"A Craving To Reform": Legitimizing Revolution in Mid-Tudor England.
Abstract
The mid-Tudor period for a long time has been portrayed as a period of trouble and turbulence that was of little historical significance. The rulers and intellectuals of the period were cast as fanatical, intolerant religious bigots whose actions at best delayed the progress of English government. Actually the opposite is true. After the death of Edward VI, a group of evangelicals fled the restoration of Roman jurisdiction by Mary I. These English Protestants are known as the Marian exiles and they fashioned some radical political ideas to support a traditional, albeit evangelical political culture. They did this by trying to find a Biblical justification to oppose the Catholic restoration of Mary and return England to the godly church and state of Edward VI. Looking to restore the reformed church, they inadvertently legitimized what had before been seen as sedition into the modern idea of revolution.