Professor Claire Cross

Profile

Biography

BA, MA, Ph D (Cambridge), Hon D Litt (Lincoln), FRHS, FHA, FSA

After six years at Cambridge University in 1958 Claire Cross was appointed County Archivist for Cambridgeshire, a post she left two and a half years later when she was awarded an international fellowship by the American Association for University Women to study the Hastings manuscripts at the Huntington Library in California. She returned from America in 1961 to take up a three year research fellowship at Reading University before joining the History Department at the new University of York in 1965. She  taught at York for the rest of her career, apart from the academic year 1990-91 when she held a visiting fellowship at Girton College, Cambridge, which enabled her to finish a Yorkshire Archaeological Society Record Series volume on Yorkshire monks, nuns and friars in the last generation before the dissolution which she compiled with Noreen Vickers,. She was for a long time business manager of the Ecclesiastical History Society of which she was elected president for the year 1989-90. In 1999 the Society presented her with a festschrift, Life and Thought in the Northern Church, c. 1100-1700,  and made her an honorary fellow the following year. After she retired in 2000 she served as chair of the British Association for Local History for some five years and is now a vice president of the Association.

Research

Overview

Since 2000 Claire Cross has continued to work on English religious and social history in the late medieval and early modern periods in general and on the church in York and Yorkshire in particular. In addition to articles in journals and collections of essays she has written over thirty biographies and survey articles for the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.

Her most recent publications include:

‘The Last Days of Bridlington Priory’ in K. Stöber, J. Kerr and E. Jamroziak, eds, Monastic Life in the Medieval British Isles: Essays in Honour of Janet Burton (Cardiff, 2018)

‘Friars, the Pilgrimage of Grace and the Dominican and Franciscan Priories in Sixteenth Century Beverley’, Yorkshire Archaeological Journal, 90, (2018)

‘The Donors of the Glass in some Parish Churches of Later Medieval York’, in E. Lord and N. R. Amor, eds, Shaping the Past. Theme, Time and Place in Local History: Essays in Honour of David Dymond (Hatfield, 2020)

Publications

• ‘The Donors of the Glass in some Parish Churches of Later Medieval York’ in E. Lord and N. R. Amor eds, Shaping the Past, Theme, Time and Place in Local History: Essays in honour of David Dymond University of Hertfordshire Press, Hatfield, 2020)

• ‘The Last Days of Bridlington Priory’ in K. Stöber, J. Kerr and E. Jamroziak, eds. Monastic Life in the Medieval British Isles: Essays in Honour of Janet Burton (University of Wales Press, Cardiff, 2018)

• ‘Friars, the Pilgrimage of Grace and the Dissolution of the Dominican and Franciscan Priories in Sixteenth-Century Beverley’, Yorkshire Archaeological Journal, 90 (2018)

• ‘The Political Enforcement of Liturgical Continuity in the Church of England 1558-1662’in R. Bethmont and A. De Mézerac-Zanetti, eds., ‘The Book of Common Prayer: Studies in Religious Transfer’,  Revue Françoise de Civilisation Britannique, XXII -I (Ap. 2017)

• ‘Frances Matthew and the Re-Foundation of York Minster Library’ in H. Vorholt and P. Young, eds., 1414: John Neuton and the Refoundation of York Minster Library (hoaportal.york.ac.uk/hoaportal/yml1414./sp.)

• ‘Recreating Calvin’s Geneva in Sixteenth Century Ashby de la Zouch’, The Local Historian, 16 no. 4 (Oct. 2016)

• A commissioned thematic essay ‘Lives of the Medieval Religious’ Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (September 2015 on line update).

• ‘Orthodoxy, Heresy and Treason in the Elizabethan Church’, Revue Francaise de Civilisation Britannique (Numéro spécial en hommage à Christiane d’HAUSSY), 18.1 (2013)

• ‘From Medieval Catholic Piety to Civil War Protestantism: the Impact of the Reformation in Two Salisbury Parishes’, Sarum Chronicle, 13 (2013)

• ‘The Dissolution of the Monasteries in the City of York’, and ‘Cathedrals in England and Wales 1500-1660' in English Cathedrals and Monasteries through the Centuries Christianity and Culture Cathedrals CD Rom (2013)

• ‘Religious Cultures in Conflict: A Salisbury Parish during the English Reformation’ in C. Dyer, A. Hopper, E. Lord and N. Tringham, eds., New Directions in Local History Since Hoskins (University of Hertfordshire Press, 2011)

