Susan Orlik demonstrates, with well researched yet accessibly presented examples, that the idea that English Parish Churches were left in decay between the iconoclasm of immediate Reformation period until Archbishop Laud’s move away from Puritanism is a myth well over due debunking.
Churches remained significant building in local communities and therefore were cared for, cherished even, through the period, and many figures that are seen as uniquely Laudian where being introduced well before the rise of Laud, and even in the Laudian period were being introduced and paid for be those opposed by Laud’s reforms in seeming equal numbers as by those that were Laud’s enthusiastic supporter.
Later during the Civil War and Commonwealth there may have been a starker divide, but the reading of this back in time is not evidenced despite its endurance.
For a book born as a doctoral thesis this is very readable, and benefits form being richly illustrated – so important when discussing the physical decoration of Churches.
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