The book is based on the records -- 50 years of uniquely expansive and garrulous commentary'' -- kept by Morebath's parish priest, Sir Christopher Trychay (priests were called Sir then, not Father), from 1520 until his death in 1574. They tell of the daily life of a priest and his parishioners as they struggle with the religious reforms of Henry VIII and Edward VI, the revival of Catholicism under Mary and the return to Protestantism again under Elizabeth I.

What is striking about this tale is how Sir Christopher and his flock, despite their strong Catholic sympathies, begrudgingly embraced Protestantism, accepting the destruction of a traditional way of life in which sacred and secular were often hard to disentangle. Villagers grazed the church's sheep with their own flocks, organized parish feasts, or ''ales,'' in its ale-house, pealed its bells for their weddings and tolled them for their dead.

After Henry's final break with the Church of Rome in 1534, prayers for the pope ceased, Sir Christopher preached royal supremacy and the parish's benign monastic landlord was replaced by one of the hard-faced speculators doing well out of the dissolution of the monasteries. Edward VI's short reign brought harsher changes, as communion tables replaced altars; an English prayer book was introduced; statues, rosaries, processions and the ringing of bells were banned and vestments and church plate confiscated.

Morebath resisted a little. Sir Christopher sent five parishioners to join the disastrous Prayer Book Rebellion of 1549, when hundreds of West Country men were butchered near Exeter. And he carefully hid his crucifixes and vestments, hoping for happier days. But even after Mary I restored Catholicism in 1553, Sir Christopher confined his satisfaction to noting that his neglected church, which had ''dekeyed'' under Edward VI, was now ''comforted'' and ''restoryd.'' By 1560, when Protestantism was again the religion of the land, he was happily accepting a second parish with an increased stipend.

Duffy calls the ease with which priests like Sir Christopher accepted Protestantism ''one of the most puzzling aspects of Tudor religious history.'' Fear of treason and the power of the crown were factors, and in Sir Christopher's case no doubt loyalty to his village flock. If abandoning them was impossible, he had to accept whatever changes came. ''His religion in the end was the religion of Morebath,'' Duffy writes.