Introduction -- An unresolved Reformation -- Situating the Laudian Reformation -- Responses to the Laudian Reformation -- The abortive Reformation, 1640-1642 -- The end of Episcopalian Reformation -- Reformation by negotiation -- The Westminster Reformation and the Parliamentarian Church of England -- The royalist Church of England, 1642-1649 -- Alternative Reformations, 1649-1653 -- The Cromwellian church -- Episcopalian royalism in the 1650s -- Failed Reformations, 1659-1661 -- The end of comprehensive Reformation and the Caroline settlement -- Conclusion: England's second Reformation.
Summary:
England's Second Reformation reassesses the religious upheavals of mid-seventeenth-century England, situating them within the broader history of the Church of England and its earlier Reformations. Rather than seeing the Civil War years as a destructive aberration, Anthony Milton demonstrates how they were integral to (and indeed the climax of) the Church of England's early history. All religious groups - parliamentarian and royalist alike - envisaged changes to the pre-war church, and all were forced to adapt their religious ideas and practices in response to the tumultuous events. Similarly, all saw themselves and their preferred reforms as standing in continuity with the Church's earlier history. By viewing this as a revolutionary 'second Reformation', which necessarily involved everyone and forced them to reconsider what the established church was and how its past should be understood, Milton presents a compelling case for rethinking England's religious history.
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