David Cressy

George III Professor of British History and Humanities Distinguished Professor Emeritus David Cressy

This book examines how the orderly, Protestant, and hierarchical society of post-Reformation England coped with the cultural challenges posed by various beliefs and events outside the social norm. David Cressy employs a series of linked stories and close readings of local texts and narratives to investigate such unorthodox happenings as bestiality and monstrous births, seduction and abortion, excommunication and irregular burial, and nakedness and cross-dressing. Each story--and the reaction it generated--exposes the strains and stresses of this unique phase of British history. As Cressy points out, the reigns of Elizabeth, James, and Charles I saw endless religious disputes, tussles for power within the aristocracy, and countless arguments about the behavior and beliefs of common people. Questions raised by "unnatural" episodes were widely debated at both the local and national levels, and drew the attention of magistrates, bishops, crown, and court. The resolution of such questions was not taken lightly in a world where God and the devil were still fighting for people's souls.

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