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More than 5000 entries on the history, culture and life of Britain (published in 1993 by Macmillan, now out of print)
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Reformation
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England and Scotland were affected very differently by the profound changes in Christian belief and worship launched in the early 16C by *Luther in Germany, and carried further by *Zwingli and *Calvin in Switzerland.
There had been an English precursor of Protestant ideas in John *Wycliffe, but the actual break with Rome came more as a result of political and sexual intrigue than on any theological basis. It derived from *Henry VIII's determination to end one marriage and legitimize another. This was achieved by an extreme solution, the establishing of a separate *Church of England. Its eventual identity, middle-of-the-road and relatively undogmatic, was itself largely the result of political wisdom, in a tradition going back to its founding father, Thomas *Cranmer.
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The *Church of Scotland by contrast was intensely theological from the start. John *Knox, trained in Geneva, was a Protestant reformer of the sternest kind. Bringing the strict Calvinist creed to a country ruled by the Roman Catholic *Mary Queen of Scots, Knox and his followers were inevitably much involved in politics. But they were uncompromising in their doctrine. And so, whereas England in the Reformation created its own version of Protestantism, Scotland eventually established a church within the broader *Presbyterian community.
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In both countries the Reformation caused much destruction of art and architecture. The *dissolution of the monasteries was state policy; the destruction of frescoes and statues in cathedrals and village churches was the result of *Puritan fervour, over-obedient to the Bible's prohibition of graven images.
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