This book offers a new interpretation of the transition from Catholicism to Protestantism in the English Reformation, and explores its implications for an understanding of women and gender. Central to this is an appreciation of the significance of medieval Christocentric piety in offering a bridge to Reformation, and in shaping the nature of Protestantism in the period up to the Civil War. Not only does this explain much of the support for Protestantism, but it also suggests the need to question assumptions that the 'loss' of the Virgin Mary and the saints was detrimental to women.