ABSTRACT
This chapter explores some important synergies between the little group of Midlands godly and the wider national picture, between godly sociability and writing and the rhetoric of revolutionary plots, especially if one looks at them from the position of Bancroft and Samuel Harsnett. Yet Heylyn's conspiracy theory is just that: he attributes far too much forethought and cohesion to the supposed masterplan, and Bancroft and Harsnett did too. Like other Anglican historians since, they conflated puritan and presbyterian in a way that was intended to damage the godly party of their own generations, and in Heylyn's case to demonstrate English progress away from enthusiastic fanaticism in religion. Elizabeth Dethick's interest was still valuable to the godly, however. The chapter discusses the audits and surveys of income and boundaries troubled tenants, whilst investment and the promotion of the town's economic development suffered. Burton was not an especially troubled community but it was in the process of decisive economic change.
