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need to emancipate ourselves from the 'pathetic illusion that there must exist some one golden key which will open the way into the heart of this great historical episode' (i.e. the Reformation); and Owen Chadwick comments, 'Historians have sometimes blamed the princes of the Reformation for intruding into divinity. They seldom recognize sufficiently that statecraft forced them into divinity.' Again, here is Gordon Rupp: 'Too little attention has been paid to their spirituality, to what they have to say of Christian experience, of their devotion to Christ, and about the joy of the Christian religion It is time to look at Puritanism from the other side of the (Christopher) Hill.' But what of Christopher Hill's own verdict? 'The Church of England survived primarily because of its deep roots among the landed ruling class, whose interests it shared in so many ways; but also because "the rabble" preferred its conservative laxity to an enforced Presbyterian discipline, or the voluntary self-discipline of the sects.' If, as R. L. Greaves justifiably suggests, Geoffrey Nuttall's major contribution has been to 'set forth with sympathy and understanding the elusive nature of the [Puritan] tradition' he has been admirably served by the way in which the contribu- tors have lived up to his example. They, too, in Geoffrey Nuttall's own phrase, have 'tried to combine honesty and frankness with the glow of conviction' which, says John Huxtable in his touching short prefatory tribute, 'as well as any other phrase I know' describes the man being honoured by this volume. GLANMOR WILLIAMS Swansea. THE DISSENTERS FROM THE REFORMATION TO THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. By Michael R. Watts. Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1978. Pp. 543. £ 15. It is high time the history of Dissent was retold in modern terms. The last juggernaut published on this theme was H. W. Clark's History of English Nonconformity (1911-13), a pedestrian piece of work which reads as if it had been written with a pen dipped in lead. No such indictment could be levelled against Michael Watts's bold and stimulating survey. In five bulky chapters, he spans the period between the emergence of radical Anabaptism in England and the outbreak of the Birmingham riots of 1791. Drawing on a rich variety of manuscript and printed sources, notably church-minute books, contemporary sermons and treatises, local and chapel histories, Watts has produced a well-balanced synthesis which combines smoothly-written narrative with shrewd judgements. The author begins his survey with an account of the radical origins of Dissent which, he claims, drew on the rich alluvial deposit of Lollardy and Anabaptism. Moving on to those 'hotter sort of Protestants' who had nothing good to say of the church settlement of 1559, he focuses on separatists who insisted on the paramount importance of 'personal faith rather than public ceremony' and the right of 'every Christian to take part in the government of his church'. His next theme is 'The Liberation of Dissent' during the revolutionary period, when a bizarre