The episcopate of John Morton has received little attention from historians, possibly because it falls in time between the traditional interests of medievalists and of reformation specialists. Previous treatments, notably that of dean Hook in his Lives of the Archbishops of Canterbury and the biography by Woodhouse, published in 1895 and heavily reliant on Hook, have concentrated on Morton's political role as ‘foster father of the Tudors’, and while Professor Claude Jenkins provided an excellent survey of the Canterbury register, he was more concerned with the evidence which it provides for die condition of the Church in die late fifteenth century than widi the archbishop himself. The purpose of this paper is to outline the salient characteristics of the episcopate and to examine the ecclesiastical policies pursued by Morton. Two qualifications must immediately be added. First, despite the wealth of material in the archiepiscopal register, supplemented by the records of the cathedral priory, there is almost nothing of a personal nature, and as always it is more difficult to estimate the character or sentiments of a fifteenth-century bishop than of his twelfth-century counterpart Secondly, it has been remarked how a hard and fresh look has upgraded the reputation of Hubert Walter, ‘that old model of secular prelacy’.

This paper is concerned widi the puritan in office. It sets out to deal with an incident that took place in the university of Cambridge in 1589, and, in analysing that incident, to examine the tensions and ambiguities inherent in the position of the puritan divine (and here I mean both presbyterians and ‘fellow-travellers’) involved in the traditional administrative and jurisdictional hierarchies of the university. At first sight the affair in question appears to be little more than another clash between two young dons, with precisian proclivities, and the university authorities. Its significance for the study of establishment or moderate puritanism lies in the fact that by 1589 those university authorities included in their ranks men like Laurence Chaderton, Master of Emmanuel, William Whitaker, newly installed as Master of St John's and Roger Goad, Provost of Kings, all of whom were noted for their puritan sympathies. It was in 1589, of course, that Whitgift's final attack on the classis movement really got under way. Here, then, we have the interesting spectacle of erstwhile puritans (one of whom, Chaderton, was an avowed presbyterian) being called upon, in their capacity as university administrators, to support, or at least not to oppose or obstruct, a new hardline anti-precisian policy which was totally at variance with their own principles and sympathies.

Richard Hooker's attitude to the Church of Rome has been widely misrepresented. This attempt to elucidate it will not only modify the traditional idea of Hooker's broad-minded ecumenism, but will also make possible a fresh evaluation of his theological development and his relation to die Elizabethan hierarchy in the period up to the writing of his Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity. Hooker scholarship has consistently interpreted his early career, especially his controversy with Walter Travers in 1586, in the light of his later authorship of the Polity, and has shown itself to be still in the grip of Isaac Walton's portrait of Hooker as official champion of Anglican orthodoxy against the Puritans. This portrait will be seen to be inapplicable to the Hooker of the 1580s. Difficult though it is to conceive a Hooker who was not yet the author of the Polity, die understanding of his theological development requires a resolute attempt to trace it forwards towards the Polity rather than backwards from the Polity.

It is widely accepted among historians that the House of Lords in the eighteenth century was an obstacle to religious change. Its unfriendly mien appears to be confirmed by the fate of several Quaker tithe bills and Dissenting petitions. Despite the passage of limited relief acts for Roman Catholics and Dissenters in 1778 and 1779 respectively, it was unusual for such legislation to be well received, or even to find a sponsor, in that chamber. Yet, in the summer of 1789 the House of Lords and that House alone witnessed what has been a neglected episode in ecclesiastical and political history. This was the attempt by the third earl Stanhope to amend the law concerning religious toleration. Although admittedly far from an exception to the rule in the way in which it was greeted by the peers, it has received scant notice from modern historians of toleration. Stanhope himself, of course, has become known to the historically minded as one of the celebrated eccentrics of the period; the image of ‘Citizen Stanhope’ the defender of the French Revolution and the ‘minority of one’ is unlikely to be effaced. Accordingly such discussion as there has been of the earl's bill has tended to emphasise Stanhope's personal idiosyncrasies and peculiar brand of aristocratic radicalism rather than the detailed provisions of the measure.

Until recently, chapbooks lay in the domain of Victorian antiquarians and bibliographers. Few persons have ever taken them seriously. Not even their original owners could mention them without showing embarrassment and adding that they had abandoned the pamphlets for more respectable reading. A half-century later, Victorian collectors called them ‘quaint’ and ‘peculiar’. Successive generations of historians failed in trying to date them and determine patterns of production and distribution. Present-day scholars no longer apologise for neglecting them. Despite this abuse, chapbooks stubbornly survive, their bad bindings preserved by poor cataloguing.