This is the first comprehensive study of one of the most important aspects of the Reformation in England: its impact on the status of the dead. It explores attitudes towards the dead in pre-Reformation religious culture, and traces the uncertain progress of the 'reformation of the dead' attempted by Protestant authorities who sought to stamp out belief in purgatory and associated rituals. It also provides detailed surveys of Protestant perceptions of the afterlife, of the cultural meanings of the appearance of ghosts, and of the patterns of commemoration characteristic of post-Reformation England. Together these topics constitute an important case-study in the nature and tempo of the English Reformation as an agent of social and cultural change.

Peter Marshall is Professor of History at the University of Warwick and co-editor of The English Historical Review. He has published widely on many aspects of the religious culture of early modern Europe, particularly in the British Isles, and his books include Mother Leakey and the Bishop: A Ghost Story (2007), The Reformation: A Very Short Introduction (2009) and Heretics and Believers: A History of the English Reformation (2017).

• Introduction


• 1: The Presence of the Dead: Memory and Obligation before the Reformation


• 2: Debates over the Dead: Purgatory and Polemic in Henrician England


• 3: 'Rage against the Dead': Reform, Counter-Reform, and the Death of Purgatory


• 4: The Regulation of the Dead: Ritual and Reform in the English Church, c.1560-1630


• 5: The Estate of the Dead: The Afterlife in the Protestant Imagination


• 6: The Disorderly Dead: Ghosts and their Meanings in Reformation England


• 7: Remembering the Dead: Commemoration and Memory in Protestant Culture


• Conclusion


• Bibliography of Printed Primary Sources


• Index