ABSTRACT
Historians of continental Europe are accustomed to taking a longterm view of the Reformation. Thus the modern discussion of its “success and failure” ranges across both the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, while Jean Delumeau’s seminal treatment of the CounterReformation employs an even wider time frame.2 The case as regards England, however, is somewhat different, where the Reformation remains largely corralled in the mid-sixteenth century and the recent “revisionist” accounts seek only to edge forward a few decades. Part of the explanation for this historiographical contrast lies in the still dominant English tradition of political interpretation, which treats the subject as first and foremost a succession of legislative enactments-culminating under Elizabeth I and followed by a fairly rapid collapse of Catholicism.3 Continental historians, on the other hand, have been more willing to see the Reformation as a religious movement, and one furthermore that continued to be strongly contested.
