Schen, Claire S.

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Schen, Claire S.

PERSONAL:

Education: Brown University, A.B., 1987; Brandeis University, Ph.D., 1995.

ADDRESSES:

Office—Department of History, University at Buffalo, State University of New York, 546 Park Hall, Buffalo, NY 14260-4130. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER:

University at Buffalo, the State University of New York, associate professor.

WRITINGS:

Charity and Lay Piety in Reformation London, 1500-1620, Ashgate (Burlington, VT), 2002.

Book review editor for the Journal of British Studies. Author of articles for scholarly journals, including Albion.

SIDELIGHTS:

Claire S. Schen is a professor of history whose first book is Charity and Lay Piety in Reformation London, 1500-1620. Based on the author's extensive research of primary documents—some 685 wills—the work details the charitable giving records of four diverse London parishes: St. Botolph, St. Mary Woolnoth, St. Michael Cornhill, and St. Stephen's Walbrook. The records show how parishioners responded to the poor in their neighborhoods, and how women and men differed in terms of what they gave and who they gave it to, especially as the Reformation took hold. Initially, charity was based on concern for one's soul, and in the later years it became more concerned with physical need and gifts were given to family and friends rather than the purely indigent. Women often took a leading role in distributing charitable contributions; they were less concerned than men with ceremony and gave freely to other women. Men tended to bequeath their money to other men or to institutions.

Schen explores the ways the Elizabethan Poor Laws of 1598 and 1601 were influenced by parish traditions, and how those laws interpreted who was worthy of receiving charity. Women were less likely to be beneficiaries of parish funds, and the least likely of all were women who were poor and lived alone. After the Reformation, the domain of charity gradually shifted from the parish to the state as workhouses and other social programs to help the poor were established.

Charity and Lay Piety in Reformation London is an "articulate book, compelling and important," wrote Paul A. Fideler in the journal Albion, and Ian W. Archer, writing in the English Historical Review, praised it as "a book from which we can learn a great deal about the processes of religious change in the metropolis."