![]() ![]() ‘God gyve us grace to repent in tyme’, he concluded fervently, ‘Amen Amen for his mercye sacke’.1 Two years later the Huntingdon schoolmaster Dr Thomas Beard published The theatre of Gods judgements, a famous anthology of anecdotes of heavenly vengeance visited upon evildoers from Hebrew times to the present. ![]() The author, together with at least some of those who flocked to see the botanical wonder, ‘geatherid therby a just ensample of god to call us all to repentance to leave our excessive pride and umble oure wickid and stony hartes … sleepinge in this worldly cradle of securitie beringe of a careles mynde, hasting godes judgement and singnifienge the latter daye cannot be farr of’. This strange prodigy was recorded in an anonymous town chronicle containing summaries of hundreds of inexpensive news pamphlets which reached the Shropshire market town of Shrewsbury in the course of the reign of Elizabeth I. Felled by order of the local bailiffs and its massive trunk ‘cut in twayne’, the ‘myghty’ tree gave one last mortal moan before shuddering into silence for ever. In 1595, ‘to the amasement of many hearers’, an ancient oak in the grounds of Herongate Park near Brentwood in Essex ‘was hard to grone for three days space most grevously … lycke as a man had been at the poynt of deathe’. Subscriber: University of Edinburgh date: 19 February 2016 Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a monograph in OSO for personal use (for details see ). PRINTED FROM OXFORD SCHOLARSHIP ONLINE ((c) Copyright Oxford University Press, 2015. Keywords: providentialism, Protestantism, English Reformation, Protestant consciousness, Civil War, English society Providentialism became a dangerously politicized discourse in the decades preceding the outbreak of the Civil War. The book also emphasizes the debate on the English Reformation. ![]() The book highlights the pivotal role played by providentialism in forging a collective Protestant consciousness, a sense of confessional identity which fused anti-Catholicism and patriotic feeling and which united the elite with their social inferiors. However, the book argues that there was a cluster of assumptions which penetrated every sector of English society, cutting across the boundaries created by status and creed, education and wealth. Print publication date: 2001 Print ISBN-13: 9780198208877 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: October 2011 DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198208877.001.0001ĭOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198208877.003.0001Ībstract and Keywords Protestantism represented every indication of continuing vitality and vigour, a radical disjuncture with the Roman Catholic past and a violent disruption of the settled patterns of a late medieval piety which betrayed no signs of decline or decay. Oxford Scholarship Online Providence in Early Modern England Alexandra Walsham ![]()
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