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Retaining a narrative drive, this title provides a clear and critical account of the recent scholarly approaches to the subject of Reformation England, evaluating all of the chief debates on the subject. There is a growing perception among scholars that the English and Welsh experienced a "long reformation", whose roots lie in the 15th century, and whose effects were still being felt well into the 17th century. Yet general surveys of the Reformation often place the origins of the story in 1529, and most draw to a close at some point in the 16th century. This book argues that to understand the Reformation it is necessary to adopt a less restricted viewpoint. It combines reassessment of familiar debates and topics with introductions to newer historiographical concerns: religious life before the Reformation; the early evangelical movement; aims and achievement of the Henrician, Edwardian and Marian Reformations; meanings of "Puritanism" and "Catholicism" in the later 16th and 17th centuries; the nature of religious "conformity"; religious conflict and the advent of civil war. "Reformation England" addresses a problem whose remifications are still felt: why the English became divided over religion, and why, despite the efforts of a succession of governments, those divisions could not be healed.