• ‘The Last Generation of Augustinian Canons in Sixteenth-Century Yorkshire’, in J. Burton and K. Stöber, eds. The Regular Canons in the Medieval British Isles,  (Turnhout, Belgium, 2011)

• ‘The Church in England 1534-1689' and ‘The Creation of the Protestant Parish, Holy Trinity, Goodramgate, York’ in The English Parish Church through the Centuries Christianity and Culture CD-ROM

• ‘Participants in the Pilgrimage of Grace (1536-1537)’ a commissioned group article Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (May 2009)

• ‘The Dissolution of the Monasteries in Sixteenth Century York’, Yorkshire Archaeological Journal, 80 (2008)

• ‘Monasteries and Society in Sixteenth Century Yorkshire: the Last Years of Roche Abbey’ in J. Burton and K. Stöber eds., Monasteries and Society in the British Isles in the Later Middle Ages (Boydell and Brewer, Woodbridge, 2008)

• 'The English Universities,1553-1558' in E. Duffy and  D. Loades eds., The Church of Mary Tudor (Ashgate, Aldershot, 2006)

• ‘The End of Medieval Monasticism in the North Riding of Yorkshire’, Yorkshire Archaeological Journal, 78  (2006)

• ‘Hatfield Church in the early Sixteenth Century’, Northern History, XLIII (2006)

• Biographies of 'George Abbot', 'Richard Bancroft', 'Edmund Grindal', 'Matthew Parker', 'William Prynne', 'Gilbert Sheldon', 'William Warham', 'John Whitgift' in 2005 World English Edition of Encarta Encyclopedia

• 'A York Priest and his Parish: St Michael, Spurriergate, in the early Sixteenth Century',‘Endings and Beginnings’ and with P. S. Barnwell ‘The Mass in its Urban Setting’, in P.S. Barnwell, Claire Cross and Ann Rycraft, eds., Mass and Parish in Late Medieval England: The Use of York (Spire Books, Reading, 2005)

• 'Exemplary Wives and Godly Matrons: Women's Contribution to the Life of York Minster between the Reformation and the Civil War', Yorkshire Archaeological Journal, 77 (2005)

• 'A. G. Dickens as a Yorkshire Historian' in R. Ambler and G. Burgess, eds., Reformulating the Reformation. A. G. Dickens: his Work and Influence, Historical Research, LXXVII no. 195 (2004)

• 'Protestant Evangelism in Boston on the accession of Elizabeth:  The Ministry of Melchior Smith', in D. Loades, ed., John Foxe at Home and Abroad (Aldershot; Ashgate 2004)

• 28 entries in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004): 'Hugh Ashton', 'Thomas Calvert', 'Elizabeth Crane', 'Hugh Faringdon alias Cook', 'Anthony Gilby', ‘Joan Harkey’, 'Francis Hastings, Second Earl of Huntingdon', 'Sir Francis Hastings', 'George Hastings, First Earl of Huntingdon', 'Henry Hastings, Third Earl of Huntingdon', 'Katherine Hastings, Third Countess of Huntingdon', 'William Haydock', 'Matthew Hutton', 'Edward Lee', ‘Elizabeth Lorde’, ‘Elizabeth Lutton’,'Frances Matthew', 'Robert Metcalfe',  'Anne Middleton', 'William Palmer',  'John Penry',  'John Piers', 'Robert Pursglove', 'Edward Reyner', 'Adam Sedbergh', 'Richard Stopes', 'John Udall', 'William Wood'.

• 'From Catholic Priests to Protestant Ministers:  Pastoral Education in the Diocese of York, 1520-1620', in T. Clemens and W. Janse, eds., The Pastor Bonus, Dutch Review of Church History, LXXXIII (2003)

• York Clergy Ordinations 1510-1519, Borthwick List and Index 31 (York, 2002)

• York Clergy Ordinations 1520-1559, Borthwick List and Index 32 (York, 2002)

• 'Law and Transgression: the Tribulations of a Tudor Archbishop of York', in C. d'Haussy, ed., Loi et Transgression, Didier-Erudition (Paris, 2002)

• 'York Clergy and their Books in the Early Sixteenth Century' in C. M. Barron and J. Stratford, eds., The Church and Learning in Later Medieval Society (Donington, 2002)

• 'Excising the Virgin Mary from the Civic Life of Tudor York', Northern History, XXXIX (2002)

• 'Yorkshire Nunneries in the Early Tudor Period' in J. G. Clark, ed., The Religious Orders in Pre-Reformation England (Woodbridge, 2002), pp. 145-154

• York Clergy Ordinations 1500-1509, Borthwick List and Index 30 (York, 2001)

