Altars are powerful symbols, fraught with meaning, but during the early modern period they became a religious battleground. Attacked by reformers in the mid-sixteenth century because of their allegedly idolatrous associations with the Catholic sacrifice of the mass, a hundred years later they served to divide Protestants due to their re-introduction by Archbishop Laud and his associates as part of a counter-reforming programme. Moreover, having subsequently been removed by the victorious puritans, they gradually came back after the restoration of the monarchy in 1660. This book explores these developments, over a 150 year period, and recaptures the experience of the ordinary parishioner in this crucial period of religious change. Far from being the passive recipients of changes imposed from above, the laity are revealed as actively engaged from the early days of the Reformation, as zealous iconoclasts or their Catholic opponents - a division later translated into competing protestant views. Altars Restored integrates the worlds of theological debate, church politics and government, and parish practice and belief, which are often studied in isolation from one another. It draws from hitherto largely untapped sources, notably the surviving artefactual evidence comprising communion tables and rails, fonts, images in stained glass, paintings and plates, and examines the riches of local parish records - especially churchwardens' accounts. The result is a richly textured study of religious change at both local and national level.

...a work of considerable importance to those interested in old churchs. * Jerome Bertram,Church Monuments, *
...a work of immense learning and thorough research...a richly evidenced, innovative and stimulating book. * The Art Newspaper *
An impressive work of scholarship, stimulating and readable. * Northern History *
This book must become the definitive account of altars and altar policies in the post-Reformation era. * Graham Parry, University of York *
A technical read, with a real sense of what things were like on the ground, and is a considerable achievement indeed * Kenneth Stevenson, Church Times *
Fascinating reading * Leanda de Lisle, Catholic Herald *
a richly textured study of religious change at both local and national level * Spartacus Review *
This book is beautifully researched, with a wealth of detail from hitherto neglected sources ... a masterpiece, and essential reading for those concerned with both theological controversy and the worship of this period in the life of the Church of England. * Bryan D. Spinks, Journal of Ecclesiastical History *
[an] excellent book ... a major contribution to Reformation studies, and a fantastic way in to the everyday dramas of this formative period * Lee Gatiss, Churchman *
This is a superb piece of collaborative historical analysis ... Altars Restored will prove the touchstone for all future research on the subject. * John Craig, History *