Faith, Scripture, and Grace: Reformation in England
Overview
Para1Historically, England had been part of Western Christianity under the leadership of
the Pope in Rome. This all changed in 1534, when Henry VIII separated the English
church from Rome using the Act of Supremacy, which made the monarch the Supreme Head
of the Church. The English Reformation spent the next decades reforming doctrine and
worship to remove traditional Catholic religious practices from mainstream belief
in England. For example, reformists argued that transubstantiation, the ritual of
the Eucharist in which bread and wine are converted to the body and blood of Christ,
was against scripture and led to many superstitions. The new Church of England wanted
to detach itself from beliefs it considered superstitious, including worship of saints,
purchase of indulgences, and worship and sale of images and relics, among other practices
and beliefs.
The Struggles of The Reformation
Para2John Foxe, a 16th century Protestant reformer famously exclaims that
because God hath so placed us Englishmen here in one commonwealth, also in one church, as in one ship together […] let us not mangle or divide the ship, which being divided perisheth(Nice 1005). This statement reveals the close relationship between church and state, but also Foxe’s hopes for national unity. Unfortunately, England’s transition to Protestantism was met with decades-long struggle, creating a sense of uncertainty and division amongst England’s citizens all through the middle of the 16th century.
Para3After Henry VIII died, his young son, Edward VI, reigned with the support of a council
of regents from 1547 until his death in 1553. Edward VI and his adult ministers continued
his father’s Protestant reign, enacting a second and more radical Reformation, which
worked to replace Catholic Mass and other rituals with an English version of the Book of Common Prayer in 1549. For the first time, religious services were held in English rather than
Latin, which helped those in the congregation follow the service more easily.
Para4However, after both Henry VIII’s and Edward VI’s Protestant reign, the next successor
to the throne, Mary I, changed the country’s religion back to Catholicism. Queen Mary
revived Catholic Mass, restored laws against religious dissent, and executed more
than 300 Protestants before her death in 1558, essentially creating a counter-reformation.
Para5Elizabeth I, who succeeded Mary I, restored the Book of Common Prayer and Protestant practices, but avoided persecuting all but the most outspoken Catholics.
However, during Elizabeth’s reign and that of her successor, James I (1603–1625),
religious strife was still a pressing issue. Radical Protestants known as Puritans
emerged who wanted to organize society around the godly elect; they believed that there were a few select people who could be considered divine
in their beliefs and behaviour.
The Main Principles of Protestantism in Early Modern England
I. Sola fide (meaning “by faith alone”)
Para6
The just shall live by faith.(Romans 1:17)
Para7Previously under Catholic belief, people used holy objects, the intercession of saints,
and other rituals performed by the church as protections from evil and a means to
salvation (Oldridge 390). The Catholic church held a monopoly on God’s grace which
was distributed through the holy sacraments administered by prients and by indulgences,
a purchased reduction in the amount of punishment a sinner was expected to undergo.
However, when Protestantism became the dominant religion in England, previous Catholic
methods were removed from mainstream practices. As a result, people started to rely
on faith to protect them from the dangers found within day-to-day life (Oldridge 390).
The Protestant doctrine of justification and protection by faith alone removed the
need for priestly intervention to mediate between God and an individual.
II. Sola scriptura (meaning “by scripture alone”)
Para8Due to the Reformation, the Book of Common Prayer and religious ceremonies were now presented in English, rather than Latin. This meant
that everyday people could now understand the language of the religious texts and
ceremonies they were undergoing, gaining access to the
Word of God as revealed in the Bible(Best). However, the translation of scripture into English also created some problems within society as it
opened the door for ‘radicalʼ interpretations of God's Word(Best).
III. Sola gratia (meaning “by grace alone”)
Para9
For by grace are ye saved, through faith, and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: Not of works, lest any man should boast.(Ephesians 2:8–9)
Para10It was common belief in the early modern period that humans were sinful and corrupt
by nature, incapable of acting for good or knowing religious truth without the grace
of God in their lives to guide them (Best). Reformed churches enforced ideas of predestination,
meaning that those who were the elect, a select amount of people who were truly faithful, were given salvation by God’s
grace and that everyone else was fated for damnation (Best). And through
the concept of election, by which God redeemed a body of Christians through His grace alone, conferred divine favour on the community of the saved(Olridge 392).
