(Ritual, Religion, and the Life-cycle in Tudor and Stuart England)
by David Cressy Oxford
(University Press ISBN 0-19-820168-0)
eview by Deward Hastings
The references here are more Stuart than Tudor (reflecting, probably, the
greater wealth of surviving material), but almost every page seems to have
its little gem. This is an example of the recent trend in history
scholarship to look to hard evidence and to the lives of the more "ordinary"
people, the dirty details, as it were. It serves to remind that people in
the past were not the cardboard cutout characters so often portrayed in
"history" books but rather people with lives every bit as complex and
confusing as our own.