Archbishop Grindal, 1519-1583: The Struggle for a Reformed Church

by Patrick Collinson

This book is about the life of Archbishop Grindal.

Genres: Nonfiction

352 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1979

About the author

Professor Patrick Collinson was a distinguished and much published author in the field of early modern history. A Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge since 1988, he was Regius Professor of History at the University until 1996. He also held a number of academic distinctions, including Fellowship of the British Academy.

Collinson authored his 1957 doctorate on Elizabethan Puritanism under J. E. Neale, and was a lecturer at the University of Khartoum and King's College London. He was professor at the University of Sydney in 1969, then at the University of Kent at Canterbury and the University of Sheffield. His 1967 monograph, The Elizabethan Puritan Movement, had a great impact on historians' understanding of the movement. The work showed Puritanism to be a significant force within the Elizabethan Church instead of merely a radical group of individuals. By the time of his retirement in 1996, he was one of the doyens of English Reformation history. His short summation of the period, The Reformation, was published in 2003.
Collinson's work laid the foundations, in many ways, for what historians of the English Reformation currently term the 'Calvinist Consensus' in the latter decades of the sixteenth and reign of James I/VI. As such, the belief Puritanism was anything but religiously radical in relation to English, and indeed British, culture stands as one of his great achievements as an historian.

Reviews

[John Anthony · Rating 4 out of 5]

When I started reading this I realised that I knew little about Grindal. I thought I remembered from A level history that he was something of an early puritan and that Elizabeth I had found him a pain in the butt. I feared at first that I wasn't going to learn much more here about him as it seemed clear that Prof Collinson had a paucity of material at his disposal in relation to Grindal's early years.

Much more material is available with the accession of Edward VI and Grindal's steady advancement and growing importance under the boy king. With Catholic Mary's succession on Edward's death and Grindal's subsequent flight overseas I followed his time on the continent with great interest, his relations with other protestant reformers, and their influences upon each other. With Elizabeth's accession and Grindal's home coming his career advances swiftly – Bishop of London, Archbishop of York and finally Canterbury.

I had expected to read of a hard nosed, hell fire preaching protestant, distinctly lacking in warmth and humanity. How wrong I was. As Archbishop of Canterbury he was courageous in standing up to Elizabeth I, as Supreme Governor of his reformed church, believing that she was hampering the spiritual revival within the church by her concentration on the via media, which pleased few it seems. He was principled, human, respected by many, high and low alike. Within 2 years of appointing him to Canterbury Elizabeth in effect 'deprived' him and endeavoured to silence him. Had it been otherwise, could Grindal have prevented many of the problems which arose 50 or 60 years later within the church, contributing so much to the English Civil War?