Key Print Sources
Nice, Jason A.
“The Peculiar Place of God”: Early Modern Representations of England and France.The English Historical Review, vol. 121, no. 493, Sep. 2006, pp. 1002–1018. JSTOR, https://www.jstor.org/stable/3806065.
Oldridge, Darren.
Light from Darkness: The Problem of Evil in Early Modern England.The Seventeenth Century, vol. 27, no. 4, Winter 2012, pp. 389–409.
Key Online Sources
Church of England.
Book of common prayer (1552), The boke of common praier, and administracion of the sacramentes, and other rites and ceremonies in the Churche of Englande1552. Folger Shakespeare Library, https://digitalcollections.folger.edu/img978.
Best, Michael.
Faith, scripture, grace.Shakespeare’s Life and Times. Internet Shakespeare Editions. University of Victoria. https://internetshakespeare.uvic.ca/Library/SLT/ideas/religion/protestantism+1.html. Accessed 25 Jan. 2024.
Prosopography
Bevan Watson
Bevan Watson was a student at the University of Fraser Valley.
Janelle Jenstad
Janelle Jenstad is a Professor of English at the University of Victoria, Director
of The Map of Early Modern London, and Director of Linked Early Modern Drama Online. With Jennifer Roberts-Smith and Mark Beatrice Kaethler, she co-edited Shakespeare’s Language in Digital Media: Old Words, New Tools (Routledge). She has edited John Stow’s A Survey of London (1598 text) for MoEML and is currently editing The Merchant of Venice (with Stephen Wittek) and Heywood’s 2 If You Know Not Me You Know Nobody for DRE. Her articles have appeared in Digital Humanities Quarterly, Elizabethan Theatre, Early Modern Literary Studies, Shakespeare Bulletin, Renaissance and Reformation, and The Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies. She contributed chapters to Approaches to Teaching Othello (MLA); Teaching Early Modern Literature from the Archives (MLA); Institutional Culture in Early Modern England (Brill); Shakespeare, Language, and the Stage (Arden); Performing Maternity in Early Modern England (Ashgate); New Directions in the Geohumanities (Routledge); Early Modern Studies and the Digital Turn (Iter); Placing Names: Enriching and Integrating Gazetteers (Indiana); Making Things and Drawing Boundaries (Minnesota); Rethinking Shakespeare Source Study: Audiences, Authors, and Digital Technologies (Routledge); and Civic Performance: Pageantry and Entertainments in Early Modern London (Routledge). For more details, see janellejenstad.com.
Kate McPherson
Kate McPherson is Professor of English and Honors Program Director at Utah Valley
University (Orem, UT, USA). In 2015, she began working to redevelop Shakespeare’s Life and Times, created by Michael Best, into the Early Modern England Encyclopedia. Her other publications include commentary on Pericles and The Comedy of Errors for the New Oxford Shakespeare (2016); the co-edited volumes Stages of Engagement: Drama and Religion in Post-Reformation England with James Mardock (Duquesne University Press, 2014) and Shakespeare Expressed: Page, Stage, and Classroom in Shakespeare and His Contemporaries, with Kathryn M. Moncrief and Sarah Enloe (Fairleigh Dickinson University Press,
2013). With Kathryn M. Moncrief, Kate has also two edited collections, Performing Pedagogy in Early Modern England: Gender, Instruction, and Performance (Ashgate, 2011) and Performing Maternity in Early Modern England (Ashgate 2008). She has also published numerous articles on early modern maternity
in scholarly journals. Kate participated in the 2008 National Endowment for the Humanities
Institute,
Shakespeare’s Blackfriars: The Study, the Stage, the Classroom,at the American Shakespeare Center. She also served as Play Seminar Director, a public humanities position, for the Utah Shakespeare Festival in 2017 and 2018.
