Relief of Sheep

I went to school in England. I doubt if The Easter Rising was even mentioned but the various Acts of Parliament concerning the establishment of the Church of England in the 1500s - that was considered important. And some of the Protestant martyrs were considered romantic / stoic / StiffUpperLipped: Be of good cheer Mr Ridley and play the man not the ball etc. We were sufficiently even-handed to acknowledge that lots of Catholics also went up in flames. But in the superficial, sound-byte teaching of history, the impact of religious flip-flopping upon everyday farming folk was a closed book.

Not any more! It was suggested that I read The Voices of Morebath: Reformation and Rebellion in an English Village (2001) by Eamon Duffy. For skool-history regnal dates context "catholics" vs "protestants" . . .

• Henry VIII Fid.Def. 1509 - 1534 [25½ yrs] 
• ie before Act of Supremacy declaring KH8 to be head of the [local] church
• Henry VIII Ch.Eng 1534 - 1547 [12 yrs]
• Edward VI 1547 - 1553 [6½ yrs] 
• d. age 15
• Mary I 1553 - 1559 [6½ yrs]
• Elizabeth 1559 -  1603 [40+ yrs]

It's quite hard to do historical research in the County of Devon, because the Public Records in Exeter were blitzed to buggery in WWII. But, like the (7/123) surviving plays of Sophocles, by chance some documents from the 1500s survived. One of them was uniquely, garrulously,  comprehensive and exactly book-ended the whole period of religious reformation in England. The churchwarden's accounts for the village /hamlet of Morebath were scrupulous written up 1520 - 1574 in the spidery scrawl of the parish priest Christopher Trychay:

Local Government, and finance, was in the hands of several elected Wardens at the beginning of this period but the vicar was literate and so kept the minutes of annual reports of income and outgoings: "Ys for the gefth of Thomas at Tymwell the wyche was  vj^s & viij^d [6/8d = ⅓ of £1] hyt was be stowyd yn payntyng of the sylyng a bowt the hye crosse parte of hyt and the rest of hyt schall come in a banner dicit very shortly sperat". It sounds like English (with a scattering of Latin) but not as we now write it.

The wealth of the parish was vested in the parish flock which were parcelled out, in ones and twos, to run with the flocks of parishioners. It was bad when one of these sheep pegged out, but not a total loss if the fleece could be recovered from the corpse. The parish bumbled along: raising funds by throwing "ales" = parties and then employing craftsmen to re-lead the church roof; make new vestments and altar-cloths; contribute to the repair of bridges.

But the finances were increasingly pinched [both senses] by the demands of central government to a) finance foreign wars b) cement (or undo) the trappings of a reformed church. The Protestants had a thing against altars and required their de-blinging and even dismantling; and the parish then had to provide a table from which to serve communion. Each parish was also required to buy an official Book of Common Prayer [whc prev], English language bible and the Paraphrases on the New Testament by Erasmus. You may be sure that someone made a fortune from the supply of these expensive articles but nobody from Morebath. When Catholicism was restored under Queen Mary, it was tables away, rebuild the stone altar, and refurnish it with chalice, pyx, paten and thurible . . . and Carry on Catholic.

Then there were the ornery taxes of secular life: like the 1549 Relief of Sheep [3^d per ewe in fields, 1^d for those on the moorland commons] followed by the Relief of Cloth [8^d per lb on finished woollen cloth]. The image this conjures is of a Highwayman holding up people at pistol-point "I shall relieve you of that purse of ducats, my good Sir, and cast thereto the lady's ear-rings". 

Those years in the mid-1500s thus midwifed, not only the Church of England, but also the modern centralized state - taking goods or money from citizens while giving them only indirect control of how the money was spent. All very modern, so.