Philip Caraman SJ, The Western Uprising 1549: the Prayer Book Rebellion Tiverton:West Country Books,1994,140pp..

Reviewed by Michael Daniel

"My main interest has been in the religious aspect of the Rebellion and I have accordingly tried to enter the mind of the people who took part in the rising and understand the strength of their attachment to their religious practice and faith which alone can account for the desperation with which they fought to the end against overwhelming odds" (intro. p. 3).

In his latest work, Caraman, who has hitherto written extensively on English Catholics in Elizabethan times, and later focuses upon the Western uprising in Cornwall which was in response to the introduction of the first Book of Common Prayer in 1549. This book is part of a growing corpus of recently published works, the most prominent being Eamon Duffy's The Stripping of the Altars, which argue for a revaluation of the English reformation.

Contrary to the hitherto dominant interpretation that late medieval Catholicism was a decayed superstition easìly swept aside by a much desired Protestant reform, more and more scholars are now arguing that Catholicism was a vibrant religion, whose demise was bitterly resented; Protestantism was unpopular, and was imposed on the ordinary people.

A fresh analysis of the Western Uprising has been long overdue. It has been largely passed over by historians.

Caraman clearly demonstrates in The Western Uprising that the uprising was caused by religious grievances. The Book of Common Prayer and its accompanying iconoclasm represented an attack upon late medieval Catholicism which was the basis of the average Englishman's conception of reality. The Western Uprising is structured as a chronological narrative of the events of the uprising.

The rebellion was sparked off by the celebration of the new "Holy Communion" on Whitsunday in the village of Sampford Courtenay and quickly spread. Caraman emphasises that the rebels' demands were all religious. In them they demanded a complete restoration of traditional religious practices.

The rebels soon attracted a large following from all classes within society and they were led by the Cornish gentry. The rebels had the support and sympathy of the vast bulk of the population, evidenced by the speed and easiness of the territorial gains the rebels made, coupled with the lack of support for the government troops under the command of Lord Russell. The rebels almost succeeded. Caraman argues that the rebels made the tactical blunder of besieging Exeter. Had they marched on London, they would have amassed a sufficiently large following en route to defeat the government troops.

The government had to resort to Genoese (ironically Catholic) mercenaries to quell the rebellion. The government's treatment of captured rebels was merciless, because the rebellion was a serious challenge to its existence. This uprising was the largest and most successful of a number of uprisings and acts of resistance that were caused by the imposition of the Book of Common Prayer. Caraman, for example, makes reference to the fact that those who resisted included bishops particularly Bonner of London.

The last chapter of The Western Uprising deals briefly with the recusancy in Cornwall. Caraman makes the observation that although the Cornish remained loyal to the old faith, evidenced by the large number of Cornish Seminary priests, Catholicism ultimately died out in Cornwall because of a lack of landowners who sheltered priests.

By contrast, Catholicism survived in York and Lancashire because of the existence of Catholic landowners in these parts.

Despite some weaknesses (the writing is tedious in places) Caraman's book provides an adequate treatment of the western rebellion, an event which arguably more than any other event in the Englìsh Reformation demonstrates the fact that the reformation only succeeded because Catholicism was eradicated by brute force.

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