# The Voices of Morebath

The Voices of Morebath: Reformation and Rebellion in an English Village is a 2001 non-fiction history book by Irish historian of British Christianity Eamon Duffy and published by Yale University Press about Morebath, England, during the English Reformation of the 16th century. Using the detailed churchwarden's accounts maintained by Sir Christopher Trychay, the vicar of Morebath's parish, Duffy recounts the religious and social implications of the Reformation in a small conservative Catholic community through the reign of Henry VIII, during the violent 1549 Prayer Book Rebellion, and into the Elizabethan era. Trychay's accounts – first reprinted in 1904 – had been used in other scholarly works and was first encountered by Duffy during research for his 1992 The Stripping of the Altars on pre-Reformation English religion. The Voices of Morebath depicts both Morebath and Trychay through their strong early resistance to the Reformation to their eventual adoption of new religious norms under the Protestant Elizabethan Religious Settlement.
The Voices of Morebath was praised for its coverage of parochial and local matters, particularly its personal treatment of Trychay. It drew critiques for instances where Duffy uses examples from Morebath to engage in broader discussions, with other reviewers noting that Duffy conceded these limitations. Though popular, the book was appraised as overly complex for the broad audience it had been written and marketed towards. In 2002, The Voices of Morebath won the Hawthornden Prize and was shortlisted for both the Samuel Johnson Prize and British Academy Book Prize.

## Background

In the 16th century, Morebath was a village of sheepherders in Devon, England, with an isolated and impoverished parish that served roughly 33 families of 150 people. Sir Christopher Trychay was Morebath's vicar for 54 years, a period during which England had four monarchs and Morebath transitioned from a conservative Catholic community rebelling against the government-imposed English Reformation into a village conforming to the Protestant Elizabethan Religious Settlement. Religion played a significant role in the daily lives of Morebath's residents, though they conformed their practices to the oscillating theologies imposed under the monarchies of Henry VIII, Edward VI, Mary I, and Elizabeth I. However, the strain of the Edwardian government's religious and financial demands proved the most trying: Devon and Cornwall revolted with the implementation of 1549 Book of Common Prayer, and the Morebath parish sponsored five of its men to join the doomed Prayer Book Rebellion at Exeter.
Trychay maintained meticulous parish accounts during his vicarage at Morebath. These records have been utilized by scholars researching 16th-century England since a version of them was first published in J. Erskine Binney's 1904 The Accounts of the Wardens of the Parish of Morebath, Devon, 1520–1573. Binney was an antiquarian who, like Sir Christopher Trychay, had been vicar of St George's Church in Morebath. The 1904 edition was edited on behalf of a local record society. Trychay's accounts are among the few surviving 16th-century accounts of Morebath's parish, as many of its records were destroyed in bombing raids on Exeter during the Second World War. While Binney had sorted the original manuscript records, they were later dropped and then randomly rebound at Exeter Library. Eamon Duffy, an Irish Catholic historian of British Christianity, would utilize both Binney's edition and the original manuscript in compiling The Voices of Morebath.
Scholarship published before The Voices of Morebath had been split on the popularity of the Reformation among the Tudor English population. Historian A. G. Dickens argued that Protestantism was quickly and voluntarily accepted across England in his 1964 The English Reformation. Initially well received by reviewers, Dickens's thesis saw revisionist challenges by other scholars. Catholic historian Jack Scarisbrick, in his 1984 The Reformation and the English People, held that the 16th-century English were generally unwilling to surrender their Catholicism. Using Dickens's approach of examining local records, Margaret Bowker's 1981 The Henrician Reformation and Susan Brigden's 1989 London and the Reformation contradicted Dickens and held that Protestantism made inroads slowly among the English.
Duffy had first encountered Trychay's records during his research for the 1992 book, The Stripping of the Altars. Called "magisterial" by historians of the Tudor period Robert M. Kingdon and Robert Tittler, this work described the religious practices that permeated all elements of pre-Reformation English society. Duffy's scholarship contended that the Reformation was "a violent disruption, not the natural fulfilment, of most of what was vigorous in late medieval piety and religious practice". The Stripping of the Altars and its conclusions proved popular, despite criticisms that Duffy has neglected addressing negative cultural components of the medieval church and that Duffy was unconvincing in saying that Catholic England had been killed by what English historian Patrick Collinson called a "royal deus ex machina". When The Voices of Morebath was published in 2001, Duffy was the president of Magdalene College at the University of Cambridge.

