George Williams' monumental The Radical Reformation has been an essential reference work for historians of early modern Europe, narrating in rich, interpretative detail the interconnected stories of radical groups operating at the margins of the mainline Reformation. In its scope—spanning all of Europe from Spain to Poland, from Denmark to Italy—and its erudition, The Radical Reformation is without peer. Now in paperback format, Williams' magnum opus should be considered for any university-level course on the Reformation.

Henry VIII and the Anabaptists describes a bloody chapter in the reign of the infamous Tudor king. The book begins with the birth of Anabaptism in the city of Zurich and follows the Anabaptists as they search for religious freedom across the European Continent. Intolerant of religious diversity and sensitive to potential threats to his political authority, Henry’s suppression ultimately leaves the Anabaptists with two choices: recant or burn.

While Baptists through the years have been certain that "war is hell," they have not always been able to agree on how to respond to it. This book traces much of this troubled relationship from the days of Baptist origins with close ties to pacifist Anabaptists to the responses of Baptists in America to the war in Vietnam. Essays also include discussions of the English Baptist Andrew Fuller's response to the threat of Napoleon, how Baptists in America dealt with the War of 1812, the support of Canadian Baptists for Britain's war in Sudan and Abyssinia in the 1880s, the decisive effect of the First World War on Canada's T. T. Shields, the response of Australian Baptists to the Second World War, and how Russian Baptists dealt with the Cold War. These chapters provide important analyses of Baptist reactions to one of society's most intractable problems.

The first book-length analysis of the thought of the first English Baptist

A study of the marrying of Anne of Cleves to Henry VIII and of sexual court politics.

London and the Reformation (1989) was the first book by Susan Brigden (later to win the prestigious Wolfson Prize for her Thomas Wyatt: The Heart's Forest). It tells of London's sixteenth-century transformation by a new faith that was both fervently evangelised and fiercely resisted, as a succession of governments and monarchs - Henry VIII, Edward VI, and Mary - vied for control. London's disproportionate size and wealth, its mix of social forces and high politics, and the strength of its religious sectors made the capital a key factor in the reception of the English Reformation. Brigden draws upon rich archival sources to examine how these religious dilemmas were confronted. 'A tour de force of historical narrative... which can be read with both pleasure and profit by scholars and non-scholars alike.' Times Literary Supplement 'Magisterial... richly detailed... teeming with the vivid street language of the sixteenth century.' London Review of Books

This is an important and interesting book on aspects of our religious heritage which until now have escaped the investigation of scholars. History is all too often employed as a weapon for smiting the "infidel." So it was among religiously-minded people in 19th century England. By the beginning of the Victorian era, after the somnolence of the 18th century, religious enthusiasm among both clergy and laity in the established Church revived. This brought about such acrimonious differences it was a wonder they could be accommodated in the same Church. Provoked by a group of Oxford scholars who sought to show that the Church of England was neither Roman Catholic nor Protestant but a middle way between the two, Protestant militants were aroused to demonstrate against and even disrupt church services of which they disapproved. To remind English men and women of the glories of the Reformation they erected memorials in many towns to celebrate the heroic reputation of the martyrs who suffered in the reign of 'Bloody Mary.' Memorials required names and to find out who the victims were and where they met their end the memorial committees turned to the pages of John Foxe's Acts and Monuments of the Christian Martyrs, better known as Foxe's Book of Martyrs. A most effective work of propaganda in the days of religious warfare, it was reprinted in new editions. Now the target was no longer the Church of Rome, but the Anglo-Catholics or the alleged 'Romanisers.' A perplexing problem for the historian is what the Protestant martyrs actually believed. It is clearly naive to suppose that they died for 19th century parliamentary democracy and liberties. Foxe's criterion of Protestant martyrdom was hatred of Rome and in his anxiety to drum up the numbers he was reticent about or ignorant of the widely varying beliefs of his martyrs. The assumption of the 19th century Protestants was that the English people rose as one to reject popery, but it is impossible to accurately assess the support for state-imposed religious change. Surviving evidence, as the preamble to wills, seems to suggest that people for the most part simply acquiesced in what the government of the day decided was the 'true' religion.