Princes, Pastors and People traces the many changes in religious life that took place in the turbulent years of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth centuries.

It is designed to make accessible to readers much of the most recent research, and to guide them through the major historical controversies of the last twenty-five years:

* the causes of the English Reformation
* the popularity of the Elizabethan Protestant Church
* the impact of the Laudian innovations of the 1630s
* the Puritan attempt to control popular culture and belief.

By adopting a thematic rather than chronological approach, the book is also able to chart the long-term developments across the period in key areas such as doctrinal and liturgical change, the role of the clergy, and the importance of religion in the everyday lives of people.