The Voices of Morebath

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

Cover of 2003 edition
Author	Eamon Duffy
Language	English
Subject	English Reformation, Morebath, Prayer Book Rebellion
Publisher	Yale University Press
Publication date	2001
Publication place	United States
Media type	Print (hardback, paperback)

The Voices of Morebath: Reformation and Rebellion in an English Village is a 2001 non-fiction history book by the Irish historian of British Christianity Eamon Duffy and published by Yale University Press about the village of Morebath, England, during the English Reformation of the 16th century. Using the detailed churchwarden's accounts maintained by Sir Christopher Trychay, the vicar of Morebath's parish, Duffy recounts the religious and social implications of the Reformation in a small conservative Catholic community through the reign of Henry VIII, during the violent 1549 Prayer Book Rebellion, and into the Elizabethan era. Trychay's accounts – first reprinted in 1904 – had been used in other scholarly works and were first encountered by Duffy during research for his 1992 The Stripping of the Altars on pre-Reformation English religion. The Voices of Morebath depicts both Morebath and Trychay through their strong early resistance to the Reformation to their eventual adoption of new religious norms under the Protestant Elizabethan Religious Settlement.

The Voices of Morebath was praised for its coverage of ecclesiastical and secular parochial matters, particularly its personal treatment of Trychay. It drew criticism for instances where examples from Morebath are used to comment on broader subjects. Other reviewers commented that Duffy conceded the limitations of a local source. Though popular, some reviewers appraised the book as overly complex for the broad audience toward which it had been written and marketed. In 2002, The Voices of Morebath won Duffy the Hawthornden Prize, and the book was shortlisted for both the Samuel Johnson Prize and British Academy Book Prize.

Background

In the 16th century, Morebath was a village of shepherds in Devon, England, with an isolated and impoverished parish that served roughly 150 people in 33 families. Sir Christopher Trychay was vicar of Morebath for 54 years, from 1520 to 1574. During this vicariate, England had four monarchs and Morebath transitioned from a conservative Catholic community rebelling against the government-imposed English Reformation into a village conforming to the Protestant Elizabethan Religious Settlement. Religion played a significant role in the daily lives of Morebath's residents, though they conformed their practices to the oscillating theologies imposed under the monarchies of Henry VIII (r. 1509–1547), Edward VI (r. 1547–1553), Mary I (r. 1553–1558), and Elizabeth I (r. 1558–1603). The strain of the Edwardian government's religious and financial demands proved the most trying: with the implementation of the 1549 Book of Common Prayer, the counties of Devon and Cornwall revolted, and Morebath's parish sponsored five of its men to join the doomed Prayer Book Rebellion at the nearby city of Exeter.

Trychay maintained meticulous parish accounts during his vicarage at Morebath. These records have been utilized by scholars researching 16th-century England since a version of them was first published in J. Erskine Binney's 1904 The Accounts of the Wardens of the Parish of Morebath, Devon, 1520–1573. Binney was an antiquarian who, like Trychay, had been vicar of St George's Church in Morebath. The 1904 edition was edited on behalf of a local record society. While Binney had sorted the original manuscript records, they were later dropped and then randomly rebound at Exeter Library. Trychay's accounts are among the few surviving 16th-century accounts of Morebath's parish, as many of its archived records were destroyed in bombing raids on Exeter during the Second World War. Eamon Duffy, an Irish Catholic historian of British Christianity, utilized both Binney's edition and the original manuscript in compiling The Voices of Morebath.

Scholarship published before The Voices of Morebath had been split on the popularity of the Reformation among the Tudor English population. The historian A. G. Dickens argued that Protestantism was quickly and voluntarily accepted across England in his 1964 The English Reformation. Initially well received by reviewers, Dickens's thesis saw revisionist challenges by other scholars. The Catholic historian Jack Scarisbrick, in his 1984 The Reformation and the English People, held that the 16th-century English were generally unwilling to surrender their Catholicism. Using Dickens's approach of examining local records, Margaret Bowker's 1981 The Henrician Reformation and Susan Brigden's 1989 London and the Reformation contradicted Dickens and held that Protestantism made inroads slowly among the English.

Trychay's records were first encountered by Duffy during research for his 1992 book The Stripping of the Altars. Called "magisterial" by the historians of the Tudor period Robert M. Kingdon and Robert Tittler, this work described the religious practices that permeated all elements of pre-Reformation English society. Duffy's scholarship contended that the Reformation was "a violent disruption, not the natural fulfilment, of most of what was vigorous in late medieval piety and religious practice". The Stripping of the Altars and its conclusions proved popular, despite criticisms that Duffy has neglected addressing negative cultural components of the medieval church and that Duffy was unconvincing in saying that Catholic England had been killed by what the English historian Patrick Collinson called a "royal deus ex machina". When The Voices of Morebath was published in 2001, Duffy was the president of Magdalene College at the University of Cambridge.

Contents

The Voices of Morebath: Reformation and Rebellion in an English Village, written by Duffy and published by Yale University Press in 2001, includes 16 pages of front matter and 232 pages of body matter. It has been printed in both a cloth hardcover edition and a paperback edition, the latter released in 2003. The dust jacket has a detail from the painting Netherlandish Proverbs (1559) by Pieter Bruegel the Elder. Bruegel's painting – alongside colour plates, woodcuts, and illustrated endpapers included in the book – was described by the reviewer Katherine L. French as "invok[ing] a sense of community and nostalgia for 'bygone' England".

