ABSTRACT
This chapter explores Jane Austen's interpretation of the Reformation by setting her History within the context of conventional eighteenth-century English accounts of sixteenth-century religious reforms. It examines the attitudes of prominent historians like Bishop Gilbert Burnet, David Hume, and Oliver Goldsmith towards the Reformation in general and the Dissolution in particular in order to establish how deeply Austen diverges from them. The chapter describes Austen to contemporary critics of the Reformation, both Protestant and Catholic to show how closely her early historical writing resembles contemporary challenges to the conventional accounts. It shows that the History of England is an important work, and that Austen's early comments on the Reformation, and the Dissolution of the Monasteries, reveal significant clues about how to interpret the representation of medieval sacred spaces in her later, mature works. In true Whig fashion, they discount the Dissolution's crimes and emphasize its salubrious effect.
