Bill Sheils

William J. Sheils , known as Bill Sheils, is professor emeritus in history at the University of York and a fellow of the Royal Historical Society. Sheils is a specialist in the early modern religious and social history of Britain.

Education Sheils was educated at the William Ellis School, North London (1957–64),

Career Sheils first worked on the Victoria County History in Gloucestershire before joining the University of York as an archivist at the Borthwick Institute in 1973 where he worked on the post-medieval collections until 1988. He then taught nineteenth- and twentieth-century social and economic history, and subsequently early modern religious and social history with a specialism in Britain.

Sheils has written extensively for the Journal of Ecclesiastical History, as well as contributing to the Economic History Review, The Sixteenth Century Journal, and Northern History.

He has served as Chair of the editorial board of the Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 2015-2019, and as Chair of Council of The Catholic Record Society 2018-2021

Personal life Bill is married to Sarah, née Maidlow-Davis, and they have four children; Lucy, Eleanor, Thomas and Richard. Sheils is a parishioner of St Aelred's in the Roman Catholic Diocese of Middlesbrough.

Selected publications The Puritans in the Diocese of Peterborough, 1558–1610. Northamptonshire Record Society, 1979. The English Reformation 1530–1570. Longman, 1989. (Seminar Studies in History)