Duffy intended The Voices of Morebath to serve as a "pendant" (paired work) for his earlier The Stripping of the Altars. Trychay's parish accounts, which span his tenure as Morebath's vicar from 1520 to 1574, are used extensively. Duffy holds that these "uniquely expansive and garrulous" parish accounts were read aloud to the congregation. The second printing, released several weeks after the first, contains details of Trychay's vicarage from an early 17th-century survey Duffy rediscovered too late for inclusion in the first printing. A fourth printing includes additional material drawn from ecclesiastical court records to detail a labourer's 1557 sword attack on Trychay.

The book details the Devon village of Morebath, its parish, and the priest Christopher Trychay as they reluctantly accepted English Protestantism despite their Catholic sympathies. The Voices of Morebath comprises seven chapters. The first chapter identifies the parish, the parish's congregants, and its place within the medieval village. The second chapter addresses Trychay's accounts and introduces the benefits and drawbacks of churchwardens' accounts. Chapter three is devoted to how the accounts depict the parish's disputes and their resolutions. Chapter four traces the financial support for the parish and the parish's expenditures to identify the religious experience of Morebath. The fifth and sixth chapters address Morebath during the Reformation and include details on Morebath's parish subsidizing five men to join the 1549 Prayer Book Rebellion. Chapter seven depicts the resurgence of pre-Reformation community and devotions under Mary I followed by Elizabeth I's accession and the ultimate conformity of the parish.

Traditional, pre-Reformation life among Morebath's residents is depicted as showing little separation between the religious and the secular, with descriptions of how the villagers grazed the parish's sheep alongside their own flocks and partook in raucous events called church ales, replete with homemade beer and visiting minstrels at the parish's church house, to financially support the parish. Trychay's faith is shown as reflecting the beliefs of his congregation, with Duffy saying "[h]is religion in the end was the religion of Morebath".

With Henry VIII's 1534 separation of the Church of England from the Catholic Church, Trychay assented to the King's claims of supremacy over the pope. Morebath's parish no longer enjoyed the favour of a monastic landlord, who was replaced with unsympathetic speculators profiting from the dissolution of the monasteries. Though complying with Edward VI's Protestant religious impositions, Trychay is recorded as having hidden – rather than destroyed – expensive vestments that he had recently purchased after 20 years of saving up for them. In opposition to the government, the parish then subsidized five of its congregants to join the calamitous Prayer Book Rebellion at Exeter. In the aftermath, the parish's ornamental items were removed, defaced, or hidden to comply with Edwardine rule.

While Trychay rejoiced at Mary I's restoration of Catholicism, he accepted Protestantism and gladly embraced the duties and income of ministering to a second parish under her successor, Elizabeth I. The Elizabethan Religious Settlement reinstated some of the unpopular elements from Edward's time, though these were less jarring and afforded certain concessions to traditional practices. By 1570, when Trychay's ministry was coming to a close, the secular government's presence in Morebath is portrayed as more intrusive, while the saints and their associated objects, once familiar and venerated, are absent. Despite the changes in doctrine, Duffy establishes that the "rhythms of life" had resumed.

The Voices of Morebath's account of Morebath's involvement in the Prayer Book Rebellion deviates from previous narratives. Duffy had previously identified that Binney's edition of Trychay's records had misread "at their goyng forthe to sent davys down ys camppe" as "sent denys down" when Binney transcribed the account of five men armed and funded by the parish in 1549. In an earlier essay on Morebath, Duffy had corrected the error and recognized Saint David's Down as the site of the rebel camp outside Exeter, though Duffy believed these five men were sent as reinforcements for the besieged government troops. Duffy's stance changed with input from the English church historian Diarmaid MacCulloch, however, and The Voices of Morebath instead argues that these five men were sent to support the rebellion. Three of the five men from the parish's contingent are presented as likely among those killed in the Battle of Clyst St Mary.

Reception

Upon release, due to popular demand for work by Duffy, The Voices of Morebath sold better than Yale University Press had anticipated. The second printing was subsequently printed within a few weeks of the first's publication. In reviewing the book for Church History, Eric Josef Carlson wrote the book's "manageable length, lavish illustrations, and reasonable price demonstrate that author and publisher intended this book for a wide audience". However, Carlson held that occasionally "description is so densely detailed that all but a few scholars will find their attention wandering", adding that "most undergraduates will find themselves overwhelmed" and advised that the book was better suited for "students who have some experience reading historical scholarship". A 2002 review in the Virginia Quarterly Review said "[t]his book deserves a wide readership".

In his 2002 review for London Review of Books, the English historian Patrick Collinson contextualized The Stripping of the Altars with Dickens's work and the revisionist studies that challenged it, noting The Voices of Morebath's role as a pendant to Duffy's earlier work. Lucy Wooding, a historian of the Tudor period, called the work "invaluable" as "a contribution to debate on the English Reformation" in a 2001 review for Reviews in History. Wooding said that there was evidence Duffy's own views had developed during his time writing the book. Tom Betteridge, writing in 2003 for the journal Reformation, recommended an "odd couple" pairing, suggesting that readers of The Voices of Morebath should treat it as "companion volume" to MacCulloch's contemporaneous work Tudor Church Militant.