The lurches from Catholicism to Protestantism and back which occurred in the reigns of Henry VIII, his son and two daughters produced dramatic changes in the liturgies, decorative fittings, and even, on occasions, the architecture of the country's cathedrals. Yet, despite these changes, there was a real sense in which cathedrals were at the eye of the confessional storms which raged about them. It is true that, as part of the Henrician reform process, the monastic corporations at Carlisle, Durham, Peterborough, Ely, Norwich, Canterbury, Rochester, Osney, Winchester, Westminster, Gloucester, Worcester and Bristol had been first dissolved and then refounded as ‘cathedrals of the new foundation’, the monks replaced by minor canons and prebendaries. Once this upheaval was over, however, the new foundation cathedrals underwent little further institutional change. Those cathedrals which had been staffed by secular priests before the Reformation (known as cathedrals of the old foundation), moreover, survived almost wholly untouched. In both new and old foundations, the same administrative and financial structures continued to support dignitaries and liturgical officers whose only obvious function remained the celebration of liturgy, despite the rejection of opus Dei and its accompanying theology of good works.

No other single person has had an influence on the whole Danish people as immense as Grundtvig. His name is known all over the world together with the names of Hans Christian Andersen and Søren Kierkegaard, but his works are not. He is very difficult to translate and his train of thought is often difficult to follow. Clear thinking and concise expressions were not for him. He was—as he called himself—a bard (skjald), and the language of the bard is not always clear although it is often profound.

Rich. Baxters Apology Against the ModestExceptions of Mr T. Blake, and the Digression of Mr G. Kendall. Whereunto is added Animadversions on a late Dissertation of Ludiomaeus Colvinus, alias, Ludovicus Molinaeus, M. Dr. Oxon. and an Admonition of Mr W. Eyre of Salisbury, with Mr Crandon's Anatomy for satisfaction of Mr Caryl (London 1654) contains, besides the five main parts indicated in the title, a number of dedicatory epistles, prefaces and postscripts, some of them with and some without dates. In the following analysis of the work an attempt is made to elucidate its manifold occasion and the order in which the various pieces included in it were written, with the approximate dates of their composition.

It has long been a commonplace of Scottish ecclesiastical history that the culdees at St. Andrews, who held a place in the cathedral church in the earlier part of the twelfth century, survived for a further two hundred years. The most authoritative statement of this belief is still to be found in the work of Dr. William Reeves (later Bishop of Down), whose paper on ‘The Culdees of the British Islands’ was read to the Royal Irish Academy at Dublin in 1860, and published there as a book in 1864. Reeves's paper discussed very fully the origins and later history of the culdees in the British Isles, especially in Ireland and Scotland; and it is of some interest to recall that since the author was a vicar-choral of Armagh cathedral he belonged to a corporation which could claim to have directly represented, since the seventeenth century, the older body of culdees attached to the mother church of St. Patrick.

Towards the end of a list, in his autobiography, of ‘Manuscripts that are yet unprinted, which lye by me’, Richard Baxter did not scruple to include ‘And a Multitude of Theological Letters’. It is an indication of the seriousness with which he regarded his correspondence. That Matthew Sylvester, Baxter's literary executor and the editor of his autobiography, the Reliquiae Baxterianae (1696), also regarded it seriously appears from his inclusion of some thirty-five letters in the body of that work, with one in the preface and several others in appendices.

It is clear from Bede's Historia ecclesiastica that England then enjoyed close relations with the Roman Church. Some passages in the work have been seen as reflecting a high doctrine of the papacy, but when carefully read they turn out to be devoid of any understanding of the papacy. The same is true of Bede's discussions of Christ's words to Peter (Matthew xvi.18a, 19) in his writing on the Bible. Yet other English authors of the period had attitudes very different to those of Bede; suggestions are offered as to why Bede took the line he did.

The later 1550s in Sprain are remembered as the time of the discovery of ‘Lutheran’ groups in Valladolid and Seville and the ensuing reaction of the authorities: the autos de fe, as the Fernando de Valdés's Index librorum prohibitorum, the edict ordering all Spaniards (with few exceptions) studying or teaching abroad to return to Spain within four months. ‘Heresy’ was to be eradicated at home and Spain was to be preserved from contagion from beyond her frontiers. There was, however, a further subordinate aim: to capture and bring back to Spain those Spaniards who for reasons of religion had taken refuge in Northern Europe. When a dozen Hieronymite monks from San Isidro at Seville fled their monastery and their country in the late summer of 1557, one finds the Inquisitor General, in November of that year, sending a list of their names to the king in the Netherlands. Further lists of wanted heretics continued to be forwarded there when Philip had returned to Spain. Cardinal Granvelle, in a letter to the king of 18 October 1561, refers to ‘aquella escriptura que V. M. me embió venida de los inquisidores de Sevilla’. At the start of that year he had similarly referred to ‘un escripto venido de los inquisidores de Sevilla’ which the king had recently sent. In April 1562 the Margrave of Antwerp was replying to inquiries from Granvelle concerning persons named in the trials of Julian Hernandez (caught when in Seville, distributing Protestant literature, in 1557) and Fray Domingo de Guzmán.

Archbishop Matthew Parker's claim to a place of respect in the estimation of posterity is as nearly secure as could be hoped for by any historical figure. This secure position is based primarily upon his implementation of the Elizabethan Settlement, his scholarship, his conveyance of an impression of mildness in an age not especially notable for its tolerance, and, finally, his efficiency as an administrator. As archbishop of Canterbury he had many functions and duties of national importance. He was royal advisor, president of the Convocation of the Clergy, visitor of Oxford Colleges, gaoler of deprived bishops, host to foreign dignitaries, sede vacante ordinary (i.e. temporary acting bishop in sees which fell vacant), one of the Queen's Commissioners in Causes Ecclesiastical, etc.