There is plenty of evidence about the religious beliefs of the ‘plain man’ in early modern England, but it tells us more about the devout and the learned than it does about the lukewarm, the ignorant, the sceptical, or those who muddled through. We know a lot about godly ministers, in their own words and in those of their detractors; we know less about their parishioners. We know about the martyred Jesuit Edmund Campion; we know less about the silent majority of English Catholics who lived without incident, many continuing to attend their now Protestant parish churches and being buried in now Protestant churchyards.

LRB 25 August 2011 | PDF Download