Tom Webster

Writing to redundancy: approaches to spiritual journals and early modern spirituality

The ‘puritan diary’ has received attention from historians and literary critics with little exchange between the approaches. Placing the diary in the context of experimental Calvinist personal discipline reveals that the form emerged independently of the literature of practical divinity. Considering the practice as a ‘technology of the self’ draws attention to the meanings of writing in a protestant context and encourages us to consider the cultural resources available to early modern protestants. Close reading of these texts suggests a greater degree of complexity than is often admitted and allows for a tension between different views of the salvific process. This tension between ‘open’ and ‘closed’ forms is helpful in understanding the religiosity of early modern protestants.

Major-General Thomas Harrison: Millenarian, Fifth Monarchist and the English Revolution 1616–1660

women in early modern London. Written clearly and concisely, it would fit well on an undergraduate introduction course to the period, as well as inspiring scholars to take note of the rich narratives and telling vocabularies that can be found within court records. As this monograph covers much ground in a relatively few pages, this reader is left hungry for more, particularly about female sociability in the city, and would welcome further elaborations from Reinke-Williams in future publications.

Windows into Men's Souls: Religious Nonconformity in Tudor and Early Stuart England

What is primarily a study of the works of the separatists John Robinson, Thomas Helwys, and John Smyth seeks to put them in a very broad context, both temporally and intellectually. This is a work that has proven to be impossible to review without using the term curate’s egg. It certainly has strengths, and attention will be drawn to them. However, it also has problems—factual, structural, and conceptual—which cannot be ignored. To begin with the strengths, this is a useful addition to the historiography. Where attention has concentrated on the common ground shared within the Church of England between the godly and the conformist and more recently on the internal tensions among the godly, the more fulsome criticisms, criticisms that were acted on, on behalf of the Separatists have sneaked under the radar of attention. This treatment, building on the work of scholars such as Stephen Brachlow, is a pertinent reminder; and the specific engagements with the Separatists’ writings are insightful and thought-provoking, not least in examining the tensions within the conditional loyalty of the Puritans to the Church of England.

Altars Restored: The Changing Face of English Religious Worship, 1547–c. 1700 by Kenneth Fincham, Nicholas Tyacke (review)

This study brings a very useful chronological range to an area that has primarily been confined to the historiography of the Caroline reign. The title is slightly misleading in that it is not a “one-trick pony” on altars so much as their being the center of attention in a broader treatment of religious material culture, space and devotional priorities, and their relations with such issues. It is extraordinarily rich in terms of sources and geographically, bringing a sensitivity to reading the material (and manuscript sources relating to the material) that has often been lacking in the historiography. In addition to the fruits of new evidence, this work brings together fields of study too often kept apart. The reader is drawn into an engagement with illuminating instances and maintaining a tension between the particular and the general with neither getting lost in the other. This is especially the case with the attention paid to the appearance of building and refurbishment under James VI and I, separating the too-often-assumed connection between structural maintenance and an appetite for ceremonial worship.

Criteria for 'Good' History Books

One of the many pleasures of working in the field of history today is the heterogeneous nature of the library. Beyond obvious questions of period and field there are, it seems, ever-increasing specializations and disparate topics and-a related matter which some find troubling and others invigorating-a variety of methodologies. New questions are asked in new ways which sometimes generate new linguistic habits, even new jargons which often seem to have little interest in treating outsiders with the tenderness that greenhorns hope for. This makes cross-disciplinary assessment difficult and when scholars seem to be employing different languages, naturally it makes conversations difficult. When I started this piece I was far from convinced that these three works could be drawn into a shared review article. However, in the process of reading these books, it became clear that this was a limited opportunity to perform an exercise in assessing such disparate texts and finding common points of praise and criticism. Such an exercise has been performed and the intention is that this will provide a greater rather than a lesser critique of the works in their own right. I greeted lain MacKenzies Gods Order and Natural Law with enthusiasm. A book on Laudian divines in the changing historiographical context is more than welcome, and such work

Book Reviews : Pro-Prayer Book Protestants

As a result of the recent marginalization of the Puritans and the Laudians in the historiography of early Stuart history a neglected middle group has emerged: satisfied Prayer Book Protestants. Judith Maltby, in her Prayer Book and People in Elizabethan and Early Stuart England (Cambridge University Press, 1998, L40.00/

Godly Clergy in Early Stuart England: The Caroline Puritan Movement, C.1620 1643

64.95, pp. xvii + 310, ISBN 0-521-45313-5), has leaped into this gap. Her aim is twofold. Her primary goal is to explore this field, but her second task is to show that it is possible to learn more about a group free from persecution. The first section undertakes these projects by an imlnersion in the church court records of the dioceses