Download or read book Tudor Church Militant written by Diarmaid MacCulloch and published by Allan Lane. This book was released on 1999 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The boy-king Edward VI, last of the male Tudors, died while still a teenager, his plans for his country's future soon to be overturned by his Roman Catholic half-sister Mary. Yet his reign has a significance in English history out of all proportion to its brief six-year span. During its course, England's rulers spearheaded a religious revolution which propelled them into the heart of the European Protestant Reformation. They deliberately sponsored the destruction of a thousand-year-old devotional world, and they let loose an explosive new form of Christianity within the realm. This moulded the future identity of the English nation, created a shape for the Church of England which remains today, and inspired one of the foundation documents of English prose, the Book of Common Prayer, a key text in the development of one of the world's most widely spoken languages.