The practice of swearing oaths was at the centre of the English Reformation. On the one hand, oaths were the medium through which the Henrician regime implemented its ideology and secured loyalty among the people. On the other, they were the tool by which the English people embraced, resisted and manipulated royal policy. Jonathan Michael Gray argues that since the Reformation was negotiated through oaths, their precise significance and function are central to understanding it fully. Oaths...

In "Life in the Medieval University," Robert S. Rait meticulously examines the intricate social and intellectual fabric of medieval academia. Utilizing a blend of narrative history and scholarly analysis, Rait delves into the structure of medieval universities, from the hierarchical organization of faculties to the daily lives of students and professors. The text is rich in primary sources, providing an authentic window into the customs, challenges, and triumphs characteristic of scholarly...

The great echoing phrases of the King James Bible that have boomed through the English-speaking mind for 400 years - an eye for an eye . . . eat, drink and be merry . . . . death, where is thy sting? . . . man shall not live by bread alone - are largely the work of a man whose genius for words matches Shakespeare. But William Tyndale, the young Gloucestershire tutor who wrote them, paid for them with his life. He was persecuted, exiled and eventually burned at the stake.Book of Fir...

This book seeks to explain the ways in which Anglicans have sought to practise theology in their various contexts. It is a clear, insightful, and reliable guide which avoids technical jargon and roots its discussions in concrete examples. The book is primarily a work of historical theology, which engages deeply with key texts and writers from across the tradition (e.g. Cranmer, Jewel, Hooker, Taylor, Butler, Simeon, Pusey, Huntington, Temple, Ramsey, and many others). As well as being suit...

Peter Ackroyd's The Life of Thomas More is a masterful reconstruction of the life and imagination of one of the most remarkable figures of history. Thomas More (1478-1535) was a renowned statesman; the author of a political fantasy that gave a name to a literary genre and a worldview (Utopia); and, most famously, a Catholic martyr and saint.Born into the professional classes, Thomas More applied his formidable intellect and well-placed connections ...

Acclaimed author Annette Carson continues her Richard III studies by concentrating on his brief protectorate while he was still Duke of Gloucester. Until now traditionally misrepresented, his office as Lord Protector has been poorly understood owing to an over-reliance on foreign reporters ignorant of the precise significance of this very English institution. Of equal importance, and equally disregarded, is his concurrent office as Lord High Constable of England, vested with military and j...

While everyone knows the story of King Arthur, few will have heard of King Lucius, a figure who has been consigned to myth and largely forgotten in the annals of British history. Examining the primary sources as well as the archaeological evidence for this second century king, David Knight convincingly refutes the generally accepted view expounded at the beginning of the twentieth century that identifies Lucius as King Abgarus of Edessa. King Lucius of Britain rec...

The changes brought about during the English Reformation clearly reflected the desire of the Crown, government and landed classes to reduce the political power and landed wealth of the late medieval Church. This book covers the background to the Reformation, the processes which brought about these major changes and the impact on the clergy and the general population.

The widespread view that 'mystical' activity in the Middle Ages was a rarefied enterprise of a privileged spiritual elite has led to isolation of the medieval 'mystics' into a separate, narrowly defined category. Taking the opposite view, this book shows how individual mystical experience, such as those recorded by Julian of Norwich and Margery Kempe, is rooted in, nourished and framed by the richly distinctive spiritual contexts of the period. Arranged by sections corresponding to histori...

Did women really constitute a `fourth estate' in medieval society and, if so, in what sense? In this wide-ranging study Shulamith Shahar considers this and the whole question of the varying attitudes to women and their status in western Europe between the twelfth and the fifteenth centuries.

This book brings together a selection of recent, cutting-edge research which, for the first time, challenges commonplace arguments about Mary and Elizabeth's relative successes or failures in order to rethink Tudor queenship.

This Companion offers a comprehensive introduction to the life and work of a major figure of the modern world. Combining breadth of coverage with depth, the book opens with essays on More's family, early life and education, his literary humanism, virtuoso rhetoric, illustrious public career and ferocious opposition to emergent Protestantism, and his fall from power, incarceration, trial and execution. These chapters are followed by in-depth studies of five of More's major works - Utopia, T...