## Contents

   "The Voices of Morebath is about a small Devon village over the most traumatic and revolutionary 50 years of the 16th century, about what happened to their lifestyle because of the Reformation. The center of the story, the center of the village, is a priest, Sir Christopher Trychay [...] who kept the parish accounts, which he read out to his parishioners and into which he put the story of all their common concerns."
The Voices of Morebath: Reformation and Rebellion in an English Village, written by Duffy and published by Yale University Press in 2001, features 16 pages of front matter and 232 pages of body matter. It has been printed in both a cloth hardcover edition and a paperback edition, the latter released in 2003. The dust jacket features a detail from the painting Netherlandish Proverbs (1559) by Pieter Bruegel the Elder. Bruegel's painting, alongside colour plates, woodcuts, and illustrated endpapers included in the book were described by reviewer Katherine L. French as "invok[ing] a sense of community and nostalgia for 'bygone' England".
Duffy intended The Voices of Morebath to serve as a "pendant" for The Stripping of the Altars. Trychay's parish accounts, which span his tenure as Morebath's vicar from 1520 to 1574, are used extensively. Duffy holds that these "uniquely expansive and garrulous" parish accounts were read aloud to the congregation. The second impression, released several weeks after the first, contains details of Trychay's vicarage from an early 17th-century survey Duffy rediscovered too late for inclusion in the first printing. A fourth impression includes additional material drawn from ecclesiastical court records to detail a labourer's 1557 sword attack on Trychay.
The book details the Devon village of Morebath, its parish, and the priest Sir Christopher Trychay as they reluctantly accepted English Protestantism despite their Catholic sympathies. The Voices of Morebath comprises seven chapters. The first chapter identifies the parish, the parish's congregants, and its place within the medieval village. The second chapter addresses Trychay's accounts and introduces the benefits and drawbacks of churchwardens' accounts. Chapter three is devoted to how the accounts depict the parish's disputes and their resolutions. Chapter four traces the financial support for the parish and the parish's expenditures to identify the religious experience of Morebath. The fifth and sixth chapters address Morebath during the Reformation and include details on Morebath's parish subsidizing five men to join the 1549 Prayer Book Rebellion. Chapter seven depicts the resurgence of pre-Reformation community and devotions under Mary I followed by Elizabeth I's accession and the ultimate conformity of the parish.
Traditional, pre-Reformation life among Morebath's residents is depicted as showing little separation between the religious and the secular, with descriptions of how the villagers grazed the parish's sheep alongside their own flocks and partook in raucous events called church ales, replete with homemade beer and visiting minstrels at the parish's church house, to financially support the congregation. Trychay's faith is shown as reflecting the beliefs of his congregation, with Duffy saying "[h]is religion in the end was the religion of Morebath". With Henry VIII's 1534 separation of the Church of England from the Catholic Church, Trychay assented to the King's claims of supremacy over the pope and witnessed the dissolution of the monasteries replace the parish's proprietor with speculators. Though complying with Edward VI's religious impositions, Trychay is recorded as having hidden expensive vestments that he had recently purchased after 20 years of saving up for them. The parish subsidized five of its congregants to join the calamitous Prayer Book Rebellion at Exeter, after which the parish was gutted of its ornamental items.
While Trychay rejoiced at Mary I's restoration of Catholicism, he accepted Protestantism and gladly embraced the duties and income of a second parish under her successor, Elizabeth I. The Elizabethan Religious Settlement reinstated some of the unpopular elements from Edward's time, though it is depicted as less jarring and affording certain concessions to traditional practices. By 1570, when Trychay's ministry was coming to a close, the secular government's presence in Morebath is portrayed as more intrusive while the saints and their associated objects, once familiar and venerated, are absent. Despite the changes in doctrine, Duffy establishes that the "rhythms of life" had resumed.
The Voices of Morebath's account of Morebath's involvement in the Prayer Book Rebellion deviates from previous narratives. Duffy had previously identified that Binney's edition of Trychay's records had misread "at their goyng forthe to sent davys down ys camppe" as "sent denys down" when Binney transcribed the account of five men armed and funded by the parish in 1549. In an earlier essay on Morebath, Duffy had corrected the error and recognized Saint David's Down as the site of the rebel camp outside Exeter, though Duffy believed these five men were sent as reinforcements for the besieged government troops. Duffy's stance changed with input from English church historian Diarmaid MacCulloch, however, and The Voices of Morebath instead argues that these five men were sent to support the rebellion. Three of the five men from the parish's contingent are presented as likely among those killed in the Battle of Clyst St Mary.

