Includes bibliographical references and index.

Part I: Reformation unravelled. Reformation, Counter-Reformation and the English nation -- Reformation unravelled: facts and fictions -- Part II: The material culture of early Tudor Catholicism. The parish, piety and patronage: the evidence of rood-screens -- Salle Church and the Reformation -- The end of it all: the material culture of the late medieval English parish and the 1552 inventories of church goods -- Part III: Two cardinals. John Fisher and the spirit of his age -- The spirituality of John Fisher -- Archbishop Cranmer and Cardinal Pole: the See of Canterbury and the Reformation -- Rome and Catholicity in mid Tudor England -- Part IV: Catholic voices. The conservative voice in the English Reformation -- Bare ruin'd choirs: remembering Catholicism in Shakespeare's England.

"For the first time, Professor Eamon Duffy publishes a book on the broad sweep of the English Reformation. Once again he emphasises the importance of a study of Late Medieval religion and society for an understanding of the Reformation, he rescues Mary Tudor and Cardinal Pole from their detractors but shows once again his brilliance at understanding the effect of the Reformation on the population at large and the common man. Duffy writes at all times with grace, elegance and wit as he sees through the prejudices and myths of other Reformation scholars and demonstrates that the truth is never pure nor simple. This is revisionist history at its very best."--Publisher's description.