The Voices of Morebath: Reformation and Rebellion in an English Village [Hardcover]

Eamon Duffy (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 1, 2001

In the fifty years between 1530 and 1580, England moved from being one of the most lavishly Catholic countries in Europe to being a Protestant nation, a land of whitewashed churches and anti-papal preaching. What was the impact of this religious change in the countryside? And how did country people feel about the revolutionary upheavals that transformed their mental and material worlds under Henry VIII and his three children? In this book a reformation historian takes us inside the mind and heart of Morebath, a remote and tiny sheep farming village where thirty-three families worked the difficult land on the southern edge of Exmoor. The bulk of Morebath's conventional archives have long since vanished. But from 1520 to 1574, through nearly all the drama of the English Reformation, Morebath's only priest, Sir Christopher Trychay, kept the parish accounts on behalf of the churchwardens. Opinionated, eccentric, and talkative, Sir Christopher filled these vivid scripts for parish meetings with the names and doings of his parishioners. Through his eyes we catch a rare glimpse of the life and pre-reformation piety of a sixteenth-century English village. The book also offers a unique window into a rural world in crisis as the reformation progressed. Sir Christopher Trychay's accounts provide direct evidence of the motives which drove hitherto law-abiding West-Country communities to participate in the doomed Prayer-Book Rebellion of 1549 - culminating in the siege of Exeter which ended in bloody defeat and a wave of executions. Its church bells confiscated and silenced. Morebath shared in the punishment imposed on all the towns and villages of Devon and Cornwall. Sir Christopher documents the changes in the community: reluctantly Protestant, no longer focused on the religious life of the parish church, and increasingly preoccupied with the secular demands of the Elizabethan state, the equipping of armies, and the payment of taxes. Morebath's priest, garrulous to the end of his days, describes a rural world irrevocably altered, and enables us to hear the voices of his villagers after four hundred years of silence.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

In the early 1990s, Eamon Duffy's monumental The Stripping of the Altars provided a new slant on the English Reformation. Duffy has now dug deeper into the same fascinating period. The Voices of Morebath is the story of a hamlet buried deep in the heart of Devon. The parish priest Sir Christopher Trychay remained in office through the troubled times of the mid-16th century. During his long tenure he carefully recorded the impact of national events in his ordinary rural community. Trychay's account is unique because it is not a personal diary but a record of the parish accounts. Sir Christopher, however, was talkative and opinionated, so the accounts are laden with the minutiae of parish life. Duffy weaves these otherwise cryptic details into the wider tapestry of events of the time, and by analysing the result shows the devastating revolution that took place in ordinary people's lives. As the drama unfolds we see the folk of Morebath forced from their secure Catholicism into the new religion of King Henry. After Edward's brief reign the villagers breathe a sigh of relief and haul out all their Catholic paraphernalia, grateful that Mary Tudor has restored the Catholic faith. Then it all goes for good once Elizabeth takes the throne. Duffy has given us history that is absorbing, readable, and complete. His own enthusiasm for his topic gives the book a zest that takes it beyond the usual academic tome. Anyone the least bit interested in English history must not neglect this important book. --Dwight Longenecker, Amazon.co.uk

Review

"Few other books accomplish such a vivid reconstruction of the past, and Duffy manages tit using the most prosaic documents."—Carlos Eire, Commonweal

(Carlos Eire Commonweal )

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 208 pages
• Publisher: Yale University Press; 1st Ed. edition (October 1, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0300091850
• ISBN-13: 978-0300091854
• Product Dimensions: 9.6 x 6.5 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,023,116 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

45 of 47 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Window on Tudor Religion and Society, December 17, 2001

By 

Janice (Sudbury, ON Canada) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Voices of Morebath: Reformation and Rebellion in an English Village (Hardcover)

Professor Duffy painlessly weaves an engrossing story from the manuscript record of Morebath parish in England's West Country. Important background information is worked in while you trace the story of the parish's growth and trials during the tumultuous changes of the Reformation. Duffy's treatment relies on a unique and garrulous chronicle kept by Morebath's priest for half a century, Sir Christopher Trychay.

Thanks to Duffy's explanations, you understand how catastrophic the changes imposed under Edward VI were for this rural parish. You also see how spirituality was closely woven into the daily life and practice of pre-Reformation Morebath. The story of how the priest and his parishoners work out a modus vivendi under the religious changes of the day makes for compelling reading. The Voices of Morebath is an outstanding example of micro-history, I highly recommend this book for students of Tudor history and culture.

25 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars English Reformation made personal, August 19, 2003

By 

Douglas Doak (Yellowknife, NWT, Canada) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Voices of Morebath: Reformation and Rebellion in an English Village (Paperback)

From 1520 to 1574, in a small sheep-farming community in Devon, parish priest Christopher Trychay maintained a careful record of village happenings, filling the pages of his account book with what Eamon Duffy calls "the personality, opinions, and prejudices of the most vivid country clergyman of the English sixteenth century." That Trychay's tenure happened to coincide with the English Reformation -- in the course of which his parishioners would be swept into rebellion and he himself would adopt the new Protestant faith -- makes his chronicle all the more priceless.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Women And The Reformation in England 1520 - 1574, January 15, 2011

By 

T. Patrick Killough "All about Patrick" (Black Mountain, NC United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Voices of Morebath: Reformation and Rebellion in an English Village (Paperback)

In his 2001 history of Tudor reaction to and management of the Protestant Reformation, THE VOICES OF MOREBATH, what does author Eamon Duffy set out to do?

