The protection of cathedrals as a means to reject confessional politics in early modern England

This essay considers the special place of cathedrals in early modern English antiquarian works through their association with episcopacy. It aims to show that Anglican antiquaries’ calls for the protection of cathedrals from radical Reformers had both an explicit and an implicit goals. These were, first, the peroration of the legal rights of the Church of England on the basis of arguments from antiquity; secondly, the rejection of the Puritans' claimed equation of Protestantism with national identity. Instead, Anglican antiquaries subtly argued that pride in being English had to be defined in relation to the entire cultural production of the nation since well before the Reformation, of which cathedrals were source repositories. I will show that by turning cathedrals into houses of English learning, Anglican antiquaries weakened the relationship between Protestantism and Englishness, thereby subtly, yet firmly, rejecting evangelical confessional identity politics. This paper, therefore, contributes to two historiographical debates. First, it sheds fresh light onto the place of cathedrals in the English Reformation through an examination of Anglican antiquarian works. Secondly, it links the topic of cathedrals to the definition of English national identity, thereby demonstrating that the two historiographical fields are interconnected more than is generally appreciated.