Faith, Scripture, and Grace: Reformation in England Reformation in England: Faith, Scripture, and Grace Author Bevan Watson Supervising Editor Melissa Walter Editor Kate McPherson Copy Editor Leah Hamby Senior Encoder Leah Hamby Encoding and Metadata LEMDO Team Copyright Holder (Content) Kate McPherson Copyright Holder (XML and interface) University of Victoria Early Modern England Encyclopedia EMEE

Anthology Leads: Kate McPherson and Kate Moncrief.

 Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada Mitacs Globablink Research Internship

Released with Early Modern England Encyclopedia 1.0a

 University of Victoria on the Linked Early Modern Drama Online Platform

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Early Modern England Encyclopedia

By Bevan Watson, inspired by Michael Best’s Shakespeare’s Life and Times, Internet Shakespeare Editions

Encoded in TEI P5 according to the LEMDO Customization and Encoding Guidelines

This document uses Canadian English spelling

 Document Types All documents in LEMDO are either born-digital documents or primary documents. Within those two general categories, LEMDO offers additional ways to categorize a file. Born-digital Born-digital documents are anything other than primary texts Critical Critical material, such as a general introduction or a textual introduction. Responsibilities Responsibilities Author A person, family, or organization responsible for creating a work that is primarily textual in content, regardless of media type (e.g., printed text, spoken word, electronic text, tactile text) or genre (e.g., poems, novels, screenplays, blogs). Use also for persons, etc., creating a new work by paraphrasing, rewriting, or adapting works by another creator such that the modification has substantially changed the nature and content of the original or changed the medium of expression. LEMDO uses the term author in two contexts: (1) to indicate the author of a primary work or document (such as Hamlet), and (2) to indicate the author of a secondary text (such as the Critical Introduction to <title level="m">Hamlet, by David Bevington). Editor A person, family, or organization contributing to a resource by revising or elucidating the content, e.g., adding an introduction, notes, or other critical matter. An editor may also prepare a resource for production, publication, or distribution. For major revisions, adaptations, etc., that substantially change the nature and content of the original work, resulting in a new work, see author. LEMDO uses the general term editor only in edition metadata and only to indicate when a person is responsible for editing all parts of an edition. Otherwise, use the more granular terms to describe the precise nature of the editorial role. Supervising Editor An editor who supervises the work of a student editor. Copy Editor LEMDO uses the term owner for the person who checks facts, quotations, and citations; may make formatting changes; may convert from one citation style to another; may suggest wording changes; and enforces conformity with the project style guide. Markup Editor A person or organization performing the coding of SGML, HTML, or XML markup of metadata, text, etc. Gloss needed. Copyright Holder A person or organization to whom copy and legal rights have been granted or transferred for the intellectual content of a work. The copyright holder, although not necessarily the creator of the work, usually has the exclusive right to benefit financially from the sale and use of the work to which the associated copyright protection applies. Normally the editor is the copyright holder for an LEMDO edition. EMEE Keywords Culture Learn about the customs, beliefs, and daily lives of people in early modern England. Science Superstition Published file. Updated metadata Changed link to Folger image. Added nested div closing tag. Gave nested divs clearer xml:ids. proofed Review of article finished. updated author respStmt. Created File. Michael Best 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.

 Leah Hamby 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.

 Navarra Houldin 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.

 Janelle Jenstad 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

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.

 Melissa Walter 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.

 Bevan Watson Bevan Watson

Bevan Watson was a student at the University of Fraser Valley.

 LEMDO Team 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 https://www.uvic.ca/
Overview

Historically, 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

John 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 togetherlet 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.

After 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.

However, 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.

Elizabeth 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)

The just shall live by faith. (Romans 1:17)

Previously 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)

Due 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 radical interpretations of God's Word (Best).

III. Sola gratia (meaning by grace alone)

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)

It 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. <q>The Peculiar Place of God</q>: 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 Englande 1552. 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.