Catholic Church was replaced as the centre of the nation's religious life. Emerging from a dense mesh of European ecclesiastical and political controversy and Tudor dynastic ambition, the English Reformation ended with the Pope supplanted as the head of the national church, the great monasteries -owners of much of the country's land-disbanded and destroyed, the Latin Mass replaced by vernacular services and the colourful wall paintings of parish churches whitewashed. This is a fully illustrated introduction that looks at the main players-Thomas Cranmer, Henry VIII, Thomas Cromwell and others-as well as the broad sweep of this era of bitter controversy, brutal persecution and seismic upheaval.

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