Church, Land and People: Essays presented to John Beckett

glebe terriers were no longer compiled; visitation and its records ceased; consistory courts were abolished; parish registers often exhibit notable gaps, and their format was meant to change from 1653. One theme of these essays, therefore, is how new sources and those little exploited for the religious history of the 1650s, can be used to explore church history. Alex Craven examines the church surveys of the 1650s – found in Lambeth Palace Library and among the Chancery papers of the National Archives. Fiona McCall looks at quarter sessions records to analyse how the policing of many religious offences such as pew disputes, swearing, and Sabbath observance, was taken on by justices of the peace. Rosalind Johnson uses churchwardens’ accounts to consider continuities from pre-1640 customs such as festal communion. Rebecca Warren analyses Oliver Cromwell’s ecclesiastical patronage from the records of the Triers, finding that not only was he the ‘single most powerful ecclesiastical patron in the history of the post-Reformation English Church’ (p. 65), he also promoted a broad range of godly ministers, two-thirds of whom continued to serve in parishes after 1660, thereby helping to shape the character of the Restoration Church of England. If an overall picture of 1650s religion emerges from these ten essays, it is of diversity, what Capp here calls a ‘bewildering patchwork’ (p. 14). In exploring new and little-used sources, and in modelling local, regional, or countybased studies of 1650s religion, the volume offers inspiration to regional and local historians of the Midlands. That is particularly the case for Andrew Foster’s essay, a self-conscious call to arms to local historians, with a series of questions from what happened to parish records (including parish registers and churchwardens’ accounts), to the fate of parish clergy and officials, and how disruptive the institutional, liturgical, and personnel changes were for ordinary parishioners. It is a challenge that could be further explored across the Midlands.