John Bale (1495 - 1563) made a strong impact on the growth of English Protestant self-consciousness in the sixteenth century. He spent twenty years as a Carmelite friar, and then converted to Protestantism in the mid-1530s. Henry VIII's government enlisted Bale to write and produce plays against the Papacy; he had a decisive influence on John Foxe, and Foxe's 'Book of Martyrs' (1563); and Bale's drama 'Kynge Johan' was an important link between the medieval mystery plays and the age of Shakespeare. His greatest achievement, however, was his re-telling of English history in light of the Reformation. Bale argued that England had a divine vocation to protect and defend Protestantism against Roman political subversion and non-Biblical religion. Bale's story of England as the Ònew Israel shaped the self-consciousness of the Elizabethan age, and via John Winthrop and New England in 1630 bequeathed a sense of national vocation to America as well.

Focusing on the life and work of the evangelical reformer John Bale (1485–1563), Wort presents a study of conversion in the sixteenth century.

"This study sets the debate over clerical marriage within the context of the key debates of the Reformation, offering insights into the nature of the reformers' attempts to break with the Catholic past, and illustrating the relationship between English polemicists and their continental counterparts. The debate was not without practical consequences, and the author sets this study of polemical arguments alongside an analysis of the response of clergy in several English dioceses to the legalisation of clerical marriage in 1549. Conclusions are based upon the evidence of wills, visitation records, and the proceedings of the ecclesiastical courts."--Jacket

This book is a critical edition of John Bale's The Image of Both Churches (c. 1545). The Introduction provides a thorough overview of this sixteenth century work, explaining its relationship to the apocalyptic tradition and to Bale's important inspirations, from Augustine to Erasmus and Luther. Topics such as Bale's language, the place of the Image in his oeuvre, his use of medieval chronicles, and the influence of his exegesis are also discussed. The Image has often been called Bale's most important work; it articulated and developed the English Protestant view of the Apocalypse, influencing other Reformers both in England and on the continent. This book offers the first critical edition of the Image, including fully modernized spelling and punctuation as well as extensive explanatory notes. The five sixteenth-century printed editions of the Image are collated here, with textual notes that illustrate the relationship between variant readings and provide information on the choices made in this particular edition. This book also reproduces the striking woodcut illustrations from the Image in their original placements; examples from two different woodcut series are offered, as well as an overview of the history and importance of these images in the early printed texts. Five appendices, including a glossary of unfamiliar terms and a chart outlining Bale's periodization of history, also provide a wealth of information that enables readers to understand and use this edition. The largest appendix, on historical names and terminology, gives biographical information for 450 individuals and explains their importance, both to Bale and to the sixteenth-century Reformers in a broader context. This critical edition of the Image offers the most thorough study of the work to date, opening up the opportunity for a deeper understanding of this monumental text and for many further avenues of research.

A challenging reinterpretation of the sixteenth century through the work of major writers of the time.

Shakespeare, Spencer and the Matter of Britain examines the work of two of the most important English Renaissance authors in terms of the cultural, social and political contexts of early modern Britain. Andrew Hadfield demonstrates that the poetry of Edmund Spenser and the plays of William Shakespeare demand to be read in terms of an expanding Elizabethan and Jacobean culture in which a dominant English identity had to come to terms with the Irish, Scots and Welsh who were now also subjects of the crown.