Patrick Collinson CBE (1929 2011) was Regius Professor of Modern History at the University of Cambridge (1998 96) and a Fellow of Trinity College and the British Academy. The leading historian of sixteenth-century religion and politics of his generation, he was the author of many important books, notably The Elizabethan Puritan Movement (1967), The Religion of Protestants: The Church in English Society, 1559 1625 (1982) and The Birthpangs of Protestant England (1988). He also published several collections of his essays, including Godly People (1983), Elizabethan Essays (1994), From Cranmer to Sancroft (2006) and This England (2011).