The Reformation of the Future: Dating English Protestantism in the Late Stuart Era

Abstract

In late Stuart England, print genres such as histories and almanacs were happy to put a precise date on the Reformation, but 1517 was not widely memorialised. This was partly because the complex history of English Protestantism meant that different dates for its founding could be canvassed (the arrival of Luther's ideas in the 1520s, Henry VIII's 1532 break with Rome, the reforms of Edward VI's reign (1547-1553) and Elizabeth's ecclesiastical settlement (1558-1599); and because this ambiguous past was used as a weapon in contemporary religious battles. While Anglicans tended to point to the settlements under Henry and Elizabeth as their ideal moment in the past, Dissenters and the more radical wing of the church celebrated the reforms of Edward’s rule and efforts by the Elizabethan puritan movement to perfect worship in England from the 1560s. These disputes first prevented a dating consensus emerging, and then convinced those trying to unite English Protestantism that it was counter-productive to be too precise about Tudor history. Particularly after the 1689 Revolution, commentators tried to resolve the issue by placing the Reformation in the future. The idea that reform still had to be completed provided an unfinished objective to unite different strands of opinion. This enshrined the notion of a long Reformation, that was a process – not an event; and helps explain the great spiritual energy of late Stuart Protestantism.