ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book focuses on people in early modern England and Scotland prayed when they weren't in church. As with public worship, there was widespread disagreement about how private and domestic prayer should be done; but its settings were more flexible, usually less open to external regulation. It sets out to indicate the sheer variety of the contexts for private and domestic devotion, spanning nonconformist and Roman Catholic practice as well as the range of English and Scottish conformities of the period. The chapter explores largely in pre-Reformation devotion: that surrounding the passion and death of Jesus. It is drawn from a variety of printed sources which themselves illustrate how very blurred the boundary is between public and private, since some are sermons re-figured as devotional reading, others devotional reading which supports public worship, especially the Eucharist.
