This is a study of the structure within which the English church was governed and administered under Henry I, although it has sometimes been necessary to draw on evidence for a rather longer period. Although the Anglo-Norman church was recruited from a single bodey of men governed by a single powerful king there was still an importand sense of separate identity in the English church, particularly expressed in the celebration of 'national' councils. By 1135 it was also very rare for the Normans appointed to high office in the English churchto have spent any substantial period in a Norman benefice; the English church was at least as distinct from its Norman counterpart as English society. By the end of the reign it was easier to define the limits of this church; although York retained important claims north of the Scottish border the creation of the diocese of Carlisle has done much to make the ecclesiastical frontier coincide with political realities; in Ireland the primatial claims of canterbury had recieved a decisive check, but the absorption of the Welsh hierarchy into her province was almost complete, at least at the higher levels.

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Symeon of Durham's history of the church of Durham, a number of earlier narratives and the fine collection of twelfth century Durham charters formed the basis for this history of the Community of Saint Cuthbert before 1150. They generally concentrated upon the acquisition and maintenance of the community's lands, the changes in which reflected the major events in northern history. The survival of the sources and the story they tell bear witness to the remarkable resilience and continuity of the community. At no time did it suffer the destruction characteristic of northern monasticism, often flourishing at times of upheaval, as during the Scandinavian and Norman Conquests. In its first days the acquisition of land was, predictably, associated with early Anglian settlement, especially royal sites. Throughout the period the growth of the patrimony was largely dependent upon royal patronage, though some bishops were also avid acquirers of land. Royal and other lay patronage can be directly associated with the need to gather support in the north. Rulers secure in the north, as native northern earls, or strong enough to subdue the area were unlikely to be great benefactors and were inclined to despoil the church. For the Cuthbertine community jurisdictional rights were important and there is evidence to suggest that there existed a substantial jurisdictional immunity within the patrimony by the tenth century. The rights of sanctuary of a mother church and the immunities of church land in the seventh century seem to have been important factors in its establishment, rather than, as has generally been suggested, the alienation of comital rights to Durham in the late eleventh century. The combination of landed wealth, jurisdictional privilege and survival accounts for the immense power of the community in the north from the seventh century onwards.

This thesis provides a study of the career and works of Samuel Harsnett, one of the most senior members of the early Stuart Church. Harsnett enjoyed a distinguished career as bishop of Chichester and Norwich, and finally as archbishop of York, but earned notoriety much earlier, by virtue of preaching a controversial sermon against the then orthodox Calvinist position on predestined grace. It was this early expression of anti-Calvinism (or Arminianism as it later became termed), together with a predisposition towards tradition on the liturgy and ceremony of the Church, which has earned Harsnett, as Conrad Russell put it, a place among "the cream of the English Arminians". As the first future bishop to express openly anti-Calvinist views Harsnett's career is contemporaneous with the first forty years of what Nicholas Tyacke described as the 'Rise of Arminianism'. For that reason he is deserving of a biographical study, both to determine the nature of Arminianism in practice and his particular contribution to its 'Rise'. In seeking to determine Harsnett's contribution to the Arminian phenomenon this thesis suggests that Harsnett was, in a number of respects, hardly the archetypal Arminian that Professor Russell and most other modern historians have assumed. This raises important questions as to the actual significance of the theology of predestination to developments in the early Stuart Church. The significant areas of Harsnett's career considered in the thesis are: his formative years as a scholar and then fellow at Pembroke College, Cambridge; his early career as chaplain to Richard Bancroft when Harsnett probably developed his lifelong dislike of Puritan non-conformity; his episcopal career at Chichester and then Norwich; his parliamentary career, which was marked by major ideological differences with fellow Arminians; his final appointment as archbishop of York, senior religious adviser to the king and Privy Councillor.

Visitatio, however, is driven by the same forces that drive equally dramatic liturgical commemorations year-round, climaxing in but not exclusive to the period around Easter. Beginning with an account of late Anglo-Saxon baptism, I examine the liturgy for the high festivals from Christmas to Ascension Day. For each chapter, I describe the liturgical forms for the day and their intended relationships with the participants, focussing on the establishment of dramatic associations between the celebrants and certain figures in the commemorated events. I then compare the liturgical forms with vernacular treatments of a particular festival, looking both for overt instruction and more subtle influence of the liturgy on the preaching texts. Anglo-Saxon preachers and homilists openly assumed the themes and symbolic images of the dramatic ritual in their attempts to make their congregations understand and take on Christian imperatives. Recursively, vernacular preaching helped solidify the meanings of the symbolic elements of the dramatic ritual and their significance to the lives of Christians. Anglo-Saxon appreciation of the dramatic potential of the liturgy was realized both in creative expansion of the liturgy and in the vernacular preaching texts that identified and enhanced this dramatic dynamic.

This thesis examines the impact of the English Bible upon the people and parishes of Norfolk, Suffolk and Essex between 1525 and 1560. It examines two major themes of this impact: firstly, the level of success of the installation of the Great Bible in the parish churches; secondly, the effects of the publication and open reading of the scriptures in the vernacular upon the laity of East Anglia. The first theme explains the reasons for the order to install English scripture in the churches, and the information on the success of this installation provided by prosecution records and churchwardens' accounts. It then introduces an obscure document set, the church-plate certificates produced during the reign of Edward VI, and using these examines the level of installation of the Bible and of the religious injunctions of 1547. The results of the study of the church-plate certificates and churchwardens' accounts are compared with a number of factors, including parish wealth, proximity to towns and agricultural patterns, to determine which types of parishes were more likely to comply. The second theme examines the various responses of laypersons to the appearance of the English Bible in East Anglia. Although much of this section has been derived from records of prosecution, it also studies the effects of the English Bible on diverse events such as Kett's Rebellion of 1549, popular printing in Ipswich and the production of educational primers. This section also looks at the level of scriptural knowledge of laypersons ranging from that of Robert Reynys, a churchreeve of Acle, of the 1430's, to that of the prosecuted Marian Protestants during the 1550's.