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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 March 2016
The evidence given us by John Foxe in his Book of Martyrs provides more information about the social and theological standing of Lollards than we know about many later religious dissidents. Recent work has added to our knowledge. Geoffrey Dickens and Claire Cross have reconsidered the place of the Lollards in the development of the English Reformation, especially in theological matters. John Thomson drew our attention to the continuity shown in some areas. Claire Cross and Margaret Aston showed the importance of women Lollards. J.F. Davis has supported the idea of a continuous movement, and stressed the involvement of the remaining Lollard brotherhoods in the Reformation proper. Margaret Aston saw the reformers using Lollard texts to settle the Reformation into a tradition. And John Fines found one group of Lollards definitely not of a low or ‘middling sort’. But despite this attention on the part of historians, we still know little of the people labelled Lollards. How did they react to developments locally and nationally? Did they assimilate into their local communities despite their beliefs? What social and economic standing did they have? Was contemporary abuse, which dismissed them as ‘lowly sorts’, justified?
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12 The Subsidy Roll for the county of Buckinghamshire. Anno. 1524 eds A.C. Chibnall and A. Vere Woodman (Aylesbury 1944).
13 Margaret Spufford, ‘Rural Cambridgeshire, 1520-1680’ (unpublished MA thesis, Leicester 1962) p. 58.
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29 Ibid. p. 240.
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34 Chibnall, Musters pp. 282-3.
35 Ibid. p. 230.
36 BRO, D/A/We/3/318.
37 BRO, D/A/Wf/2/299.
38 Foxe, v p. 454.
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40 Ibid.
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53 Chibnall, Musters pp. 230-255.
54 Chibnall and Vere Woodman, Subsidy pp. 24-5.
55 BRO, D/A/We/14/171.
56 Westminster Abbey Muniments 16905-6, 30501; West. Reg. bks ii, fol 161b, iv, fol 85; WAM 16810; Foxe, iv p. 178.
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59 Ibid.
60 Ibid. p. 228.
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70 Ibid. pp. 220-2.
71 Ibid. p. 223.
72 Ibid. p. 224.
73 Ibid. p. 225.
74 Ibid. p. 228.
75 Chibnall and Vere Woodman, Subsidy pp. 12-13, 18, 19, 24-5, 26-7.
76 Chibnall, Musters pp. 224, 230, 216.
77 E.M. Elvey, Archdeaconry Court p. 295.
78 Ibid. p. 88.
79 BRO, D/A/We/2/52.
80 BRO, D/A/Wf/1/268.
81 BRO, D/A/We/12/150.
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