## Reception

Upon release, due to popular demand for work by Duffy, The Voices of Morebath sold better than Yale University Press had anticipated. The second impression was subsequently printed within a few weeks of the first's publication. In reviewing the book for Church History, Eric Josef Carlson noted the book's "manageable length, lavish illustrations, and reasonable price demonstrate that author and publisher intended this book for a wide audience". However, he held that occasionally "description is so densely detailed that all but a few scholars will find their attention wandering", adding that "most undergraduates will find themselves overwhelmed" and advised that the book was better suited for "students who have some experience reading historical scholarship". A 2002 review in the Virginia Quarterly Review said "[t]his book deserves a wide readership".
Keith Thomas wrote on The Voice of Morebath in 2002 for The New York Review of Books and said that the reliance on Trychay's accounts resulted in Morebath's history being recalled from the perspective of a Catholic priest without input from its lay population. Thomas acknowledged Duffy's efforts to mitigate this narrow perspective, and recommended the fourth impression – with its "tantalizing" account of the sword attack on Trychay – to readers on the grounds that it indicated a greater diversity of religious persuasions in Reformation Morebath. Kingdon, writing in a 2003 review for the Journal of Interdisciplinary History, said the book was limited in what conclusions it could claim regarding the English Reformation due to its reliance on a single source but lauded Duffy's "remarkable empathy and impressive technical research skills". Carlson approved of Duffy's "refusal" to "claim too much", citing a lecture Duffy gave shortly after the book's publication that described using Trychay's accounts as "trying to describe a house by looking through a keyhole"; Carlson responded in his review, remarking, "But what a keyhole!"
In his 2002 review for London Review of Books, Collinson contextualized The Stripping of the Altars with Dickens's work and the revisionist studies that challenged it, noting The Voices of Morebath's role as a pendant to Duffy's earlier work. Collinson, calling the work "a microhistorical threnody and lament", identified "Trychay's centrality" in the 2001 book as the result of "our almost total dependence on his accounts" following the destruction of Morebath's other records in the Second World War. In Collinson's view, this resulted in The Voices of Morebath not providing a comprehensive view of the parish, its people, and Trychay himself. Saying "Duffy's regret for a little world lost is understandable and even justified", Collinson added that history "can never hope to recapture what it might have meant actually to live in those worlds".
Lucy Wooding, a historian of the Tudor period, called the work "invaluable" as "a contribution to debate on the English Reformation" in a 2001 review for Reviews in History. She said that there was evidence Duffy's own views had developed during his time writing the book. However, she said "the evidence is too slender to sustain any very broad conclusions". Referencing "Duffy's suggestion that women were perhaps treated better in an era where the Virgin and St. Sidwell were widely venerated", Wooding said it could remain only "interesting speculation". J. P. D. Cooper, in a review for the Sixteenth Century Journal, called it "a splendid book: a good detective story, offering fine writing and some valuable reflections on the nature of the community in the Tudor era".
David Loades, a specialist in Tudor era history, called The Voices of Morebath "local history at its best" in a 2003 review for Albion. He appraised Trychay's records as 54 years of "running commentary ... under the guise" of churchwardens' accounts. Though he acknowledged the evidence for the parish's support of the 1549 rebellion concealed in the accounts, he believed that it "perhaps hardly merits a share of the [book's] title". Agreeing with Duffy that "you cannot write the history of the English Reformation on such a narrow base", Loades said "we should be grateful" towards Duffy and Trychay "for this fascinating glimpse of the past; even if the latter was something of an unamiable busybody".
The Voices of Morebath has been recognized as a micro-history in the tradition established by Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie's seminal 1975 book Montaillou on 14th-century French Pyrenean peasants. Thomas said The Voices of Morebath "is a fine piece of microhistory, even if it is not the English Montaillou", and that a thorough understanding of the English Reformation required a "look at the movers in the shakers: the politicians and the bishops, the evangelical preachers and the godly laymen". Thomas added that Duffy lacked sympathy for such major figures, "but, like many Catholic historians before him, he has a deep sympathy for a vanished world".

