All these women (Anne Bolyen, Anne Askew, Katherine Parr, Lady Jane Grey, Catherine Willoughby) thought theologically. They were lay theologians. They read theological books, most especially the Bible, and anything to which they could gain access from the continental Protestant Reformers. They talked theology. Their inner circles of court ladies were twenty-four-hours-a-day Bible studies. They saw everything that happened to them through two lenses: the lens of the providence of God and the lens of the furtherance of the Reformed Religion… Each of these women… lived for one thing: to see the Reformed Religion overcome the opposition to it both within the church and outside it. They ached to see the Reformation triumph. They were not only observers of this high drama, they were participants.
From Five Women of the English Reformation, by Paul F.M. Zahl
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