The debate about the social and political attitudes associated with Pelagian theology has exercised a stranglehold on the discussion of Pelagianism in Britain in recent years. Edward Thompson's new book on Saint Germanus and the end of Roman Britain prompts a re-examination of the nature of Pelagianism, a re-examination in which its fate in Britain must take a key part. It will not be necessary to recall here the interesting views on Pelagianism and the end of Roman Britain associated with Dr J. N. L. Myres and the late Dr John Morris which, as Gerald Bonner has rightly remarked, have ‘always appealed to historians of Roman Britain rather than to church historians who approached Pelagianism as a Christian movement of the Mediterranean region’. I do not want to take sides between the historians of Roman Britain and the church historians; and from the debate aroused by Myres and Morris I want to stand aside. In this paper I pursue the implications of thoughts which have germinated in the course of reading Thompson's fascinating book.

Thomas Cyrcetur belonged to the second generation of anti-Wycliffite theologians. He must have been born c. 1376, and was a Fellow of Merton College in 1395 or 1396 and until at least 1401. He had graduated BD by December 1417, and probably left the university for residence in Somerset about 1418/19. The immediate Wycliffite threat had thus passed by the time of his Oxford career, and he was not involved in scholastic polemic against Wyclif. On the other hand, he was little influenced by the new orthodox outlook which developed in the universities and in London from the 1420s onwards. He had left Oxford by the time of the publication of Dr Thomas Walden's (alias Netter's) Doctrinale antiquitatum ecclesie, with its new patristic approach to combating heresy, and he shows no sign of acquaintance with that work, although it achieved immediate success. He had long ceased to reside in the university, and was of advanced years, by the time of the opposition to Bishop Pecock in the 1440s and 1450s, which was led by a group of theologians, many from Cambridge but including some Oxford men, whose approach appears also to have been patristic as well as consciously orthodox, and whose best-known member is Thomas Gascoigne. Cyrcetur's approach to theology remained conservative, but it was also pastoral. Even before he graduated BD he took an interest in pastoral work.

Between 1 June and 1 August 1508, the newly refounded tribunal, known to history as the Spanish Inquisition, was subjected tojudicial investigation by a ‘General Congregation’ at Burgos, in Old Castile. The process resulted from the activities of Diego Rodriguez Lucero. As inquisitor of Córdoba, he was accused of making false charges of ‘judaising’ against conversos, or converts from Judaism and/or their descendants, and ‘Old Christians’ alike. During the Congregation's examination of his work, many of the tensions and difficulties which had arisen in Spanish society as a result of the Inquisition's work were exposed. To date, the only detailed consideration in English of Lucero's rise and fall - published in 1897-has been that of the great liberal Protestant historian of the Inquisition, H. C. Lea. As ever, his work was solidly based on the best early printed sources, but also on documents from the Castilian national archives at Simancas and the cathedral archives in Cordoba itself, as well as other places. In recent years, however, many more documents have come to light, which make possible a more profound and thorough investigation of the Lucero affair. Progress towards increased knowledge has not, however, been uninterrupted. Many of the manuscript sources in the Cordoba Cathedral archives to which Lea refers are no longer traceable, having, in some cases, been torn from their bindings; others have simply vanished. Such, it appears, is the degree of passion which the name of Lucero still inspires.

In his reinterpretation of ‘Henry vm and the praemunire manoeuvres of 1530-31’ Dr J. A. Guy asserts that the principal aim of the king in his dealings with the Church in these years was to secure a large sum of money. The purpose of the prosecution of churchmen for offences against the statute of praemunire was ‘to reinforce the demand for a clerical subsidy’. ‘Some serious praemunire offence had to be constructed in order to encourage the clergy to settle quickly for a general pardon’ for which they would pay a hefty fine. ‘The king had already decided by mid-1530 to seek a repeat performance of the clerical subsidy of 1523, and … he acted to outfoot those who had identified themselves as stalwarts in Wolsey's day [i.e. those who had opposed the subsidy in 1523] by accusing them of praemunire.’ Dr Guy cannot ignore Henry was desire for an annulment of his marriage with Catherine of Aragon altogether. The king's true objectives were ‘supply and the divorce’. But the latter was subsidiary. ‘Henry VIII wished to raise a clerical subsidy as substantial as that achieved by Wolsey in 1523. Second, he aimed to subdue the opponents of the divorce in convocation’.

The beginning of Elizabeth i's reign was a happy and confident time for committed English Protestants in spite of their doubtful and precarious position in the world. They had almost miraculously survived both the death of their Protestant king, Edward vi, and the reign of the Catholic queen, Mary, and her foreign husband, Philip n of Spain. It seemed that God was testing Protestantism in England. Since he allowed Elizabeth to succeed to the throne, Protestantism, it seemed, had passed the test. As a result early English Protestants confidently began to formulate their place in both the world and history while attacking the established positions of their Catholic opponents. English Catholics defended themselves from these attacks and replied with some of their own. This debate over the historical situation of the Church of England continued through the reign of James i and beyond. During the course of the debate both sides commented frequently and necessarily on what they thought was Martin Luther's place in church history.