Raising Christian children in early modern England: Salvation, education and the family

Changes in prescribed doctrine, through the removal of the direct association between baptism and salvation, created much ambiguity surrounding child salvation in post-Reformation England. Despite this, Protestant religion provided a constructive and positive framework for raising the young, set out in a range of family advice manuals, written by Protestant clerics. Within this framework, ideal models of behaviour were narrated for both parents and children. Such idealized narratives provide us with a glimpse of what kind of behaviour was expected of both parents and children in this period, and also what kind of world these families inhabited.