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The institution of a Christian man. The Bishops’ Book (1537). The King's Book (1543). Bishop Bonner's Book (1555). By Gerald Bray. Pp. viii + 489 incl. frontispiece and 1 table. Cambridge: James Clarke and Co., 2018. £75. 978 0 7188 9510 5

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The institution of a Christian man. The Bishops’ Book (1537). The King's Book (1543). Bishop Bonner's Book (1555). By Gerald Bray. Pp. viii + 489 incl. frontispiece and 1 table. Cambridge: James Clarke and Co., 2018. £75. 978 0 7188 9510 5

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 July 2019

Harriet Lyon*
Affiliation:
University of Cambridge
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Abstract

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Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2019 

Gerald Bray's edition of three versions of the text originally known as the Bishops’ Book (1537) is intended to ‘shed light on a neglected phase of the English Reformation by printing and editing texts that give us a unique insight into the theological developments that characterised its earliest stages’ (p. 9). Conceived as a kind of ‘practical textbook’ for the education of English Protestants (p. 2), the Bishops’ Book contained principally the Apostles’ Creed, the Seven Sacraments, the Ten Commandments, the Lord's Prayer and the Ave Maria. It is reproduced in full here, collated with its successor, the King's Book (1543) – a notable change from the nineteenth-century edition of both texts (Charles Lloyd, Formularies of faith, Oxford 1825). Far from being confusing for the reader, this has resulted in a volume in which the similarities and divergences between the two texts are clearly apparent and which captures the complexity of defining the religious position of the Henrician Church. This edition also contains Henry viii’s suggestions for revision of the Bishops’ Book, as well as Thomas Cranmer's response to the king. Finally, by compiling these texts with Edmund Bonner's Marian edition, known as Bonner's Book (1555), Bray's volume offers a striking account of religion in transition during the tumultuous decades of the 1530s, ’40s and ’50s. It is for this reason, as well as Bray's highly accessible and informative introduction, that this volume is sure to be of great value to students and scholars of Tudor history and the English Reformation.