Blessed Are the Peacemakers? The Negotiation of Religious Change in East Anglia, 1547–53

This paper explores the fraught process of local religious change in England under Edward VI. During this time evangelicals launched numerous innovations, including the regulation of liturgical practice and church fabric, but imposing such changes on a realm still predominantly faithful to traditional (Catholic) religion came with uncertainty. Edward’s government therefore sought the cooperation of local officials to promote their program. Understanding this cooperative relationship is key to gaining a better view of the English Reformation. To that end, this paper utilizes records from the Suffolk parish of Long Melford (and several other case studies) to analyze local implementation of and reaction to religious changes in one corner of the kingdom. Long Melford is remarkable because religious conflict among parishioners manifests itself openly in the parish records. This paper identifies the opposing parties, their motivations, strategies, and actions in defense of their respective positions. What emerges is a three-cornered tension between loyalty to one’s religious faith, one’s king, and one’s community values, with churchwardens caught in the middle. In their unique position managing parish finances and answering to royal officials, churchwardens exercised significant agency in determining the speed and scope of religious change in their communities. In Long Melford the churchwardens seem to have negotiated a compromise wherein the parish complied with new religious policies altering the church’s material decoration, but also resisted these orders by selling treasured items to conservative neighbors for safekeeping. This arrangement only lasted as long as Edward lived, with the conservatives triumphant upon Mary I’s accession and out for revenge against their predecessors. This paper questions how previous scholars have interpreted the implementation of religious change and proposes that this case study of conflict and compromise over material religion may offer a new approach to understanding the Tudor Reformations as a whole.