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Inward Purity and Outward Splendour: Death and Remembrance in the Deanery of Dunwich, Suffolk, 13 70-1547. By Judith Middleton-Stewart. [Studies in the History of Medieval Religion, Volume 17.] (Woodbridge: Boydell Press in association with the Centre of East Anglian Studies. 2001. Pp. xiv, 328. $110.00.)
The deanery of Dunwich lies on the coast of the eastern English county of Suffolk. In 1524 some 9,460 people lived in its fifty-two parishes, nearly a fifth of them in the two coastal towns of Southwold and Dunwich (still the bigger, but gradually being claimed by the encroaching sea). This book gives a uniquely vivid, thorough, and detailed account of the material expression of the deanery population's religious aspirations during the years between the great epidemic mortality of the fourteenth century and the beginning of the Edwardian Reformation. Nearly 3,000 wills of deanery inhabitants drawn up during that period are Dr. Middleton-Stewart's principal source. Their testimony is complemented by evidence from surviving churchwardens' accounts, inventories of church goods, and what remains of church fabrics and...