REFORMATION
‘Making new novelties old’

Marian Histories of the Herician Reformation

Thomas Betteridge
University of Kingston

Abstract

This article examines the neglected topic of Marian historiography. It argue that the polemical strategy of legitimating religious Reformation through history was not an inherently Protestant one. Like its Henrician, Edwardian, and Elizabethan cousins, the Marian Reformation used a number of different historical images and narrative in order to achieve this end. 

    By help of these the bishops effeminate,
    Against lady faith did so much prevail,
    That certain of her men to them was captivate,
    And for her sake was laid fast in jail,
    Then before her was drawn such a veil,
    That she was so hid, few men could her see,
    Till God saw time, that seen she should be.
    —Miles Hogarde, The assault of the sacrame[n]t of the Altar...
    1

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1. Miles Hogarde, The assault of the sacrame[n]t of the Altar... (London: R. Caly, 1554), S.T.C. 13556, G.ii (v). For Miles Hogarde, see J. W. Martin, Religious Radicals in Tudor England(London: Hambledon, 1989), pp. 82-105, and John N. King, English Reformation Literature: The Tudor Origins of the Protestant Tradition(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1982), pp. 216-217.