• 'Realising a Utopian Dream:  the Transformation of the Clergy in the Diocese of York, 1500-1630' in R. Horrox and S. Rees Jones, eds., Pragmatic Utopias: Ideals and Communities, 1200-1630 (Cambridge, 2001)

• 'York under the Tudors: Defiance and Submission', in P. Nuttgens, ed., The History of York from the Earliest Times to the Year 2000 (Pickering, 2001)

• 'A Yorkshire Religious House and its Hinterland: Monk Bretton Priory in the Sixteenth Century', in S. Ditchfield, ed., Christianity and Community in the West:  Essays for John Bossy (Aldershot, 2001)

• York Clergy Ordinations 1561-1642, Borthwick List and Index 24 (York, 2000)

• 'Observing the Day of Rest in Early Stuart York', in C. d'Haussy, ed., Travail et Repos, Didier-Erudition (Paris, 2000)

• Church and People 1450-1660:  The Triumph of the Laity in the English Church ( Blackwell, second edition 1999)

• 'The Origins and University Connections of Yorkshire Religious, 1480-1540', in P. Biller and B. Dobson, eds., The Medieval Church: Universities, Heresy, and the Religious Life. Essays in Honour of Gordon Leff, Studies in Church History, Subsidia XI (1999)

• 'A Clerical Affray in Petergate in 1540' in D. M. Smith, ed., The Church in Medieval York;  records edited in honour of Professor Barrie Dobson, Borthwick Texts and Calendars 24 (York, 1999)

• 'Religion in Doncaster from the Reformation to the Civil War', in P. Collinson and J. Craig, eds., The Reformation in the English Towns, 1500-1600 (1998)

• 'No Continuing City:  Exiles in the English Reformation 1520-1570', History Review, 32 (1998)

• 'Frozen in Time:   Some English Clerical Perceptions of the Elizabethan Church', in C. d'Haussy, ed. Quand Religions et Confessions Se Regardent (Didier-Erudition, Paris), 1998

• 'The Dissolution of the Monasteries and the Yorkshire Church in the Sixteenth Century', in J. C. Appleby and P. Dalton, eds., Government, Religion and Society in Northern England 1000-1700 (1997)

• 'Ordinations in the Diocese of York 1500-1630' in C. Cross, ed., Patronage and Recruitment in the Tudor and early Stuart Church, Borthwick Studies in History 2 (York 1996)

• 'Richard Hooker; a peacemaker in the Elizabethan Church?', in C. d'Haussy, ed., Les Artisans de Paix (Presses Universitaires de Reims, 1996)

• C. Cross and N. Vickers, eds., Monks, Friars and Nuns in  Sixteenth Century Yorkshire, Yorkshire Archaeological Society, Record Series CL (1995), pp. 684

• 'Confession in the Elizabethan Church and some substitutes to Confession', in La Confession et les Confessions, Universite Paris XII - Val-de-Marne, Groupe de Recherches sur l'Histoire et la Pensee Religieuses Anglaises (Didier-Erudition, Paris, 1995)

• 'Charting Changes of Belief in the English Reformation', History Review, no. 19 (1994)

• The End of Medieval Monasticism in the East Riding of Yorkshire, East Yorkshire Local History Society (1993)

• 'A Man of Conscience in Seventeenth-Century Urban Politics:  Alderman Hoyle of York', in J. Morrill, P. Slack and D. Woolf, eds., Public Duty and Private Conscience in Seventeenth-Century England:  Essays in Honour of Gerald Aylmer (1993)

• 'Orthodoxy and Heterodoxy in the English Reformation:  the Married Yorkshire Religious', in Orthodoxie et Heresie, Universite Paris - Val-de-Marne, Groupe de Recherches sur l'Histoire et la Pensee Religieuses Anglaises (Didier-Erudition, Paris, 1993)

• 'An Elizabethan Martyrologist and his Martyr;  John Mush and Margaret Clitherow', Studies in Church History, 30 (1993)

• 'The Reconstitution of Northern Monastic Communities in the Reign of Mary Tudor', Northern History, XXIX (1993)

• 'Margaret Clitherow, An Elizabethan Yorkshire Saint' in C. d'Haussy, ed., Saints et Saintete;  Hier et Aujourd'hui, Universite Paris- Val-de-Marne, Groupe de Recherches sur l'Histoire et la Pensee Religieuses Anglaises (Didier-Erudition, Paris, 1992)

• The Elizabethan Religious Settlement, 1558-1575, Headstart History Papers (Bangor, 1992)

