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Richard Bancroft and Elizabethan Anti-Puritanism . By Patrick Collinson . Cambridge Studies in Early Modern British History. Cambridge : Cambridge University Press , 2013. xvii + 238 pp. $75.00 cloth.
Book Reviews and Notes
This is the last book from Patrick Collinson, premier historian of English Puritanism. Collinson showed himself a master in his magisterial work, The Elizabethan Puritan Movement (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967). Through many works since, Collinson demonstrated his wide understandings of the context of the movement called "Puritanism" in its many forms and variations. He finished this book as he was dying (d. September 28, 2011) and entrusted the work to press under the guidance of Alexandra Walsham and John Morrill. The book is vintage Collinson, wide-ranging in understanding, deft in style, and packed with illuminating insights.
This volume traverses ground Collinson covered in his seminal work. But here he focuses on the developing movement for Presbyterianism as a polity of reform for the Church of England during the second half of the sixteenth century. The protagonist is the archenemy of Puritans and Presbyterians: Richard Bancroft (1544-1610). Bancroft was chaplain to Lord Chancellor Hatton and then Archbishop Whitgift. He became Bishop of London (1597) and vigorously sought to uncover and stamp out the dangerous viewpoints he believed were subversive and revolutionary in their intent and threatened the church and its monarch. Given Whitgift's infirmities, Bancroft virtually functioned as Archbishop and wielded enormous power (189).
The book is not a biography...