Thomas Becon was one of the most prolific and popular Tudor writers; he composed dozens of works and produced several translations, and his popularity is reflected by the fact that a translation of Heinrich Bullinger's The Golden Book of Christian Matrimony (1542) was, as he said, "for the more ready sale set forth in my name by the hungry printer with my preface." In his life and works one can track the progress of the English Reformation from its early days under Henry VIII, through the consolidation of Protestantism under Edward VI and the reassertion of Catholicism under Mary, until the years after the Elizabethan Settlement. Many of his tracts ran to several editions during his lifetime and continued to inform the spiritual lives of English men and women long after his death. In the confusion of the early Reformation, Becon's first publisher claimed that his pen name on...