The subject of this paper is a celebrated incident in Constantius' Life of St. Germanus. The work is a near contemporary piece, evidently drawing on eye witness accounts. It was composed in Gaul about 480 A.D. Constantius provides several interesting and possibly historical details concerning conditions in Britain during the transition from Celtic independence to Saxon dominance. St. Germanus visited Britain in 429 to combat the Pelagian heresy. While there, according to Constantius, he led the Britons in a military victory over invading Picts and Saxons, the Alleluja Victory. He thereafter passed into a prominent position in British legend and history.

This biography of St. Germanus and particularly the incident of the miracle victory have long been the focus of a lively historical debate. Incidental details in Constantius' work including references to cities, synods, and men bearing vaguely Roman titles in Britain have been accepted (rather uncritically) as genuine. Others have rejected the work as historically valueless and suggested that the Alleluja victory is simply an allegory based on Biblical miracles such as the fall of the walls of Jericho.

Although significant changes took place in the Church of England between 1547 and 1553, the Protestant Reformation under Edward VI has received less attention from historians than the Reformation under Henry VIII or Elizabeth I. The publication of A. G. Dickens' The English Reformation in 1964 marked the beginning of a redirection of reformation studies which included a deeper appreciation of the importance of the Edwardian Reformation. Dickens saw the English Reformation as part of a larger European religious crisis and focused attention on Lutheran, Calvinistic, and other continental influences that contributed to the development of protestantism under Henry VIII and Edward VI. Emphasizing the successes of Edwardian reformers, Dickens wrote, “Such evidence as we can adduce suggests that Protestantism continued steadily to expand amongst the upper and middle classes, while … able preachers could still make many converts among the working people of the towns.” In recent years, however, regional studies have revealed the obstacles to Protestant reform and the survival of Roman Catholicism.

This essay looks at the Edwardian Reformation from the center of England, the city of London, and examines religious change at the parochial level. It is based on sixty-three clergy who were appointed to a total of sixty-six London benefices between 1547 and 1553 and traces their careers through the reign of Mary to the Elizabethan settlement of 1559. The essay studies the process of parochial reform by examining the exercise of patronage and attempting to determine the quality and religious orientation of beneficed clergy. It also seeks to identify the successes and failures of the government of Edward VI as it sought to promote Protestant reforms throughout the country.

An important aspect of John Knox's thought is his concept of divine providence. Closely related to and partially dependent on his notion of providence are the reformer's ideas on God, history, politics, and predestination. Knox did not, however, write a specific tract on divine providence. In fact, he denied being a speculative “theologian” and regarded himself as a preacher, being called “to blow my master's trumpet,” rather than “to compose books for the age to come….” Consequently, he did not approach the subject systematically. For example, Knox did not, as John Calvin had done, logically relate the subjects of creation and providence. In fact, the Scottish reformer seldom spoke of God's act of creation. Despite this nonsystematic approach, Knox did have a doctrine of divine providence, even if at times it was implicit rather than explicit. As a result, his concept of providence must be derived piecemeal from his historical, polemical, and pastoral writings.

What then is the value of studying the concept of providence in the thought of a reformer who did not think systematically? First, such a study will demonstrate that a coherent conception of the nature of divine providence can be found in Knox's writings, though not expounded in a single treatise. Second, his thoughts on this subject have not been the object of an extensive scholarly investigation, either by historians or theologians. Third, Knox's concept of providence had a practical and motivational significance for both the reformer's thought and actions, thus revealing more about Knox the man, his mission, his motivation, and worldview. His great objective was the reformation of religion, particularly in his native Scotland.

According to Nicholas Tyacke, the doctrine of predestination worked as a “common and ameliorating bond” between conformists and nonconformists in the late Elizabethan and Jacobean Church of England. Anglicans and Puritans both accepted Calvin's teachings on predestination as a “crucial common assumption.” Puritans were stigmatized either because of their refusal to conform to the church's rites and ceremonies or because of their rejection of the church's episcopal government, but their agreement with the episcopacy on predestinarian Calvinism imposed “important limits” on the extent of persecution. The Synod of Dort, a Dutch conference held in 1619 which included several English representatives, repudiated Arminianism and affirmed the Calvinist view of salvation, Tyacke calls “an event which has never received the emphasis it deserves from students of English religious history,” because the Synod “served to emphasize afresh the theology binding conformist and nonconformist together, and the limits which that common bond imposed on persecution.” The rise of Arminianism broke this common bond and contributed to the causes of the Civil War. To the Arminians, Puritans were those who opposed the new religious policies of King Charles I and archbishop William Laud. The Arminians' elimination of Calvinist influence in the church and at court, along with intensified persecution of Puritans, “generated a Puritan militancy” that erupted in 1640. By that date, Tyacke concludes, predestinarian Calvinism had been “transformed with relative ease into a call for ‘root and branch’ remedies”; at the same time, presbyterianism emerged as “the cure of Arminian disease.”

By the middle of the eighteenth century, the growth of the national debt, the burden of the taxes necessary to support it, and the effect of this system of public finance on the politics, economy, and society of Britain, deeply concerned politicians in opposition. Their frequent expressions of concern were sufficiently persuasive to induce similar apprehensions on occasion in politicians at court. In 1753, when the national debt was a little over £74,000,000, earl Waldegrave, a personal favorite of George II, felt compelled to tell the House of Lords about a “consideration of very great importance, … the state of our national debt [and] the heavy taxes which are the consequences of this debt.” The situation required, he went on, “prudent measures of government, with that strict national economy which must be our only remedy.” Waldegrave did not go so far as to believe the nation was on the verge of collapse. As he pointed out, “a country and a government like ours has so many and so great resources, that we may bear a great deal and still be in a flourishing condition.” “Yet as long as this evil does subsist,” he warned the House, “we can never expect fully to exert our proper strength.” He concluded, “Till this burden is removed it will remain a check to our trade, will be still heavier on the landed interest, must lessen our credit and influence abroad, and will be a cause of discontent if not of disaffection at home.”

The year 1851 witnessed the Great Exhibition, Britain's celebration of technological achievement. Thousands of curious and excited visitors from the world over flocked to Joseph Paxton's futuristic Crystal Palace to marvel at the various exhibits which underscored, not only Britain's commercial and industrial preeminence, but also the Victorian faith in progress and the triumph of the machine.

Less noticed, late that same year, was the passing of one of the most perceptive observers of the new age, the veteran artist J.M.W. Turner. This great English Romantic, famed for his paintings of bucolic landscapes, storms at sea, and Alpine avalanches, also had drawn significant inspiration from the new forces which were then rapidly transforming Britain and the world. A notable body of his work, particularly the efforts of his later career, exist as complex visual commentaries on the reality and the meaning of nineteenth century industrialism. Watercolors of blackened mills, polluted skies, and steam locomotion capture the face of change, while great oils such as The Fighting Temeraire and Snow Storm—Steam–Boat off a Harbour's Mouth symbolize a dynamic new age.