During the medieval and early modern periods the Welsh diocese of St Davids was one of the largest in the country and the most remote. As this collection makes clear, this combination of factors resulted in a religious life which was less regulated and controlled by the institutional forces of both Church and State. Addressing key ideas in the development of popular religious culture and the stubborn continuity of long-lasting religious practices into the modern era, the volume shows how the diocese was also a locus for continuing major religious controversies, especially in the nineteenth century. Presenting a fresh view of the Diocese of St Davids since the Reformation, this is the first new account of religion and society in over a century. It is, moreover, not one which is written primarily from an institutional perspective but from that of wider society. As well as a chronological treatment, giving an overview of the history of religion in the diocese, chapters address key themes, including a study of religious revivals which originated within the borders of the diocese; consideration of popular and elite education, including the contribution of Bishop Burgess's pioneering institution at Lampeter (the first degree awarding institution in England and Wales after Oxford and Cambridge); the relationship of the Church to the revival of Welsh cultural identity; and new reflections on the agitation and realisation of disestablishment of the Church as it affected Wales. As such, this pioneering study has much to offer all those with an interest, not only in Welsh history, but ecclesiastical history more broadly.

English and American Baptists of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries lived in two worlds. In one world, established churches were the norm and persecution was the means by which such churches and the civil governments dealt with religious dissenters. Yet these Baptists also lived in another world in which God's kingdom ruled and the sword of the Spirit (the Bible), not the sword of Caesar, settled religious disputes. When their two worlds collided, and they often did, many Baptists chose to go to prison rather than to violate their consciences by worshipping in churches that they abhorred, by listening to ministers whom they did not choose, and by submitting their spiritual lives to earthly magistrates. Early Baptists knew that they could avoid prison and other hardships if they yielded to the pressures of political and ecclesiastical authorities to conform. Many Baptists considered such yielding as a retreat from their cause and their God, believing that retreat would have been spiritually fatal. They chose instead to move forward in their faith, although it might cost them dearly. Thus, rather than retreat, these courageous Baptists advanced, some to prison and then back to freedom, others to jail and then to the grave. All, however, did so because, like Thomas Hardcastle, they knew that "There is no armor for the back." Baptists who graced numerous prisons and jails in England and in the American colonies did not remain silent, however, for they continued to preach and to write letters, poems, and books. These Baptists stated their cases without any self-pity and interpreted their persecutions as the natural consequences of professing their faith in Christ.

England on Edge deals with the collapse of the government of Charles I, the disintegration of the Church of England, and the accompanying cultural panic that led to civil war. Focused on the years 1640 to 1642, it examines stresses and fractures in social, political, and religious culture, and the emergence of an unrestrained popular press. Hundreds of people not normally seen in historical surveys make appearances here, in a drama much larger than the struggle of king and parliament. Historians commonly assert that royalists and parliamentarians parted company over issues of principle, constitutional scruples, and religious belief, but a more complex picture emerges from the environment of anxiety, mistrust, and fear. Rather than seeing England's revolutionary transformation as a product of the civil war, as has been common among historians, David Cressy finds the world turned upside down in the two years preceding the outbreak of hostilities. The humbling of Charles I, the erosion of the royal prerogative, and the rise of an executive parliament were central features of the revolutionary drama of 1640-1642. The collapse of the Laudian ascendancy, the splintering of the established church, the rise of radical sectarianism, and the emergence of an Anglican resistance all took place in these two years before the beginnings of bloodshed. The world of public discourse became rapidly energized and expanded, in counterpoint with an exuberantly unfettered press and a deeply traumatized state. These linked processes, and the disruptive contradictions within them, made this a time of shaking and of prayer. England's elite encountered multiple transgressions, some more imagined than real, involving lay encroachments on the domain of the clergy, lowly intrusions into matters of state, the city clashing with the court, the street with institutions of government, and women undermining the territories of men. The simultaneity, concatenation, and cumulative, compounding effect of these disturbances added to their ferocious intensity, and helped to bring down England's ancien regime. This was the revolution before the Revolution, the revolution that led to civil war.