Arthur Donald Innes's "Cranmer and the Reformation in England," 7ff.

CHAPTER I: PROLOGUE: UNREST, pp. 1-11. Pioneers of the Reformation Europe in the fifteenth century are briefly noted, but without a reference to the 15th century councils and efforts at reform—cf. Hardwick on the Articles. Lollards are dismissively handled as a social and economic movement. The Gutenberg press is rightly noted. The “New Learning” we are quickly told inclined to a “skeptical conformity on the part of the cultured…” (27). Quite a reduction. A corrupt Borgian Pope, Alexander VI, is elected, a bad sign of the times, and is brought into conflict with the fiery Savonarola of Florence. The state of England—we are told the “English people have a genius for preserving decencies” a real species of funny English exceptionalism as if England was isolated and absolved (4). Innes tells us that we cannot get a real idea about “the condition of the Church of England before and during the first fifty years of the sixteenth century” (5). That’s quite the claim. Innes then retails Simon Fish’s The Supplicacyon for the Beggers, a man who comes off as a “Hyde Park agitator” bringing forward “putrescence” (5). Yet, contradictorily and after impugning his chief witness, Innes notes there must have been some “colorable grounds for holding the mass of the clergy guilty of greed, worldliness, and lax morality” (6). Ecclesiastical corruptions included monetized salvation (indulgences, shrines) and a monetized clergy at all levels, including courts. Its causes—moral laxity (whatever Innes means by that). Special conditions in England—the higher clergy were engaged in political, fiscal and worldly concerns. He calls attention to the monasteries. Motive force for Reformation—a Royal’s marital needs and an Archbishop willing to assert Royal supremacy over the church. Innes sorta forgot to mention the entire episcopal bench (minus Fisher) supporting the King's marital and political actions. Grade: D. Hopefully, Mr. Innes will up the game.