### Awards

Duffy was awarded the Hawthornden Prize for Literature for The Voices of Morebath in June 2002. Carlson's review compared it to a previous Hawthornden Prize winner, Graham Greene's novel The Power and the Glory. Holding that "it is hard to think of Voices of Morebath as a masterpiece equal to Greene's novel", Carlson said that both books "give us the life of an all-too-human priest, an insignificant figure in the grand scheme of history but someone nonetheless rather representative of his time".
The Voices of Morebath was shortlisted for the 2002 Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction, an award for non-fiction works. It was also shortlisted for the British Academy Book Prize for "accessible scholarly writing within the humanities and social sciences" in that award's second year. The judges for the British Academy Book Prize described The Voices of Morebath as a "jewel of a book. A subtle exposition of the human significance of a major transition in English religious history."
| Award | Date | Result |
| Hawthornden Prize for Literature | June 2002 | Won |
| British Academy Book Prize | 2002 | Shortlisted |
| Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction | 2002 | Shortlisted |

## Legacy
### Cultural

Engagement with The Voices of Morebath has spanned a variety of groups. Following the book's publication, an English Heritage sign was installed in Morebath and the church reported that hundreds of people have come to visit after reading about it in Duffy's work. The village has also been featured on historical television programming regarding the English Reformation: Ann Widdecombe's 2009 series Christianity: A History included an interview with Duffy and used Morebath to describe the Reformation's impact on the English rural class, while the Reformation episode of BBC Two's 2012 The Great British Story: A People's History also focussed on Morebath. Playwright Alan Bennett listed The Voices of Morebath as a "key work" in 2005.
In 2023, the Vicar of St Ives in Cornwall drew criticism after installing beer pumps in St Ia's Church for that year's St Ives Festival. In light of the debate around St Ia's Church, Christopher Howse of The Daily Telegraph noted the use of churches for social events has been controversial in England for centuries. Howse cited The Voices of Morebath to establish that, in the West Country from the 1450s onward, parishes constructed church houses that were built adjacent to churchyard specifically for hosting social events, such as the highly profitable church ales. The National Churches Trust, a charity dedicated to preserving British church buildings, published a report in 2024 that suggested churches should host social events to ensure their survival in the face of increased secularization. An editorial in The Guardian positively compared this proposal to Duffy's description of church ales and suggested "historic places of communal worship can still find a social vocation in the 21st century".

### Academic

Historian Dominic Selwood, in a 2018 review of Duffy's Royal Books and Holy Bones for the Catholic Herald, identified The Stripping the Altars and The Voices of Morebath as Duffy "punching irreparable holes through accepted wisdom". In a 2021 review for Church Times on Duffy's essay collection A People's Tragedy: Studies in Reformation, Richard Chartres, former Church of England Bishop of London, credited Duffy's work in The Stripping the Altars and The Voices of Morebath with revising the understanding of English religion on the eve of Reformation and resistance among the laity and clergy to early Protestantism.
French historian Jean-Pierre Moreau assessed both The Stripping of the Altars and The Voices of Morebath as among the revisionist works by English historians of the English Reformation. Writing in 2004, Moreau observed that a new school of English Reformation history, post-revisionism, had developed since 1990. Moreau said that post-revisionists evaluated Dickens's thesis as not promoting a false conception that the religious revolution came "from the bottom" but accepted some revisionist criticisms of Dickens. Post-revisionist historians, such as Alec Ryrie, emphasize considering how socio-economic and cultural factors may have induced the English Reformation.
Robert Lutton's Lollardy and Orthodox Religion in Pre‐Reformation England, published in 2006 by the Royal Historical Society and Boydell Press, explicitly responded to Duffy's The Voices of Morebath. In detailing religious practices in Tenterden's parish during the period of Lollardy in early 16th-century England up to 1535, Lutton emulated Duffy's use of a parochial study. However, rather than utilizing churchwardens' accounts like Trychay's with their unitary narratives, Lutton utilized the community's wills. These wills offered multiple perspectives, which Lutton used to challenge Duffy's revisionist stance of a unified medieval English religion. Lutton's argument promoted a theory of diverse pieties during this period and asserted that some were compatible with the Reformation's doctrines.
Sheilagh O'Brien, a historian at the University of Divinity's St Francis College, identified The Voices of Morebath as an example of a micro-history on the English Reformation that is accessible to readers who do not find history compelling or encountered it inaccurately portrayed in popular works of fiction. She noted that The Voices of Morebath and The Return of Martin Guerre and their emphases on the lives of ordinary people had inspired further micro-histories, such as Suzannah Lipscomb's 2019 The Voices of Nîmes on women brought before Huguenot ecclesiastical courts. Justin Colson, reviewing Christopher Dyer's 2012 A Country Merchant, 1495-1520 for Reviews in History, found Dyer's description of medieval economics through the study of a specific individual similar to Duffy's use of Trychay's life to illustrate English Reformation religion.