Archbishop Edmund Grindal is remembered for his refusal to obey Queen Elizabeth I's orders to limit the number of preachers in the English church and to suppress the preaching conferences called "prophesyings." The themes that mark his disobedience are foreshadowed, however, in the style and substance of those few of his earlier works that survive. A pervasive Scripturalism, a tendency to antithesis, and the moral intensity of life lived in the face of death are vital ingredients of Grindal's challenge, but they also point to broader impulses integral to progressive, reform-oriented Protestantism in sixteenth-century England. Grindal's career itself encapsulates the fluctuating prospects of this branch of Protestantism during his life.

Born in 1519 or 1520 of a poor tenant farmer in provincial Saint Bees, Cumberland, Grindal distinguished himself through his academic pursuits. He was conferred a B.A. by Pembroke Hall, Cambridge, in 1538, an M.A in 1540, and a B...