Title: Early Modern England 1485-1714: A Narrative History
Authors: Robert Bucholz and
Newton Key
Page Count: 391
Synopsis from Goodreads:
The second edition of this bestselling narrative history has been revised and expanded to reflect recent scholarship. The book traces the transformation of England during the Tudor-Stuart period, from feudal European state to a constitutional monarchy and the wealthiest and most powerful nation on Earth. Written by two leading scholars and experienced teachers of the subject, assuming no prior knowledge of British historyProvides student aids such as maps, illustrations, genealogies, and glossaryThis edition reflects recent scholarship on Henry VIII and the Civil WarExtends coverage of the Reformations, the Rump and Barebone's Parliament, Cromwellian settlement of Ireland, and the European, Scottish, and Irish contexts of the Restoration and Revolution of 1688-9Includes a new section on women's roles and the historiography of women and genderAccompanied by "Sources and Debates in English History, 1485-1714".
Review:
This was our main text book for the course and we used the second edition. I really enjoyed the narrative aspect. It was not all dry information being spewed at the reader. This book was easy to understand and kept the attention of the reader better than most history text books I have encountered.
Title: The Voices of Morebath: Reformation & Rebellion in an
English Village
Author: Eamon Duffy
Page Count: 190
Synopsis from Goodreads:
In the fifty years between 1530 and 1580, England moved from being one of the most lavishly Catholic countries in Europe to being a Protestant nation, a land of whitewashed churches and anti-papal preaching. What was the impact of this religious change in the countryside? And how did country people feel about the revolutionary upheavals that transformed their mental and material worlds under Henry VIII and his three children.
In this book a reformation historian takes us inside the mind and heart of Morebath, a remote and tiny sheep farming village where thirty-three families worked the difficult land on the southern edge of Exmoor. The bulk of Morebath’s conventional archives have long since vanished. But from 1520 to 1574, through nearly all the drama of the English Reformation, Morebath’s only priest, Sir Christopher Trychay, kept the parish accounts on behalf of the churchwardens. Opinionated, eccentric, and talkative, Sir Christopher filled these vivid scripts for parish meetings with the names and doings of his parishioners. Through his eyes we catch a rare glimpse of the life and pre-reformation piety of a sixteenth-century English village.
The book offers a unique window into a rural word in crisis as the reformation progressed. Sir Christopher Trychay’s accounts provide direct evidence of the motives which drove hitherto law-abiding West-country communities to participate in the doomed Prayer Book Rebellion of 1549 – a siege that ended in bloody defeat and a wave of executions. Its church bells confiscated and silenced, Morebath shared in the punishment imposed on all the towns and villages of Devon and Cornwall. Sir Christopher documents the changes in the community reluctantly Protestant, no longer focussed on the religious life of the parish, and increasingly preoccupied with the secular demands of the Elizabethan state, the equipping of armies, and the payment of taxes. Morebath’s priest, garrulous to the end of his days, describes a rural world irrevocably altered, and enables us to hear the voices of his villagers after four hundred years of silence.”
Review:
A good supplement to the textbook, it gives an insight to the religious conflict in England but from a smaller scale population's perspective. My lack of religious knowledge made this difficult to piece together at times, but the general reader with some knowledge of Christianity will likely be fine.
Title: The Pilgrim's ProgressAuthor: John Bunyan
Page Count: 290
Synopsis from Goodreads:
The Pilgrim's Progress has inspired readers for over three centuries. It is one of the best-loved and most widely read books in English literature and is a classic of the heroic Puritan tradition and a founding text in the development of the English novel. The story of Christian, whose pilgrimage takes him through the Slough of Despond, Vanity Fair, and the Delectable Mountains, is full of danger and adventure. Together with his trusty companions, Faithful and Hopeful, he encounters many enemies--the foul fiend Apollyon, Judge Hategood, Giant Despair of Doubting Castle--before finally arriving at the Celestial City.
Bunyan's own experience of religious persecution informs his story, and its qualities of psychological realism, and the beauty and simplicity of his prose combine to create a book whose appeal is universal. This edition includes the illustrations that appeared with the book in Bunyan's lifetime, giving a sense of its impact on contemporary readers.
Review:
We only read the first part of this play, when the story is concentrated on Christian. If you enjoy examining symbolism and have a solid understanding of the basics of Christianity then you will enjoy this read.
Title: Fire From Heaven: Life in an
English Town in the Seventeenth
Century
Author: David Underdown
Page Count: 265
Synopsis from Goodreads:
Dorchester was a typical English country town, of middling size and unremarkable achievements. But on August 6, 1613, much of it was destroyed in a great conflagration, which its inhabitants regarded as a 'fire from heaven,' and which was the catalyst for the events described in this book. Over the next twenty years, a time of increasing political and religious turmoil all over Europe, Dorchester became the most religiously radical town in the kingdom.... David Underdown traces the way in which the tolerant, paternalist Elizabethan town oligarchy was quickly replaced by a group of men who had a vision of a godly community in which power was to be exercised according to religious commitment rather than wealth or rank. They succeeded, briefly, in making Dorchester a place that could boast systems of education and of assisting the sick and needy nearly three hundred years in advance of their time. The town achieved the highest rate of charitable giving in the country. It had ties of blood as well as faith with many of those who sailed to establish similarly godly communities in New England. Underdown skillfully sets the story of Dorchester in the context both of national events and of what was going on overseas. This parallel vision of the crisis that led to the English Civil War and of the incidence of the war itself opens fresh perspectives.
Review:
This was very similar to The Voices of Morebath as it serves to show the broader issues presented by the textbook in a smaller scale population.
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