I.Introduction

In the past forty years,historical understanding of the English Reformation has gone through something of a revolution.To a historian of the late medieval and pre-Reformation church,the basic reason for the turmoil among Reformation historians seems obvious:they realised that the church as it actually existed before 1530 did not match their preconceptions,and had to respond to that realisation.This sense of surprise was largely due to the scale of previous investigations of the church and its institutional and religious structures before 1500,which had not been picked up by Reformation historians because of the way in which the Reformation under Henry VIII was treated as a fundamental break between periods in the history of the English church.It may be an extreme statement,but it seems that Reformation historians had felt no real need to look at the pre-Reformation church.They knew that it was decadent and needed reform—because if it was not like that,there would have been no Reformation.Now,however,things are different,and the old certainties have been smashed.This article addresses some of the changes in historians'approaches to the late medieval and early Reformation church,focusing on the years of the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries,through to the death of King Henry VIII in 1547.The continuing extensive debate about the nature and significance of the Reformation changes under Henry VIII(and,of course,later)precludes any suggestion that what follows is a definitive statement on the early stages of that transition.Nor,indeed,can it be a definitive statement about the pre-Reformation church,where research and analysis continues to add to understanding while increasing uncertainty about national trends and developments.^[2]

‘The Reformation’unavoidably overshadows,dictates and distorts approaches to late-medieval English religion,as much of the fifteenth as of the sixteenth century.A search for‘origins’and a focus on change impose a directional approach to understandings and appreciations of the medieval church,the rejection of papal catholicism and the emergence of a new religious settlement in the later years of Henry VIII's reign having their origins in the tensions of a pre-Reformation past.Closer attention to pre-Reformation religion with a more‘local’focus provides a different perspective on and view of those evolutions.This local approach has to operate at several levels.The church in England as a whole can be considered as a‘local’church in relation to the totality of catholic Christendom;investigation on that basis challenges views of the late medieval church as a unified and overwhelming institution,a centrally-controlled machine which imposed itself on unwilling subjects.Meanwhile,if England is treated as the main unit,as the highest level of attention,then examination of evolutions at lower levels of the church in terms of its structures and practices(possibly right down to the individual practising Christian)raises questions about the validity and value of broadbrush attempts to impose a nation-wide narrative of spiritual development and receptivity to doctrinal evolutions when seeking to understand how and why the English church and people accepted change under Henry VIII.

The question of receptivity might easily force the chronological coverage of this discussion beyond the very first years of the Reformation,but how far it should go beyond those initial years is open to debate,and such extension is not attempted here.The changes brought to the English church over the whole sixteenth century mean that the Reformation's own progress can be seen as both an affirmation of localism in relation to the wider world(the development of a distinctively and assertively national church)and as an assault on many central features of the numerous local configurations of catholicism within the pre-Reformation English church.The dissolution of the monasteries smashed the attractive power of pilgrimage,the destruction of relics and images undermined local and regional cults.^[3]With the imposition of the Book of Common Prayer in 1549,a standard liturgy,and a standard ecclesiastical calendar,established a single and uniform annual devotional round,reaffirmed in slightly different format under Elizabeth I.^[4]No longer would a canon of Salisbury seek permission to worship according to the Use of Hereford because it was his preferred choice,or a chantry priest in York Minster employ a monastic breviary while all around him the Use of York was recited.^[5]