For almost 400 years, Roman Catholics have been writing about the English Reformation, but their contributions have been largely ignored by the scholarly world and the reading public. Thus the myths of corrupt monasteries, a 'Bloody' Mary, and a 'Good' Queen Bess have established themselves in the popular mind. John Vidmar re-examines this literature systematically from the time of the Reformation itself, to the early 1950s, when Philip Hughes produced his monumental Reformation in England.

Extensively revised and updated, this new edition of The debate on the English Reformation combines a discussion of successive historical approaches to the English Reformation with a critical review of recent debates in the area, offering a major contribution to modern historiography as well as to Reformation studies. It explores the way in which successive generations have found the Reformation relevant to their own times and have in the process rediscovered, redefined and rewritten its story. It shows that not only people who called themselves historians but also politicians, ecclesiastics, journalists and campaigners argued about interpretations of the Reformation and the motivations of its principal agents. The author also shows how, in the twentieth century, the debate was influenced by the development of history as a subject and, in the twenty-first century, by state control of the academy. Undergraduates, researchers and lecturers alike will find this an invaluable and essential companion to their studies.

How the English Reformation was Named analyses the shifting semantics of 'reformation' in England between the fifteenth and seventeenth centuries. Originally denoting the intended aim of church councils, 'reformation' was subsequently redefined to denote violent revolt, and ultimately a series of past episodes in religious history. But despite referring to sixteenth-century religious change, the proper noun 'English Reformation' entered the historical lexicon only during the British civil wars of the 1640s. Anglican apologists coined this term to defend the Church of England against proponents of the Scottish Reformation, an event that contemporaries singled out for its violence and illegality. Using their neologism to denote select events from the mid-Tudor era, Anglicans crafted a historical narrative that enabled them to present a pristine vision of the English past, one that endeavoured to preserve amidst civil war, regicide, and political oppression. With the restoration of the monarchy and the Church of England in 1660, apologetic narrative became historiographical habit and, eventually, historical certainty.

In 1598, Jesuit missions in Ireland, Scotland, and England were either suspended, undermanned, or under attack. With the Elizabethan government’s collusion, secular clerics hostile to Robert Persons and his tactics campaigned in Rome for the Society’s removal from the administration of continental English seminaries and from the mission itself. Continental Jesuits alarmed by the English mission’s idiosyncratic status within the Society, sought to restrict the mission’s privileges and curb its independence. Meanwhile the succession of Queen Elizabeth I, the subject that dared not speak its name, had become a more pressing concern. One candidate, King James VI of Scotland, courted Catholic support with promises of conversion. His peaceful accession in 1603 raised expectations, but as the royal promises went unfulfilled, anger replaced hope.

Two eminent scholars of historiography examine the concept of national identity through the key multi-volume histories of the last two hundred years. Starting with Hume’s History of England (1754–62), they explore the work of British historians whose work had a popular readership and an influence on succeeding generations of British children.

Long ghettoized within British and Irish studies, Catholicism and Recusancy in Britain and Ireland demonstrates that, despite many challenges and differences among them, English, Scottish, Welsh, and Irish Catholics formed strong bonds and actively participated in the life of their nations and their Church.

This book explores (mis)representations of two female claimants to the Tudor throne, Lady Jane Grey and Mary I of England. It places Jane's attempted accession and Mary I's successful accession and reign in comparative perspective, and illustrates how the two are fundamentally linked to one another, and to broader questions of female kingship, precedent, and legitimacy. Through ten original essays, this book considers the nature and meaning of mid-Tudor queenship as it took shape, functioned, and was construed in the sixteenth century as well as its memory down to the twenty-first, in literary, musical, artistic, theatrical, and other cultural forms. Offering unique comparative insights into Jane and Mary, this volume is a key resource for researchers and students interested in the Tudor period, queenship, and historical memory.

Henry VIII remains the most iconic and controversial of all English Kings. For over four-hundred years he has been lauded, reviled and mocked, but rarely ignored. In his many guises - model Renaissance prince, Defender of the Faith, rapacious plunderer of the Church, obese Bluebeard-- he has featured in numerous works of fact and faction, in books, magazines, paintings, theatre, film and television. Yet despite this perennial fascination with Henry the man and monarch, there has been little comprehensive exploration of his historiographic legacy. Therefore scholars will welcome this collection, which provides a systematic survey of Henry's reputation from his own age through to the present. Divided into three sections, the volume begins with an examination of Henry's reputation in the period between his death and the outbreak of the English Civil War, a time that was to create many of the tropes that would dominate his historical legacy. The second section deals with the further evolution of his reputation, from the Restoration to Edwardian era, a time when Catholic commentators and women writers began moving into the mainstream of English print culture. The final section covers the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, which witnessed an explosion of representations of Henry, both in print and on screen. Taken together these studies, by a distinguished group of international scholars, offer a lively and engaging overview of how Henry's reputation has been used, abused and manipulated in both academia and popular culture since the sixteenth century. They provide intriguing insights into how he has been reinvented at different times to reflect the cultural, political and religious demands of the moment; sometimes as hero, sometimes as villain, but always as an unmistakable and iconic figure in the historical landscape.

In The Excommunication of Elizabeth I, Aislinn Muller examines the excommunication and deposition of Queen Elizabeth I of England by the Roman Catholic Church, and its political afterlife during her reign. Muller shows that Elizabeth’s excommunication was a crucial turning point for both Catholics and Protestants, one that irrevocably changed attitudes towards the queen, widened political participation and resistance, and posed a destabilising threat to her regime. The Excommunication of Elizabeth I demonstrates how this event exacerbated religious tensions in England’s foreign and domestic politics, and how Elizabeth’s conflict with the papacy shaped the development of anti-Catholicism in post-Reformation England.

Jane Austen's England was littered with remnants of medieval religion. From her schooling in the gatehouse of Reading Abbey to her visits to cousins at Stoneleigh Abbey, Austen faced constant reminders of the wrenching religious upheaval that reordered the English landscape just 250 years before her birth. Drawing attention to the medieval churches and abbeys that appear frequently in her novels, Moore argues that Austen's interest in and representation of these spaces align her with a long tradition of nostalgia for the monasteries that had anchored English life for centuries until the Reformation. Converted monasteries serve as homes for the Tilneys in Northanger Abbey and Mr. Knightley in Emma, and the ruins of the 'Abbeyland' have a prominent place in Sense and Sensibility. However, these and other formerly sacred spaces are not merely picturesque backgrounds, but tangible reminders of the past whose alteration is a source of regret and disappointment. Moore uncovers a pattern of critique and commentary throughout Austen's works, but he focuses in particular on Northanger Abbey, Mansfield Park, and Sanditon. His juxtaposition of Austen's novels with sixteenth- and seventeenth-century texts rarely acknowledged as relevant to her fiction enlarges our understanding of Austen as a commentator on historical and religious events and places her firmly in the long national conversation about the meaning and consequences of the Reformation.