John Craig. Reformation, Politics and Polemics: the Growth of Protestantism in East Anglian Market Towns, 1500-1610.

Aldershot and Burlington: Ashgate Publishing Company, 2001. xvi + 268 pp. index, append. illus, this. map. bibl. $84.95. ISBN: 0-7546-0269-9.

Understanding the reception of the Reformation in English counties, towns, parishes, and chapelries has been a staple preoccupation of sixteenth-century historians for at least two generations. Every sort of record, and every type of community, has been pressed into service. In the 1960s and 1970s the focus was most frequently diocesan, and the favored evidence was drawn from the disciplinary records of the established church or from the treasure-store of wills accumulated by the consistory courts. Since then churchwardens' accounts and local borough records have become major sources for studying response to the Reformation. And still the studies come thick and fast, perpetuating debates about fast and slow religious change, regional diversity, social differentiation, and the nature of radical sentiment. John Craig has for some years been a major contributor to these debates, and it is a pleasure to see his book on East Anglian communities reach print. Craig negotiates between the extreme localism of the parish and the broader world of religious politics in diocese and county. His sources are a mixture of parochial accounts, borough records, and national materials, and his objective is to analyze the pattern of conformity and initiative that he believes marks the response of local communities to the demands of their rulers. Four case studies--of Mildenhall, Bury St. Edmunds, Thetford, and Hadleigh--are chosen to articulate different aspects of cooperation and conflict. The first is primarily directed to understanding the role of churchwardens in the management of parochial affairs; the second examines the fascinating story of the Bury stirs, well-known conflicts between the Puritans and their enemies, that are here revealed as leading to the dominance of the "middling sort" in the religious life of the borough. The Thetford warns historians against regarding every local conflict as underpinned by religious division, and the moral of the Hadleigh story is that bitter early conflict about reform did not necessarily create an intensely godly community under Elizabeth. Each of these individual investigations is conducted with impressive rigor. Craig exudes the confidence of one who thoroughly understands the records when, for example, he assails John Foxe's image of Hadleigh as a nursery of true Protestantism, or questions contemporary gentry interpretations of Thetford's stirs. Although his earlier publications have familiarized us with significant parts of the story, this should not detract from the value of this systematic approach. If there is any general conclusion that can be drawn from diverse particular histories, it is that broad compliance with the will of the government and bishops did not preclude the firm management of local religious affairs by the "middling sort." And their obedience could surprisingly quickly move in to species of nonconformity--supporting clerics who fell afoul of the bishops, undertaking petitioning, even participating in informal conventicling.

The problem for Craig lies not in his fascinating local studies, but in the need to make the whole greater than the sum of its parts. He reveals different ways of responding to change, but concludes (correctly) on the real dangers of generalizing from his cases. He can with conviction assail the Puritan divines who in their polemical tracts simplified ordinary parishioners and presented straw men--worldlings and ungodly characters unmoved by the Pauline message. And he can also embrace in this critique modern historians, especially Christopher Haigh, who imply that this was what English parishioners were really like. There is in this volume the germ of an alternative interpretation of local sources, based upon the role of the "middling sort" as brokers: it may now need some greater analytical boldness to develop and model these localist insights.

FELICITY HEAL

Jesus College, University of Oxford