Overview

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 antipapal 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 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 also offers a unique window into a rural world in crisis as the Reformation progressed. Sir Christopher Trychay's accounts provide direct evidence of the motives which drove the hitherto law-abiding West-Country communities to participate in the doomed Prayer-Book Rebellion of 1549 culminating in the siege of Exeter 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 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.

Full Product Details

9780300098259

Table of Contents

Reviews

Stories like the one Duffy skillfully tells here, for historian and general reader alike . . . bear remembering. -Paul Lewis, New York Times Book Review Stories like the one Duffy skillfully tells here, for historian and general reader alike . . . bear remembering. And it is a story that can still be seen. . . . Duffy's map of the parish in Tudor times remains accurate today. -Paul Lewis, New York Times Book Review Social history at its most compelling. -Sunday Telegraph This is an absorbing portrait of one small Devon village in the sixteenth century as it faced up to daily life and the upheavals of the English Reformation. . . . A series of vivid snapshots of ordinary life during a time of extraordinary change. -The Sunday Times (London) Duffy's scholarship is meticulous and exact. . . . This is a book to be read by enthusiasts and general readers alike. . . . It is vital to understand, for example, that the piety of the people clustered around the saints of the region as if they were an emanation of the soil itself. As more historians begin to discover this territorial imperative, then new forms of history will be written. The Voices of Morebath is a significant and striking example. -Peter Ackroyd, The Times (London) Dr. Duffy's presentation of the journals is quite brilliant. . . . The book is never dull: on the contrary, it reads like a very good novel. . . . This book should be assured of a place in the library of every Catholic school, primary as well as secondary. . . . Not to have read it will reduce one's claim to be a well-informed English Catholic. -Mentor Magazine Gripping. . . . We catch a rare glimpse of the life and pre-Reformation piety of a sixteenth century English village. -Catholic Life (UK) Duffy's meticulous research enables us to catch a rare glimpse of 16th-century religious life as experienced by the poorest of the poor, whose distress at the constant and inexplicable changes wrought by the Reformation comes through clearly in this remarkable and highly praised account. -Good Book Guide (UK) [A] vivid piece of microhistory. . . . Through a sensitive and sympathetic reading of this text written to be read out loud to Trychay's parishioners, Duffy provides us with a rich and often witty portrait. -Alexandra Walsham, History (UK) A vivid study. . . . What Duffy gives us is an utterly convincing and compelling work of reconstruction. Other historians have known and used the Morebath accounts, but we have not had this mixture of critical engagement and sheer enthusiasm before. . . . His book is alive with detail and Morebath comes to life in the process. . . . Christopher Trychay and the voices of Morebath are fortunate indeed to have found such a wise and compassionate judge as Eamon Duffy. -David Hoyle, Journal of Theological Studies (UK) This book is a gem: small, colourful, many-faceted. -Lucy Wooding, Reviews in History Short-listed for the Samuel Johnson Prize Long-listed for the British Academy Book award Winner of the Hawthornden Prize for Literature for the best work of imaginative literature