Leah Hamby
Leah Hamby is the primary encoder for the Early Modern England Encyclopedia. Aside from encoding, she also works as an editor for the project and contributed
several articles of her own. She has been working on the EMEE since February 2023. As of February 2026, she is soon to graduate with honours from
Utah Valley University with a major in history and a minor in creative writing. Her
other work with the LEMDO program includes remediating William Kemp’s Kemp’s Nine Day’s Wonder for the Digital Renaissance Editions.
Melissa Walter
Melissa Walter is Associate Professor of English at the University of the Fraser Valley.
Her research focuses on early modern English drama and English and European prose
fiction. She is the author of The Italian Novella and Shakespeare’s Comic Heroines (U of Toronto, 2019), and co-editor, with Dennis Britton, of Rethinking Shakespeare Source Study: Authors, Audiences, Digital Technologies (Routledge, 2018). Her work on English theatre and the European novella has appeared
in several edited collections, including Transnational Exchange in Early Modern Theater (Ashgate, 2008), and Transnational Mobility in Early Modern Theater (Ashgate, 2012). She has also written about
Translation and Identity in the Dialogues in English and Malaiane Languages(Indographies, ed. Jonathan Gil Harris. Palgrave 2012). At the University of the Fraser Valley, she is a lead coordinator of UFV’s Shakespeare and Reconciliation Garden.
Michael Best
Michael Best is Professor Emeritus at the University of Victoria, BC. He founded the
Internet Shakespeare Editions in 1996, and was Coordinating Editor until 2017, contributing two editions to the
ISE: King John and King Lear (the latter also available in print from Broadview Press). In print, he has published editions of works of Elizabethan magic and huswifery,
a collection of letters from the Australian goldfields, and Shakespeare on the Art of Love (2008). He contributed regular columns for the Shakespeare Newsletter on
Electronic Shakespeares,and has written many articles and chapters for both print and online books and journals, principally on questions raised by the new medium in the editing and publication of texts. He has delivered papers and plenary lectures on electronic media and the Internet Shakespeare Editions at conferences in Canada, the USA, the UK, Spain, Australia, and Japan.
Navarra Houldin
Training and Documentation Lead 2025–present. LEMDO project manager 2022–2025. Textual
remediator 2021–present. Navarra Houldin (they/them) completed their BA with a major
in history and minor in Spanish at the University of Victoria in 2022. Their primary
research was on gender and sexuality in early modern Europe and Latin America. They
are continuing their education through an MA program in Gender and Social Justice
Studies at the University of Alberta where they will specialize in Digital Humanities.
Orgography
LEMDO Team (LEMD1)
The LEMDO Team is based at the University of Victoria and normally comprises the project
director, the lead developer, project manager, junior developers(s), remediators,
encoders, and remediating editors.
University of Victoria (UVIC1)
https://www.uvic.ca/Metadata
| Authority title | Faith, Scripture, and Grace: Reformation in England |
| Type of text | Critical |
| Publisher | University of Victoria on the Linked Early Modern Drama Online Platform |
| Series | Early Modern England Encyclopedia |
| Source |
By Bevan Watson, inspired by Michael Best’s Shakespeare’s Life and Times, Internet Shakespeare Editions
|
| Editorial declaration | This document uses Canadian English spelling |
| Edition | Released with Early Modern England Encyclopedia 1.0a |
| Sponsor(s) |
Early Modern England EncyclopediaAnthology Leads: Kate McPherson and Kate Moncrief.
|
| Encoding description | Encoded in TEI P5 according to the LEMDO Customization and Encoding Guidelines |
| Document status | published, peer-reviewed |
| Funder(s) |
Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada
Mitacs Globablink Research Internship |
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Intellectual copyright in this entry is held by Kate McPherson on behalf of the contributors. Copyright on the TEI-XML markup is held by the University of Victoria on behalf of the LEMDO Team. The content and TEI-XML markup in this file are licensed under a CC BY-NC_ND 4.0 license. This file is freely downloadable without permission under the following conditions:
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