The first sentence of his Preface says it all: "This is a book about a sixteenth-century country priest, and the extraordinary records he kept." The priest is Sir Christopher Trychay (pronounced "Tricky"). The country is the sheep-raising part of Devon in southwestern England, more precisely the wee village of Morebath, 25 miles north of the county seat at Exeter. The years are 1520 - 1574 when Trychay was vicar of Saint George's parish church, and wrote up the fiscal accounts presented annually by elected lay parishioners. Laymen and laywomen managed various funds (called "stores") used for church upkeep and adornment and for other needs of the parish.

From the still rather jumbled manuscript of the Vicar's narrative of accounts, historian Duffy teases out a surprising mass of biographic and genealogical facts about the 30-odd farm families of Saint George's parish: men, women, boys, girls and infants. For 54 years their priest, Sir Christopher Trychay, baptized them, officiated at their weddings and funerals and fostered their pride in personal and collective religious service to the parish. Duffy treats all local cadres and both sexes fairly and evenhandedly.

The conservative but instinctively deferential Vicar of Saint George's begins Catholic, is forced to do Protestant things, enjoys five years of re-Catholicization under Queen Mary, then knuckles under to the victorious Protestantism of Queen Elizabeth. Why did Sir Christopher Trychay not resign his churches? Why not go underground in nonconforming opposition? Probably, argues Eamon Duffy, because at bottom the Vicar's personal Christianity was rooted in the local, the familiar, the dear. No mere change of monarchs would undermine his enduring loyalty to or cause him to leave "his" Morehead. Much the same seems likely for the conservative laymen of Saint George's parish. There was simply "no help for it." The inevitable had to be borne.

There are things you might care to know about the specfically feminine dimensions of Saint George's in the 54 years that Sir Christopher was vicar there. Here are some:

-- (1) local cult of the Virgin Mary,

-- (2) cult of Saint Sidwell,

-- (3) parish leadership roles of women and even girls,

-- (4) two wives' influence on King Henry VIII's religious leanings.

***

-- (1) Local cult of the Virgin Mary. Both Eastern and Western Christianity were in the 16th century thoroughly Incarnationalist, earthy, concrete, celebrating "the Word made flesh." And the Word was enfleshed in the virgin womb of Mary. Thus the most precious and valuable possession of any early Tudor country woman was a large rosary, with silver pater noster beads, and worn suspended from the waist. The fiscal reports of Saint George's record many donations of valuable rosaries to the church, to adorn statues or altars or to be sold back to relatives to fund good works for the poor and others.

But in Morebath the great Queen of Heaven, the Mother of God, also assumed a role more resembling that of minor "helper" saints invoked for special needs or on special occasions. Thus Our Lady of Sorrows was especially dear as companion to the severely ill as they prepared for a good death.

-- (2) Cult of Saint Sidwell. Buried outside the eastern gate of Exeter was the Saxon girl Saint Sidwell, murdered by her cruel step-mother. In 1520, almost upon his arrival as new Vicar at Morebath, Sir Christopher introduced the local cult of this saint. Remarkably soon, the women and girls of the parish embraced this cult. And one widow even willed her silver wedding ring to make shoes for the statue of Saint Sidwell. This statue was prominently supplied near an important side altar previously called "the Jesus altar," but soon the Jesus-Sidwell altar or simply the Sidwell altar.

-- (3) Parish leadership roles of women and even girls. Every year 12 laymen were elected to manage the parish funds or "stores" dedicated to the church's special needs: altar cloths, beeswax for candles, sheep for their wool, altar linen, etc. One of the several stores was the women's and another the "maidens" store. Girls as young as 12 (the traditional age for receiving first communion) were eligible for election and the record shows that they often served, too. Sometimes their fathers subbed for them in preparing the annual accounts. Women at times also filled the number one parish accounting role, or warden. Pre-Reformation Morebath shows women and girls heavily engaged in the daily minutiae of parish life, side by side with their menfolks and boys under the leadership of their pastor. As the Reformation juggeraut from on high destroyed old pious practices, participation of laymen in all parish activities fell off dramatically. In general, the numbers of clergy plummeted as did fresh vocations to the Protestant priesthood.

-- (4) Two wives' influence on King Henry VIII's religious leanings. Eamon Duffy credits Henry VIII's second wife, Anne Boleyn, with pushing him into his earliest Protestant reforms. He credits his fifth wife, Catherine Howard and her conservative relatives, for pulling Henry back toward the end of his reign from earlier reforming zeal.

Bottom line: Women mattered in both Morebath and England, especially the two Tudor Monarchs Mary I and Elizabeth I. The Reformation, however, according to Duffy, greatly diminished the role of women in parishes. At the same time the centralizing Tudor state based in London increasingly converted parishes from religious to secular entities for raising revenues for the Crown.

The book is very visual, well illustrated and presents two useful maps of Morebath, Devon and southwestern England. For my personal taste, there is too much minute scholarship scattered proudly through the text. Otherwise almost anyone keen to know more about how three Tudor Monarchs imposed Protestantism on an unhappy but compliant population will enjoy THE VOICES OF MOREBATH: REFORMATION AND REBELLION IN AN ENGLISH VILLAGE. -OOO-