Prayer Book and People in Elizabethan and Early Stuart England. By Judith Maltby. FIRST EDITION : 1998. HARDBACK in JACKET

Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998. First Edition . Hardcover. Fine/Fine. Large Octavo. FIRST EDITION : 1998. Hardback. Brown cloth; gilt lettered spine. In green pictorial dust-jacket (now in an archival quality clear protective sleeve). Illustrated with plates, maps and figures. Tight, bright and clean. No owner name or internal markings. (xvii), 310 pages. Includes bibliographical references and index. CONTENTS : Acknowledgements; List of figures; List of tables; 1. Introduction: the good, the bad, and the godly? The laity and the established church; 2. Conformity and the church courts, c. 1570-1642; 3. The rhetoric of conformity, c. 1640-1642; 4. Sir Thomas Aston and the campaign for the established church, c. 1640-1642; 5. Parishioners, petitions, and the Prayer Book in the 1640s; 6. Conclusion: laity, clergy, and conformity in post-Reformation England; Appendix 1. Petitions for the Book of Common Prayer and episcopacy, 1640-1642; Appendix 2. Subscribing Cheshire parishes and townships, 1641; Appendix 3. Five subscribing Cheshire communities; Bibliography. SUMMARY : This book explores the culture of conformity to the Church of England and its liturgy in the period after the Reformation and before the outbreak of the Civil War. It provides a necessary corrective to our view of religion in the period by a serious exploration of the laity who conformed, out of conviction, to the Book of Common Prayer. Through the use of church court records and parliamentary petitions, the views of lay people are examined - those who were neither 'puritan' nor 'Laudian', yet were committed to the reformed liturgy and episcopacy out of sincere belief, and not as a matter of political expediency. ** Will pack well** SCARCE hardback first printing. [ Rosley Books for Antiquarian books, Literature, Theology and History. ]