• 'Conflict and Confrontation:  the York Dean and Chapter and the Corporation in the 1630s', in D. Marcombe and C. S. Knighton, eds., Close Encounters: English Cathedrals and Society since 1549 (Nottingham, 1991)

• 'Monks and Learning in Sixteenth Century Yorkshire', Studies in Church History, Subsidia 8 (Oxford, 1991)

• 'Monks, Friars and the Royal Supremacy in Sixteenth Century Yorkshire' Studies in Church History, Subsidia 9 (Oxford, 1991)

• '"I was a Stranger, and Ye took Me in":  Polish Religious Refugees in England and English Refugees in Poland in the Sixteenth Century', Studies in Church History, Subsidia 60 (Oxford, 1990)

• 'Community Solidarity among Yorkshire Religious after the Dissolution', in J. Loades, ed., Monastic Studies:  the Continuity of Tradition, I (Bangor, 1990)

• 'The Religious Life of Women in Sixteenth Century Yorkshire', Studies in Church History, 27 (Oxford, 1990)

• 'Communal Piety in Sixteenth Century Boston', Lincolnshire History and Archaeology, 25 (1990)

• 'Les couvents de femmes et la societe laique dans le nord de l'Angleterre a la  veille de la Reforme', in Vie Ecclesiale, Communaute et Communautes, Universite Paris - Val-de-Marne, Groupe de Recherches sur l'Histoire et la Pensee Religieuses Anglaises (Didier-Erudition, Paris, 1989)

• York Clergy Wills 1520-1600:  2. The City Clergy, Borthwick Texts and Calendars: Records of the Northern Province 15 (York, 1989)

• 'A Medieval Yorkshire Library', Northern History, 25 (1989)

• 'A Metamorphosis of Ministry:  Former Yorkshire Monks and Friars in the Sixteenth-Century English Protestant Church', Journal of the United Reformed Church History Society, 4 no 5 (1989)

• 'Sin and Society:  the Northern High Commission and the Northern Gentry in the Reign of Elizabeth I', in C. Cross, D. Loades and J. J. Scarisbrick, eds., Law and Government under the Tudors (Cambridge, 1988)

• 'The English Church on the Eve of the Reformation', History Sixth, II (1988)

• 'Monasticism and Society in the Diocese of York 1520-1540', Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 38 (1988)

• 'Northern Women in the Early Modern Period:  the Female Testators of Hull and Leeds 1520-1650', Journal of the Yorkshire Archaeological Society, 59 (1987)

• 'Protestant Attitudes towards Episcopacy in the Early Elizabethan Church', Miscellanea Historiae Ecclesiasticae, VIII (Louvain, 1987)

• 'Oxford and the Tudor State from the Accession of Henry VIII to the Death of Mary', in J. McConica, ed., The History of the University of Oxford, volume III: The Collegiate University (Oxford, 1986)

• 'The Genesis of a Godly Community:  Two York Parishes, 1590-1640', Studies in Church History, 23 (1986)

• Urban Magistrates and Ministers;  Religion in Hull and Leeds from the Reformation to the Civil War, Borthwick Paper no. 67 (York, 1985)

• 'The Third Earl of Huntingdon's Death-bed:  a Calvinist Example of the Ars Moriendi', Northern History, XXI (1985)

• York Clergy Wills 1520-1600:  1 The Minster Clergy, Borthwick Texts and  Calendars:  Records of the Northern Province, 10 (York, 1984)

• 'Wills as Evidence of Popular Piety in the Reformation Period:  Leeds and Hull 1540-1640', in D. Loades, ed., The End of Strife:  Death, Reconciliation and Expressions of Christian Spirituality (Edinburgh, 1984)

• 'Dynastic Politics:  The Local and National Importance of the Hastings Family in the Sixteenth Century', in M. Palmer, ed., The Aristocratic Estate:  The Hastings in Leicestershire and South Derbyshire (Loughborough University, 1982)

• 'The Development of Protestantism in Leeds and Hull, 1520-1640:  The Evidence from Wills', Northern History, XVIII (1982)

• 'The Incomes of Provincial Urban Clergy, 1520-1645', in R. O'Day and F. Heal, eds., Princes and Paupers in the English Church (Leicester University Press, 1981)

• 'The State and the Development of Protestantism in English Towns, 1520-1603', in  A.C. Duke and C.A. Tamse, eds., Britain and the Netherlands, VII (The Hague, 1981)

• 'Priests into Ministers:  The Establishment of Protestant Practice in the City of York, 1530-1630', in P.N. Brooks, ed., Reformation Principle and Practice:  Essays in Honour of Professor A.G. Dickens (Scolar Press, 1980)

