Imagining England in Richard Morison's pamphlets against the Pilgrimage of Grace (1536)

Mottram, Stewart

Abstract

This article contests the assumptions of the social historians Foucault, Anderson, Gellner, and Habermas, all of whom date the origins of nationhood in Western Europe to the eighteenth century, and argue that nationhood superseded empire at this time. It explores how England is imagined as both empire and nation in Richard Morison's pamphlets against the northern rebellions of 1536 - the Lamentation and Remedy for Sedition. The article approaches Morison's pamphlets as Royal Supremacy propaganda, and argues that within them, Morison turned to the character mother England as a means to ventriloquize his support for the empire defined in the 1533 Appeals Act - an empire compact of Church and state, and independent from the Apostolic See. The article reads the Remedy in relation to writings by Tyndale and Coverdale. It concludes that in this pamphlet, Morison makes Bible-reading the cornerstone for his construction of English national identity - an identity based on obedience to scriptural passages that command our obedience to kings.

Citation

Mottram, S. (2005). Imagining England in Richard Morison's pamphlets against the Pilgrimage of Grace (1536). Comitatus: A Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 36, 41-67. https://doi.org/10.1353/cjm.2005.0004

• Journal Article Type: Review
• Online Publication Date: Apr 1, 2015
• Publication Date: Jan 1, 2005
• Deposit Date: Apr 1, 2022
• Journal: Comitatus
• Print ISSN: 0069-6412
• Electronic ISSN: 1557-0290
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 36
• Pages: 41-67
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1353/cjm.2005.0004
• Public URL: https://hull-repository.worktribe.com/output/3607926
• Publisher URL: https://muse.jhu.edu/article/540286#info_wrap