The history and, perhaps even more so, the historiography of the English Reformation continues to generate a great deal of interest—and debate. This is an important part of the larger discussion about the European Reformation(s), including origins, issues of geography and timing (short vs. long), major figures, elite and popular culture (from above/from below), by force and/or by persuasion, etc. In his historical and historiographical account of the “English Reformation,” Benjamin Guyer analyzes the shifting semantics regarding ‘reformation’ over the course of the fifteenth to seventeenth centuries, focusing on England, while also demonstrating how developments elsewhere, especially in Scotland, but in continental Europe as well, impacted the evolving understanding and terminology of religious and political changes in England. The interplay and variant understandings of reformation in England and to a lesser degree Scotland, in both the Tudor and Stuart eras, is an important and recurrent theme in the book, with English writers generally viewing the Scottish Reformation in terms of revolt and violence, as opposed to the English version. In the introduction, Guyer highlights the history of ‘three discourses’ that he traces through the volume: ‘reformation by church council, reformation by revolt, and reformation as past historical event’ (9). Church councils had long played a significant role in Latin Christendom, though their import and purported inerrancy were subjects of debate. In the Catholic view, church councils and papal primacy were interconnected, whereas in England royal authority, i.e., the royal supremacy, had replaced (or reclaimed) that of the popes. This began under the Tudors, though the degree to which the various Tudor monarchs and regimes were promoting a true reformation continued to be debated. While there were some links in this regard between the Henrician and Edwardian regimes, especially in terms of their anti-papal stance, many later commentators believed that it was under Edward that true reform commenced, most of all with regard to liturgical changes and related theological understandings. Yet, on the central issue of the interpretation of the Lord’s Supper, which sadly divided not only Catholics and Protestants, but also many of the latter, Guyer notes, ‘The Church of England’s approach to the Eucharist offers a clear example of confessional hybridity and reveals the full spectrum of international influence upon the English Church’ (40). In any event, the Edwardian changes (and the important role of Cranmer), including the promulgation of the Book of Common Prayer and increasing iconoclasm, were a clear shift, if not break, from changes under Henry VIII.
The mid-Tudor period witnessed ongoing and dramatic shifts in the official religion in England. Mary, in addition to being the first queen regnant in English history, attempted to reverse, through systematic reform, what she saw as schism (Henrician) and heresy (Edwardian) that had infected her realm over the previous two decades. Her brief reign, however, led to yet another reversal, under Elizabeth, though at the time and thereafter, debate raged as to whether the Elizabethan Settlement produced, from a “Protestant” perspective, a properly reformed church or one that was still in need of true and full reformation. Yet, Guyer contends, ‘Finding itself on the defensive may have prevented Elizabethans from developing a coherent historiography of Tudor religious developments’ (68). During this same period, Scotland, under Knox and others, was undergoing swift and violent religious changes that produced a ‘Reformed Church’ in 1560. Differences and opposition between the English and Scottish churches were to play out well into the future.
These religious fault lines proved to be enduring despite the fact that the Stuart dynasty of Scotland succeeded to the English throne in 1603 in the person of James VI and I. In addition to his inability to achieve a stronger political union of his northern and southern kingdoms of ‘Great Britain’, James also had to deal with ‘the increasingly fractious relations between the national churches of England and Scotland’ (87). James in his heart of hearts was both a devout Protestant and a believer in the divine right of kings. In opposing aspects of Presbyterianism, as at the Hampton Court Conference (1604), he left no doubt as to his stance with his famous dictate: ‘No Bishop, no King’. He believed that the religious and political hierarchies were mutually reinforcing. Moreover, aspects of ‘reformation’ in Scotland (and potentially in England?) were connected with rebellion. It is also instructive how, in the Jacobean era, many Protestants in England viewed important figures from the past. On the Luther Centenary (1617), for example, the English reaction was largely underwhelming, seeing Luther as a significant but not pivotal figure in the history of religious reform. Within England, looking back to the Edwardian era, many favored the religious changes under Somerset, as opposed to the arguably more extreme ones under Northumberland. More broadly, according to Guyer, ‘“reformation” was not yet an organizing category for English historical self-understanding’ (105).
Under Charles I, however, ‘reformation’ gained new meaning, and one increasingly associated with political violence. It was only with the outbreak of civil war in the three kingdoms in the 1640s that an important term came into general use (but which historians have retroactively applied to events a century earlier). As Guyer astutely sums it up: ‘The “English Reformation” began as a historiographical apologetic intended to justify the Caroline regime and the Church of England against their shared opponents. It was a historiographical development with the most immediate of short-term causes but the most enduring of long-term consequences’ (116). As events unfolded, the Cromwellian regime debated ‘reformation’ with regard to Presbyterians and Congregationalists, but religious liberty was not to be extended to ‘Popery or Prelacy’ (135). In response, the latter, who supported both the monarchy and the Church of England, spoke in favor of ‘our English Reformation’, i.e., reform but not rebellion.
The Restoration from 1660 onward witnessed the revival of the monarchy and episcopacy, as well as the enhancement of the liturgy. At the same time, in reaction to the upheavals of the 1640s and 1650s, ‘“Reformation” … remained cloaked in a hermeneutic of suspicion’ (157). The Tudor monarchies underwent reassessment, with a range of writers viewing the Henrician era as a preamble to genuine religious reform, which they argued had only truly begun with Edward and was essentially completed by Elizabeth. Both the English and Scottish Reformations were seen as unique, and thus as having developed with limited influence from continental reformers, including Luther and Calvin, though Erasmus’s impact gained some traction.
In his conclusion, Guyer offers several suggestions for ‘going forward’, in particular the idea that ‘we need to analyze the international dissemination of the histories of local reformations—recognizing, of course, that the histories in question need to explicitly name the events that they describe as “reformation”’ (186). This study offers a range of valuable insights into the Reformation era and the English Reformation in particular. The histories, and especially the historiographies, of these intersecting religious, political, and social transformations are more complicated than we have been inclined to believe. In light of that, while the author’s focus was on England, more discussion of ‘reformation’ in Scotland and especially in Ireland (which was hardly mentioned) would have added to the value of this study, particularly in light of the valuable historiographical turn to the study of the interconnections (pro and con) among the three kingdoms. In any event, Guyer has made a significant contribution to the field of Reformation studies and its evolving historiography.