• 'Irenical Tendencies in the Elizabethan Church', Nederlands Archief voor Kerkgeschiedenis, LX (1980)

• 'Lay Literacy and Clerical Misconduct in a York Parish during the Reign of Mary Tudor', York Historian, III (1980)

• 'La Suprematie Royale et les Controverses Religieuses en Angleterre sous le Regne d'Elisabeth I', in M. Peronnet, ed., La Controverse Religieuse (Montpellier, 1980)

• 'Continental Students and the Protestant Reformation in England in the Sixteenth Century', in D. Baker, ed., Reform and Reformation:  England and the Continent c 1500-c 1750:  Essays presented to Professor C. W. Dugmore, Studies in Church History, Subsidia II (1979)

• 'Religious and Social Protest among Lollards in Early Tudor England', in The Church in a Changing Society (C.H.I.E.C. Conference Proceedings, Uppsala, 1979)

• 'Parochial Structure and the Dissemination of Protestantism in Sixteenth Century England:  A Tale of Two Cities', Studies in Church History, XVI (1979)

• 'From Estate to Profession:  The Transformation of the English Clergy in the Sixteenth and early Seventeenth Century', in P. Butel, ed., Societes et Groupes Socieux en Aquitaine et en Angleterre (Bordeaux, 1979)

• '"Great Reasoners in Scripture":  The Activities of Women Lollards', in  D. Baker, ed., Medieval Women:  Essays Presented to Professor R. M. T. Hill, Studies in Church History, Subsidia I (1978)

• 'York Clerical Piety and St Peter's School on the Eve of the Reformation', York Historian, II (1978)

• 'Churchmen and the Royal Supremacy', in F. Heal and R. O'Day, eds., Church and Society in England:  Henry VIII to James I (Macmillan, 1977)

• 'From the Reformation to the Restoration', in G. E. Aylmer and R. Cant, eds., A History of York Minster (Oxford, 1977)

• 'Les Difficultes soulevees par les Institutions Non-reformees de l'Eglise face au progres du Protestantism dans L'Angleterre du XVIeme Siecle', in M. Peronnet,  ed.,  Les Eglises et leurs Institutions au XVIeme Siecle (Montpellier, 1977)

• Church and People 1450-1660:  The Triumph of the Laity in the English Church ( Fontana, 1976)

• 'Popular Piety and the Records of the Unestablished Churches 1460-1660', Studies in Church History, XI (1975)

• 'The Church in England 1646-1660', in G. E. Aylmer, ed., The Interregnum:  The Quest for Settlement 1646-1660 (Macmillan, 1972)

• '"Dens of Loitering Lubbers":  Protestant Protest against Cathedral Foundations', Studies in Church History, IX (1972)

• '"He-Goats before the Flocks";  A Note on the Part played by Women in the Founding of some Civil War Churches', Studies in Church History, VIII (1971)

• 'The Economic Problems of the See of York;  Decline and Recovery in the Sixteenth Century', in J. Thirsk, ed., Land, Church and People:  Essays presented to Professor H.P.R. Finberg, Agricultural History Review, vol. XVIII, Supplement (1970)

•  The Royal Supremacy in the Elizabethan Church (Allen and Unwin), 1969

• The Letters of Sir Francis Hastings, 1574-1609, Somerset Record Society (1969)

• 'Supervising the Finances of the Third Earl of Huntingdon, 1580-1595', Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research, XL (1967)

• 'Achieving the Millennium: The Church in York during the Commonwealth', Studies in Church History, IV (1967)

• The Puritan Earl:  The Life of Henry Hastings, Third Earl of Huntingdon, 1536-1595 (Macmillan, 1966)

• 'The Third Earl of Huntingdon and the Trials of Catholics in the North', Recusant History, VIII (1965)

• 'An Example of Lay Intervention in the Elizabethan Church', Studies in Church History, II (1965)

• 'The Hastings Manuscripts: Sources for Leicestershire History in California', Transactions of the Leicestershire Archaeological and Historical Society,  XXXVIII (1964)

• 'Berwick on Tweed and the Neighbouring Parts of Northumberland on the Eve of the Armada', Archaeologia Aeliana, 4th Series, XLI (1963)

• 'The Third Earl of Huntingdon and Elizabethan Leicestershire', Transactions of the Leicestershire Archaeological and Historical Society, XXXVI (1962)

• 'An Exchange of Lands with the Crown', Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research, XXXIV (1961)

• 'Noble Patronage in the Elizabethan Church', Historical Journal, III (1960)

• The Free Grammar School of Leicester (Leicester University Press, 1953)