The English ecclesiastical historian John Strype (1643-1737) published the second volume of his monumental Elizabethan religious history Annals of the Reformation in 1725. For over two and a half centuries it remained one of the most important Protestant histories of the period and has been reprinted in numerous editions. Volume 2 Part 1 covers the years 1570 to 1575. It focuses on the Queen's use of parliament; royal relations with the episcopate and nobility; various ecclesiastical commissions; threats from Rome; religious polemics; difficulties with Mary Queen of Scots; diplomacy with Spain, France, Germany, the Netherlands and Scotland; the pressures on the Queen to marry and the printing of the Bishop's Bible. Strype's thorough use of primary sources and the enormous scope and detail of his history has ensured its place as an outstanding work of eighteenth-century scholarship. It should be read by every student of Elizabethan religious history.