A remote village on the edge of Exmoor, Morebath had from 1520 to 1574 a single parish priest, the dedicated and opinionated Sir Christopher Trychay, who kept detailed parish accounts in which he also recorded the lives and deeds of his flock. The period covered, of course, was that of the English Reformation, from Henry VIII's initial tentative reforms through the harsh Protestantism of Edward VI and the reversion to Catholicism under Mary to Elizabeth's establishment of a more moderate, distinctively Anglican religious settlement. Using Trychay's records as his primary source, Eamon Duffy - author of the much-acclaimed The Stripping of the Altars - examines just how the changes affected the people of Morebath, and how they reacted. Those used to the traditional Protestant account of corrupt, inaccessible Catholic practices being justly overthrown will be astonished by the harshness caused by the imposition of the Reformation and its consequent destruction of a community way of life, its impact on the unwilling and their eagerness to return to the old ways under Mary. The shock was financial as well as spiritual. The local community was faced not only with the obligatory purchase of new prayer books, service books, bibles and record books, but had also to raise the 'Five Dole', so called because it was a minimum #5 - as much as the normal parish income - to provide money towards equipping the army and for sea defences. To pay for this, what was left of the church valuables, after the Commissioners had seized all they could find, had to be sold off, the equivalent of the village hall stripped, closed down and rented out. No wonder the countryside rose up in protest. Morebath financed five young men to join the rebels who surrounded and laid siege to Exeter in 1549. Not trusting Englishmen to deal with the rebels, the Government recruited professional foreign mercenaries to subue them. The peasants were dispersed and 400 were slaughtered. The Vicar of St Thomas, near Exebridge, who was considered one of the ringleaders, was hung in his vestments from a chain to die from exposure and starvation. Duffy's meticulous research enables us to catch a rare glimpse of 16th-century religious life as experienced by the poorest of the poor, whose distress at the constant and inexplicable changes to their familiar rituals - not to mention the devastation wrought on the fabric of the church building itself - comes through clearly in this remarkable account. It is only a shame that Duffy's style is somewhat on the academic style for the general reader; a more 'popular' version of this masterly work would be widely welcomed. (Kirkus UK)

a book of exceptional quality John Adamson, The Sunday Telegraph This great book is a monument not only to scholarship but also to the numinous spirituality of our past. Daniel Johnson, The Daily Telegraph a book to be read by enthusiasts and general readers alike... significant and striking. Peter Ackroyd, The Times

Stories like the one Duffy skillfully tells here, for historian and general reader alike . . . bear remembering. And it is a story that can still be seen. . . . Duffy's map of the parish in Tudor times remains accurate today. -Paul Lewis, New York Times Book Review Social history at its most compelling. -Sunday Telegraph This is an absorbing portrait of one small Devon village in the sixteenth century as it faced up to daily life and the upheavals of the English Reformation. . . . A series of vivid snapshots of ordinary life during a time of extraordinary change. -The Sunday Times (London) Dr. Duffy's presentation of the journals is quite brilliant. . . . The book is never dull: on the contrary, it reads like a very good novel. . . . This book should be assured of a place in the library of every Catholic school, primary as well as secondary. . . . Not to have read it will reduce one's claim to be a well-informed English Catholic. -Mentor Magazine [R]ichly detailed. -America A unique and valuable record. . . . Eamon Duffy has written a classic account of how one small parish adapted to the bewildering changes of the Reformation. -Roger B. Manning, American Historical Review This is an immensely appealing book, both for its physical appearance and its contents. . . . [Duffy] offers a plausible reading, that makes good use of these wonderful records. -Catholic Historical Review Duffy's book provides a poignant account of a priest and his parish struggling to adapt to a world that is changing too quickly. . . . The Voices of Morebath should appeal to specialists and non-specialists alike. It is an absorbing story, told largely through the words of the 'most vivid country clergyman of the English sixteenth century,' as well as an accomplished piece of regional Reformation history. -Holly Crawford Pickett, Comitatus: A Journal of Medieval & Renaissance Studies Admirers of Duffy's justly acclaimed The Stripping of the Altars willwelcome this extended footnote to his argument that the Protestant Reformation was, for the most part, an elitist and violent imposition upon a solidly Catholic England. . . . It is a poignant story of people trying to hold on to their faith and community, but finally coming to terms with changes to which royal power gave the appearance of inevitability. -First Things The Voices of Morebath will fascinate historians who already find the period exciting. Those who have considered themselves immune to the charms of Clio may be in for a pleasant surprise. This book deserves a wide readership. -Virginia Quarterly Review Few other books accomplish such a vivid reconstruction of the past, and Duffy manages tit using the most prosaic documents. -Carlos Eire, Commonweal

Author Information

Eamon Duffy is Reader in Church History in the University of Cambridge, and President of Magdalene College. His previous books include The Stripping of the Altars, Traditional Religion in England c 1400-c 1570 (0 300 06076 9, [pound]13.95* pb.), and Saints and Sinners, a History of the Popes (0 300 07799 8, [pound]14.95* pb.), both published by Yale University Press.

Tab Content 6

Customer Reviews

Recent Reviews

Countries Available