This detailed study of the parish clergy in England on the Eve of the break with Rome is based on a wide variety of documentary sources, both ecclesiastical and

A 'grass roots' cultural history of the English parish from the earliest times to Queen Victoria.

In Parish Clergy Wives in Elizabethan England, Anne Thompson shifts the emphasis from the institution of clerical marriage to the people and personalities invol

Traces the careers and fortunes of the last priests ordained before the Reformation.

"This study sets the debate over clerical marriage within the context of the key debates of the Reformation, offering insights into the nature of the reformers'