ABSTRACT
The debate over clerical marriage, and indeed Reformation polemic in general, testifies the importance of theology to the history of the sixteenth century. In the view of Dickens and Tonkin, 'Historians who exclude theology from their enquiries are usually committing a supreme act of folly.' The debate over clerical marriage in the sixteenth century supports a claim. The lifting of the prohibition on clerical marriage in 1549 was fundamentally a religious piece of legislation; it was an act of doctrinal iconoclasm which upheld the supremacy of the word of God over the laws of men. The debate on clerical celibacy testifies the power of continental influences in the early English Reformation, and the content of the Actes and Monuments confirms Diarmaid MacCulloch's contention that the accession of Elizabeth did not deserve the Settlement passed by parliament: Continent cut off'.
