Between king and conscience: Law, politics and community in early modern England's Diocese of Winchester, 1520--1641

Once England's political leaders chose to enact the statutes and directives that launched the realm's Protestant Reformation, it fell to the kingdom's lesser officials to enforce and implement the resulting revolution. But these agents were subject to a variety of pressures and influences. As a result, the English people participated in their Reformation to a degree rarely appreciated.; This study argues that whereas the broad mass of English people may not have desired the Reformation, nevertheless they participated in and influenced the continuing development of their new Church. The church courts were principally employed by the realm's leaders to enforce the Reformation and depended in large measure on local cooperation to detect violations. The parish clergy and the churchwardens, representing the officials principally charged with detecting violations, depended on their neighbors' continuing goodwill and therefore they were subject to a variety of conflicting influences. This empowered ordinary parishioners to participate in local governance and Church reform, and this franchise led to a sense of continuing ownership over the parish church which may help to explain why the Reformation apparently succeeded without arousing the kind of violence seen on the Continent and why the English ultimately came to harbor such intense loyalty to a Prayer Book they may not have wanted in the first place.; The study employs a variety of local and national archival materials, but the heart of the research relies on three types of sources: the churchwardens' accounts, probate evidence, and the records of Winchester's church courts. The study is subdivided into four main sections. The first section recounts the deeds of Winchester's bishops during the era. This is followed by a more extensive analysis of the parish clergy, highlighting the ways in which they remained highly vulnerable to their neighbors' goodwill. The third section assesses the nature and process of parish governance, revealing the extent to which churchwardens, like the clergy, remained vulnerable to their neighbors' goodwill. Finally, the changing modes of personal belief are analyzed, showing that Winchester's people were broadly Protestant by 1641.