interests of their parishioners. More recently still, Nicholas Alldridge has argued that, if lay activity within the church suffered any diminution, it soon reasserted itself and flourished again.1 The purpose of this chapter is to sift and assess the evidence.
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Layfolk within the Church
Claire Cross, Church and People 1450–1660 (Glasgow, 1976);
J. J. Scarisbrick, The Reformation and the English People (Oxford, 1984);
N. Alldridge, ‘Loyalty and Identity in Chester Parishes, 1540–1640’, in S. J. Wright (ed.), Parish, Church and People. Local Studies in Lay Religion, 1350–1750 (London, 1988).
Eamon Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars (New Haven, CT, and London, 1992), p. 475.
Cited by Christopher Haigh, English Reformations (Oxford, 1993) p. 141.
Gerald Bray (ed.), Documents of the English Reformation (Cambridge, 1994) pp. 347–8.
David Cressy and Lori Anne Ferrell (eds), Religion and Society in Early Modern England: A Sourcebook (London, 1996) p. 108; Hunt, ‘Lord’s Supper’; John Aubrey, cited by Hunt.
Peter Marshall, The Catholic Priesthood and the English Reformation (Oxford, 1994) p. 41.
William Nicholson (ed.), The Remains of Edmund Grindal (Parker Society, Cambridge, 1843) p. 133.
Tessa Watt, Cheap Print and Popular Piety, 1550–1640 (Cambridge, 1991) p. 137.
A. G. Dickens, The English Reformation (1964; 2nd edn, London, 1989) p. 321;
Cord Oestmann, Lordship and Community: The Lestrange Family and the Village of Hunstanton in the First Half of the Sixteenth Century (Centre of East Anglian Studies, 1994) p. 241.
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© 1998 Christopher Marsh
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Marsh, C. (1998). Layfolk within the Church. In: Popular Religion in Sixteenth-Century England. Social History in Perspective. Palgrave, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-26740-8_2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-26740-8_2
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