ABSTRACT
The legalization of clerical marriage in England was, in the words of H. C. Lea, 'a process of far more intricacy than in any other country which adopted the Reformation'. For the best part of a century, Lea's work has been the standard history of celibacy in the church, and his account of sixteenth-century legislation on the issue is still widely accepted. The prohibition on clerical marriage, it argues, persisted as a consequence of Henry VIII's doctrinal conservatism, and was lifted only reluctantly in 1549. The discipline of celibacy was enforced in the English church for the best part of two decades after the break with Rome, and was tolerated rather than welcomed in the Elizabethan church. Despite the proclamation of 1538, the debate on clerical marriage continued. Wriothesley claimed that preachers continued to defend clerical marriage, even in the presence of the king, and clergy continued to marry.
