SOURCE: Gresham, Stephen. “William Baldwin: Literary Voice of the Reign of Edward VI.” The Huntington Library Quarterly 44, no. 2 (spring 1981): 101-16.

In the following essay, Gresham asserts that Baldwin is the most representative religious and moralistic writer of the years 1547 to 1553, showing how his writings help elucidate the complex nature of the English Reformation and merge didacticism with literary quality and accessibility.

The most representative religious and moralistic writer of the reign of Edward VI is William Baldwin, a man of letters known best to us as the chief compiler of as well as a contributor to A Mirror for Magistrates. Baldwin merits this distinction over better-known writers such as Thomas Becon, Robert Crowley, John Bale, Hugh Latimer, and George Joye because his writings more adequately reflect the considerable range and variety of religious and moralistic works printed during this brief era of the English Reformation.¹ No other religious...