Worcester: a Cathedral City in the Reformation

Abstract

This study concentrates on a narrative of religious change in sixteenth-century Worcester, contained in a largely unknown Worcester chronicle; it compares what the chronicle tells us with what we know of religious changes elsewhere, particularly in other cathedral cities, during the English Reformation. The Worcester Chronicle, recently rediscovered by Dr Pat Hughes of Worcester, deals with civic matters as well as the religious changes chiefly under consideration here; it forms five folios in a manuscript volume of miscellaneous collections and memoranda. ¹ It is structured as a list of the annually-elected pair of senior and junior bailiffs of the city of Worcester from 1483 to 1578; to this list, annalistic entries have been added, taking the year of the bailiwick from September to September. Internal evidence indicates three levels of compilation in the work. First, entries up to 1547 are fairly laconic; second, from 1547 on, the descriptions of events are clearly those of an eye-witness with decided opinions, particularly about religion. From the tone of their comments, both pre- and post-1547 chroniclers are conservative in religious sympathy. Third, the whole work is now in the hand of an early seventeenth-century copyist, who has added material of a commonplace nature about kings and queens, after he had copied the more interesting original entries.