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Of the types of mediate influence available to the sixteenth-century propagator of religion, potentially among the most effective in the battle for men's minds was the written word. It is therefore significant that in the South-West the utilization of this medium by religious traditionalists would seem never to have been extensive. Evidence of the dissemination of Catholic books, pamphlets or even bills is in fact relatively scarce. At Exeter, it is true, ‘seditious bills’ supporting the opponents of iconoclasm were posted in 1536; a paper implying that Henry VIII was ‘cursed of God's mouth’ was discussed by some of the citizens in 1539; and ‘most slanderous and seditious bills’ were ‘affixed to doors and scattered in the streets’ in 1547. Thereafter such activity apparently subsided, though bills maintaining the doctrine of transubstantiation and denying the identification of the pope with Antichrist were erected in the city by a doctor in as late as 1561. One of the very few cases of this type to be reported from outside Exeter occurred at Alphington, where, in 1567, books written on the continent by the exiled Thomas Harding – and presumably smuggled thence into the South-West – were read by Thomas Stephens. Stephens, moreover, commended these works to Simon Hamlyn as ‘good and Catholic’, ‘did praise them above all measure’, and indeed read one of them aloud to John Alderhead and John Helmer. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the sixteenth century, the religion of the mass of the English people was subjected by their governments to a series of unprecedented and increasingly destructive assaults. In the 1520s official attitudes towards the activities and institutions of traditional Catholicism were still essentially supportive. The seven sacraments and a wide range of additional ceremonies, as well as prayers and masses on behalf of the dead, the invocation of saints, and the veneration of images and relics, all continued to enjoy official approbation. So, in most respects, did the papacy, the secular clergy, the monastic orders, the parish churches and the religious guilds. In 1521 Henry VIII indeed received from the pope the title of Defender of the Faith. From 1529, however, a complex of financial, political and personal factors combined with the influence of Cromwell and Cranmer to substantially modify this official support. An increasingly hostile attitude to the papacy, which in 1532–3 produced Acts against its revenue and jurisdiction, culminated in the Act declaring royal supremacy over the national Church in 1534. This was followed in 1536–9 by the governmental suppression of all monastic houses. Meanwhile the privileges of the secular clergy were eroded, particularly by the limitation of probate and mortuary fees in 1529, and its status as the prime provider of religious knowledge was implicitly undermined by the legitimization of the English Bible in 1538. Important practices were also attacked. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One question remains. To what extent may the responses of south-western people to the Reformation be regarded as typical of those of the English people as a whole? Comparison with other regions is hindered by the emphasis of most modern research upon the clergy and gentry rather than upon the mass of the population. It is further complicated by the differing sources and approaches employed by modern historians, and by the conflicting conclusions that these have sometimes produced. At one end of the spectrum, A. G. Dickens and G. R. Elton have argued that discontent with Catholicism increased markedly in later-medieval England; that Lollardy and anticlericalism were widespread; and that (in consequence) Protestantism rapidly won support in the sixteenth century. At the other end, C. Haigh and J. Scarisbrick have contended that Catholicism was still flourishing on the eve of the Reformation; that Lollardy and anti-clericalism remained relatively rare; and that (in consequence) the progress of Protestantism was both difficult and slow. It is probable that only after many more local studies will a generally agreed picture of English responses to the Reformation eventually emerge. Nevertheless, a brief survey of the principal types of evidence – and in particular of those which are susceptible to some form of statistical analysis – would suggest that a number of general propositions may be plausibly essayed. There are signs that, in several regions, the Reformation decades witnessed a rising volume of verbal outbursts by laymen against traditional religion and against priests. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The religious attitudes of the layman were shaped not only by his exposure to mediate influences, particularly literature, drama and art, but also by his experience of direct contact with a wide variety of individuals and social groups. In many cases a powerful influence was undoubtedly exerted by his family in general and by his parents in particular. Several members of one family might be simultaneously active in the religious life of their parish: examples include the Noseworthies at Chagford and the Rumbelows at Morebath. Familial influences are discernible also among the Catholic extremists in 1548–9. In 1548 the Cornish rioters included John and William Kilter, both of Constantine; Alan and Richard Rawe, of Gwennap and St Keverne; John Tribo the elder and John Tribo the younger, both of St Keverne; and James and John Tregena, the former of St Keverne. The power of parental training was evident also among the traditionalists at Exeter in 1549: Hooker sneered that these rejected ‘any other religion than that as they were first nozzled [i.e. suckled] in’. The rebels of this year indeed demanded a return to the religious practices of ‘our forefathers’. At the same time, however, anti-Catholic attitudes might also be propagated by means of the family. Protestant parents, including Thomas Bennett, John Budleigh, Robert Kede, Philip Nichols, and their respective wives, seem frequently to have successfully transmitted their religious convictions to their offspring. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Of those Catholic institutions in which the layman played no part the most important to him on the eve of the Reformation were the papacy, the religious orders and the secular clergy. Of these the most remote from him was inevitably the papacy. Nevertheless it would be mistaken to assume that this ancient institution was wholly absent from his religious consciousness. Popes, with their distinctive triple croziers and tiaras, were frequently depicted in his parish church. A window erected at St Neot in as late as 1528 shows the local saint receiving, as his supreme accolade, the blessing of the ‘holy father’. Thomas Becket, soon to be denounced by Henry VIII as an enemy of the royal supremacy in the English Church, was similarly honoured by murals, as at Breage, and by screen-paintings, as at Ashton. Parishes, moreover, still contributed their ‘Peter's Pence’ to the papal coffers. Thus at Morebath, according to the account for 1531, each householder paid ½d per annum, and each cotter ¼d. It was possibly as a receptacle for such payments that the hollow pre-Reformation lectern in Exeter Cathedral was originally employed. And to the anger of occasional critics – most notably of John Atwill of Walkhampton, who, in 1505–6, protested that they made money rather than saved souls – papal indulgences continued to be highly valued by many men and women. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A narrow neck of land, some 35 miles in width, constituted the sole physical connection between the south-western peninsula and the mainland of Tudor England. Since even this was largely blocked by the Blackdown and Brendon hills, access was normally restricted to the Blackdown–Brendon gap and to the Axe Valley. From this neck the peninsula thrust westwards for some 130 miles: it first broadened to a width of more than 70 miles in Devon, and then narrowed rapidly towards Cornwall's western tip. A ride of at least four days separated east Devon from London. Cornwall was even more remote: it retained its Celtic place names and, particularly in its western districts, its Celtic tongue. The northern coast of the peninsula was bounded by the Bristol Channel and the Atlantic, and its southern coast by the English Channel. From the lowlands arose extensive areas of hill country and three expanses of highland – Exmoor, Bodmin Moor and the central granite mass of Dartmoor. Streams, rivers and estuaries were abundant. The Taw, Torridge and Camel flowed to the northern coast, but most of the important rivers – including the Exe, Teign, Dart, Plym, Tamar, Fowey, Fal and Helford – ran south. Several originated on Dartmoor, the height of which combined with the maritime environment to ensure a heavy fall of rain. Patterns of economic activity were largely determined by this physical matrix. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]