Religion in Doncaster from the Reformation to the Civil War

Abstract

On his visit to Doncaster towards the end of the reign of Henry VIII, in addition to mentioning the two stone bridges which carried the Great North Road over the Cheswold and the Don, John Leland singled out for particular comment ‘the fair and large parish church of St George’. He also remarked that ‘the soil about Doncaster hath very good meadow, corn and some wood.’ All these topographical features have a direct bearing upon the town’s religious history in the early modern period and go a long way towards explaining how a Catholic community of the late Middle Ages could be transformed into a Protestant municipality within at the most three generations.¹