Part I explores the character and range of late medieval English Catholicism. Part II recounts the dismantling and destruction of that symbolic world, from Henry VIII's break with the Papacy in the early 1530s to the Elizabethan 'Settlement' of religion. Draws on a wide variety of sources, from liturgical books to painted images, from saints' lives and devotional treatises to play-texts, and from churchwardens' accounts and ecclesiastical court records to personal commonplace books and wills. Interweaves discussion of church furnishings and religious objects. ;