For an older generation of historians, the University of Cambridge was a cradle of English Protestantism. Cambridge produced many of the luminaries who established a reformed Church under Edward VI and especially during the reign of Elizabeth I. Archbishop Thomas Cranmer; Thomas Bilney; Robert Barnes; Hugh Latimer; Nicholas Ridley; Martin Bucer; William Cecil, first baron Burghley; and Sir John Cheke, among many others, were celebrated from 1563 in the pages of John Foxe’s Actes and Monuments. They have continued to dominate the story of the university in the sixteenth century, as in H. C. Porter’s Reformation and Reaction in Tudor Cambridge (1958) or more recently in Damian Riehl Leader’s A History of the University of Cambridge: the University to 1546 (1989), to an extent that has been difficult to overcome.

The present book under review, Ceri Law’s Contested Reformations, seeks to depart from the traditional view that Cambridge was precociously evangelical and `almost entirely unencumbered by religious conservatives’ (p. 3). Rather, she wishes to establish that the religious character of the university was not one of ‘binary opposition’ (p. 4) between the extremes, but rather, it was a spectrum that displayed differences of degree. As a community, the university was almost exclusively male, and it was dominated by the young. In time, England did become a Protestant country, but the process at Cambridge as elsewhere was ‘contradictory’ (p. 6) and often collaborative. Like some of the cathedral chapters, Cambridge was a refuge for conservative clerics who could not easily build their careers elsewhere.

Law presents fresh and lively accounts of the life of the university over the five decades from 1535 to 1584. She documents disputes and disagreements, like visitations of the university, which were often bitter and ‘destabilizing’ (p. 81) to the evolving status quo. So disruptive were they that Elizabeth’s privy council refused to allow Cambridge to be visited in 1581, even though Thomas Norton feared that evident abuses flourished at the university.

Some of the events Law considers are already familiar, such as the far-reaching controversy about the correct way to pronounce Greek that consumed Bishop Stephen Gardiner’s first term as the university’s chancellor during the reign of Henry VIII. In restraining new trends in the pronouncement of Greek, Gardiner wished to suppress doctrinal novelties and to defend his own authority, which he believed was under attack.

Other episodes that Law draws from the university’s archives have not previously received full scholarly attention. When Gardiner was restored to his old offices in the reign of Queen Mary, he sought not just a return to Catholicism, `but the obliteration’ of the legacy of Edwardine reforms (p. 67). John Caius, who refounded Gonville Hall, set up a crucifix in the college in the early 1570s. He also allowed fellows to avoid obligatory sermons and other services. Yet, when complaints were made against him, Caius was sustained by his close friendship with Archbishop Matthew Parker. Parker consoled him in his final illness. The authority of death, not the government, ultimately removed Caius from Cambridge.

Contested Reformations is the author’s first monograph, and it has a first book’s little problems. Although it covers about fifty years, its story starts rather later than perhaps it might. Law begins her book in 1535 with the execution of its chancellor, Bishop John Fisher of Rochester and the consequent visitation by his replacement, Henry’s chief minister, Thomas Cromwell. At first glance, 1535 would seem to be an appropriate place to begin. However, Fisher was elected chancellor for life in 1504. He channeled the considerable benefactions to the university that were made by the early Tudors: Henry VII and his mother Lady Margaret Beaufort. Margaret’s bequests made possible Fisher’s creation by 1516 of St John’s College for the study of theology. His college established a conservative stronghold at the university whose fellows resisted Henry and Cromwell and who continued to cause difficulties for the regime well into Edward’s reign and beyond.

Another small problem concerns Law’s references to Elizabeth’s chief minister, William Cecil. Although Elizabeth ennobled him as Baron Burghley in 1571, he is referred to here merely as Cecil. Burghley served as Cambridge’s chancellor from the early months of the queen’s reign, and, like Fisher, he was a commanding figure for the university. However, the book ends not with his death in 1598, but with the foundation of Emmanuel College in 1584 by Sir Walter Mildmay. Mildmay wished to establish what would be in essence a Protestant seminary for preachers. His benefaction did much over time to change the culture of the university. Emmanuel ultimately enjoyed a long reach across the Atlantic, for in the 1630s and 1640s nearly three dozen graduates from Emmanuel emigrated to the new world. In Massachusetts, a college was founded to honour the memory of one of them, John Harvard.

Contested Reformations makes a good beginning. One looks forward to Ceri Law’s next book.