This is a detailed study of the large and important diocese of Lincoln under three sixteenth-century bishops, Smith, Wolsey and Atwater. Little detailed work of this kind has been done on the state of the clergy before the Reformation. General studies have tended to rely on the literature of the time, and consequently more is known about what contemporaries thought of the Church, particularly of its shortcomings, than about the actual state of the church itself. Mrs Bowker has used a wide range of diocesan material to fill in this side of the picture. She describes the machinery of diocesan administration and the organization of the ecclesiastical courts, and indicates the extent to which benefit of clergy was abused. There is an important analysis of the reasons for non-residence and its effect on the parishes. Mrs Bowker discusses the educational opportunities and requirements of the priesthood, and the impact on clerical education of the introduction of the printing press.
John Longland, confessor to Henry VIII and bishop of Lincoln – a diocese which spanned nine counties and has a correspondingly important place in English history – occupied his see throughout the period of the Henrician Reformation. In her analysis of the diocese during his episcopate, based on exhaustive research in archives, Margaret Bowker reveals the impact of both royal policy and religious contention on the clergy and laity of a large part of England, and on the ecclesiastical structure of the diocese. The state of the Church and the reforms which are in progress within it during the decade before the Reformation are first discussed. Mrs Bowker then looks in detail at the effects of the break with Rome, and the royal policies associated with it, on the monasteries, the clergy, and the religious life of the diocese. Her account includes statistical analyses of both clergy and laity which will become essential reference material for future work on the English Reformation.
