England’s Protestant Reformation

When England’s Reformation began, only a small band of idealists – or fanatics – truly wanted a Protestant England. Nevertheless, within a single lifetime, they achieved it. 

The lecture considers how the upheavals of the Tudor era led to the emergence of a genuinely new religious consciousness in England, as reformers set about rebuilding the nation’s spirit from the ground up. By their own impossibly high standards, these reformers failed; but their ‘failure’ was transformative and its consequences are enduring.